This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone who morbidly follows this sort of thing (as I do) knows, enraging Muslim fanatics is hardly an accomplishment of Halley’s Comet-like rarity. It doesn’t take much: books, cartoons, teddy bears named Mohammad, posters of puppies, piggy banks, a Burger King ice cream swirl and the Nike logo (both of which apparently too closely resembled the Arabic script for “Allah”), are just a few of the recent Western offenses that have sparked their frothing outrage worldwide.

Yet despite the Daily Star’s perversely hopeful tone, there was no violent reaction in the UK from said fanatics, nor was there one in the United States after the episode originally aired here last Thanksgiving weekend (in a grimly ironic twist, the same weekend as the devastating mass murder and mayhem committed in Mumbai by a band of – wait for it – Muslim fanatics, or as the culturally sensitive media preferred to call them at the time, “gunmen”). So why no Muslim fury over The Simpsons? (more…)

The most annoying creature in the pantheon of Hollywood cliches is the “free spirit,” the heedless, hedonistic waif whose responsibility-free lifestyle shows us uptight squares just how empty and soulless our lives of meeting obligations and delaying gratification truly are.  But there’s nothing free about free spirits in real life – they flit along like eternal infants while other people get to pick up the figurative and literal bill – people like you, and me and TV’s most amusing everyman Hank Hill.

Tonight Fox will run the series finale of King of the Hill, the saga of Hank and his gang of associates living in their exurb paradise of Arlen, Texas.  King has a helluva a pedigree.  It was created by fellow UC San Diego grad Mike Judge, who also developed the criminally under-appreciated Beavis and Butt-Head.  The co-creator was Greg Daniels, who previously worked on The Simpsons  and wrote the classic Lisa’s Wedding episode.  Together, they made King the most subversive comedy on television. (more…)

Only a tiresome poseur like Quentin Tarantino could think that the Hollywood pretty boys he cast in his soon-to-be released opus The Inglorious Basterds are convincing movie tough guys. Where is Lee Marvin when we need him?

You’ve probably experienced the Basterds publicity blitz.  Brad Pitt looks like he stepped out of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. Folks I know who have been around him say he really is a pleasant and laid-back guy, and these are hardly the characteristics of a beady-eyed killer.  Creepy Eli Roth, taking some time off from directing his degenerate torture movies, is just a leering clown – he looks like he should be squatting in the back of his Ford panel van offering Tootsie Rolls to passing tweens.  And B.J. Novak?  The guy is a hilarious writer and is really funny in The Office , but I’m not buying this cat as the scourge of the Third Reich.

In contrast, Lee Marvin’s tough guy legacy lives on despite the fact that his body rests with thousands of other heroes in Arlington National Cemetery. He earned that right when he was wounded fighting the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific as a Marine private. His Purple Heart is 100% USDA certified proof positive of his prime badassary. Who is the Hollywood tough guy of today who can dare step up to the Lee Marvin plate and take a swing?

Nobody. (more…)

Compared to the generic twerps the Hollywood machine pumps out today and labels as “stars,” at 92, Ernest Borgnine remains the real deal. He is to the genetically-engineered robots like the Zac Effrons and Robert Pattinsons of the world what a shot of straight-up Jack Daniels is to a watered down cosmopolitan served with a straw. Borgnine has lived a real life, full of ups and down, and his face shows it. In contrast, today’s stars look like they were raised in protective cocoons after being genetically engineered to perfect their bone structure, dark eyebrows and pouting lips. And that’s just the guys.

Look at his life. Borgnine was born to Italian immigrant parents in 1917, spent 10 years in the Navy, including all of World War II, then bummed around as a second string character actor for another decade before snagging an Oscar in his first major role. The closest thing to life experience one of today’s stars has is a three week stint at $5,000-a-day rehab resort getting seaweed facials and talking about how his daddy never told him he loved him during group therapy while secretly gobbling the vicodins he smuggled in inside the liner of his Louis Vuitton cosmetics case. (more…)