Imitation is the highest form of imitation!

Remember when creativity in the television and film industries meant coming up with something new and original and not everything was an adaptation, a sequel or a reboot? Yeah, I don't either. But I'm still going to call bullshit on the Lord of the Rings TV show.

Although I'm sure the New Zealand Hobbit-based
tourism industry is breathing a sigh of relief.

Again, I refer you to the Hobbit Trilogy
which was, to be fair, was two and a half
more movies longer than it needed to be.

Huh? Oh yes, apparently Amazon, which owns everything Disney doesn't, has just snapped up the rights to produce a TV series set in the Lord of the Rings universe. I say the LOTR (acronym!) universe because the series is going to be a kind of prequel taking place before The Fellowship of the Ring movie. But wait, didn't Peter Jackson already mine the shit out of the pre-Fellowship era with the Hobbit trilogy? Sure, but why should a minor detail like a lack of source material stand in the way of milking Tolkien fans?

And milk them they shall because goddamn did the Tolkien estate cash in on this with Amazon paying $250 million. Yes, of money. And it's not just a one off, but a multi-season commitment and a spin-off. Yes, a spin-off for the series they haven't even made yet. Which, no really where are they getting the source material? Did Christopher Tolkien "find" another lost manuscript in the attic? Are they going to adapt The Children of Húrin? Or even more baffling, The Silmarillion?

Probably not. People tend to like TV
shows where things actually happen. Burn!

"So what's your excuse George R.R. Martin?
Still waiting on book six. Just saying..."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, throwing shade

It's a fair question, I mean, Tolkien's output has been a little light since he, you know, died in 1973. Here's what his estate had to say:

"Sharon (Tal Yguado, head of scripted series for Amazon) and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien's original writings."

-A rep for the Tolkien estate, 

struggling to be heard over the sound 

of J.R.R. Tolkien spinning in his grave

"Original? That's adorable."

-Jeff Bezos

I'm not sure 'hey, people like Lord of the Rings so let's make Lord of the Rings' qualifies as an exceptional idea. Also "...previously un-explored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien's original writings." Is it me or is that statement a little...you know, misleading? Like, they're not explicitly saying that they've got some here-to-for unseen Tolkien stories to base the show on, but they'd kind of like you to think so. Like it could be anything written by anyone and they just stick in a Hobbit. Which ok, cool, but why not just write something original?

Bezos knows Lord of the Rings is
more about adventure and whimsey and
less about incest and shanking, right?

Wait, is Jeff Bezos mocking me in that caption? Well yes he is, but then he was recently named the world's richest human so he is, by any reasonable measure, right to do so. Also it was, it turns out, his creative vision that prompted Amazon to buy the LOTR rights in the first place. And by creative vision I mean he looked at the success of Game of Thrones and then told his TV people to make something like that. You know, because fantasy is in right now. You see, Game of Thrones has swords and magic, and the Hobbit has swords and magic so samey-samey, right?

Ugh...Is that how you get to be the richest person on Earth? By looking at someone else's successful idea and then telling the people under you to go buy you something like that?

"Well yeah, what's your point?"

-Jeff Bezos, from 

atop his money horde

This is why we can't have nice things...

Ok everybody, the clock is ticking. According to the world's smartest human and noted alien invasion fear monger, Steven Hawking, we've got just six hundred more years to figure out a way off this planet or we're doomed. Doomed!

"My God that's...wait, did you say six hundred years? Yeah, sure 
we'll get right on that. After we cure cancer, come up with cold fusion 
and invent time travel. Pfft...you know, we're not your monkeys."  

-Scientists

Miami is already seeing serious flooding
and it's only a matter of time before cities
 we actually care about suffer similar fates.

What specific threat will doom us? Well, despite Hawking's previous warnings about alerting hostile aliens to our presence with inane SETI transmissions, the actual architects of our doom will be, unsurprisingly, us. Hawking says climate change resulting from the last two and a half centuries of industrialization combined with a rapidly increasing population will make the Earth uninhabitable sometime in the 27th century. Rising sea levels alone are expected to have catastrophic consequences for coastal cities in fewer than 100 years.

He's made predictions like this before, giving us timeframes anywhere between a hundred years and a thousand years, which... kind of makes me wonder why he's not working on inventing a warp drive instead of sitting around calculating our destruction, but hey, he's the once in a generation super genius I guess...

"Duh, because it's like, way easier."

-Dr. Steven Hawking

Old people: "dicking over succeeding
generations since the dawn of time."

The bright side to all of this-which is simultaneously the root of the problem-is that be it a thousand years or in a hundred years, chances are that if you're reading this you're probably not going to be alive to see the worst consequences of climate change. Kids on the other hand are kind of screwed. I'm not saying that laying blame on any one particular group is getting us anywhere, but if I were to lay some blame, I'd lay it at the feet of old people. Not all old people of course, just the ones who vote for politicians who are openly hostile towards environmental issues knowing full well they'll never see the consequences.

If we can double deck a taco, surely
we can slip some surly bonds.

So what do we do? Steven Hawking says we should get packing. Sure, the galaxy is an endless, radiation-soaked void that wants to kill us, but he feels it may well be preferable to Earth someday. It's not going to be easy, I mean, unless the government has a secret Stargate program or something, colonizing other planets is going to take some doing. And that's cool, I mean, I'm all for pouring the collective creative energies of the human race into something that isn't a new iPhone app or a taco within a taco.

But isn't there is something, I don't know, a little defeatist about this whole thing? Are we really talking about abandoning the Earth rather than switching to solar power and riding bikes? Probably. We are, after all, sort of a path of least resistance species, which is kind of what got us into this mess in the first place.

Besides, can you imagine an entire planet full of people
being insufferable about how they bike to work?

They give out awards for that, right?

You know, the word 'hero' gets thrown around a lot these days, but did you see this thing about Donald Trump? No? Because according to his former body guard, Donald Trump once turned down five prostitutes. So like, trophy?

Above: Donald Trump getting an award.
Probably for prostitute turning-down.

Pictured: Schiller and the man
he'd do anything to protect. Even
say, lie to Congress for him. 

Yeah, his former body guard, a guy called Keith Schiller, was interviewed by Congress today in connection with that dossier which, among other things, mentioned that Trump had a bunch of prostitutes over to his hotel room. Now according to Schiller, while someone involved with the Miss Universe contest did offer to send five prostitutes up to Trump's hotel room when he was staying in Moscow back in 2013, he, that is Schiller, turned them down. And then he and Trump laughed about it. Because crime and degradation are hilarious.

He went on to helpfully clarify that both he and Trump were concerned about the likelihood of hidden cameras in Russian hotel rooms. Super.

"Wah? Hidden camera? Psscht...
guys, it's me we're talking about..."

-The guy that picked

our President for us

Wait, shouldn't he be suggesting that
we investigate Hillary Clinton? You
know, because emails or whatever?

But how are we hearing about all this? Leaks! Yes, and Schiller's lawyer is appalled. Appalled!

"It's outrageous that the very Committee that is conducting an investigation into leaks...is itself leaking information and defaming cooperative witnesses like Mr. Schiller...This conduct...calls into question the credibility and motives of the Committee's investigation."

-Keith Schiller's lawyer 

on the real outrage...leaks

I don't know what he's so upset about, I mean, Schiller said that Trump didn't hire five prostitutes. Because he was afraid he might get caught. But given the incredibly low bar the administration has set, that's pretty good right? Incidentally, what do you call a group of prostitutes anyway? A gaggle? A flock?

Is it a sadness of prostitutes? I think it's a sadness of prostitutes.

It's a Wil Wheaton situation!

Hey, you know what's way easier than confronting our national epidemic of gun violence?  Getting outraged at Wil Wheaton. Wait, who? you ask. Get out. I reply. And then I remember that you're reading my blog and not in the room with me so I'll just explain. Will Wheaton played Wesley Crusher, boy genius on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but has since parlayed his kind of annoying character into a place in the geek pantheon, doing voice work, tv and just general nerdery.

Captain Picard used to let him fly the ship because he knew his mom way back when.
Which must have sucked if you were a Starfleet officer who worked your entire
career to get a job on the Enterprise, only to get passed over for some wonder teen.

Turns out getting conservatives to be
outraged is like, super-easy.

Anyway, right-leaning media outlets have demanded that we all get outraged over a Tweet Wheaton uh...tweeted in response to Speaker Paul Ryan's Tweet about yesterday's shooting at a church in Texas. Still with me? Great. Ryan's initial Tweet, which I'm sure was genuine and coming from a good place, said that the people of Sutherland Springs, where the shooting took place, 'need our prayers...' Whatever you think of Paul Ryan and whatever your worldview, religious or not, his comment was pretty innocuous.

Then Will Wheaton kind of jumped all over him with his Tweet:

In Wheaton's defense, Paul Ryan is kind of a sack of shit...

"Americans don't need affordable
health care, they need our prayers."

-Speaker Ryan

Yikes, right? As he later explained in subsequent Tweetings, Wheaton's beef is with Paul Ryan's failure to support reasonable gun control laws, and that he instead just offers his prayers every time something like this happens, which is, you know, really, really often. But sure, the way he said it was little, you know, aggressive? And I can see how religious people could take it as Wheaton saying that prayer is worthless and that everything they believe in is a lie. He's not saying that, but that's what they hear. Sure, emotions are high right now, but sometimes people just like to feel outraged.

Here, check out the Fox News coverage:

People of faith? They mean evangelical Christians, don't they? Why don't
they just say 'evangelical Christians?' This is Fox, they're not fooling anyone.

"After praying? I like to do some
reps. Some reps for The Lord."

-Paul Ryan

The article itself isn't particularly unfair, and it does include Wheaton's later clarifications and apologies, but couldn't the headline just as easily be "Paul Ryan responds to shooting with rote platitudes?" Ok, obviously this is Fox News and "Hollywood trashes Jesus...again!" is more their speed, but I'd still like an answer to Wheaton's implied question: what is Paul Ryan planing to do once he's done praying for Sutherland Springs? I think we're all a little sick of the guns don't kill people line, so what else have they got?

"Trump angers people vulnerable to
bullets with preposterous defense of guns"

-Probably not the headline

Fox is going to go with

At a press conference in Japan, Trump was asked if this most recent shooting might prompt some, you know, reasonable legislative action. He responded:

"Mental health is your problem here. This was a very, based on preliminary reports, a very deranged individual. A lot of problems over a long period of time. We have a lot of mental health problems in our country as do other countries. This isn't a guns situation..." 

-President Trump on how this 

mass shooting isn't a guns situation

"Guns: making it not be as bad as it was
because it could have been much worse..."

-The NRA's new slogan

Since no blind parroting of NRA talking points would be complete without a suggestion that the solution to gun violence is more fucking guns, the President went on:

"I mean, we could go into it, but it's a little soon to go into it, fortunately somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction otherwise it wouldn't have been as bad as it was, it would have been much worse."

-Trump, not so great at off-the-cuff, is he?

That feeling you're feeling? That's just the burning hot sensation of impotent rage, but fortunately there's something you can do about it. You don't have to take this. Put pressure on your representatives in congress. Demand action. Let them know that we, as a people, will no longer sit idly by while celebrities are allowed to Tweet critically about our elected officials' stubborn inaction on the problem of gun violence. I mean, how dare they?

Remember, this isn't a guns situation, it's a Wil Wheaton situation. 

Today in things that are not at all the same:

Hey, nobody really thinks that this thing with the DNC giving Hillary Clinton a better fundraising deal than Bernie Sanders is in any way the same thing as colluding with Russia to win the election, right?

Ok, this guy does but c'mon.

"Account locked? How am I supposed to
tell everyone what's BAD FOR COUNTRY?"

-The President

Sure, Trump believes it's comparable, but then he also believes that millions of immigrants managed to conspire against him in order to vote illegally and rob him of the popular vote, yet somehow still failed to tip the electoral vote to Clinton, so I'm not really sure he's necessarily the best judge of what is and is not a plausible conspiracy. Of course that didn't stop him from chiming in on Twitter about it. That is once his account was back up and running after an eleven blissful minutes of peace.

Anyway, because 140 characters are simply not enough to contain the flailing, rabid foam attempts to deflect attention from all the indictments, he went on:

Busy investigating your people, why do you ask?

Turns out millennials are pretty broke,
so like, thanks preceding generations...

According to Donna Brazile's article on Politico, the DNC was being mismanaged by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and was millions in debt. Clinton stepped in, paid off the party's debts in exchange for crazy control over the DNC's operations and a fundraising agreement. An agreement that was offered to Sanders' campaign as well, but they turned it down for philosophical reasons opting for small donations from individuals. Laudable? Absolutely. Was it going to prevail against Clinton's fundraising infrastructure and connections? Absolutely not.

Turns out you can't buy
ad time with passion.

Either one would have been great candidates and both are far, far more qualified to be President than the former host of The Apprentice, it's just that Sanders' base was all passion and not a lot of money while Clinton had the Democratic Party behind her. I don't know, maybe it wasn't fair, I mean after all, the kind of control she had isn't usually allowed until a candidate has become the nominee. But she's been a loyal member of the party for decades while Sanders wasn't a Democrat until he wanted to run for President.

"Master Blaster runs Bartertown!"

-Paid for by Master 

Blaster for America

But whatever, was the deal shady? I don't know, but even Brazile doesn't think it was illegal. Unfair, and a bad visual, sure. Maybe even unethical, but not illegal. I mean, it's not like she had surrogates meeting with Russian intelligence. Look, I'm not an expert on how political parties work, but my understanding is that they're not mentioned in the Constitution so how they choose their candidate is up to them, right? If one party or the other wants to choose their candidate by Thunderdome, I think they're legally within their rights.

The take away here is that it's almost a year in, and instead of a united opposition to the unceasing shit show that is the Trump administration, the left is sitting around blaming each other over who got what from the DNC and who should have conceded earlier.

"Now that I have endorsed Hillary Clinton, I'm sure it'll will be smooth
sailing to the White House. Unless of course the electoral college screws
us over again. But hey, what are the odds that'd happen again?"

-Bernie Sanders, July 2016

Which is weird because his base never
seems to need help rallying. Just some
tiki torches and a persecution complex.

So what the shit does any of this have to do with the Russia investigation? Nothing at all. Despite (technically) winning the election, President Trump has spent the last ten months campaigning against Clinton. And he's probably going to continue running against her as long as he needs to distract the media and rally his base. As long as we're all focusing on whose fault the Democrats' defeat was, then maybe we won't notice that an unqualified gameshow host most of us didn't vote for is handing out tax breaks for corporations and Tweeting bullshit about Crooked Hillary.

And maybe laying blame for the 2016 election should be on the agenda, but we probably need to shut up about how Bernie Sanders was unwilling to deal with the reality of party politics or how Clinton's pull with the DNC plays in the media. Instead maybe we could focus on real things like how a thuggish goon is using our obsession with social media to turn us against each other.

Which goon? I don't know, both? They're both pretty thuggish, like, does it matter?

Turns out it's not ok to lick strangers.

So good news for fans of famous people finally seeing consequences for terrible things they've done: Andy Dick has been fired over allegations of sexual misconduct. In fact, fired twice. From two separate films. Of course the news that two different directors cast Andy Dick in their movies has left the nation in a state of shock.

Yup, I'm taking shots at Andy Dick.
Turns out I'm not better than that.

Um...so where was Jimmy
Kimmel's security this time?

Andy Dick is sort of famous for being a walking sexual misconduct charge and has spent much of the 2000's in and out of treatment for addiction and getting fired from gigs for exposing himself. He was once even forcibly ejected from Jimmy Kimmel's show for groping Ivanka Trump. The first movie to fire him this month was a low-budget horror comedy called Vampire Dad (I wonder what it's about...) and Dick had to be escorted off the set on the first day of shooting for sexually assaulting several members of the crew. Yikes.

And then yesterday he was fired for almost exactly the same reason from an indie film called Rasing Buchanan which on the one hand, begs the question why they hired him in the first place knowing his history. but on the other hand begs the question why the fuck can't Andy Dick just be a person and not touch people who don't want to be touched? 

Incidentally, that one's about a woman who steals James Buchanan's
body for ransom, but nobody wants it. So they've got my $10 right there.

Careers are just collapsing like...um...
elaborately stacked yet unstable structures
like...Jenga! Collapsing like Jenga towers.

As to the first, Katheryn Moseley, a producer on Vampire Dad, kind of figured he'd be professional enough to show up sober and not act like a creeper on the set. She was wrong. I mean, it wasn't an unreasonable ask, it was just...well again, he was forcibly ejected from Jimmy Kimmel's talkshow. As to why he was fired and not, you know, endured which seemed to be the standard practice until like a month ago, I think it's got everything to do with the whole Harvey Weinstein and now Kevin Spacey thing. I mean it's great that America has finally developed a sudden interest in repercussions for sexual misconduct. Overdue. But great.

Like maybe he legitimately confuses
the phrase with something else, like
oil painting or whatever and just can't
understand why everyone's upset?

Dick sort of leapt to his own, bewildering defense but I'm not sure he did himself any favors.

"I didn't grope anybody. I might have kissed somebody on the cheek to say goodbye and then licked them. That's my thing. I licked Carrie Fisher at a roast. It's me being funny. I'm not trying to sexually harass people. I didn't grab anybody's genitals."

-Andy Dick's confusing reaction to the 

allegations of-wait, he knows what 

'sexual harassment' means right?

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure 'That's my thing.' has ever been a successful defense for anyone, anywhere, on trial for anything.

"Yes my client stabbed the victim thirty-seven times before setting the house
on fire to destroy the evidence, but that's just his thing. His murder thing." 

-Some lawyer

Today in feelings that don't wash off:

Wai-wai-wait, so I know that Sarah Sanders is the White House Press Secretary and her job is speak for the administration, but did you see the thing about her calling all the women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment liars?

Pictured: Sarah Sanders on how Trump's accusers are attention-
seeking liars and the President is, and always has always had respect
for women. Huh? No, I don't know how she lives with herself either. 

The exchange went like this: Jaqueline Alemany from CBS asked Sanders:

Holy shit, these reporters must be
sick of the phrase 'fake news.' 

"At least sixteen women accused the president of sexually harassing them throughout the course of the campaign. Last week, during a press conference in the Rose Garden, the president called these accusations 'fake news.' Is the official White House position that all of these women are lying?"

-Alemany who, in fairness,

must have known she was 

in for some bullshit answer

Aw, remember him? When he tried to
tell us the Inauguration was the biggest
one ever? That was cute, wasn't it?

A straight forward, specific question with no room to evade, right? Let's say yes. Then the Press Secretary, with the usual dismissive aplomb she rolls out whenever reporters have the temerity to ask her a question:

"Yeah, we've been clear on that from the beginning and the president's spoken on it."

-Sarah Sanders, giving

it the ol' Spicer try

Ok, first of all Sarah Sanders has literally made a career out of being unclear about everything she's ever said from behind the podium, but here she is agreeing that yes, it's the official White House Policy that the women accusing the President of sexual harassment are liars which...holy shit, right? 

Hey, remember back when Trump literally
made a career out of objectifying women? 

"Never....feel...clean...again..."

-White House Staff

What I want to know, is how does anyone who works at the White House, from officials down to cooks and clerical staff, scrape together the will to go in every morning when they work for a President who, in addition to being under investigation by pretty much everybody for everything from conflicts of interest to colluding with Russia to steal the election, has to have an official policy of calling the many women who have accused him of sexual harassment, liars? I mean, they must want to shower immediately after they get home.

Pictured: exactly how likely it
is that these sixteen women
are all just making this up.

Look, I don't know any of the people involved, and for all I know these sixteen women could be lying. They're not, but it doesn't strain the laws of physics as we know them. It's sort of like how aliens could have built the pyramids. Like, I can't really prove they didn't, but it's still preposterous. The fact that the Billy Bush tape came out during the campaign and he still won the electoral college suggests that neither Trump nor his supporters give a shit about how he treats women. 

Of course this man is guilty of countless incidents of sexual harassment. Of course he is. He's just managed not to get called out on it. That's not the same thing as being innocent.

It is however the same thing as being rich and powerful so...here we are.