I thought this would be a good place for a semi-regular feature of musings and ramblings on what is in the news.
* The first section I go to in Friday’s Star Ledger is TICKET. Today it had a review of the SEX AND THE CITY movie by often witty Stephen Whitty titled “Dressed for Excess”. What it boiled down to was basically - “It’s not really a movie. It’s a clothes catalog that talks.”
You can bet that I am going to pass on this movie. I found the television series practically impossible to sit through on the very few occasions I tried to watch it in hotel rooms while at tax conferences and conventions (I do not subscribe to HBO, Showtime or any of the “premium” movie channels).
It will be an interesting experiment to see if a movie can “make it” with an exclusively female audience. I can’t imagine any straight man actually wanting to see it. I suppose there are also many, many women who would not want to sit through an installment of the DIE HARD franchise.
* TICKET also identified movies that will be opening next Friday. Included was DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN. Another movie on which I will definitely pass. I refuse to see any movie that stars Adam Sandler.
While this conviction is long standing, it was set in stone when Sandler had the unmitigated balls to remake two classic movies (granted one of more stature than the other) in his standard pre-teen fart-humor style. Of course I am talking about MISTER DEEDS GOES TO TOWN and THE LONGEST YARD. What makes this cafone think he can come close to remaking such iconic stars (again, one more than the other) as Gary Cooper or Burt Reynolds. To quote one review of the Deeds remake, “Adam Sandler is to Gary Cooper what a gnat is to a racehorse”.
I also refuse to see any movie that stars Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara’s boy. He did not inherit his parents’ level of talent.
I have found that you will not be disappointed if you avoid any movie that stars a “regular” of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE from any season other than the first two.
* I always enjoy Chris Cassett and Gary Brookins’ SHOE comic strip, especially when it features a press conference by “the Senator”. In today’s installment the Senator tells the press that “I work out every day to clear my mind”. The reporters reply, “It’s working Senator…Everyone agrees it’s completely empty!”
*The front page highlighted the latest “episode” of the McGreevey divorce trial under the headline “McGreevey’s Wife Endures The Heat”.
Dina Matos’ testimony “also discussed the impact of their subsequent separation on her lifestyle, down to where she shopped for her daughter’s clothes: Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Talbots were replaced by the Children’s Place, the Gap and Marshalls”. Gee, ain’t that tuff!
Matos complained about having to “stay inside my house with the shades drawn for up to six hours because I had reporters and photographers sitting outside.” But McGreevey’s lawyer countered with the fact that Matos has been a “frequent guest on a variety of high-profile news programs after other political scandals.”
“She testifies she wants to be press-free and photographer-free, and every time there’s a camera she runs right towards it.”
* The first section I go to in Friday’s Star Ledger is TICKET. Today it had a review of the SEX AND THE CITY movie by often witty Stephen Whitty titled “Dressed for Excess”. What it boiled down to was basically - “It’s not really a movie. It’s a clothes catalog that talks.”
You can bet that I am going to pass on this movie. I found the television series practically impossible to sit through on the very few occasions I tried to watch it in hotel rooms while at tax conferences and conventions (I do not subscribe to HBO, Showtime or any of the “premium” movie channels).
It will be an interesting experiment to see if a movie can “make it” with an exclusively female audience. I can’t imagine any straight man actually wanting to see it. I suppose there are also many, many women who would not want to sit through an installment of the DIE HARD franchise.
* TICKET also identified movies that will be opening next Friday. Included was DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN. Another movie on which I will definitely pass. I refuse to see any movie that stars Adam Sandler.
While this conviction is long standing, it was set in stone when Sandler had the unmitigated balls to remake two classic movies (granted one of more stature than the other) in his standard pre-teen fart-humor style. Of course I am talking about MISTER DEEDS GOES TO TOWN and THE LONGEST YARD. What makes this cafone think he can come close to remaking such iconic stars (again, one more than the other) as Gary Cooper or Burt Reynolds. To quote one review of the Deeds remake, “Adam Sandler is to Gary Cooper what a gnat is to a racehorse”.
I also refuse to see any movie that stars Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara’s boy. He did not inherit his parents’ level of talent.
I have found that you will not be disappointed if you avoid any movie that stars a “regular” of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE from any season other than the first two.
* I always enjoy Chris Cassett and Gary Brookins’ SHOE comic strip, especially when it features a press conference by “the Senator”. In today’s installment the Senator tells the press that “I work out every day to clear my mind”. The reporters reply, “It’s working Senator…Everyone agrees it’s completely empty!”
*The front page highlighted the latest “episode” of the McGreevey divorce trial under the headline “McGreevey’s Wife Endures The Heat”.
Dina Matos’ testimony “also discussed the impact of their subsequent separation on her lifestyle, down to where she shopped for her daughter’s clothes: Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Talbots were replaced by the Children’s Place, the Gap and Marshalls”. Gee, ain’t that tuff!
Matos complained about having to “stay inside my house with the shades drawn for up to six hours because I had reporters and photographers sitting outside.” But McGreevey’s lawyer countered with the fact that Matos has been a “frequent guest on a variety of high-profile news programs after other political scandals.”
“She testifies she wants to be press-free and photographer-free, and every time there’s a camera she runs right towards it.”
.
To be fair, Matos is, to some degree, the “injured party” in this divorce action. And her testimony correctly portrays her ex-husband as “a man consumed by political success”. He was, after all, a professional politician.
However I would not be surprised if her only attraction to McGreevey in the first place was his potential for rising up the political ladder, and the various “perks” that the wife of such a politician would enjoy. It would explain her “cluelessness” to any possible signs of the former governor’s “gaiety” prior to his public outing (half the state, myself included, knew about McGreevey before Dina).
Let us set the record straight (no pun intended). McGreevey did not resign because he was Gay. Being gay is not a crime, or a condition that should preclude one from holding political office – nor is hiding the fact from the public. McGreevey resigned because he was about to be investigated by federal agencies for legal and not social improprieties.
The only crime connected with McGreevey’s gaiety is the fact that he hired his boyfriend Golan “I Am Not Gay” Cipel for a high paying high level government security position. After all, Spitzer did not appoint his “escort” to a New York State commission, nor did Slick Willy make Monica his Secretary of the Interior.
The bottom line – I have no sympathy for either party in this action. They both made their own beds.
* There was an item inside the first section on the controversy of paying retiring state employees for all of the unused sick days that has accumulated during their entire tenure of employment. This came to attention when it was discovered that outgoing Keansburg Superintendent of Schools Barbara Trzeszkowski would be getting $170,137 for 235.5 unused sick days as part of a $740,000 severance package (in addition to a $120,000 per year pension).
This is nothing new - and is not limited to school superintendents. I recall that about a dozen years ago the final W-2s for several retiring upper-rank Jersey City police officers, who happened to be tax clients, were be in excess of a quarter of a million dollars ($250,000). The bulk of this was pay, at current rates, for unused sick pay. I also recall that the resident police station “tax pros” of the day were touting the theory that the payment for accumulated unused sick pay should be taxed under the highly preferential “Ten-Year Averaging” method that was available at that time.
Sick pay is not an “entitlement”. It is an “accommodation” made by the employer. It should be, as it is for the most part in the business world, a “use it or lose it” benefit. A law should be passed that no employee of the State of New Jersey or any political subdivision thereof, will not be able to “bank” unused sick pay for more than (at most) 24 months – and not go back 30 years!
Just another reason why the State of New Jersey is in such a mucking fess, and why I will be moving to Pennsylvania as soon as my parents go to their final audit.
* While I did not see it in today’s Star Ledger, the story about Rachael Ray’s supposed “faux pas” appeared under the Show Biz Buzz heading on my Comcast.net homepage as well as elsewhere around the internet. This story falls under the YHGTBFK category (a free copy of my special report SURFIN’ USA to the first reader who can “translate” this acronym).
It seems that, according to the Boston Globe, Dunkin’ Donuts, for whom Rach is a spokesperson, promptly pulled an ad in which she wore a black and white patterned scarf that somewhat resembles a “keffiyeh” - a traditional headdress worn by Arab men - after conservative commentators became enraged by the ad and even threatened to boycott the company.
What utter nonsense. Give me a break!
To be fair, Matos is, to some degree, the “injured party” in this divorce action. And her testimony correctly portrays her ex-husband as “a man consumed by political success”. He was, after all, a professional politician.
However I would not be surprised if her only attraction to McGreevey in the first place was his potential for rising up the political ladder, and the various “perks” that the wife of such a politician would enjoy. It would explain her “cluelessness” to any possible signs of the former governor’s “gaiety” prior to his public outing (half the state, myself included, knew about McGreevey before Dina).
Let us set the record straight (no pun intended). McGreevey did not resign because he was Gay. Being gay is not a crime, or a condition that should preclude one from holding political office – nor is hiding the fact from the public. McGreevey resigned because he was about to be investigated by federal agencies for legal and not social improprieties.
The only crime connected with McGreevey’s gaiety is the fact that he hired his boyfriend Golan “I Am Not Gay” Cipel for a high paying high level government security position. After all, Spitzer did not appoint his “escort” to a New York State commission, nor did Slick Willy make Monica his Secretary of the Interior.
The bottom line – I have no sympathy for either party in this action. They both made their own beds.
* There was an item inside the first section on the controversy of paying retiring state employees for all of the unused sick days that has accumulated during their entire tenure of employment. This came to attention when it was discovered that outgoing Keansburg Superintendent of Schools Barbara Trzeszkowski would be getting $170,137 for 235.5 unused sick days as part of a $740,000 severance package (in addition to a $120,000 per year pension).
This is nothing new - and is not limited to school superintendents. I recall that about a dozen years ago the final W-2s for several retiring upper-rank Jersey City police officers, who happened to be tax clients, were be in excess of a quarter of a million dollars ($250,000). The bulk of this was pay, at current rates, for unused sick pay. I also recall that the resident police station “tax pros” of the day were touting the theory that the payment for accumulated unused sick pay should be taxed under the highly preferential “Ten-Year Averaging” method that was available at that time.
Sick pay is not an “entitlement”. It is an “accommodation” made by the employer. It should be, as it is for the most part in the business world, a “use it or lose it” benefit. A law should be passed that no employee of the State of New Jersey or any political subdivision thereof, will not be able to “bank” unused sick pay for more than (at most) 24 months – and not go back 30 years!
Just another reason why the State of New Jersey is in such a mucking fess, and why I will be moving to Pennsylvania as soon as my parents go to their final audit.
* While I did not see it in today’s Star Ledger, the story about Rachael Ray’s supposed “faux pas” appeared under the Show Biz Buzz heading on my Comcast.net homepage as well as elsewhere around the internet. This story falls under the YHGTBFK category (a free copy of my special report SURFIN’ USA to the first reader who can “translate” this acronym).
It seems that, according to the Boston Globe, Dunkin’ Donuts, for whom Rach is a spokesperson, promptly pulled an ad in which she wore a black and white patterned scarf that somewhat resembles a “keffiyeh” - a traditional headdress worn by Arab men - after conservative commentators became enraged by the ad and even threatened to boycott the company.
What utter nonsense. Give me a break!
.
TTYL
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