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So… no more nasty election campaign ads. They get replaced by… Christmas shopping ads. Crap: it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, people! Sheesh!

FC: great photos from the wedding/reception. Looks like everyone had a great time!

I’m getting very excited about the new Bond movie. Probably not seeing it this weekend (the opening weekend gets the crazies out, don’t they?), but will have to see it. My man Clive Owen might not have gotten the role, but Daniel Craig’s looking mighty fine to me. Not classically handsome (but then I don’t consider early Sean Connery to be classically handsome either), but looking – well – rather hunkish anyway. Mmm. 😉

Today, Princeton’s going after the Ivy League football championship title, and Harvard’s playing Yale. The reason why I mention this: well, I don’t know – just kind of weird seeing this Harvard-Yale game on my tv right now. Not like my Alma Mater’s team was any good this year (as usual). Interesting story in the NY Times concerning Ivy League football and why they can’t seem to be on the same level of similar schools that find a way to balance sports and academics (like Stanford or Duke or something):

But less than a month after the 1981 season ended, the Ivy League was expelled from big-time college football. In a squabble over television revenue, the eight Ivy institutions were demoted to the N.C.A.A.’s Division I-AA. Given the chance to appeal, the Ivy League presidents did not protest and instead willingly walked away from the highest level of a game their teams created.

Twenty-five years later, that quiet act of rebellion stands out all the more in the increasingly commercial world of major college sports. Ivy League leaders say they have protected the academic stature of their institutions, avoided the stain of recruiting and classroom scandals, and nurtured athletics as a truly amateur endeavor.

“Thank goodness,” said Derek Bok, Harvard’s president in 1981 and its interim president now. “The quality of football is not the primary objective of the institution.”

But there have been tradeoffs: fewer victories, diminished television exposure, disappointed alumni and dwindling attendance. On the eve of tomorrow’s annual Harvard-Yale game, the wisdom of the 1981 downsizing of football is still broadly debated.

“It has been painful to watch the unnecessary atrophy of the league,” said John Rogan, Yale’s quarterback in 1981. [….]

The debate intensifies when the Ivy League is compared with institutions like Stanford, Northwestern, Duke and the service academies, which still compete in Division I-A and adhere to high academic credentials. It is often suggested that the Ivy teams could have maintained their Division I-A status, which would have likely boosted recruiting and attendance, while playing league opponents and a mix of games against institutions with similar academic standards. [….]

“Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship,” Bok said when asked why football is kept out of the postseason playoffs. “And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes. That’s how even responsible institutions end up doing things they don’t like doing.”

With that kind of thinking dominating the positions of leadership, a scenario in which the Ivy League would step up in class to join Division I-A football programs like Stanford or the service academies seems unlikely.

Jeff Orleans, the Ivy League’s executive director, said, “For those who wonder why we didn’t stay in Division I-A as Duke, Stanford and Northwestern did, I would ask, what do you think of their football experience this year?”

Duke’s football team is 0-10 this season. Stanford is 1-9 and Northwestern is 3-8.

“One could argue,” Orleans said, “that the Ivy League has had the better football experience than those institutions have had for the last 25 years. You might want to ask why they didn’t do what we did.”

But others say Ivy League football is too central to the game’s history to be in its current position. The teams were perennial national champions from 1869 to 1939 and were still nationally ranked well into the 1970s, but now they frequently lose to less established programs with no national reputation. More demoralizing might be that these games are often played in storied locations like the Yale Bowl and Harvard Stadium before crowds that fill only one-fourth of the seats.

“It’s depressing when you can walk up to one of those great old Ivy League places 15 minutes before game time and buy a ticket without even waiting in line,” said Joe Restic, who coached at Harvard for 23 seasons beginning in 1971. “It all started with the I-AA classification. Right away the recruits said to us, ‘I don’t want to play with the second-class citizens.’

“The Ivy presidents should have fought it. A great institution should try to excel in whatever it undertakes. We didn’t have to play Notre Dame, but we should have held the line so we could still compete with our traditional nonleague rivals. Instead, before the season started I could look at the schedule and see three games where I knew our chances of losing were very high.”

A balancing of interests indeed.

The week:

ABC’s “Ugly Betty” had their Thanksgiving episode a week early. Debbi Mazar plays a shady immigration lawyer (oops) who managed to take the money but not really help Betty’s dad’s illegal status issue. Betty is torn between trying to balance her career and her family, but realizes that it probably is ok to give her sister (a bossy sort if there ever was one!) a shot at doing more for the family too. Betty tries to support her boss, Daniel – the man who’s trying to get over his himbo (rather than bimbo) image in being an editor of his dad’s fashion magazine (Vogue-like magazine that’s part of the dad’s big corporate media empire); nice friendship thing developing, as Betty becomes the one to recommend that he wear a purple shirt on his sort-of date and has to get him home because he drunk after getting spurned bythe newest editor in his dad’s Media Empire, well played by the show’s producer Salma Hayek.
After seeing a few episodes of “Betty,” I think it’s a pretty well done show – characters are interesting, touching and funny moments are balanced. It’s very much an Americanized network version of the telenovela of Spanish tv – some over the top moments, but still some quality stuff. Heck, if you can make Vanessa Williams’ villainous Wilhemina a human being (particularly in the area of her dealing with her estranged teen daughter), you’re doing a pretty good job in developing a good tv show. The stuff I don’t care about (probably because I missed the first couple of episodes and therefore don’t really understand what’s going on): this weird conspiracy Wilhemina and Fey are doing on Daniel’s dad. Apparently, Fey is pretending to be dead to make her ex-lover the Media Mogul go crazy (Medial Mogul apparently treated Fey as his beloved mistress, since his wife, played by the ex-“Who’s the Boss” star Juditch Light, is an alcoholic). Don’t know why they’re doing this storyline since it’s annoying. Otherwise, I like Betty and her family – they bring a nice element of diversity that’s sorely needed on tv.

“Grey’s Anatomy” this week – interesting. I usually do like Meredith Grey, but even I realize how annoying she can be. I like it best when Meredith’s trying to deal with her Alzheimer afflicted mother – it make Meredith more human again, not just as Surgical Intern or Dr. McDreamy’s Girlfriend. Meredith has issues to get over regarding her parents, so it’s interesting to see her stumble over them again and again. The Chief, Dr. Webber, has decided to stop visiting Ellis, Meredith’s mom and his ex, because – well, apparently he wants to go back to his wife. Funny how he confessed this to McDreamy and Dr. Addison and neither were listening to him! Dr. McSteamy continues to treat Alex like crap; sooner or later, someone’s got to realize that. And, will Dr. Burke’s malady be officially discovered? As Cristina told him: George knows! Dr. Webber will not be happy with Burke, forget even Dr. Bailey (who probably should murder him, forget Cristina).

I watched most of this week’s “Heroes” on NBC. I’ve watched some of it before, but haven’t had the discipline to watch a whole episode and figured I’d ought to, since I’m such a big superhero fan (but having been disappointed in seeing these shows not meet up with potential). Looks like they’re finally moving to get the disparate people with superpowers together very soon. Gosh, I hope so – the too many characters and the rather slow pace gnaws on me. I keep wondering if these storylines will meet up already. Next week is apparently the big episode. Ooh!

Back from a fun-filled weekend. Here’s the short list:
Breakfast at the Amish Corner at the Reading Terminal Market. One of the recent shooting victims had worked at the Amish diner here.
Touring throughout downtown.
The old Wanamaker Department store, now a Macy’s, with the world’s largest pipe organ.
CapoGyro Gelato (really nice since the temps jumped into the 70s.
Rittenhouse Square (sort of like the Village)
Early Chinese dinner in Chinatown (will add the name of the place – very good Cantonese food, the way it used to be)
Moot Court Awards ceremony (two people I know walked away with Bar/Bri gift certificates)
Back to Chinatown, barely making the bus back to New York.
The next day, law school friend’s Catholic Indian wedding (fascinating ceremony), followed by a stupendous reception (350 guests, must have been at least $50K)
Bro from SF is visiting this week – cooking an early Thanksgiving tonight.

Election Night had the feeling of Living In the Middle of History. Exciting to think “Good Grief, the Dems are really pulling it off?!” Montana and Virginia pulled through for Democrats in the senate races. The Founding Fathers’ checks and balances (and compromises) may prove victorious – and an end to one-party rule in this country for the last several years.  Indeed, the whole Election season reminded me of the time when I was young and watching the Democratic convention of 1992 on tv – when VP candidate Al Gore made that stirring speech of “It’s Time for a Change!” Time for a change all right.

Bob Menendez keeps NJ Democratic. Elliott Spitzer is Governor-elect, finally – kind of felt anti-climactic. I guess the hard part is the governing part now – something our friends in D.C. and Albany are going to have to pull off now.

TV coverage was kind of odd – I watched mostly ABC (considering that we segued into Election Day coverage after Dancing with the Stars – where more Americans probably called in to keep Joey Lawrence on tv than actual voting) – well, I kept wanting more from Charles Gibson. Katie Couric didn’t bother me, but I felt a little weird when Couric and the CBS crew seemed to be pulling out the exit polls stuff (when I thought we were moving away from the lack of accuracy in exit polls). I found myself wanting to watch more of Brian Williams and the NBC crew (they even brought back Tom Brokaw as an analyst), but kept going back to ABC, since that’s been my habit. ABC News Now on-line, via Yahoo, was entertaining actually – Sam Donaldson being funny; then into the wee hours as Sam in DC and the NYC ABC News Now pair kept hoping something would come out of Virginia but knowing “not really” and the NYC pair realizing that they haven’t eaten food yet (me thinking, “umm, you ABC guys are on the West Side and you can’t just order food in? Embarrassing!”).

NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley felt the whole coverage seemed to have a bit much testosterone. Can’t say that I disagree. Slate’s Troy Patterson thought there was some color – well, that and how Anderson Cooper had a nice suit.  Of course, I don’t have cable, so I wouldn’t know if Anderson had a nice suit or not – but I went to CNN.com and they had a photo from Election Day – mmm.  Yeah, that’s a nice suit.  He wears things very well (considering he was once a model – is it a surprise?).
The end of Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Time for a change… Change for good? Well, I’m in the middle of some interesting reading, and the thought that kept coming up in my reading is that when Pandora opened the box, at least hope stuck around. Kind of an apt thought for the age we’re living in.
An amusing profile on Senator Harry Reid, Democratic Party leader, in the NY Times:

Harry Reid began Election Day with 50 situps and 80 push-ups (very red state of him) and 40 minutes of yoga (very blue state of him).He spent most of the momentous day in his Senate office, waiting. Just after 2 p.m., he finally heard some actual news: Britney Spears was filing for divorce.

“Britney Spears,” Mr. Reid said, shaking his head. “She loses a little weight, and now she’s getting all cocky about things.” He added, “Britney has gotten her mojo back.”

Few would peg Mr. Reid, 66, as someone with anything to say about Britney Spears or, for that matter, someone who would ever use the word “mojo.” But he is a tricky figure to pigeonhole or predict, a Democrat who is a Mormon opposed to abortion and who looks more like a civics teacher than someone set to become the most powerful person in the Senate.

As much as I think he must be excited to become majority leader, it is really weird to imagine that Harry Reid would (a) care about Britney Spears (who really did the GOP a huge favor by filing for divorce and taking some attention away from them) and (b) use the word “mojo.” Heck, would any senator use the word “mojo”? That was probably the one word not coming up during the whole Menendez v. Kean campaign and the mudslinging.
The passing of Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. It’s just so sad and sudden. He was different and interesting as a journalist – not just a model as a journalist who was a person of color. The obituary that I linked was from the NY Times and it had a moving quote from one of Bradley’s close friends, Charlayne Hunter-Gault (formerly of MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour):

For Ms. Hunter-Gault, who left The New York Times for the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour” on PBS in 1978, Mr. Bradley was more than just someone who helped clear an early path to national television for herself and other black journalists — a distinction he shared with, among others, Max Robinson and Lem Tucker.

“I think people might want to characterize him as a trailblazer for black journalists,” she said yesterday, by cellphone from outside Mr. Bradley’s hospital room just after his death. “I think he’d be proud of that. But I think Ed was a trailblazer for good journalism. Period.”

In the weeks before his final hospitalization, Mr. Bradley had been scrambling to finish the Duke report in particular, while fending off what would become the early stages of pneumonia.

“He just kept hitting the road,” Ms. Hunter-Gault said. “Every time I talked to him, he was tired. I’d say, ‘Why don’t you go home and rest?’ He’d say, ‘I just want to get this piece done.’ ”

“He was proud of what he did,” she said. “But he never allowed that pride to turn him into a star in his own head.”

“In his own head,” she added, “he was always Teddy.”

As of the hour I write this, the polls in NY are still open until 9pm – if you haven’t voted, go vote!

I did vote, but at least two areas of voting in which I was not terribly happy. Oh well.

At least see what tonight will bring!

Poking around Time’s special Midterm Blog (fascinating stuff – heck, they got Time tv/media critic James Poniewozik on board!) and they linked to Cute Overload as a way to make us feel better on this Day of Madness (can’t find the original Midterm Blog post, but it’s somewhere there). I’ve passed by this Cute Overload website before – sooo cute!

The election starts in about 3 hours. I’m going to be a pessimist and say that the Dems will only tie in the Senate, while sweeping the House.

Much of the recent political momentum is due to videos published on YouTube, which was recently cited by Time magazine as the Invention of the year. This was the next step from the Rodney King video; now everyone’s Rodney King videos have instant worldwide distribution. I’ve tried the upload interface and it is really uncomplicated – you upload whatever video file you have, and YouTube figures out all of the conversion, resizing, streaming, and all that other hard stuff about videos.

The other slick thing is the legal team that figured out how to use the DCMA in their favor; unlike Napster, as long as it stays in the DCMA’s common carrier safe harbor by doing what it has to do, YouTube is pretty much immune from lawsuits no matter what people put up on the site.

The other great thing about YouTube is not just it lets you catch up on the last 20 years of pirated broadcast history, but it is a revival of the lost art of parody, and also is an education in what is “real”.

For example, this guy makes the observation that one of Jolin Tsai’s Mandarin Chinese songs sounds a lot like English. (click on the pictures to play the videos).

Katers17, who is part Native American and works for a video game store chain in England, blows away the competition in an online video date-off, apparently only with a webcam:

After the founders of YouTube hit the jackpot, they did, of course post a video:

That invited the NoHo Girls (a group from North Hollywood apparently experimenting with creating an online soap opera) to goof on the YouTube guys:

The Vietnamese chick in that video, Berry “Blue” Nguyen (we’re not really sure it’s her real name), had her own intro video. It wasn’t clear whether her Valley Girl act was real or staged:

That led communitychannel, a 20-year-old Chinese-Australian from New South Wales to parody Blue’s act:

YouTube has become the killer video app, not just because of technical advances, but it is providing the vocabulary and mores for the average person to communicate using video in the same way that letter writing was in the last century. It’s about time.

Remember to vote today!

What Would Alex P. Keaton Do? Apparently someone asked Michael J. Fox that question:

After a nearly 20-year absence, Nixon-loving, Reagan-worshipping Alex P. Keaton is again slinging his political views on television.

Michael J. Fox, who played the conservative teen on the 1980s sitcom “Family Ties,” says that if the right-wing, tie-wearing Keaton were a real person, Alex would disagree with the Republican stance against increased embryonic stem cell research.

“I was recently asked what my character, Alex P. Keaton would think of me campaigning for stem cell research,” Fox said Monday during a speech in Keaton’s TV hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

“First, he would be happy I’m wearing a tie. And I think he would tell me I’m doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.” [….]

Keaton was never shy about incorporating his politics into everyday life, becoming a true spin doctor years before that term entered the lexicon. Remember when he used to advise his little brother Andrew with Republican cheers or Democrat jeers?

He carried a briefcase to high school. He ran for student council president. He espoused odd ideas for teens, such as capitalism and supply-side economics.

Despite all that, “Family Ties” focused mostly on themes surrounding its title, says Robert Thompson of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television. “It was never a show about politics. It was a way of using politics to frame a fish-out-of-water scenario.”

At first, Alex P. Keaton wasn’t supposed to garner so much attention on the show, which also starred Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross as Keaton’s liberal, ex-hippie, baby boomer parents.

Eventually, Fox’s popularity vaulted him on to the covers of teen magazines, which then led to roles in films such as 1987’s “The Secret of My Succe$s” and 1991’s “Doc Hollywood,” where he played characters identified with the young yuppie myth.

Fox himself embellished the Keaton myth by adding the middle initial P to Keaton’s name as an ad lib during an audition, according to IMDb.com.

By 1989, after seven seasons , “Family Ties” ended and Alex left the Keaton home to begin a career on Wall Street.Later, more fictitious information about Keaton surfaced during Fox’s final episode of his 1990s sitcom “Spin City,” when it was revealed that Keaton was elected as an Ohio congressman, according to IMDb.com.

“Most Americans in their 30s know Keaton’s character,” Thompson says. “He represented a shifting political demographic in the ’80s, a portion of a generation who rejected their boomer parents’ Democratic loyalties.”

Whatever Keaton might have thought about stem cell research, his hero’s widow, former first lady Nancy Reagan, shifted her views in favor of it, as the former president was dying of Alzheimer’s disease.

I’ve my own theory about Alex. Presumably after his successful Wall Street career, I would tend to think that Alex became more of the libertarian mold of conservative. I’d agree that he’d be for stem-cell research and he never really struck me as a guy who’d be some right winger pro-lifer – no, I think he’d be more pro-choice. I mean, he’s still the son of ex-hippies who surely taught him something (he was pretty close to his mom, who taught him a thing or two about strong women, and the love of his life was a liberal – and I like to believe that Alex did get Ellen back in his life – Michael J. Fox did end up marrying the actress who played Ellen, after all!). And, well, Alex is from Ohio – he can’t afford to be that conservative and I just can’t buy that after a Wall Street career that he’d go all Christian-church-going, family values (not without a serious transformation – which can happen, since Alex isn’t real). He was pro-business, but had a heart (even if he didn’t tend to admit it).

Hmm. An Asian-American Republican candidate in California whose aide (or maybe himself?) got into something rather foolish concerning how to handle Hispanic voters (or this really shoddy way of discouraging illegals from voting – and not to mention naturalized immigrants, who are legal to – uh – vote). When I first heard this story, I shook my head; but this link to Time.com – well, politics is ugly all right.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta on why smoking marijuana, even if a bunch of states legalizes it, is still not good for you:

But I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren’t suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer’s or chemo-induced nausea. Many of them just want to get stoned legally. That’s why I, like many other doctors, am unimpressed with the proposed legislation, which would legalize marijuana irrespective of any medical condition.

Why do I care? As Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, “Numerous deleterious health consequences are associated with [marijuana’s] short- and long-term use, including the possibility of becoming addicted.”

What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory. It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope?) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety. While many people smoke marijuana to relax, it can have the opposite effect on frequent users. And smoking anything, whether it’s tobacco or marijuana, can seriously damage your lung tissue.

The Nevada and Colorado marijuana initiatives have gained support from unlikely places. More than 33 religious leaders in Nevada have endorsed the measure, arguing that permissive legalization, accompanied by stringent regulations and penalties, can cut down on illegal drug trafficking and make communities safer.

Perhaps. But I’m here to tell you, as a doctor, that despite all the talk about the medical benefits of marijuana, smoking the stuff is not going to do your health any good. And if you get high before climbing behind the wheel of a car, you will be putting yourself and those around you in danger.

This whole John Kerry Bad Joke news story is, in my mind, a little overblown. Just a little. I’m not terribly in favor of Senator Kerry these days, and then President Bush’s demand for an apology, and Kerry’s slow apology to the troops – well, it was too much 2004 redux. Really. Aren’t we supposed to, say, focus on the issues? Then, one wonders – would Pres. Bush’s pushing this backfire? (NY Times article that I’m linking – key quotes by Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenburg:

Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Mr. Bush’s opponent in 2004, is not running for office this year. But the president seized on what he said were Mr. Kerry’s disparaging remarks about the troops — and what Mr. Kerry insisted was a botched joke aimed at Mr. Bush — as he sought to make Mr. Kerry the face of the Democratic Party this fall.

In the process, Mr. Bush brought renewed attention to the war in Iraq, which he defended with vigor while campaigning in Georgia, at the very moment that a number of Republican Congressional candidates, following the advice of party strategists, were stepping up their efforts to distance themselves from the White House on the war as the campaign enters its final days. [….]

In attacking Mr. Kerry and defending the war, the White House clearly made the calculation that achieving what has been its main strategic goal this year — firing up a dispirited conservative base — would outweigh any risk that might come in spotlighting a war that Republican Party officials said had become a huge burden for its candidates.

After all, one man’s bad joke (and, yeah, it was lousy) may end up reminding us who’s the Commander-in-Chief who’s in charge in the first place.
And, really, all these NJ campaign ads – ugh. I know the NYC tv market has these ads because NJ shares the broadcast air space and all that, but it’s always jarring to watch ads for elections that I can’t vote in anyway. Kean, Jr., constantly reminding us Why Menendez is Bad (umm, can’t you tell us why you’re any good – besides being Kean Sr’s son, that is) and Menendez going all Bush-wacking or at least, trying to connect Kean Jr to the Bush people (umm, he’s a Kean – I’d hope he’s at least uphold the family tradition of being moderate Republicans). These Connecticut ads have also been strangely amusing – Gen. Clark campaiging against Lieberman (but not really telling us why Lamont’s great) and the Democratic National Committee connecting CT voters that Congressman Shays is a Bush man (but, he’s long been a moderate Republican – you know, one of those solid few left in the Northeast). And, Lehrer’s Newshour on PBS has managed to educate me on how Tennesee politics work. As much as Election season this year has been enlightening, I think I’ll be glad when it’s over.
Viggo Mortenson – the “Lord of the Rings” guy (who has done other roles, really) – is also a writer/visual artist/indy publisher. Cool.

Save the Hubble! (just don’t get harmed while doing it)

All Saints’ Day – even when we don’t know a lot of saints.

The Price is Right’s Bob Barker is retiring.  For real?  Generations of us have watched him as part of our daytime viewing.  Although it’s been awhile since I last watched the show, it just won’t be the same.  Will there still be a Price is Right?
I’m not a big Halloween person – it only amounts to watching tv shows with Halloween themes for me.  Can’t stand the egg yolks in the neighborhood.  Like the to-do the neighbors might do to decorate their houses.  Cute kids in costumes.  UNICEF.  Sure.  Nasty teens on the prowl.  No.  But, then again, some people take their holidays a little too damn seriously.   It’s either “Merry Christmas, damn it!” or “Die for saying ‘Happy Holidays’!!”  Yeesh.  Just be pleasant, that’s all!

Slate’s Michael Kinsley on Why It’s Ok to Vote for a Party this Election Day.