Peter Jennings, R.I.P.

Well, it seems like every time I get ready to unleash a humorous rant in your direction, something serious happens that takes precedence. And this is a big one, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The last credible TV news anchor has passed away. Peter Jennings was 67. Lung cancer -- smoking -- killed him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Lost": Everything But Weight

Image
I don't watch "Lost". I sat through a small handful of the first-season episodes with the Wife -- just enough to make me realize where all the former "Twin Peaks" writers were now employed. (Both "Twin Peaks" and "Lost" were ABC productions. Coincidence? I think not ...) But certain things became alarmingly apparent to me faster than they did to anyone on the show ... like this silly obsession with the number 108. It was very early on that I realized the six numbers printed on the side of some hatch somewhere (or some toilet seat -- I have since lost track) added up to 108, which is the frequency with which the "doomsday device" needs to be reset. And the digits in "108" add up to 9. And the "Dharma Project" has something to do with Jenna Elfman's career, but darned if I can figure out what. As any loyal fan of "Lost" knows by now, the six numbers on the fortune cookie that led Locke (the bald guy w...
Read more

The Spread of American Culture

Image
I have never been a soccer fan. Not until today, that is. World Cup final match, Italy vs. France. Two teams kicking the ball all over the place and having practically nothing to show for it after 90 minutes of "action" and 30 minutes of overtime: boring. Italy winning the match on penalty kicks because someone on the French side screwed up: yawn. France's Zinedane Zidane smashing his bald head into the solar plexus of Italian Marco Materazzi, intentionally and for no good reason? Now, that's a tackle that an American sports fan can get into! I'm not proud of my bloodlust, but let's be completely honest here. When it comes to the pageantry of sports, Americans are about as refined in their choices as the Romans were when feeding gladiators to the lions. Football needs no explanation: it's really all about bodies slamming against each other. Basketball these days is about "in-your-face" stuffs and over-the-back flagrant fouls. NASCAR is sitting t...
Read more

"Dude, What The F*** Is Wrong With German People?"

Image
By sheerest coincidence, I was thinking about a scene this morning from the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut . The kids are surfing on the Internet, and stumble across a German scheisse video. (Just think "poo" and Cartman's mom, and you'll have all the information you need.) As they scream in horror and quickly click away, one of the kids exclaims: "Dude, what the f*** is wrong with German people?" And then, this afternoon, I stumbled across this story , and asked myself the same question. A convicted German cannibal returned to court on Thursday for a retrial to determine if his killing and eating of a willing victim amounted to murder. Oooookay ... The bizarre case of sexual fetishism and gory details of the crime have transfixed the public in Germany and beyond, while legal experts have argued over the definition of murder. "Sexual fetishism "? Uh oh ... He has admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brande...
Read more