Prime Time

The Transformers are back tonight, Michael Bay-lessly, in a new mini-series called Transformers: Prime. Not only do the Autobots and Decepticons look more like their original selves, but Megatron even has his real voice back, courtesy of Frank Welker.

Catch Transformers: Prime tonight on The Hub. And the child in me lives on...

Surely You Can't be Serious

Unfortunately, I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. Leslie Nielsen has died.

While he'll mainly be remembered as the doctor in Airplane! and as Lieutenant Frank Drebin in Naked Gun, I'll also always remember him as Blanche's uncle Lucas, who married Dorothy in the series finale of The Golden Girls.

More on him tomorrow, but for now enjoy this little clip which added a little strangeness to the finale...

Turkey Time

Just wanna wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.* Like most people it is my favorite holiday and I plan on eating 'til my heart is content, and then eating some more. Hope you do, too.

*Showing a picture of a turkey getting ready to eat turkey is a little deranged, but it was that or the turkey that Obama pardoned earlier, and he got enough press today.

Ahhhhhh'll be Back

Every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie scream ever. I mean, what more can I add?

Via FilmDrunk via HyperVocal

One Hand Scans the Other

Here's a story that sums up everything you need to know about politics and cronyism in 2010.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff represents the company that is selling the scanners Homeland Security is buying for the airports. Seems like with three cable news channels we'd all know about that, right? Well, thankfully there is C-Span. (Now that's something you don't hear often.)

Tell 'em, Representative John Duncan of Tennessee...

Iron Avatar Aliens Wars Man

Real-life Iron Man suits are now being tested by Raytheon Sarcos, a defense contractor in Utah. Frankly, I think the suit looks more like the thing Sigourney Weaver used in Aliens or what the general used in Avatar, but we'll stick with the Iron Man reference since that's what CNN went with here.

The name Raytheon Sarcos definitely sounds like it could've been a bounty hunter from Star Wars, though.

Now check out the future of war, or past of movies...

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

The Pentagon is telling us that what we've all been calling a missile for the last few days was actually just a plane. Right, cause planes often look like this, and also often nobody knows what they are for a several days.

I don't mind being lied to but at least make up something fun, like aliens or monsters or super-alien-monsters.

Let's take just one more look...

If you aren't a conspiracy theorist you can read the Pentagon explanation here. Still though, a little creativity wouldn't kill the government, would it?

Making Contact

Had he lived longer, today would've been Carl Sagan's 74th birthday. Sagan, for those of you who don't know, was an astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and perhaps most famously, a regular on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. (Way back when The Tonight Show was a relevant piece of Americana.)

I didn't know about Sagan until 1997, a year after he died, when I went to see Air Force One* with a couple buddies from college. The movie was sold-out, so we took our extremely stoned selves and went to see some flick we had never heard of called Contact. We managed to get to our seats just in time and then saw this...

That brilliant panoramic view of the universe had me hooked, and the whole idea behind the movie really began a change in the way I thought about the world. It is still one of my top-five movies to this day, and I think Jodie Foster's best work. I read a couple of Sagan's books after seeing the movie, including "Billions and Billions," which is my favorite work of non-fiction. Sagan actually wrote much of the book while dying, and it was finished by his wife Ann Druyan. Actually, she is an author and cosmologist herself, and was on Real Time with Bill Maher a couple weeks ago.

Oh, I probably should have mentioned above that Sagan was the author of the novel "Contact," which the movie was based off of. (Was that not clear?) As a scientist, Sagan was a much better stickler for detail than I am.

Clearly.

*Air Force One is a pretty solid movie, too. The kind you can catch any rainy day, no matter where in the movie, and curl up and watch. Am I right, or am I right?

Wheel of More Than Fortune

This woman is just outright mocking Vanna White. And clearly the fix is in over at The Wheel...

The Cleveland Show

Just saw this pretty great fan response to that LeBron James commercial I posted last week. Seems the city hasn't quite gotten over "The Decision" just yet...

If You See What I See, If You Feel What I Feel

On this 5th of November, it seems fitting to post this brilliant scene from "V for Vendetta." As a comedian/podcaster/blogger/babbler I'm a sucker for words, and this is a pretty spectacular use of them...

Election Erection

The country turned mostly red last night as the Republicans picked up a ton of seats in the House and a bunch of seats in the Senate. Blue now seems only to exist in the Northeast and West Coast, which makes me wonder why Democrats usually seem to live near water. I've always said gay people lived near water for an easy escape, and I guess it now applies to Democrats as well.

I'll gladly listen to other theories on the matter.

It seemed election night was more about the media coverage than the actual results themselves. FoxNews was like a giddy group of obnoxious kids, while MSNBC was a bunch of snarky, whining babies. I actually watched the least of CNN, which must have set some kind of record for "most pundits with the least interesting things to say" ratio.

I'm still a little confused as how having partisan pundits discussing election results counts as election coverage in the first place. They all just give party talking points and regurgitate the same BS that the other guys say when the shoe of power is on the other foot. I found many of the people I follow on Twitter far more insightful than the 20 people had CNN locked in The Situation Room last night. (Though my sources say that had quite and after-party in there including Paul Begala doing body shots off of Candy Crowley.)

Anyway, like all of them, I had watched, commented, tweeted about it and will continue to do so. I guess that's the real state of social media and politics in a America in 2010. It can keep us all busy enough with our own opinions that by the time the other guy clicks send on his tweet you're already 128 characters into your next one.

#RubinPalin2012

#joke

#orisit

Chinese Tea Party

Just caught this commercial from a group called "Citizens Against Government Waste." It's pretty jarring, especially on the same day we all (or about 40 percent of us) exercise our right to vote. Ironically, right after I voted I ate Chinese food for lunch.

I'll be tweeting all kinds of election fun throughout the rest of the day so make sure you're following me @Rubinville on Twitter. Also, we're guest hosting on Sirius OutQ tonight, 6-9 pm. Sirius channel 109, XM channel 98.

Now how do you say "Go Vote" in Chinese?

Stiff Upper Lip (And Brow)

The hot rumor in Washington at the moment is that if the Democrats lose their majority in the House that Nancy Pelosi will retire. I'll do more of a political roundup tomorrow, but this does make me ponder one question: Does the House retirement plan include Botox?

Cause if not, I could see her stringing this thing out a couple more years...