Constitution, Meet Glenn Beck's Hole Punch

There's a lot of talk of the right these days about repealing various constitutional amendments: the 14th (birthright citizenship) and the 17th (direct election of Senators) being the ones getting the most attention.

But based on the ground rules for Glenn Beck's 8/28 gathering in front of the Lincoln Memorial, there appear to be a few more on the hit list.

What can I NOT bring?
As a security precaution, the following items will be prohibited from the event sites:

• NO signs (political or otherwise) as they may deter from the peaceful message we are bringing to Washington.

Good Lord! No signs? Beck is against freedom of speech! People's First Amendment rights will be trampled into the dust!

• Firearms (either real or simulated)
• Ammunition

The Second Amendment too? Say it ain't so, Joe... err, Glenn!

• Alcoholic beverages

Apparently, not even the 21st Amendment (the one repealing the 18th Amendment, which created Prohibition) is safe from Beck's anti-Constitutional rampage.

What's your next target, Glenn? Presidential term limits? Women's suffrage? Do you want legal punishments to be crueler and more unusual? Are you gunning for immediate adjustments to Congressional salaries? Is nothing sacred, Glenn?

Tiny Awesome Things Are Awesomely Tiny

Dalton Ghetti is a genius, a fraction of an inch at a time.

(h/t)

Sensitizing Manhattan

Since it has been declared that building a Muslim YMCA almost-kinda-sorta-not really within sight of the former WTC is insensitive to the feelings of the families of 9/11 victims, it's clear that New York could use a lot of fixing in this regard.

Now, don't get me wrong. This isn't about people's right to do any of the things listed below, merely about their sensitivity to the raw emotions that 9/11 still creates nearly a decade later. With that in mind, here are my proposed guidelines for the Big Apple:

1) No brown or black people. If it's insensitive just to create a meeting place for Muslims, imagine how traumatic it might be for a person who lost someone on 9/11 to actually see a Muslim anywhere around the WTC. And of course, from across the street any dark-skinned person can easily be mistaken for a Muslim through a waterfall of tears. So, in the interests of sensitivity, all brown and black people should just stay out of Lower Manhattan entirely.

2) No air traffic to, from or around New York City. If bumping into a theoretical Muslim on the street is traumatic, imagine how awful it must be to hear or see a jet flying overhead, if you lost someone on 9/11. Nothing could bring the horror of that day flooding back faster than that. Deep in your gut, the fear that another plane might suddenly veer off course and slam into another Manhattan tower would be overwhelming, if completely irrational. But this isn't about rationality. It's about emotion. Thus, in the interests of sensitivity, all air traffic to, from and in the vicinity of New York City should be eliminated.

3) No use of the numbers 9 or 11 in Lower Manhattan. This one is just obvious. 9/11 is permanently etched into our national consciousness, and using those numbers for something as trivial as the floor of a building, a street address, a price or a telephone number is just the height of insensitivity. If you had lost your husband or son or wife or daughter in the WTC, would you want to be reminded of it every time you called to order a pizza and every time you paid for it? It's too monstrous to even contemplate. So, in the interests of sensitivity, everyone in Lower Manhattan should completely avoid using the number 9, or two consecutive 1's.

I think, if New Yorkers just abided by these simple suggestions and showed a little more sensitivity to those people who lost loved ones (of which, thank God, I'm not one) on 9/11, we can finally begin healing this raw, open wound in our national psyche.

More, Please

I like that the official US government response to Tucker Carlson is to figuratively tell him to go auto-erotically asphyxiate himself with his bow tie.

More Interesting TIFF Films

Some other stuff that's coming, that I might have to check out:

- Danny Boyle's latest, 127 Hours, is one of those snarly man-versus-wilderness true stories. This one stars James Franco as a mountain climber trapped for days under a big rock. Boyle's gotta be able to find a way to make that visually interesting, right? Right?

- John Sayles keeps on truckin', this time taking a look at the Philippine-American War in Amigo. I just realized I can't remember the last new Sayles film I saw. That Bush spoof thing, I guess? He's overdue for a good one.

- Will Ferrell stars as a motivational speaker whose life falls apart in Everything Must Go. Sounds more Stranger Than Fiction than Anchorman, but probably worth a peek.

- Clint Eastwood follows three people, including Matt Damon, trying to find a bridge to the afterlife in Hereafter. Oh dear.

- remember that train wreck of a Joaquin Phoenix interview on Letterman? Yeah, it was for Casey Affleck's film I'm Still Here, which frankly looks like the most self-indulgent piece of ego-driven trash since M Night cast himself as the savior of the world in Lady in the Water. In other words, count me in.

- Alex de la Iglesia makes fun of the Spanish Civil War again in The Last Circus.

- Kick-Ass' little darling, Chloe Moretz, stars in the English language remake of Let The Right One In, called just Let Me In. They better not screw this one up.

- former Michael O'Donoghue writing partner Mitch Glazer makes his directorial debut with Passion Play, in which Mickey Rourke plays a Chet Baker-esque jazz trumpeter who shacks up with sideshow freak Megan Fox and tries to outwit gangster Bill Murray. There's gonna be no middle ground with that one, is there? It's either epic win or epic fail. But I still love Scrooged, so I'm probably predisposed to thinking 'win'.

National Day of Mourning Declared

On October 3rd I hope we will all be able to put aside our fury over the audacity of some Muslim cleric wanting to build something that isn't a mosque somewhere that isn't Ground Zero, to mourn the passing of one of our most beloved and cherished cultural institutions.

That's right. On October 3rd, the final Cathy strip will be published.

Somehow, we'll have to find a way to live in a world without the light (some might say undetectably light) comedic touch of our favorite neurotic mess, and in which Muslims will be swimming a mere two blocks away from the hallowed hole above which the Freedom Tower might someday majestically rise.

Truly, the end must be nigh.

Midnight in Toronto

Yep, the Midnight Madness slate got announced today. And there are some doozies.

- Opening night is the Fubar sequel, cleverly titled Fubar 2. The plot? Terry and Dean head to Alberta. Good enough for me.

- Troma graduate and Slither writer/director James Gunn brings us... oh, another superhero spoof, called SUPER. Yay. On the other hand, he got Rainn Wilson to play the wannabe hero, Crimson Bolt, whose super power appears to be the ability to swing a mean monkey wrench.

- filling the "Please please please let this not suck" slot that in the last couple of years went to George Romero and Dario Argento, John Carpenter takes us to The Ward, which appears to be a smaller thriller about Amber Heard in a mental institution. It could work. Really. Carpenter's tank might not be empty yet, dammit! Just shut up!

- Saw writer/director James Wan gets Insidious, a haunted house film with Rose Byrne and Barbara Hershey. Damn. Why did it have to be Rose Byrne? I like her, ever since I saw her in Goddess of 1967.

- The Butcher, The Chef and the Swordsman is a crazy Hong Kong action/comedy about the fight to possess a meat cleaver made from the blades of five legendary swords. Oh yeah, I'm so there.

- Hong Kong writing team Laurent Courtiaud and Julien Carbon make their directorial debut with Red Nights, which on first glance appears to be kind of a distaff Maltese Falcon riff.

- Machinist director Brad Anderson tells us about Vanishing On 7th Street, an apocalyptic Twilight Zone-y thing starring Thandie Newton, Hayden Christiansen and John Leguizamo.

- Bunraku is a post-apocalyptic action film billed as 'a new style that melds east with west and old school with new.' Well, Ron Perlman's in it, so what the hell.

- Stake Land is another post-apocalyptic action film, this one with vampires and a fundamentalist cult that isn't necessarily upset about the world ending.

- Fire of Conscience is the third Hong Kong film in the MM program this year, this one a more typical cops-and-robbers-and-guns-and-explosions-and-mayhem kind of thing.

My snark aside, that does look like a pretty good lineup. Assuming the Carpenter doesn't suck, that is. Please don't suck.

My Other Fantasy Football Team

This one's also 14 teams, $200 cap, but it's a keeper league with slightly kooky PPR-flavored scoring rules. Also 1/2/2 starting positions with a RB/WR flex.

QB- Josh Freeman $4, Matt Moore $1
RB- Maurice Jones-Drew $56, Shonn Greene $17, Jahvid Best $30, Fred Jackson $9, Leon Washington $7, Marshawn Lynch $2
WR- Greg Jennings $23, Anquan Boldin $30, Eddie Royal $6, Donnie Avery $3
TE- Jermichael Finley $6
K- David Buehler $1
D/ST- NY Giants $3, SF $2

I took a chance on Buehler as my kicker because the league gives bonus points for longer FGs. If he doesn't work out, kickers are easy to replace.

I also want another WR, but I'll wait and see what crazy longshot wins a starting job under Mike Martz and try to nab them in free agency.

Prices were very weird. Even given it's PPR, RBs were too cheap and WRs too pricey. In retrospect I would have been better off keeping Mike Sims-Walker at $6 (he went for $14) rather than MJD at $56 (Frank Gore went for $50... Steven Jackson for $46). I still could have gotten MJD back at about that price as well as a $30 Boldin, with Sims-Walker taking the place of someone like Lynch and giving me a more balanced bench. Ah well.

Hearing a Career End

So I'm in the theatre about to watch Scott Pilgrim (which is both the best Toronto movie ever made, and quite possibly the best comic book movie ever made) and one of the trailers in front of it was for Devil, the movie written and directed by someone else but based on an idea by M Night Shyamalan.

Now, keep in mind this was an opening weekend crowd for Scott Pilgrim. The place was crawling with the young folk: hipsters, geeks, and every subculture in between.

The moment MNS's name appeared on screen, the audience erupted in derisive, mocking laughter.

Even his name is now a joke. Explain to me how you make any kind of dramatic film, in any genre, when even the mention of your name inspires giggles.

Shyamalan's done. Anyone who lets him make a movie for them is burning money.