- Bears News: Wow; "Wife induces labor so husband can go to Bears game." Yay; "Bears' Johnson gets court OK to travel." Yikes; "Dallas needs a coach. Lovie Smith is underpaid. Hmm....."
- Kingston sends this week's Fuck You You Fucking Fuck Award out to Isaiah Washington. The dude is trying to cover his ass, but even his network wants his head on a platter. Is this a good sign that our culture is trying to overcome hate speech, or a bad sign that we're all too politically correct for our own good?
- In other entertainment news, the Oscar nominations came out today. I feel vindicated that "Dreamgirls" was shut out of Best Picture and Best Director. It just isn't that good, people! (You'll have to excuse me -- I work in a theatre department, and this movie is all anyone seems to want to talk about.)
- Also, controversy at Sundance as Dakota Fanning gets raped in her latest film. Reminds me of all that controversy over "The Pain and the Itch" at Steppenwolf last year. Chris Jones, the Chicago Tribune theatre critic, wrote a review of the show. Then he wrote a separate article which mentioned that as a parent himself, the show's use of an actual 9-year-old to play the part of the 6-year-old who gets a venereal disease made him uncomfortable. (I can't link to the articles because they're too far back.) To my mind, this is the job of a critic: to point out how the play made him feel so that we, the educated consumer, can then decide if we would feel that way, and if we want to feel that way. The folks working on the show, of course, declared that he was trying to censor their art. Sigh.
- In theatre news, here's a GREAT article in the Guardian written by Fiona Shaw about her experiences working on Beckett plays with crazy director Deborah Warner. Should be required reading for theatre students.
- Also in the Guardian, a great quote from Kate Jackson, lead singer for the Long Blondes, "Student debt is the greatest threat to art today."
- And another musician weighs in on making money vs. making art: John Mellencamp talks about his Chevy truck commercial, "I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not suggesting it for anybody else. This is just what I did this time to reinvent myself and stay in business. Sometimes I get sad about it really. I still don’t think that people should sell their songs for advertising."
- Comic Book Science In The Real World, #3: Bionic eyes might actually be true!
- No one I've ever talked to remembered this awesome video game from my youth, and I was beginning to be worried that I had dreamed the whole thing. You play the members of the band Journey on a quest to get your instruments back from outer space and get to your concert. Don't stop believin'!
- I don't know why I had to find this in the Houston Chronicle, but apparently Houston and Chicago are going to be the test markets for the new $1 George Washington coin! It should roll out in mid-February.
- This article made me angry. The headline asks, "What's wrong with the CTA? A $6-billion shortfall. Suspect decisions. Soaring ridership. Can our train system be fixed?" Then it goes on to tell you that what's wrong with the CTA seems to be: a $6-billion shortfall, suspect decisions, and soaring ridership. But they never bother to suggest any solutions, or to answer the final question of whether or not it can be fixed, short of finding someone to pony up the $6-billion.
- Random weirdness: beer for dogs!
- Here's a moral quandry: The courts ordered the Unabomber to pay $12-million in restitution to the families of his victims. So far they've gotten about $7,000 from selling the land his cabin was on, but the dude had no money or possessions to speak of. So the government wants to auction off his writings and letters to raise some more of the money. Kaczynski has appealed, arguing that his intellectual property is not covered under the restitution law. His family is also concerned, as many of the letters are from them or to them, and they argue that their words shouldn't be subject to seizure because of Ted's actions (and in fairness, they turned him in with the promise that their name would be kept out of the whole mess, and the government screwed them). The victims are split between wanting the money, not wanting Kaczynski to get any more publicity because of the auction, and not wanting him to be able to retain the rights to his writings and publish them later. It's a crazy mess that makes me glad I'm not a judge!
- More news from the marriage front: the marriage rate is declining, but now it appears that educated people are more likely to get married, and to stay married longer. Weird, considering that earlier statistic about how people with a graduate degree are more likely to cheat on their spouse! Statistics suck.
- The 100-Mile Diet is sounding better all the time..... Meat is ridiculously bad for the environment.
- Too much time on your hands? Read this interesting essay on reconsidering the original Star Wars trilogy in light of the prequels. It proposes that the actual masterminds behind the rebellion in the original trilogy were... R2D2 and Chewbacca!
- And lastly, this fun gadget is designed to help disabled people work on computers, but think how nice it would be to have it set up at your bed on your day off.....
And now, since I'm still high from Sunday, here it is - your Moment of Bears Zen:
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