Lovesick Over You

Your Lightning Round editor-in-chief didn't get any flowers or candy this Valentine's Day -- which wasn't a hurtful thing considering the potential for harm in the shape of a heart.

ROTTEN HEARTS. WCBS-TV in New York City found year-old Valentine's Day candy showing up on store shelves:

CBS 2 HD did its own investigation, purchasing six bags of Valentine's Day treats at stores around New York City. Of those six bags, five were inedible.

From the finest of truffles to candy bought in bulk, most of these products were expired and showed signs of improper storage, like melting and reshaping. Some of the chocolates had white dots or streaks, called a "bloom," which means the chocolate is stale.

It's great candy to send to an ex-Valentine, perhaps with an appropriate card: "My lips shall never touch yours, and neither shall these." Or, "You left my love to wither, spoil and rot -- now see the fruits of your indifference."

Your Lightning Round editor admits he's kept old chocolate around himself -- mainly in the form of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies in his desk, the treats that mysteriously resist spoilage. We think the refrigerated temperatures of the newsroom have something to do with that.

THOSE WHO CAN'T READ, TEACH. How? That was the question on our minds when we heard about John Corcoran, the California man who taught school for 17 years after graduating from college without knowing how to read, write, or spell.

Corcoran engineered a matrix of deception to propel him through the educational system, as KFMB-TV reports:

"When I was a child I was just sort of just moved along when I got to high school I wanted to participate in athletics. At that time in high school I went underground. I decided to behave myself and do what it took. I started cheating by turning in other peoples' paper, dated the valedictorian, and ran around with college prep kids," said Corcoran.

"I couldn't read words but I could read the system and I could read people," adds Corcoran.

He stole tests and persuaded friends to complete his assignments. Corcoran earned an athletic scholarship to Texas Western College. He said his cheating intensified, claiming he cheated in every class.

"I passed a bluebook out the window to a friend I painstakingly copied four essay questions off the board in U.S. government class that was required, and hoped my friend would get it back to me with the right answers," Corcoran said.

So unfortunately, cheaters do win sometimes. Corcoran, however, grew tired of the game and sought tutoring. He's now head of a foundation providing literacy programs. You might call it penance.

IT'S NOT TOO LATE. Boulder, Colorado's city council is deciding whether to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and VP Dick Cheney.

Reports the Rocky Mountain News:

"Whether or not it's the city's business directly, like potholes, I feel this affects all of us," [impeachment supporter Liz Robinson] said. "We're the ones who are paying the taxes to support this administration's depredations, especially the war."

Impeachment proceedings would be worth doing even if they only put the last few months of Bush's eight years in office at risk, Robinson said.

"We need to send a message that this all matters to us, whether it's last-minute or not," she said.

Your Lightning Round has learned a vote for secession is scheduled for next week. The potholes, on the other hand, can wait.

SATELLITE SHOOTDOWN. The Pentagon wants to make sure a dud spy satellite doesn't drop dangerous fuel back to earth, so they're going to shoot it out with a missile.

From the AP:

[Gen. James Cartwright] predicted a fairly high chance—as much as 80 percent—of hitting the satellite, which will be about 150 miles up when the shot is fired. The window of opportunity for taking the satellite down, Cartwright said, opens in three or four days and lasts for about seven or eight days.

"We'll take one shot and assess," he said. "This is the first time we've used a tactical missile to engage a spacecraft."

We recommend VP Cheney take aim and fire.

BLAST OFF. International Space Station astronauts have access to a gun as part of a survival kit, according to former NASA engineer Jim Oberg and reported by WESH-TV:

He said the gun has no place in an environment where people are under such high stress.

"There have been cases of severe psychological strain on people in space, strain that they have taken out -- that their shipmates worried about the ultimate actions," Oberg said.

Experts said the idea of an astronaut losing control was unthinkable until one year ago, when Lisa Nowak shattered the myth.

We can think about all the things a bullet might do in a micro-gravity environment. It makes the space shuttle's tile problems look like a routine shower re-grouting job.

IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SNIFF. ISS Science Officer Don Petit says outer space gives off a scent:

It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as "tastes like chicken." The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes.

Which is good, we gather, because we don't need to waste precious cargo and living space with Glade.

CHARLIE BIT ME! Advice to young boys -- never put your finger in your baby brother's mouth when he's teething, as this English lad learned in this YouTube video that's been downloaded more than 6 million times:

Something Beautiful Remains

Communications Professor Steve Beverly of Union University in Tennessee normally writes about game shows. But lately, he's writing about the emotionally draining task of salvaging the campus ripped apart by tornadoes.

The news footage over the past few days combined with his accounts leaves me stunned and thankful nobody died. I only have to think of a twister tearing a path through my alma mater, the University of Missouri-Columbia, to feel a bit of the devastation. It very well could happen, with Missouri in the heart of Tornado Alley.

Yet it is one of life's great ironies that the worst events bring out the best in us. As Professor Beverly notes:

The spirit and camaraderie and the encouragement spreading throughout this campus is nothing short of astounding. You know by looking in every direction how massive the job will be to rebuild Union. Yet, people have the most upbeat spirit and we are all reinforced and energized by scores of volunteers who are coming with work teams to assist with the cleanup. Some were here Saturday from as far away as Michigan. We don't know them. But we know the kind of people they are merely from the fact they are here.

We gathered on the parking lot of the administration building at 9 a.m. for prayer and encouragement from our president, David S. Dockery. At that point, I looked up and saw 20 of our communications alumni from the last decade. I absolutely lost it. Some of them came from as far away as Little Rock. To think that they thought enough of their years at Union to make a long journey at their own expense to help us overwhelmed me.

The tornadoes, the destruction, and the deaths across the South -- none of those things were of God, even though insurance companies call them "Acts of God" out of a lack of understanding about the forces of good and evil. But the real Acts of God are the love, teamwork, and support of students and faculty as they rebuild -- the Holy Spirit in action. Union University's students are learning the greatest lessons of their lives in these next weeks, the ones they didn't sign up for, didn't pay tuition for, but will shape the rest of their lives.

God is great.

The Saga Continues

Super-duper-cali-fragialistic Tuesday, the gigantic showdown that was to be the mother of all primaries, ended up resolving only one thing: the presidential preference campaigns aren't over yet if you're a Democrat. But while you bite your nails and stress over delegate counts, we at your Lightning Round have a few other items for your consideration.

KEY TO DEMOCRACY. Diebold electronic voting machines are already known for security problems. But here's the topper: blogger Brad Friedman reports somebody copied a key to a Diebold machine using a photo on the company's website.

From BradBlog:

It was revealed in the course of last summer's landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It's also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it's used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars!

It's no wonder Maryland is voting to scrap its Diebold machines for pencil and paper optical scanning systems.

LOOK BEFORE SENDING. The New York Times landed a huge scoop last week because of a mis-directed e-mail. The paper reported drug giant Eli Lilly was in settlement talks with the feds over improperly marketing its drug Zyprexa for schizophrenia.

From Portfolio.com:

As it turned out, one of Eli Lilly's lawyers at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia wanted to email [law firm] Sidley Austin's Berenson, about the negotiations. But apparently, the name that popped up from her email correspondents was the wrong Berenson.

The wrong Berenson was Alex Berenson, a Times reporter. He who trusteth in auto-complete has a foolish finger.

SKIN TRADE. Abercrombie & Fitch makes millions selling clothes, so why do they display images of people under-dressed? Virginia Beach police seized two large promotional photographs from an A&F last weekend because they ran afoul of obscenity laws.

Reports the Virginian-Pilot:

[Police] confirmed that one depicts three shirtless young men from the back, walking through a field. The man in the lead appears to be about to pull up his jeans, which have slipped down enough to reveal his upper buttocks.

The same image is displayed on the Abercrombie Web site.

The other image is of a woman who is topless and whose "breast is displayed with her hand covering just the nipple portion," [a police spokesman] said. "You could still pretty much see the rest of the breast."

One could interpret the first photograph as an innocent case of plumbers' behind, but the second makes Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction look like just a glitch. Now the A&F manager could be looking at fines and/or jail time for the risque business. Authorities later dropped the charges, but another case isn't going away so easily.

Fifty-two ABC television stations are also on the hook for $1.43 million in fines because of a nude scene in a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue which showed a woman's partially bare breast and fully bare buttocks as she was preparing to take a shower, and a young boy accidentally walking in on her as he tries to use the bathroom.

ABC warned about "partial nudity" in a disclaimer before the show, and it made this rationalization for the scene, as noted in the FCC ruling.

ABC asserts that the purpose of the scene was to "illustrate the complexity and awkwardness involved when a single parent brings a new romantic partner into his or her life," and that the nudity was not included to depict an attempted seduction or a sexual response from the young boy. Even accepting ABC's assertions as to the purpose of the scene, they do not alter our conclusion that the scene's depiction of adult female nudity is titillating and shocking. As discussed above, the scene includes multiple, close-up views of the woman's nude buttocks, with the camera at one point panning down her naked back for a lingering shot of her buttocks.

C'mon, ABC, admit you're playin' dirty here.

But here's what your Lightning Round finds puzzling: All of the stations that were fined were in the Central and Mountain time zones, because the particular scene aired in the 10pm hour rather than the 11pm hour, in which indecency standards are looser. Should one hour really make a difference, especially in the age of TiVO?

Also puzzling: not all of the ABC stations in said zones were fined. KNXV in Phoenix, Arizona was fined, but not KGUN in Tucson? KMBC, KDNL, and KSPR in Missouri were fined, but not KMIZ? As far as I know, all of these stations aired NYPD Blue in the 10pm hour.

UPDATE: According to David Hatfield of Inside Tucson Business, KGUN wasn't fined because nobody in their viewing area complained to the FCC. So if a buttock is bare in prime time in Tucson, and nobody complains, is it still offensive?

The courts have already found the FCC's indecency regulations are a mess to figure out. Look for this case to end back up in front of judge.

WHAT DID HE TAKE FOR A HEADACHE? Actor Heath Ledger died from "acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine," according to New York City Medical Examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove. And yet his death is still called an accident.

Reports AP:

In a statement released through Ledger's publicist, the actor's father, Kim, said Wednesday: "While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage."

And still the question persists, did he need all of those drugs in the first place? Yes, it was an accident all right... an accident waiting to happen.

Until next week: medicate safely, everyone.

You're Not A Machine

Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." Amen. But doing all things doesn't necessarily mean doing them all at once.

I CAN DO IT ALL! (NOW WHAT WAS I DOING?) Computers multitask well. People, not so much, according to Walter Kirn in The Atlantic, who cites research showing people who do multiple things at once accomplish their goals at the cost of focus and sanity -- something us TV news producers already know from years of control room experience.

Writes Kirn:

This is the great irony of multitasking—that its overall goal, getting more done in less time, turns out to be chimerical. In reality, multitasking slows our thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the pile we’re interested in, pick up its pieces, review the rules for putting the pieces back together, and then attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly. (Fact, and one more reason the bubble will pop: A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultaneously will, because of all the back-and-forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing.)

I'm hearing you there, Mr. Kirn. Your Lightning Round editor recalls several incidents of toiling over a script on the newsroom computer when somebody walking out for the day bid me farewell and I responded "Bye" with a lag of at least five seconds. My mind was preoccupied with a word or a phrase on an LCD screen. Shame on me. On the other hand, my focus might not be as bad as I thought.

This leads us to multitasking's damage to etiquette, something we also knew already:

I've been fired, I’ve been insulted in front of co-workers, but the time I flew thousands of miles to meet a boss who spent our first and only hour together politely nodding at my proposals while thumbing out messages on a new device, whose existence neither of us acknowledged and whose screen he kept tilted so I couldn’t see it, still feels, five years later, like the low point of my career.

Many of us would burn to say something akin to Dustin Hoffman's line in Tootsie: "Hey, is my acting interfering with your talking?"

People can also put a dollar value on our attention division disorder:

Six hundred and fifty billion dollars. That’s what we might call our National Attention Deficit, according to Jonathan B. Spira, who’s the chief analyst at a business- research firm called Basex and has estimated the per annum cost to the economy of multitasking-induced disruptions. (He obtained the figure by surveying office workers across the country, who reported that some 28 percent of their time was wasted dealing with multitasking- related transitions and interruptions.)

That's about 2.5 hours in an average workday, meaning we only really work 5.5 hours a day instead of 8, and 27.5 hours a week instead of 40. It's enough to make you want to turn in the blackberry and laptop in exchange for a shirt saying "Leave me alone! I need to get something done!"

STICKIN' IT TO THE CAPITALIST MAN. Sink a bank, be a hero. Jérôme Kerviel, the French rogue trader who plunged Societe Generale into a $7 billion loss is now an Internet sensation, according to Charles Bremmer in TimesOnline:

After half a million Google searches yesterday, JK's admirers are singing his praises as "The Che Guevara of Finance", the "James Bond of the Soc Gen". The real JK may have lost his Facebook friends on the day of his arrest, but 11 new Jérôme Kerviels are on Facebook at the moment, with 30 groups in French and English. On one he has over 900 fans, many of whom proclaim their love for the clean-cut Breton whose pals called him Tom Cruise.

We suspect this has more about getting a few licks in on the French than it does actual fandom. Our bigger question remains why nobody seemed to learn anything from the exploits of Nick Leeson, who cratered Barings Bank in the 1990's with risky bets on derivatives. He later went on to write a book and see his story made into a movie. Where's his fan club?

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE. In another one of those tell-us-the-obvious studies, British and American researchers found middle-age really is depressing, regardless of nationality.

Reuters reports:

For men and women the probability of depression slowly builds and then peaks when people are in their forties -- a similar pattern found in 72 countries ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe, the researchers said.

They suggest we get depressed as we find out we're not going to reach many of our goals in life. Ron Paul's supporters ought to be going through that phase right about now.

LEND ME YOUR EAR. A pastor in Carlisle, PA is putting chaplains in local bars, hoping to minister to those who try to drown their troubles in drink.

From the AP:

The chaplains won’t preach against drinking or evangelize when the program starts at Market Cross Pub, organizer Chuck Kish said.

“We’re simply going to be there to help anybody who wants it. Sometimes people really just want somebody they can talk to who is not going to be judgmental, but be sympathetic,” he said.

And if they drive these barflies home, that's a miracle in itself.

PROUD TO SERVE, AND BE SERVED. A South Carolina Representative says if you're old enough to die for your country, you should be old enough to buy a drink in it.

From WYFF-TV:

Rep. Fletcher Smith has sponsored legislation that would allow service members younger than 21 to purchase alcohol if they show a military identification card to a bartender or store clerk.

You will recall the voting age was lowered to 18 using the same justification. We doubt this will boost recruiting numbers, but it could create a new market for fake service ID's, leading to the inevitable question from a skeptical bartender: "Is somebody else flying your F-18 home for you?"

CHEERS! A traffic officer in Manchester, England wrote a parking ticket -- and got applause from the crowd. The act wasn't as impressive as the car that was cited, as Autoblog reports:

In some countries, folks cheer at the sight of an exotic supercar, while in others they assume the driver is a (expletive deleted). In which camp would you think England falls? We'd have hoped the former, but the crowd has spoken, and they're saying otherwise. When an evidently obscenely wealthy driver parked his Bugatti Veyron in a loading bay in downtown Manchester, a traffic warden wrote him a ticket while a gathering crowd stood by and cheered her on.

And for an encore, your Lightning Round suggests the officer aim a radar gun down the Autobahn.

Reel To Reel: Rambo

Bloody hell.

How It Rates: * (and that's being generous)
Starring: Sylvester Stallone
Rated: R
Red Flags: Graphic, Bloody And Sustained War Violence, Sexual Assault, Strong Language

Rambo is so bloodthirsty I had to check my shirt for spatter marks after walking out of the theater. It guns down, assaults, burns, decapitates, carves, stabs, dismembers and blows up hundreds of bodies. It gushes of red, taking CGI and squib effects to levels of unapologetic grotesqueness. Watching the film made me think I was in A Clockwork Orange, where delinquent-turned-Christian Alex De Large is forced to watch sadistic motion pictures as part of an experiment to cure his depravity. The only thing this film cured was my notion of Sylvester Stallone -- who directed and co-wrote -- tying a neat bow on the John Rambo saga a la Rocky Balboa.

The title character emerges from hiatus as a laconic snake-hunter and boat captain in the jungles of Thailand. It's understandable enough for an old soldier with deep-welled anger, forsaken by the country he fought for. A group of missionaries comes to him seeking a ride up the river to war-plagued Burma where they can minister and feed what villagers haven't been killed or forced into the army. He turns them down, but wouldn't you know they would be carrying Sarah (Julie Benz), a beautiful charismatic young woman with them? So with her persuasion, Rambo navigates them there. He runs into a gang of pirates who are not the kind Jack Sparrow (or Bartholomew Burgundy) would hang out with. Facing capture or worse, Rambo cuts them down with the impossible resourcefulness of a battle-hardened Green Beret. Rambo is back. He's bad. He's invincible. But with the Sixth Commandment trumping security, he's not needed once the aid workers step off his boat.

As we would expect, the missionaries get to the village, start doing the Lord's work and then find themselves overrun by the Burmese Army in an unexpurgated sequence of killing and maiming and detonating and raping -- the second such sequence of the movie when coupled with a news-footage prologue explaining the country's strife. For no reason other than need of a plot hook, the soldiers take the missionaries alive.

Several days later, the pastor of the missionaries' church finds Rambo and asks him to take a bunch of mercenaries where his flock went. This is the part where I would expect Rambo to step up and say, "You're gonna need more than that."

"Like what?" the pastor would answer.

"Like me," Rambo would reply in one of those ta-da moments.

But we don't get that satisfaction. Rambo, whose character arc swings between passive-aggressive and ticked off, muses in voiceover: "When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing." Well, duh. Didn't we see that already?

Our hero leads a group of rag-tag soldiers of fortune upstream, including an ex-SAS bloke who has probably dropped more f-bombs than actual bombs. This time, Rambo insists on bringing up the rear over the objections of the foul-mouthed Brit. Guess what -- this motley crew makes it to the battle-desolated village with its rotting corpses and heads on sticks and finds itself about to be ambushed by the Burmese. Then -- TA-DA! -- there's Rambo and his trusty crossbow!

A rescue mission to the enemy camp follows, then the mother-of-all-battle scenes with -- you guessed it -- more copious bloodletting, decapitations, bullet spray, and another ta-da moment. We also get to see the awesome power of a Claymore mine, which Wikipedia defines as "a directional anti-personnel mine" firing "steel balls." This version resembles a micro-nuke without the radiation. Let's also not forget the compulsory element: Rambo's big confrontation with the commanding officer. Ever gut a deer?

I dare give you so much plot information, dear readers, because the ultimate atrocity of the film isn't its unrestrained violence; it's the failure to let Rambo be Rambo. You remember the renegade who could singlehandedly take out dozens of enemy troops, who could ignore pain, who could cake himself with mud and survive in conditions killing scores of men with about the same amount of dialogue as Tarzan. Rambo: First Blood Part II built up a legend of testosterone. It perfected the genre of paramilitary adventure. Rambo the Fourth reduces Stallone's character to axle grease, injected into key moments instead of mad and loose throughout the film.

The choice of Burma as a location puzzles me. It's humanitarian and noble but devoid of a rallying cry. Shouldn't Rambo go into Pakistan and kick Osama Bin Laden's behind? Audiences lapped up the second First Blood picture partly because we won Vietnam on film. It still reeked of brutality and cheese, but it did so in a cathartic, patriotic way during the height of Ronald Reagan's America. Rambo doing his thing to Al-Qaida might divert our minds from the mess the War On Terror has generated.

No, I didn't hate this picture. I despised, loathed, disliked and abhorred it for royally messing up a film icon while amping up the grossness. The only reason it earned a single star is the ending scene, which elicits a glimmer of hope -- hope that either the whole thing is over, or that maybe a new chapter can be written in the Rambo saga with some redeeming quality.

Game Of Life

Your Lightning Round editor-in-chief admits he's old school and proud of it when it comes to his video game habits. That's because I grew up in the age of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, before Mortal Combat clones multiplied in the arcades. When I'm behind a joystick, I don't want to be having a philosophical conversation with myself about the dehumanization of life via microchips and its parasitic influence on reality. You can safely deduce I never played Grand Theft Auto. Still, we have exceptions to the trend.

AND ALL AFTER PUSHING A FEW BUTTONS. Paxton Galvanek is not a doctor, but the 28-year-old knew enough medical skills to save an accident victim's life after playing America's Army, a free online computer game developed by the military as a recruiting tool. Medical training is part of the virtual drill.

From WRAL-TV's LocalTechWire:

Assuming the role of first responder, he quickly assessed the situation and found two victims in the smoking vehicle. Needing to extract them quickly, he helped the passenger out of the truck and noticed he had minor cuts and injuries. He told the man to stay clear of the smoking car and quickly went to the driver's side where he located a wounded man. He pulled the driver to safety on the side of the road.

Galvanek immediately noticed the man had lost two fingers in the accident and was bleeding profusely. The victim had also suffered head trauma. Galvanek located a towel, put pressure on the man’s hand, and instructed him to sit down and elevate his hand above his head while pressing the towel against his lost fingers. Galvanek then attended to his head cut and determined that injury was not as serious as his hand.

A real soldier who stopped to help determined Galvanek had done an excellent job.

This isn't an isolated example of computer games improving real-life performance. We at your Lightning Round found civil engineers have used SimCity as a learning tool. We also know of a doctor in Phoenix who's using Wii games to teach surgical skills.

Next up, using "Crazy Taxi" to teach defensive driving.

DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY. An Australian teenager took on a donated liver. Then she took on her donor's blood type and immune system, according to the Daily Telegraph:

On closer inspection, specialists found that stem cells from the donor liver had penetrated her bone marrow, effectively resulting in a naturally-occurring bone marrow transplant.

Her treating doctor Michael Stormon said she was able to come off the immunosuppressant drugs that most transplant patients needed to take life-long to ensure they don't reject the donated organ.

"We were stunned, absolutely stunned, and also very puzzled,'' said Dr Stormon, who reported the novel case in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In a related story, your Lightning Round has learned of a man with an artificial heart who mysteriously started beeping like R2-D2.

BUT WAIT, I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS GLOBAL WARMING! The coldest place in the universe is not Leona Helmsley's casket [rim shot]. It's a specially-designed box at MIT where a team of researchers lowered the thermometer to -455°F.

From Smithsonian:

Ultimately, [Wolfgang] Ketterle, like many physicists, hopes to discover new forms of matter that could act as superconductors at room temperature, which would revolutionize how humans use energy. For most Nobel Prize winners, the honor caps a long career. But for Ketterle, who was 44 years old when he was awarded his, the creation of [a new form of matter] opened a new field that he and his colleagues will be exploring for decades.

If they don't freeze themselves to death first, we hope.

ALL THAT HE LEAVES BEHIND. Bono confessed some inconvenient truths to Al Gore: he's less than green in his ways, according to AFP:

"It's like being with an Irish priest. You start to confess your sins," he said. "Father Al, I am not just a noise polluter, I am a noise-polluting, diesel-soaking, gulfstream-flying rock star.

"I'm going to kick the habit. I'm trying father Al, but oil has been very good for me -- those convoys of articulated lorries, petrochemical products, hair gel."

So Father Al, what penance does he get? Putting U2's next album out on a CD-RW?

IT'S LIKE WINDEX, BUT CUTER. Is your computer screen dirty? Do the kids insist on touching that new LCD with the same hands that just touched PB&J? Your Lightning Round has the answer, and even if it doesn't work, it's fun to watch: Click here for a cleaning.

Shall I Sing La Marseillaise?

The following is an actual conversation between myself and a parking attendant at the Tucson Convention Center on Saturday, January 20, 2008 at approximately 7pm.

Attendant: "Are you a visitor?"

CF: "No. I live here."

Attendant: "Oh. You look kind of like you're French."

(It must be my newly-grown ponytail.)

CF: "Well, maybe I am, in a way."

I shoot a French musket and I've dressed like a French viscount. Close.

Reel To Reel: Cloverfield

Alien vs. Camcorder in a terrifying tale of the tape.

How It Rates: ***
Starring: Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Sci-Fi Violence And Disturbing 9/11-esque Images Of Destruction In New York City, Some Language

Producer J.J. Abrams, who brought us cool cult hits like Alias and Lost, delivers a frightening mash-up of The Blair Witch Project, Aliens, and War Of The Worlds mimicking the terror of September 11th to an uncomfortable degree. Watching the destruction of a New York City building and seeing the ash roll down the street, I can't ignore the haunting parallel to the news footage of that day. Sheets of paper glide down from the sky while dust-covered people wander the street and cough.

However, Cloverfield is tolerable because the root of this evil is a Godzilla-sized monster who lands on Earth, pulverizing real estate only because that's what movie monsters are supposed to do. Maybe he's ticked at not being cast in Alien Vs. Predator. I'd love to see Hollywood crank out a monster flick where some gigantic creature just sits off Long Island and watches us like a giant ant farm. I'd develop this plot further if we weren't in a writers' strike.

The film's premise, like Blair Witch, is the release of an amateur videotape discovered after the attack. We see everything through the lens of a camcorder, presumably one of those new high-definition ones, because it's the best looking camcorder video ever transferred to film -- even with all the shaking. It's also got the longest battery life I've ever seen, and it somehow manages to squeeze more than an hour of footage onto one of those DV cassettes. The tape starts out with some domestic life of a young New Yorker, then cuts to a farewell party for him shot by a friend. Just as the movie is turning into The Social Gaffe Project, something smashes into Manhattan. People hit the streets for a closer look, and then the head of the Statue of Liberty lands right in front of them with the camera rolling. Poor Lady Liberty. Planet Of The Apes wasn't enough of an insult.

A few more buildings blow up, and for the first time we get a glimpse of this grotesque creature that's stomping down Broadway. Worse, he's dropping little grotesque creatures all over the place who resemble the ooky lifeforms Sigourney Weaver shot up all those years ago. The rest of the film follows a group of three friends as they try to save the guest of honor's girlfriend while running around to escape the creature and his buddies.

Cloverfield's visual effects amaze me because they blend so well with the camcorder footage, and yet the movie doesn't present anything we haven't seen in other monster and horror films. It's a low-budget (only $25 million according to Box Office Mojo!) scare flick with a glossy CGI finish, and yet it left me clinging to my seat, breathing shallow and knowing none of this is going to end well. Thus, it achieved its goal.

You Bet Your Vote!

A recount is now underway in New Hampshire, where Democrat Dennis Kucinich is among many raising flags about disparities between machine-counted and hand-counted vote totals. The recount won't lift him out of the basement, but it might lift more eyebrows if there's a lead change at the top, where Hillary beat Barack by two percentage points. And that might just have people demanding to use pencil and paper again at the polls. We likely won't know the results for several weeks, but in the meantime, another voting irregularity is cropping up in the west.

FIVE-TO-ONE ODDS. Some of the voters in Nevada's Democratic Caucus will do their thing at the Bellaigo hotel, as the Washington Post reports:

Just before noon, the hotel's dishwashers, cocktail waitresses, porters and bellhops will go on break and gather in a 30,000-square-foot ballroom to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama or maybe John Edwards to be the Democratic nominee for president.

A similar scene will play out in eight other casinos on or near Las Vegas's Strip as Democrats caucus in Nevada, the next stop in the party's fiercely competitive presidential race. There will be more than 1,700 caucus precincts across Nevada, but estimates are that the votes cast in the casinos could be more than 10 percent of the statewide total.

Right down the hall, the sports books have Obama by two, but the odds are far from even according to a lawsuit from Nevada teachers who claim the locations are way too convenient to be fair to all candidates. Hillary's hubby had a mild hissy fit with KGO-TV reporter Mark Matthews about it:

Clinton: "This is a one-man one-vote country. I'm amazed. You should be offended by this. You think that one persons vote should count five times as much as another's?"

Mathews: "I think it looks as though it's the Clinton supporters --"

Clinton: "When you ask me that question, your position is that you think that the culinary workers vote should be easier for them to vote than anyone else in Nevada who has to work on Saturday. Second, when they do vote, their vote should count five times as much as everybody else? That's what the teachers have questioned. If that's your position, you have it. Get on your television station and say 'I don't care about the home mortgage crisis'. All I care is that some voters have it easier than others, and when they do vote, their vote should count five times as much? That is your position. If you want to take that position, get on the television and take it. Some people in Nevada are old fashioned. They think the rules should be the same for everybody and everybody's vote should count the same. I had nothing to do with that lawsuit and you know it."

A judge decided the house had no edge. But while the Dems caucus Saturday, maybe Bill will be in the ring at Ceasar's Palace for the main event.

FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE, YOUR PRODUCTIVITY MAY BE MONITORED. Microsoft may be developing the ultimate spyware application: software and hardware that watches how hard you're working. As London's Times Online reports:

Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.

The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.

We also understand this software will reboot you if your output suffers or grinds to a halt.

OH, RATS! Scientists have grown a heart from cells of rats, paving the way for a lab-grown human heart in the future. As The New York Times Reports:

With modifications, scientists should be able to grow a human heart by taking stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that has been prepared as a scaffold, Dr. [Doris] Taylor [of the University of Minnesota] said in a telephone interview from her laboratory in Minneapolis. The early success “opens the door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas — you name it and we hope we can make it,” she said.

Okay, Dr. Taylor, what about brains?

TRAGICALLY HIP. Where are the fashion police when you need them? Taking a look at what's coming down the runway, your Lightning Round staffers wonder if the design world is playing a gigantic ongoing joke on us all.
A man in a tutu?
A lady wearing her intestines!
Geek chic.
Masked madness.
Plus, when veils attack!
But the handbag's not bad.

A TRUE PATRIOT. Finally, your Lightning Round editor tips his tricorn and bows humbly to 14-year-old Anna Grant, who stood proud in the midst of egregiously bad sportsmanship this past Sunday. The finalist in the NFL Pepsi Punch, Pass & Kick title was booed by fans in Indianapolis during the Colts-Chargers game because she was wearing a New England Patriots jersey.

Naturally, it made YouTube:



No need here for a lecture on boorishness by people who call them the "Hate-riots." As Anna told the New Hampshire Union-Leader:

"My parents said to expect it, so I just laughed it off, but it was definitely obvious they were booing."

And for her honorable display, she'll be honored on the field before Sunday's game against the Chargers in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where she is sure to receive thunderous huzzahs. So thanks booers, you just gave a fine young lady a priceless moment.

Realm Of The Merry

An account to the Lords and Ladies of All Nations of the ball honoring Her Majesty, Queen of the realm of We Make History, as described by Your Humble Servant, Viscount Christopher Francis.

In the Year Of Our LORD 1757

My Dearest Readers,

With great happiness I report a Grand Ball with Her Majesty the Queen and His Lordship, a gathering of high fashion and temperament, attended by their loyal subjects and visiting nobility of kingdoms far and wide. On this occasion, they were a small yet heartened number, encouraged by the host with one key word.

"Elegance!" he pronounced before the assembled, meaning elegance in dress, in manner, and most importantly, dancing.

I must note his leadership by example, clothed in a regal blend of red jacket and breeches adorned by a golden weskit, topped by the extraordinary efforts of the Court Wigmaker. But I shall not leave you in suspense as to the attire of Her Royal Majesty, the portrait of a joyous monarch in her golden gown and bows with flashes of scarlet, crowned with a white feathered wig. To see her smile is to feel the strength and confidence of a Loving And Righteous Kingdom.

They led a procession in which I had the honour of escorting a beautiful Countess in a brightly-coloured gown of pink.

"You are becoming a regular at these events," she noted to my gracious acknowledgment, having traveled great distance to attend the regal soirée two times before.

Her Majesty and His Lordship embarked in a diversion of Follow The Leader, winding the dancers around them like a spool of thread and then unwinding and looping about the ballroom until all finally stood in a great circle.

In this Realm Of The Merry, honour permeates everything, but lest there be any doubt, His Lordship provided a few words of instruction on the gestures of civility.

A bow, he said, may be performed one of two ways. One with feet together and hands spread apart as the body gracefully bends; the other, with one foot in front. However, he cautioned, the second way was less formal, "although we might think of it as more formal."

I must admit a moment of shock, having learned the second way from a dancing mistress in The English Colonies and ingraining it into my manner. Yet one must always seek improvement, and adapt I would, seeking acceptance amongst the gathered nobility. From a young Princess, the ladies learned a Royal Curtsy and its simple elegance with a sink and rise, eyes not leaving the one recieving honour.

His Lordship reminded us that it was important for the gentlemen to dance with many different ladies during the evening, and he wondered aloud if the assembled understood the reason why.

I ventured a guess. "Balls were social occasions, and you wanted to dance with as many partners as possible."

"Sir Christopher is entirely correct," he responded. But, he added, there was a higher purpose, and that everything we did should be "in honour of the ladies."

Your Humble Servant admits he knew this in his heart, although sadly the truth did not purse his lips. I resolved my actions would render my tongue inconsequential, and the charming Countess and I enjoyed a round of "Noel," a dance of lively skipping and circling. I thanked her with another bow, albeit I was still reminding myself to bow the formal way.

"May I escort you somewhere?" I asked her, remembering yet another instruction from His Lordship. She was well-pleased with my performance and offered kind sentiments for it, but a strong noblewoman she was, and she politely passed on my offer, seeking her next partner with a determined gate. At that moment, I realized had just danced with a future Queen.

A rumour made its way among the gathered, word of two Russians: one a legitimate ambassador; the other, an impostor. The steadfastness and joy of Her Majesty's Realm, alas, leads others to plot against her, somehow thinking they may attain the peace they are lacking through disingenuous means. Members of the nobility began questioning one another, hoping to unmask the spy.

I tell you the whiff of espionage had no ill effect, as the Lords and Ladies of the Realm enjoyed many dances in sets this evening, where the gathered stepped through graceful figures under the direction of the Royal Court Dancing Mistress, and I delighted myself with leading my partners, leading them up and down the line, turning them, and encouraging them if they thought their efforts futile. The asymmetries of "The Fields Of Frost And Snow" did not dismay us, nor did the winding turns of "Jack's Maggot," where a gentleman and two ladies loop in figure eights, and a lady and two gentlemen do as such. (Dearest readers, I should clarify the term "maggot" refers to a fanciful or whimsical idea, in the belief Jack might have conjured the idea for such a curving dance after a bite from a baser creature, if not from a friend named Daniel.)

The simplest steps produced the most delightful moments, as when I traded places with the lady across the set from me, my smile wide across my face and my eyes affixed on hers as we stepped to the center, my hands spread wide with a hint of a bow as my legs weaved around her and into place. When the call came for a right or left-hand star, my free hand would rise above my shoulder in an expression of joy, one others in the figure would happily imitate. To my delight, two of my favourite dances were part of the evening's celebration: "All Haste To The Wedding" and "Christchurch's Bells." Their simple grace allowed Your Humble Servant to devote his utmost attention to the lady across from him.

During a pause for refreshments, I happened upon a beautiful Countess from Spain. Madrid was truly at the forefront of style, as evidenced from the colour alone. Her glowing countenance permeated my heart at first glance, which explained the presence of the young Musketeer standing guard at her side, although he was a man oddly without sword.

"Purple," I complimented. "That is a color of royalty."

She graciously accepted the words. "And where are you from?" she inquired of me.

"Surrey, England," I replied. "But I have come via the newly established" -- or soon to be, in this time -- "pueblo of Tucson, protected by the finest of Spain, who I have a certain feeling will be helping the cause of liberty."

"And whose side are you on?"

"I am on the side of liberty," I answered, taking a stand that impressed her.

A few more pleasant words followed, but I soon had to excuse myself. "Can I count on you for a dance?" she inquired.

"You shall do more than count," I promised. "You shall have!"

When the dancing resumed and she emerged from the refreshment corridor, a gentleman of Austria found his way to her before me. To my diplomatic friends, I assure you I did not desire any petty hostilities between our nations, so I graciously deferred to him and sought the Countess at the next available opportunity.

"I am a man of my word and my promises," I said, falling into a low bow. "Will you honour me with a dance?"

As I expected, she honoured her word unflinchingly, accepting my hand as we joined a forming set of six for a dance entitled "Come, Let Us Be Merry," another one of my favourites. And Dear Readers, here I must confide to you that my joy achieved its pinnacle. For you see, the aforementioned dance is a beautiful three-quarter tempo highlighted by many bows and curtsies, a grand circle of graceful stepping, and most of all, the opportunity to lead a lady down the center of the line with a minuet step. And I must note here, too, I was joined in the set by His Lordship and Her Majesty, whose elegant movements inspired all of us, Her Majesty's especially -- she truly is The Dancing Queen!

So it should not surprise you, when the Countess and I assumed the role of head couple, we went to great lengths to show we were worthy of dancing in the Regal Presence. Every step I took, I took with refinement, turning and bowing and turning again, casting off to the middle of the set, and then leading the lady between the lines. Her eyes and mine connected as I led her, turning inwards and outwards on alternating beats, her smile once again running a needle through my heart, warming me thoroughly, and her entire face aglow with the joy of the dance. I must admit, I did not want that stately procession to end. If only I could have led her the length of the ballroom and then back again, perhaps capering around her at the end in her honour! However, I abided by convention and followed the dance to the letter.

"Tres bien," His Lordship remarked.

Upon the conclusion of the dance, I bowed to her deeply once again, my eyes misting over. But to my surprise, no tears would come tonight, not even tears of joy. I gather they escaped to my forehead instead.

Efforts to root out the spy intensified, and another rumour of skulduggery emerged: "The Crown Jewels have been stolen!"

"We shall have to employ the efforts of Her Majesty's Secret Service!" I cried.

In their steadfastness, Her Majesty and His Lordship showed no sign of alarm. They proceeded to the awarding of prizes by lot, challenging the winners to recite a fact pertaining to any queen of any kingdom. Unfortunately, many were unprepared, and despite the best efforts of His Lordship to coax out a fact -- any fact -- a few could do no more than resort to the common sentence in The Realm Of The Merry: a jig.

So ladies capered to the clapping encouragement of the assembled, finding joy even in punishment, although one noblewoman briefly neglected decorum by revealing her stockings and knees underneath her frock. The infraction did not escape notice of the host. "She is from Kansas," he noted, and asked the gathering to forgive said transgression.

I must admit, I would have reneged on a promise had it not been for the keen memory of His Lordship, who pointed out that Your Humble Servant had promised a lady a dance at a certain Christmas Party. I recalled the promise, but I was unsure of the lady whom I had honoured with said promise. With His Lordship's help, she was revealed, and I paid my debt with interest.

Inquiries persisted as to the identity of the spy. Even Her Majesty's Secret Service could not discern the impostor. Thus, a team of young Princesses banded together, and in their persistence, they unmasked the cunning one: a young Natasha, sent by personal directive of the czar. Gasps emanated from the assembled, and His Lordship wondered how such an deceptive lady could evade detection.

"Her beauty was so overwhelming, we were blind to her treachery!" I shouted.

Indeed, she displayed much charm and class, a pitiful waste of such gifts. But in the Realm Of The Merry, much is forgivable. His Lordship offered her a higher wage to embark on counterintelligence for Her Majesty, and a gentleman quickly offered her a dance. No gaol would hold her this evening, under edict of The Queen.

The Pineapple Dance raised our spirits once more with the Lords and Ladies of the Realm sashaying down the lines of eager dancers, hoping to take a partner's hand or be the last one to be passed the exotic and hospitable fruit.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" a lady asked me.

"Very much so," I answered with the Spirit Of The Dance enveloping me.

As much as I would delight in regaling you with more tales of dancing and grace, the time did eventually arrive for us to depart for our own kingdoms and times, but not without a waltz borrowed from another age.

I spotted a lady I had been wanting to dance with all evening sitting alone at the side of the room, and I bowed to her.

"Thank you for saving me the last dance," she said to me. We conversed through a two-step, and she put forth a question. "What was your favourite gift this Christmas?"

I puzzled at the answer, but not for long. In the Realm Of The Merry, and with the beautiful lady in my arms, I could not perceive anything material. Searching through my feelings, I spoke from my heart. "GOD has given me many gifts. HE has given me friends and joy such as this." I would leave no doubt of the Kingdom I called home.

Her Majesty's subjects speak! Their words here.

NEXT: Washington's Way

Hankie Panky

Hillary's had quite a week. It started with that much-bally-boo-hooed cry in front of the camera. Was it real or was it crocodile? Or was it simply the frustration of working her tail off and still getting beat like a drum in Iowa?

Then she won the New Hampshire primary and Bill turned on the water. Oh why not, it works for Oprah. But we at your Lightning Round shed no tears as we sift through the net each week, except when somebody forgets to clean their contacts... the lenses, people, not those meat puppets in the Rolodex.

SILVER SALUTE. Listening to Barack Obama Tuesday night, somebody almost forgot to tell him he came in second. Once again, he stepped up and delivered the kind of speech that makes downtrodden patriots believe again.

As the AP reports:

"We know the battle ahead may be long. But always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change," Obama said.

"I am still fired up and ready to go," he said.

And...

"All the candidates in this race have good ideas and all are patriots who serve this country honorably," Obama said.

And further...

"In record numbers, you came out and you spoke up for change. And with your voices and your votes you made it clear that at this moment in this election there is something happening in America."

If he doesn't get the Democrats' nod, we're urging the next president to create the Department of Motivation and name him secretary. Who cares about big government when you have hope for the future?

Here's another motivator: when all the votes were counted in New Hampshire, Obama and Hillary ended up winning exactly the same number of delegates: 9. However, Hillary still has a wide lead in the overall Democratic delegate race because of superdelegates. Huh?

JOHNNY MAC'S BACK. On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain owned the night, leaving your Lightning Round editor-in-chief eating a genrous helping of crow... cold.

Early last year, with the Arizona senator trapped under the debris of immigration reform, donations drying up, and key campaign staff bailing out, I predicted his presidential aspirations wouldn't survive the new year. Yet McCain climbed out of the grave and rededicated himself.

The senator also took a page from the Obama playbook:

"For me, that greater cause has always been my country, which I have served imperfectly for many years but have loved without any reservation every day of my life," McCain said. "However this campaign turns out - and I am more confident tonight that it will turn out much better than once expected - I am grateful beyond expression for the prospect that I might serve her a little while longer."

We remind you McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 before losing the nomination to then-governor George W. Bush. So "little while" is still a little uncertain -- but we wonder if it will outlast the writers' strike.

POLL POSITION. The big losers in New Hampshire were the polls, the ones that had Obama sailing to victory Tuesday night. So what went wrong? ABC News polling director Gary Langer offers a theory or two, but also throws us this:

Prof. Jon Krosnick of Stanford University has another argument: That the order of names on the New Hampshire ballot - in which, by random draw, Clinton was toward the top, Obama at the bottom - netted her about 3 percentage points more than she'd have gotten otherwise. That's not enough to explain the gap in some of the polls, which presumably randomized candidate names, but it might hold part of the answer.

Looking at the long-list ballot, we have other questions: "People are still voting for vice-president?" and who exactly is "O. Savior?"

OPEN SEASON. The next main event on the political fight card is Super Duper Tuesday, February 5, when Arizona and more than a dozen other states hold primaries. But if you're a registered independent, you can't vote because of a quirk in the state's open-primary law. Arizona state senator Jack Harper is offering a quick-fix bill, but like a lot of his Republican cronies, he can't resist taking a cheap shot across the aisle, as reported in the Arizona Daily Star:

His proposal doesn't stop at just letting independents vote in one of the party primaries. It would also let Republicans vote in the Democrat primary.

However, Democrats, described by Harper as "people who would burn American flags in front of American soldiers and call that free speech," would not have the same crossover ability — although he later said he is willing to alter that provision to treat both parties the same.

For Harper, that may mean letting Republicans burn glossies of Hillary.

YOU EAT MY HEART OUT. Perhaps one can serve his political opponents in effigy, if not in love. Chidi Ogbuta of Allen, Texas had her wedding cake made to look like her -- life sized, with her veiled upper torso on top of several lower layers. She told her future hubby she wanted a "unique, personalized wedding."

Just what I want to see on my happiest day: somebody sticking a knife in me.

PASTA POLITICS. The sauce is red, but its consumer may be blue. The American Italian Pasta Company dug into it, offering its findings on partisan pasta eating habits.in a press release that crossed our wires:

Democrats, data shows, lean towards elbow macaroni, while Republicans tend to prefer long spaghetti.

We gather independents have the Lasagna vote.

Wait Just A Minuet

My favorite We Make History ball of the year is coming up this weekend. I love Colonial-style dancing (a.k.a. English Country Dance), but one dance I haven't done yet is a minuet. It's on my Bucket List.

I'm dreaming of a moment of movement like this one, performed by The Covent Garden Minuet Company:



And then something else lively, like this from the Mercurius Company:



And finally, sharing the ballroom floor alone with a beautiful lady... like this.

Ahhhh... Ladies of the realm, I extend my hand. Refuse me and break my heart!

Reel To Reel: Charlie Wilson's War

How to fund a war under the table and win.

How It Rates: ***
Starring: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ned Beatty
Rated: R
Red Flags: One Scene Of Nudity (including Hanks' bare derriere), Language, War Violence

Much of what happens in Washington happens outside of our vision, out of reach of the press or C-Span or blogs or otherwise. So it's entirely possible a Texas congressman could engineer the funding and weapons deals that helped Afghan rebels defeat the Soviets in the 1980's -- all under the table. But better, it actually happened.

Charlie Wilson's War is based upon the book by former 60 Minutes producer George Crile, who chronicled how the hard-drinking and womanizing Rep. Charlie Wilson pulled off one of the most successful covert operations in history. It's a ode to logrolling and influence peddling used for something other than a highway in Alaska. At the same time, it's a political thriller unmasking Washington's systemic inaction and hypocrisy.

Wilson (Hanks) learns of Afghanistan's failing resistance from a Dan Rather report -- while sitting in a Las Vegas hotel jacuzzi surrounded by nude women and cocaine. He isn't shy about his boozing or skirt-chasing. Curvy assistants keep his office running, and he's quick to offer a drink to anybody who stops by. Yet behind the good-ol'-Texas-boy front is a leader with incredible power and influence as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. The position enables him to ask for get more funding for covert CIA operations with little resistance.

Houston socialite Joanne Herring (Roberts) uses her charm to prod Wilson to visit Afghanistan after hearing how he doubled some intelligence funding with just a few words. She's the kind of woman you admire and detest in the same sentence. Herring reeks of rich like someone on Dynasty but at least she's not spending it on a tummy tuck. Wilson is dismayed to find diplomats unwilling to give the Afghans more than just chump change, old weapons and lip service. He teams up with Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman), a chain-smoking CIA pariah aching to get something done and escape the agency's bureaucratic sludge. Together they weave the tangled and secret web of alliances and funding to put rocket launchers into the hands of the Afghan rebels and turned the tide.

Charlie Wilson's War is a breezy Washington fable with comic edge, thanks in large part to the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing. We hear references to former House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and then-prosecutor Rudy Giuliani. Still, people who don't go for political thrillers will like this film because of its economy and avoidance of excess Washington-isms. Yes, Sorkin's a liberal. And yes, I have heard conservatives grumble that Wilson is getting too much credit for bringing about the end of the Cold War. Yet Wilson himself admits that, saying "they made me a little better than I am." And somebody remind conservatives -- as if you need to -- that it wasn't Wilson who got the Soviets in a nuclear arms race.

Like the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, the film pulls out before the liberated country falls under control of the Taliban, paving the way for Al-Qaida and 9/11. We see Wilson in one scene trying to win the peace, but he is left to offer us only an expletive-laced quote summarizing what happened -- The End. The aftermath of Charlie Wilson's War is the topic for another movie at another time, if Hollywood is willing to make it. Judging from the box office performance of Lions For Lambs, it won't be soon.

Playing Both Sides

Round one of the super-heavyweight fight known as the presidential race is over and scored. Amidst the politically charged headlines from Iowa this week, somebody got their polarity reversed. But it's what your Lightning Round editors have come to expect during campaign season, when partisan ethics is an oxymoron.

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T. GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee took the peculiar step of declaring he would run a positive campaign and then showing the negative ad he wasn't going to run.

From The Hill:

When asked if it is hypocritical to make an announcement about not running negative ads, and then show a negative advertisement to dozens of members of the national and local media, Huckabee said he had to show the ad to prove its existence.

“I want to show you that we were fully prepared,” Huckabee said.

Yeah, like nobody would ever believe a gentleman like Mike Huckabee was capable of putting together a mean, nasty, hateful campaign ad, now?

Huckabee said the ad cost about $30,000 to make, and the original purpose of the press conference was to introduce the spot to the media.

But the former governor said he had a change of heart shortly before the media assembled. Easels outlining the attacks on Romney were still standing in the room, and Huckabee stood in front of a banner that read “Enough is Enough.”

“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” he said.

It's never too late to make up a cover story, either. Your Lightning Round editors praise Huckabee for figuring out how to get ad time without paying for it -- show an incendiary commercial to the press and let them lap it up like dogs. However, the twisted logic behind this political stunt smacks of somebody who's figured out how to live on both sides of the issue... sorta like Hillary.

On caucus night, Iowans didn't turn him off. Huckabee invoked the spirit of the founding patriots after his win, saying "it's not about me; it's about we." He meant "we" as in "we the people," not "we" as "we are gonna stomp Mitt Romney's Mormon butt in New Hampshire."

He also said, "I wish it was all over tonight, and we could celebrate." Envisioning the wild and woolly campaign season yet to come, "we" can't blame him.

HE'S A GONER. Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut quit the race as the last of the Iowa Caucus results trickled in. He did indescribably bad, as CNN's Wolf Blitzer phrased it, saying Dodd came in a "distant distant... place."

The Wolfman also referred to Barack Obama as a "young man in his mid-forties." Huzzah -- that makes your Lightning Round editor a kid again!

WHAT ABOUT RON? Republican un-candidate Ron Paul finished Iowa with a respectable 10 percent, behind Fred Thompson.

Of course, his supporters claim the networks are underreporting and underestimating his support. Paul vows to continue. We would too if we finished ahead of Rudy Guiliani.

STAND BY ME. The eventual nominee will eventually have to pick a running mate, but a wingman will do for now. During the post-caucus speeches, Hillary Clinton had Bill and Chelsea at her side along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Mike Huckabee had Chuck Norris, who easily doubled as his bodyguard. John Edwards had his wife. Barack Obama stood solo; hope was his companion.

THREE BOTTLE MINIMUM. Running from the political arena and into the nearest club now, Gregory Barnard is suing the trendy Times Square nightclub Arena for $2 million after a booze beatdown. Bouncers roughed him up for buying only one $350 bottle of vodka. Why? Because he didn't buy two more as the club requires.

The New York Post lays things out:

A bouncer threw him to the floor and held him down while two other bouncers punched and kicked him, he said.

They then picked Barnard up and walked him two blocks to an ATM for more money, but the bank had frozen his card because the waitress had already charged $1,400 on it, swiping the card at least nine times, he said.

He said the bouncers dragged him back to the bar, where he waited until police arrived and arrested him for theft of services.

The charges were dismissed.

All for $700 in spirits he and his friends didn't want and never drank. For you non-clubbing types -- including your Lightning Round editor -- Mr. Barnard ordered "bottle service," defined as paying a ghastly amount of money for not only the alcohol, but also glasses, mixers and a dedicated server whom you hope has a shapely figure. We can safely conclude no tip was left this evening.

As for that three-bottle minimum, hasn't anybody at Arena ever heard of public intoxication? Or DUI?

Reel To Reel: National Treasure: Book Of Secrets

Hurry people! Treasure's out there and we've only got two hours to find it.

How It Rates: **
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight, Diane Kruger, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Harvey Keitel
Rated: PG
Red Flags: Adventure Violence

Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer are prepared to get a lot of mileage out of far-fetched legends and conspiracy theories, turning them into as many treasure hunts as they can. This sequel to 2004's National Treasure leads us on another breathless chase for another huge stash, doing the impossible in mere minutes and somehow managing to avoid any war-on-terror tripwire. It is not so much a movie as a collection of plot twists tied together.

Treasure hunter Benjamin Frankin Gates (Cage) is back, as is his father Patrick (Voight) and gadget-guru Riley (Bartha). This time, they're not just hunting for some whopping pile of artifacts. Somebody has come forward with a scrap from John Wilkes Booth's diary, suggesting Gates' great-grandfather was involved in a conspiracy to kill President Lincoln. Ben is determined to clear his family's name, but along the way, he uncovers evidence pointing to the golden city of Cibola, an ancient dwelling that makes Fort Knox, Kentucky look like Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

The movie's various plot gymnastics (and that's putting it mildly) lead through Paris, London and Washington, D.C. We have desks that double as safes and ratty old wooden planks with ancient markings. A huge cover-up involves Mount Rushmore. Gates somehow manages to finagle a moment alone with the president, and Riley manages to hack into any computer system they come across with the help of a laptop and what looked to me like an iPhone. Why does he have to help Gates hunt treasure? He could make a fortune unlocking iPhones.

But we all know Ben and his buddies are going to get to the treasure, thus making the journey the reward. National Treasure: Book of Secrets is all about the trip, not the destination. It moves faster than common sense can keep up, but we really don't care because we're dying to see the next clue, and then the clue after that. It doesn't matter that Cage's character can slip out of any trap like a modern Indiana Jones -- which reminds me: the third act of this film reminded me of the first act of Raiders of the Lost Ark with ancient booby-traps and a giant stone to boot. Jones has one more sequel on the Coming Attractions reel. And I bet you Cage and company will have one, too.

Just One More Before The Clock Strikes Midnight

An end-of-the-year recap? Really. We at your Lightning Round don't believe in them. On the contrary, we think our humble readers deserve better than to hear our staff reminisce about the twisted scattershot material dug up during the last twelve months. Get the champagne ready already; one more in the can and we start with a new calendar and clean slate.

ROCK OF AGES. Old white guys still rock, and they roll in the dough. As Variety reports:

The Police topped the chart by taking in $131.9 million from 54 North American shows, far outdistancing No. 2 seller Kenny Chesney, who made $71.1 million on the same number of shows, according to Pollstar, which tracks the concert business. The Police and Chesney were the only acts to sell more than 1 million tickets in 2007; four acts, one of which was Chesney, did it in 2006.

Reuniting never felt so good -- or paid so well, especially for your Lightning Round editor's favorite band, Genesis:

The David Lee Roth-led edition of Van Halen pulled in $56.7 million from 39 dates to land in fifth place; Phil Collins and his mates scored $47.6 million from 25 shows.

Oh, and what about Hanna Montana?

The tour that caused the biggest ruckus in terms of ticket demand, the “Hannah Montana”/Miley Cyrus tour, grossed $36 million from 49 gigs.

But hey, when she's grey, she'll be topping the charts.

WORK IT OFF. Throwing a tea party isn't feasible, so seniors are working part-time for the city of Greenburgh, NY to pay off sky-high property taxes.

From the AP:

People shouldn't have to sell their house, move away to a place with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends," said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.

He envisions retired doctors mentoring schoolchildren, retired accountants helping with the town's finances, retired lawyers offering their services for a discount. But there are plenty of less-skilled jobs that need doing, he said.

"It's not like we're going to see grandma running the snowplow," he said. "There are lots of things people can do for the town and it wouldn't cost us that much to pay them."

Other cities have tried similar programs with success. But we note, this still doesn't do anything about the taxes:

[Audrey] Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes - perhaps $2,000 to the town - and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills.

Talking to Feiner last week at the town senior center, she said, "I would work as long as it was a job where I could sit."

"You could be a receptionist!" Feiner said. "You could greet people right here, when they come in."

And tell them: "Hello. I'm eager to serve you, just as long as the tax man gets his piece of my flesh. Otherwise, they're going to throw me in debtor's prison."

THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THEY USED TO. Good old Sudafed -- reliable and drowsiness-free. Not anymore. When meth heads started using it for their own evil purposes, its maker was pressured into reformulating it with an active ingredient that Jeffrey Tucker of Mises.org argues "might as well be a placebo." And he has a theory:

The reason you can't get Mucinex and Sudafed that work without jumping through hoops isn't really about stopping basement meth users. It is really about the racket going on in Washington in which the law is used to benefit influential producers in cahoots with the political class at the expense of less influential producers and the American people, who should have the freedom to choose.

In other words, you can thank lobbyists and lawmakers for your stuffed-up nose. You can send them a Kleenex at re-election time. What you do to it before you mail it off is up to you.

BIC: THE NEW WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. The Harvard School of Public Health finds no evidence to support X-raying of luggage prevents hijackings or attacks, although we do admit it makes us feel safer anyway. But more telling, the same study also found no evidence to support taking your shoes off helps either. Tell that one to the people who flew with Richard Reid.

From ABC News:

"Even without clear evidence of the accuracy of testing, the Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year," the researchers added. "Most of these illegal items were lighters."

Just think of all the money the "gub-mint" could raise by selling them in the gift shop!

HIGH INFIDELITY. CD's -- provided you're still buying them anymore -- have been getting louder and louder, and you're actually hearing less. Rolling Stone turns up the volume on the casualties in "the loudness war:"

The idea that engineers make albums louder might seem strange: Isn't volume controlled by that knob on the stereo? Yes, but every setting on that dial delivers a range of loudness, from a hushed vocal to a kick drum — and pushing sounds toward the top of that range makes music seem louder. It's the same technique used to make television commercials stand out from shows. And it does grab listeners' attention — but at a price. Last year, Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone that modern albums "have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static."

Of course, Bob Dylan's vocal range had us adjusting the pitch on the turntable.

Now hear this: we're signing off until next year.

Miracles

Stefanie, a friend and colleague of mine, recently told me about the experience that changed her life... and almost ended it. This is her story.

If you ever doubted Heaven existed, she should erase all doubt.

Instant Messaging In The 1700's

Slashdot pointed me to this fascinating article on the optical telegraph system in late 18th century/early 19th century Europe. It consisted of a series of towers spaced a few miles apart, each equipped with two wooden semaphore arms and two telescopes.

From the article:

Every tower had a telegrapher, looking through the telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher copied that symbol on his own tower. Next he used the telescope to look at the succeeding tower in the chain, to control if the next telegrapher had copied the symbol correctly. In this way, messages were signed through symbol by symbol from tower to tower. The semaphore was operated by two levers. A telegrapher could reach a speed of 1 to 3 symbols per minute.

Pretty slow, but a lot faster than a post rider, provided nobody was dallying at the controls.

The very first message – a military victory over the Austrians – was transmitted in less than half an hour. The transmission of 1 symbol from Paris to Lille could happen in ten minutes, which comes down to a speed of 1,380 kilometres an hour. Faster than a modern passenger plane – this was invented only one and a half centuries later.

Of course, the electrical telegraph arrived in the mid 1800's, and all of those semaphore towers faded into history. As Paul Harvey would say, "and now you know the rrrrrrrrrest of the story!"

Reel To Reel: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

Music and lyrics that go for the throat.

How It Rates: ***
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen
Rated: R
Red Flags: Graphic Throat-Slashing And Bloody Violence, A Few Uses Of The "S" and "P" Words

Director Tim Burton has made film history: the first slasher musical. Actually Stehpen Sondheim created it, but not like this. The curtain went up on Sweeney Todd long before Phantom Of The Opera and no doubt influenced it by proving Gothic horror and haunting melodies could work together. Phantom plays up the romance while Sweeney piles up the bodies, accompanied by gleeful singing of revenge and opportunity.

As the title character, Depp embodies a loathing insanity, controlled and skillful yet mad as a hatter with a white slash through his dark hair. The first scenes show him returning to London after spending 15 years in Australia for a crime he didn't commit, framed by the corrupt and jealous Judge Turpin (Rickman, still in Servus Snape mode), who had designs on his beautiful wife. She is now dead, and their infant daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) is now a pretty young girl under Turpin's care. Todd returns to his former home -- where he lived as Benjamin Barker -- still occupied downstairs by struggling pie-maker Mrs. Lovett (Carter). She sings of her "worst pies in London" and high price of meat, which leaves us to imagine what's going under the crust.

Mrs. Lovett quickly reunites Todd with his old razor blades, the ones he will use to carry out his revenge and win back Johanna by luring Turpin in and cutting his throat. First he needs customers. He drums up business in a shaving showdown with the self-proclaimed "King Of Barbers", Signor Adolfo Pirelli, played by Sacha Baron Cohen as an Italian riff on his Borat character. When the stubbled masses start coming in, and as Todd grows madder, he hatches a scheme with Mrs. Lovett to revamp her business while carrying out his murderous impulses. Guess what's in the pies now?

Tim Burton spares us no gore. He does not camouflage the slashing with a polite cutaway or reverse angle. One sequence murders over and over again, with Todd dispatching his victims in merry melody as a duet with gargling blood. It's not pleasant to watch, and I can only see a man's throat cut so many times -- which isn't much at all. Better to just close my eyes and concentrate on Depp's capable singing, as is everybody else's. Wisener gets an extra tip of the hat for her angelic voice. It provides some lift from the horror alongside her romance with Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), the young man who has accompanied Todd back to London.

Otherwise, Sweeney Todd is constantly brooding, dark and impoverished. It's the Victorian London of Dickens, but Dickens at least had some optimism. Burton bathes us in the grit and filth of the lower classes with the corruption of the upper crust hanging over them. You don't have to suspend much disbelief to enjoy the movie, and that's saying a lot for how well this musical is staged. But it's still hard for me to watch horror films of any variety, and even though the Stephen Sondheim score makes it all go down easier, it's still a bleedin' mess.

Reel To Reel: No Country For Old Men

Drugs, dollars, and death deep in Texas.

How It Rates: ***
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald
Rated: R
Red Flags: Graphic Bloody Violence, Language

I didn't figure out No Country For Old Men was set in the late 1970's or early 80's until about one-third of the way through the film, where we see a shot of a Bell System telephone bill in glorious computer type. A drive from McAllen, Texas to Tucson in 1999 revealed parts of dusty West Texas fail to age at the same rate as everything else. Even the law doesn't keep up with the changing times, as revealed in the Coen brothers' latest suspense thriller that intertwines drug running, serial killing, greed and lone-wolf survivalism.

Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a hunter who stumbles across the bloody aftermath of a Mexican drug buy gone bad near the Rio Grande. Decaying, bullet-pierced bodies lay around him, along with a load of heroin and a satchel with more than $2 million in cash. He takes the money, a silver pistol, and a semi-automatic rifle and leaves, only to be gnawed by a guilty conscience for one of the banditos barely alive. When he returns with water, he finds more smugglers coming to check out the scene, and the chase is on. Moss is in a messa' trouble, as they say in Texas.

His trouble is an assassin named Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a creepy angel of death with a pale complexion who could scare Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with just his philosophical tongue alone. One of the film's most riveting scenes features Chigurh discussing a coin toss with a gas station owner, where it's clear more is on the line than heads or tails:

Anton Chigurh: What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?

Gas Station Proprietor: Sir?

Anton Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.

Gas Station Proprietor: I don't know. I couldn't say.

[Chigurh flips a quarter from the change on the counter and covers it with his hand]

Anton Chigurh: Call it.

Gas Station Proprietor: Call it?

Anton Chigurh: Yes.

Gas Station Proprietor: For what?

Anton Chigurh: Just call it.

Gas Station Proprietor: Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.

Anton Chigurh: You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.

Gas Station Proprietor: I didn't put nothin' up.

Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it.
Quotes courtesy imdb.com

Chigurh's weapons of choice are a silenced shotgun and an air gun used to slaughter cattle -- which is also handy for busting open locks. Most of the film is a fox-and-hound hunt between Moss and Chigurh, with Moss figuring out how to stay a step ahead of his potential killer while protecting his wife Carla Jean (MacDonald).

That would be enough to fill the movie, but Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones) is also looking for Moss, a man he's familiar with in the small-town Texas kind of way. Bell knows the ways of border bandits, and he knows Moss is in grave danger, but Carla Jean is the only link to him, and Moss isn't the kind of person to ask for help. Bell can do little but investigate and worry while mentoring a greenhorn deputy Wendell (Dillahunt). Yet he knows how it's all going to end from the moment he learns of Moss' involvement. Sheriff Bell has a reluctance to delve deeper into the case, especially with retirement nearing, as he realizes drug violence is infiltrating what used to be just quiet Lone Star country.

No Country For Old Men is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, but it reminds me of the Coens' first picture, Blood Simple. It also weaved a dark and intricate tale of murder with white-knuckle tension. But while that one built to a huge finish, the Coens decided to let this one coast down the hill. Maybe you will find it Hitchcockian and understandable, or maybe you'll echo what a woman behind me said as she was leaving the theater: "That was a stupid ending!" Ethan and Joel are clearly capable of better.