Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show: I as always am Blog

The title there isn’t funny at all. Well at least if you don’t watch/listen to Kevin Pollack’s chat show. But even then it really isn’t that funny.

Right so as a blogger I am not so much into the recommendations. I mean I do reviews. From time to time I will take a pass at political commentary and perhaps, hopefully, make the three of you reading laugh. But today we are going to change that.

Not the laughing part, that is probably going to stay the same. I will officially make the first official recommendation and it is not a brand or level of sunscreen, even though everything above 30 is total bull.

Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show is a must listen/watch for those of you who enjoy the entertainment arts, and the hollywood land buzi-nass.  It’s basically Inside the Actors Studio, but without the pandering narcissism of James “Tea man” Lipton.

It is a casual conversation with interesting people that makes you think, “hey this is unscripted goodness and isn’t trying to sell me something.” I am looking at you network television. Stop selling me things, I am not buying. Except whatever that baby is selling, that shit is hilarious. If only I could remember the product.

Anyway, Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show is like sitting in on a private conversion between a famous person and Kevin Pollack. Sorry KP, you know you’re my boy. Well actually you don’t because I was born in Delaware and you were in the Usual Suspects. But you are my boy.

Seeing actors, comedians, people of note and Kevin Pollack in their normal state is demystifying in a very cool way. It’s like Neil Patrick Harris or Jason Alexander is just a guy hanging out, nothing horribly special. Just a guy who was able to do some really cool things talking about them.

But more than that you get a really different understanding of the nuts and bolts of the movie/tv making business. I think most people don’t understand why actors do bad movies, but when you hear so many talented actors talk about how hard it is to work, you really start to form a different opinion of the performing arts career choices.

Although, their is also significant discussion of how the TV show, movie, theater process works. For entertainment junkies like this pale kid that’s amazing. I’m never going to see the play that John Slattery (Mad Men) did with Nathan Lane (the Birdcage), but hearing about it is almost better.

Besides all that Chat Show does some cool things with social media to get the audience involved: tweet 5 -where a twitter gets to ask 5, either-or questions to the guest. Also, each episode includes “The Larry King Game,” in which guests perform a bad impression of Larry King exposing a personal secret  and then going to the phones siting a funny sounding city name.

It’s a 2 hour live show that is refreshingly unedited and moderately scripted, it’s genuine…which is not really a word that one can normally use when referring to hollywood.

All the episodes are on iTunes, I recommend subscribing to the video podcast and then picking the guests you are most interested in.

Below are a sample of a few Larry King games, enjoy!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: You have to earn it

Somewhere an executive at Warner Brothers is crying in a Scrooge Mcduck size pool of money.  That comically large pool of gold coins was not due to a government bail out but one of the most successful franchises in entertainment history, the tears are because the Harry Potter franchise has started to end.

Although, they are squeezing every penny out of the final book installment, splitting the 784 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows in two feature length films.  And to be fair the story is large enough to split into a Ken Burns documentary, so it’s not like WB is spreading this out to weasel an extra $10 out of you, that is just the icing on the gold plated  birthday cake they are sending to JK Rowling at her Scottish castle-home.

The thing I really enjoy about Part 1 is that it is not for everybody. It is for the fans. You could not just show up to this movie and understand anything that was going on. These final two films are  the payoff for those who read the books and followed the movies, and if you didn’t well then you are SOL.

For those of you who are fans (of the paleness or Harry Potter) continue.

With so much story to cover in the final two films director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves do an excellent job of establishing the most important aspect of the Deathly Hollows – the stakes.  The world of Harry Potter isn’t going to spell’s class, pranks on Snape or even Hogwarts anymore, schools out and it’s time to get expecto patronum on some death eaters imperiusing asses.

( I told you fans only)

That is why the early deaths of Hedwig and Mad-Eye Moody are so important. Both in the novel and in the film.  At it’s core the Deathly Hollows is about transitioning from the innocence of youth to the reality that we will all die, and all that we can control is how we go about living.

To effectively communicate this though, Yates has to keep the pace high and cut out a lot of the secondary character’s background stories. Bill Weasley is awkwardly introduced in the first few scenes as if he were a throw-away character and then all of a sudden you are at his wedding.  But that is what has to happen when you have so much story to cover and only so much attention span to work with.

Also, Yates has a uncanny ability to mix the humorousness that is so much a part of the Harry Potter franchise with the incredibly dark and evil events of the deathly hallows. This is war and you know it, but with a few laughs along the way…like a children’s book morphing into a adult fiction.

But that is basically the way Rowling wrote it so Yates must be doing something right.

Though their are more than a few moments where the dialogue is weak and awkward shots seem to waste valuable screen time, on the whole this will be an enjoyable film to Potheads everywhere.

Pale Alert: Harry Potter Uberfan makes Blogger seem cool

Alright, so when you first start to watch this you’re thinking, “crazy.” But you know, to each his own. Then you get to the part about how he has a tattoo of J.K. Rowlings signature and you start to get a Buffalo Bill vibe from this guy/kid.

I don’t know what they would call the mayor of crazy town at Hogwarts but this guy/kid is it.

I don’t mind obsession either. I mean I have grown to become obsessed with the smell of SPF 50 to the point where I am thinking of marketing my own cologne, “pale survival”. But I still know how to mix it up once in a while and get a little dangerous with something in the 30′s…sometimes I get burned, literally, but sometimes I just get a few freckles.

My advice to this guy/kid…maybe get down with some Middle Earth and diversify the crazy investment, just in case the Deathly Hallows Part 1 doesn’t quite live up to nerdspectations.

What is wrong with a kid having a flag on his bike?

I just have one question: why wasn’t he allowed to have the flag on his bike in the first place? There is a giant American flag in front of the school, so it is not like everybody didn’t know that they were this country.

Also, in case anybody wants to make this political…he was riding his bike! Green energy bitches, come on.

127 Hours – Your hand or your life, you choose

A man stuck between a rock and a hard place. The hard place in 127 Hours is the hand of Aron Ralston and the rock is, well the rock is an actual rock.

Ralston (James Franco) was hiking and climbing through Blue John Canyon in Utah, when a bolder became dislodged and fell, crushing his right hand and wedging itself against the narrow canyon walls.  After 5 days of urine drinking and hallucinating Ralston amputates his own arm.

I don’t think Bear Grylls covered this in Man v. Wild.

It’s actually a pretty funny movie. Up until the part where Ralston resorts to drinking his own urine. It only gets more graphic when Ralston breaks his own arm and slowly tears into his own flesh, cutting nerves like long pieces of spaghetti, with a dull pocket knife.

The whole thing is almost surreal to watch because it is so personal.

Franco and director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) are able to bring you into Ralston’s mind as it slowly deteriorate from careful water rationing and clever survival tactics into saw your arm off in a dehydrated, survival haze.

But in a movie that is completely driven by one character, 127 Hour skillfully avoids the Cast Away pitfall – the loneliness of just one character and his monologue makes you want to punt every Wilson volleyball you see.  127 Hour moves quickly and doesn’t dwell on building up the accident that leads to the crushing of Aron’s hand or the ultimate decision to cut his arm off.  Everything just kind of happens and you are along for the ride.

It is an experience film that puts you into the mind of a true survivor. You will walk away with just one though, “could I do that?”

For me it wasn’t cutting off the arm or even drinking the urine, but the 5 days of direct sunlight which would have sunk my battleship.

Health Care Costs: It’s Not About Expanding Coverage, It’s About Reining in Costs

I may have given too much away in the title of this post, but after my initial point about the precedent of Congresses’ ability to mandate health insurance coverage I thought it was important to address the real question facing health care reform – cost.

Some liberal proponents of health care reform have argued that access to health insurance is a human right. This concept is wholly unsupportable based on the reality that this country is a free market economy. No one has the right to any good or service offered by the free market, they (the public) merely has the right to be among the people who create demand. It is the public’s right to be able to demand a product from the free market, but no one is required to offer it. That’s a fairly clear cut issue.

It’s important to establish that health insurance is not a right, because it shifts the focus from expanding access to controlling cost. While controlling cost will expand access it’s important to understand the real problems in the health care system. While insurance companies have certainly limited access (i.e. denying individuals coverage for pre-existing conditions), it’s because such limitations are in the best interests of their bottom line, that doesn’t make them morally culpable just assholes.

But the means of appropriately regulating a free market industry is through a combination of limited legal regulations and more importantly tax breaks or incentives to foster good actions, thereby making the right thing also the profitable thing. “But that’s a general philosophy, what about the current legislation?”

The thing is that the US government already pays for 29% of health care coverage in this country. 29%!  This bill is meant to address the 15% uninsured, in terms of access. But even if this legislation could extend coverage to the remaining uninsured, the government would still be insuring less than half of the country. So where is the socialism?

This legislation is meant to address extending the coverage by roughly 10%, over the next several years.  Most of this 10% will be eaten up by the private industry which has not expanded mandates to offer people coverage.  Again, where is the socialism?

The answer is that there is no socialism, what there is though is an expansion of coverage without a clear and well understood economic plan for the future of the system. The federal government is already spending roughly 20% of its budget on Medicaid and Medicare.  This new legislation will actually only increase the current federal health care expenditure slightly, perhaps less than 3% by some estimates. 

The problem isn’t the health care reform bill; the problem is the health care system and it’s lack of cost containment. This was why we needed tort reform, to help lower insurance premiums for doctors. Those high insurance premiums get passed on to patients, and inflate the cost of health care policies. It’s a trickle down effect, that hurts everyone but the lawyers.

But tort reform is just one issue that could have a positive impact on reducing health care costs. Reducing costs will have a systemic impact on the affordability of writing health care policies in the free market. If it’s a less expensive product to create, then it’s a less expensive product to sell. A more affordable product will expand access.

But you can’t just expand access without addressing the broad economical picture, which has been less effected by the health care reform bill than by the current state of the health care system in the country. Hence my initial argument that everyone needs to calm down, we’ve been living with this problem for a while now and the ghost of Stalin hasn’t re-written the Constitution yet.

Public Option: Crazy? Maybe Not

I wrote a post a month or so ago in which I tried to discuss the virtues of the public option, primarily the potential use of a public plan as a safety net to help cover high risk populations which cost more to the tax payer anyway. Which I still believe is the case, just look at how many states handle home owners insurance and you’ll figure out the cost benefit of having a public plan. But I was reading an New York Times Op-Ed today entitled Health Care That Works by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF.

I don’t generally read Kristof, but he brought up a few good points on the health care debate worth highlighting. The most significant valid point that he brings up is the fact that Veteran’s Hospitals are a form of socialized health care that provide an good product compared to many private sector options. Course the VA hospitals don’t serve a huge population, and the quality of care is commensurate with the service that these men and women have provided to the county, and therefor not cheap necessarily. But the point is that government does have some administrative success stories in the world of health care to suggest they might be able to handle a larger job.

Kristof also brings up the number of socialized programs that already exist in this country, and that produce a high level product. The most obvious are the Police and Fire departments around the country, which Americans would stand behind and consider these public servants as local hero’s. Rightfully so in my opinion.

But the difference is that the police force and fire fightes provide a necessary public service and combat communical problems. Health and health care are fundamentally private. This is why their is such a fierce debate about the public opinion from a policy standpoint.

Behind the conservative calls of socialism and Obama’s social agenda, their is a basic concern that government would impact the relationship someone has with their doctor. While many Democrats and public option proponents call this fear baseless and the result of Republican political misinformation, their is a sense that while insurance companies suck, at least we already know when, where and how they suck. Better the devil you know…

I’m not saying I agree with this thought process, but before a public option can win public support Congress and the President will have to really explain and flesh out their ideas to prove that there policies will not impact the doctor patient relationship. Just saying…

Muammar Gaddafi, Omaba Praising Students and other Crazy People I’m afraid Of: Thunder Awards

The Thunder Awards

Winner of the Week: Bill Clinton, hands down. He has dominated the news cycle over the past week, he’s on every show commenting on everything, and doing it in the smooth way President Clinton.

Loser of the Week: Mummar Gaddafi, and not because he made a 90 minutes speech, he was alloted 15, and not because he talked about swine flue, the Kennedy Assassination and Nazi’s all in the same speech…but because he is crazy. I also enjoyed when he threw his program at the Secretary General’s podium…sometimes I feel like he’s the real life borat.

In case you missed it -

 

Obama’s War

Conservative columnist George Will called for a reversal of the Obama policy in Afghanistan today, quoting Charles De Guall- “Genisus… sometimes consists of knowing when to stop.” Will ‘s article, Afghanistan: Time to Stop Nation-Building, is an pragmatic argument best summed up by saying the mission is over. Al-Qaeda no longer has basis’s in the nation, so why stay and try to build a nation where the economy and infrastructure wouldn’t even meet Fred Flinstones level of of sophistication. Course Fred had dinosaurs to help him out so that’s not really a fair comparison.

Of course President Obama doesn’t really argee with George Will’s assessment, believing that Afghanistan is essentially the proving ground for his administrations version of a war on terror. The problem for both men’s position is Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan. General McChrystal has argued that the war and goals are within research, but all he needs is more resources.

But this is the crux of Will’s argument; if the goal, as the President has recently stated,  is to elimate the threat of Al-Qeada in the region then that job is done. Resources in this economy are limited, and an increase in to Afghanistan may not be the best target to battle the broader regional issues.

As Will alludes to in th conclusion of his article, Pakistan is the real regional hope. Pakistan is almost a country. Sure it has a few intergovernmental issues and the swat valley is basically the wild west, but hey at least they have a government and some level of infrastructure. Afghanistan’s economy is primarily built on the trafficking of illegal drugs, which mostly funds terrorist organizations and possibly the vice President of the country.

Either way, it’s not exactly an ideal nation in which to foster a stable democracy, or any form of government for that matter.  As Will sites, Afghanistan is second to worst on the Brookings Institute list of places to nation build, beating out Somalia. Resources should be placed where they can have the greatest impact, and taking Afghanistan over Pakistan in the war of central asian terrorism is trying to turn around the Oakland Raiders when the 49ers are right next door. *

* For those of you who don’t follow the NFL as some of us fantasy football obsessed people do, here’s another analogy – It’s like investing in 8 track a year after CD’s came out.

Rachel Maddow – You (Scott Brown) Lie!

Anger! Rage! Rachel Maddow.

She’s pissed at Scott Brown for using her name as potential opposition candidate to scare up some out-of-state cash. But unfortunately for Scotty she didn’t know that she was running, or even being asked to run. Of course that doesn’t matter, Republican’s will see Rachel Maddow think crazy liberal lesbian on MSNBC and whip out their check books.

So Ms. Maddow has some right to be upset that she’s being used to stir up cash for the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts. But so her natural reaction is to take a full page aid out in the Boston Globe to set the record straight. The fact that she has a nationally syndicated cable TV show apparently wasn’t a large enough megaphone to present her case.

I’m all for setting the record straight, and calling people out when your name has been incorrectly used, but she’s a journalist whose suppose to be objective.   I don’t necessarily see the journalistic objectivity in her following comments -  “Do you remember when Mitt Romney ran for President after being our Governor and he went around the country insulting Massachusetts, talking about what an awful state we are?” While Governor Romney definitely made jokes about the liberalism of Massachusetts, I don’t remember him bashing the state he was Governor of, but that’s besides the point.

My point is this- she’s an activist. Can’t we just admit that she’s balancing out Fox News. She’s entertainment and so are they. I don’t go to MSNBC or FOX for news coverage, I go there for political slant and bias commentary.

I’m not saying she can’t be upset, but if you’re doesn’t this kind of thing weaken her arguments against Fox New’s activism. I mean she’s involved in the same kinda of activist journalism that Glenn Beck is, she just doesn’t support a group as much as an ideology.

I’m just say’n.