It's one of those tasks that may look easy on the surface, but becomes increasingly difficult as you try to do it, as evidenced by the efforts of our sister (heh) site, Lemondrop.com. Some of their staff tried to do the same thing and ended up with what looked like mutated twin brothers of the U.S. that their parents keep locked in the basement and feed a bucket of fish heads once a week.
But Franken's mutant power (his X-Men name would be "Sketchy") dates back farther than his recent days of pandering to voters in an election that made the Dade County, Florida recount look like a jelly-bean counting contest.
If you haven't seen our game before, we give you a picture from a recent episode of a TV series and you provide the caption! Last week's winner is ac with this caption:
"Now I remember why I never watched C-SPAN."
This week's photo is from this week's Hell's Kitchen, the end-of-the-second-episode confrontation between Chef Ramsay and contestant Joseph:
If you haven't seen our game before, we give you a picture from a recent episode of a TV series and you provide the caption! Last week's winner is Nathanael B will this:
"When I said I'd do anything to get on TV, I wasn't kidding!"
This week's photo is from the televised Sonia Sotomayor hearings. Hey, it's Al Franken!
If you're one of the few remaining dissenters who doesn't think Sonia Sotormayor is qualified to serve on the nation's highest ranking court, don't blame President Obama. Don't blame any of her law professors or mentors. Don't even blame the left wing media.
Blame Perry Mason.
The Supreme Court nominee said before the Senate and the Judiciary Committee that the old Perry Mason show inspired her to seek a life in upholding the law.
I'm not sure if you've been watching the Sonia Sotomayor hearings this week, but if you haven't been near a TV during the day or would just rather see a summary of what's been going on than watch hours of judicial talk, you have The Daily Show.
This is funny whether you support Sotomayor or not. Jon Stewart dumps on both sides of the aisle (did Chuck Schumer actually start to cry yesterday?), and it also includes some bonus Al Franken footage!
Well, they finally settled that Norm Coleman vs. Al Franken race in Minnesota. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to show Franken in another time, impersonating Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger on Solid Gold in the 80s. Partner Tom Davis is doing Keith Richards. I wonder if Franken would have won if Coleman had just run this video on a continuous loop on his web site for a year.
MSNBC is perking along. Either they're getting better at the results or I'm getting more comfortable with all their bells and whistles and commentary.
8:48 David Gregory is good as a traffic cop. He's bouncing the focus around from Chuck to Chris to Ann to Lester really well. He's interviewing Obama's campaign chief strategist David Axelrod now. He doesn't look worried. He looks like Mr. Whipple, but he doesn't look worried.
8:55 Tom DeLay, former House Majority Leader -- is talking trash. He claims Nancy Pelosi is going to push President Obama around. Hmm...he sounds pretty bitter. Of course, he was forced to resign when he was indicted for election fraud.
On his final Air America radio show today, comedian and political pundit Al Franken announced that he is going to run for a U.S. Senate seat in his home state of Minnesota. He'll be seeking the Democratic nomination for next year's election; whoever gets that nomination will run against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.
This isn't exactly a surprise, since all the signs were there: he moved his family back to Minnesota last year and decided to end the Air America show. Both pointed to his intention to run. But his presence is going to lend national attention to that race, meaning we'll probably be hearing much more of the humorless pundit version of Franken than the witty comedian we actually came to like over the last twenty-five years. Oh, and don't put it past Minnesotans to vote him into office; he's a much more serious a candidate than Jesse Ventura was, and you remember what happened there.
Jon briefly touched on the heightened security of the other night's episode (bulletproof glass and snipers and all that jazz). "If you're ever in this situation and they bring the bomb-sniffing dogs in, please know -- and I know this now for a fact -- they do not, in anyway, recognize drugs or porn... Not that we weren't scrambling!"
The Boston
Phoenix has another list (they've been doing this a lot lately), and this one lists what they think are the best and worst movie performances from Saturday Night Live
cast members. While it's great to have Bill Murray number one, it's for Ghostbusters?! What about
Lost In Translation? Or Stripes? Or Rushmore? How about Groundhog Day? (Same thing
with Janeane Garofalo - they pick Wet Hot American Summer?)
Among the best: Eddie Murphy in
Bevery Hills Cop, Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, and Harry Shearer in This Is Spinal
Tap. Among the worst: Eddie Murphy in The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, Adam Sandler in The
Waterboy, and Jimmy Fallon in Fever Pitch.
Al Franken recently moved his radio show to my humble little metropolis
of Minneapolis, the city where he grew up. By sheer coincidence I know one of his producers and I asked them why
he was back in his homestate of Minnesota. Turns out Franken is giving some serious consideration to making a senate
run in 2008. He hasn't officially thrown his hat in the ring, according to an interview with AlterNet he did recently,
but the fact that he moved the whole shebang to Minnesota pretty much makes one think it's going to happen. I
think the "celebrity to politician" move is a crap shoot at best, but this is Minnesota, and Al is a hometown
boy. I figure if Jesse Ventura could get his hulking frame into office Franken probably stands a pretty good chance.
In the interview, Franken talks about humor revealing a deeper truth (something I completely agree with), but even
with his recent political affiliations, do people still think of him as just Al Franken the funny guy from
Saturday Night Live? Put another way, can a person add a new dimension to their public persona after so many
years of being seen only one way? It has happened, but that move is always a tenuous one.