More hockey player-actor look alikes

Tom Cavanaugh and Matt Cullen

Click here for my Stephen Baldwin - Tuomo Ruutu look alike

The ladies have got to watch their shows.

She seemed pretty interested in what I was doing, so I popped open a video she might enjoy.

This doesn't make me look like the crazy cat lady at all.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I guess I'll continue the fine (?) tradition of posting comments to movies I see at the theater and apply a qualifying number of Shwing!s to them. Here's a 4-Shwing!er.

Last weekend it was a great night out with friends to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Overall I thought the movie was very good. I think it was a example of very good storytelling. The makeup and effects used to change the apparent age of the characters were terrific. And then, there's Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

The story here made me think about that phrase "Youth is wasted on the young." This movie seemed to turn that notion on its head, and look at giving youth to the older, the wiser. There were amusing scenes where a seven-year-old Benjamin was surrounded by the elderly, amusing in how they seemed to sometimes behave much the same way. Funny, too, where some random scenes peppered in having to do with lightning strikes.

The peripheral characters were often as engaging as the main ones. Benjamin's mom (she was wonderful), the woman who teaches him piano, Caroline and Captain Mike were interesting and so well-done. This is not just a Brad Pitt movie.

There was potent symbolism involving the approach of Hurricane Katrina that I hope Laura will explain to me.

Even though there were a few times it seemed to move a little slow, the story never felt bogged-down. I'm happy I saw it.

The olde tyme ShBlog

I was browsing through the old posts on this blog and was surprised to see the oldest post referenced a former home for my blog. Really?

I finally remember where that was housed, an old-old site called Blurty. The postings aren't visible unless I login since they're so old (http://www.blurty.com/users/shblog). So I saved them as PDFs and posted them here for posterity.

I have to say, even though it's drivel, I am impressed that I was consistently blogging back in 2004. I clearly had a lot of time on my hands.

I see what you're doing

Does anyone else notice the excessive coverage of Jett Travolta's death on the 24 hour news channels and entertainment shows? Disclaimer: I only know about the entertainment shows because they were playing at the gym.

Besides being tragic and sad, the death of a celebrity's child is newsworthy in America in 2009. But why the incessant coverage? I have an idea why.

I think that because the Travolta/Prestons are Scientologists, news programs are covering the story closely from the beginning in case there is an eventual connection (either real or contrived) between their religious practices and the condition(s) that resulted in his death.

Once that evil, terrible, big-mouthed, ignorant woman Nancy Grace gets her claws in this, it will get even worse. I hate her! (ooh! rage!)

What I don't like the way this is that this playing out in the media. As if they're setting us up to watch them blame a child's parents for his death...just in case it might be true. It's sensationalism, it's cruel and there's no place for it with what's really going on (that matters) in America this week.

But to shift gears for a moment, I do have some sugar for the NBC Nightly News crew. In case I haven't mentioned it, I love Brian Williams a little bit. And I know that the demographics of the people watching major network nightly news programs is a more senior crowd that my demographical checkbox, but I still like to watch Brian tell me about what's happening. Anyway, during tonight's broadcast they covered the Obama children starting their new school. Brian went on to say that would be the last they would cover the Obama girls unless there is compelling news about them. I thought this was very decent, noticeable because I'm not used to decency from the media.

See what Bri had to say at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/28511761#28511761

Thus concludes today's tirade about American media.