Brilliance

If you haven't yet seen the article of the day, I have it for you. It is so deliciously subversive, taking a twisted look at the biggest news story of the last two years and doing it in such a subtle way that you can laugh without realizing what they are doing. Plus, the comments are pretty funny.

So, as set up, here is the original article from The New York Times announcing bin Laden's death.

And here is the article of the day, as the head of a great and powerful nation announces that the leader of their enemy is finally dead.

Read This

It's the rare news story that can make you tear up. The two that jump to mind immediately are Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-winning piece about people who have forgotten their children in cars and the New Yorker piece about the man who was wrongfully executed. Both are very, very sad.

Here's a third, but it's not sad. It made me tear up because it's beautiful. It's a very short read and I highly recommend it -- a piece from the Washington Post about one connection forged by the random destruction of the Alabama tornado.

Thor: Alien of Thunder

I don't think it's unusual to see a summer blockbuster-type of movie and be entertained and then nitpick it to hell after you leave the theater. My problem with Thor is that I thought it was just okay, at best, and then I nitpicked it until I think it's garbage. The love story plot is simply pathetic. The CGI in Asgard is just too much; it looks really fake. The major battle at the end is so weak that it makes the battle at the end of Iron Man 2 look good. Yes, there are a couple of decent parts, good comic relief, but that's overshadowed by what I thought was the unwatchable nature of almost every scene that doesn't happen on Earth.

But my biggest problem with the movie has nothing to do with the plot or look or acting (which, granted, wasn't so bad). My problem is in the way the movie kowtowed to the religious right. Odin, Thor, Loki, and company are gods. They are Norse gods. It's the mythology, no different in the comic. Shoot, the video game of the movie is even called Thor: God of Thunder. In the movie, though? Nope. The movie makes it very, very clear that they are not gods in any way, shape, or form. They are called warriors in the voiceover at the beginning, warriors who came to our world to defend us from evil. At one point, a character tells us that they are essentially aliens, beings from another realm who may have been mistaken for deities by a primitive people. I'm not kidding. The script comes just short of having a character turn to the camera and say, "Hey, please don't protest us for saying that there's more than one god!" There's a lot I didn't like about the movie, but I admit it's a necessary evil to set up for The Avengers next year. This kowtowing, however, is unforgivable to me.

Garyland

• The Monologue:
• It seems like three senators may have seen fake bin Laden pictures and thought they were the real thing. They also told me that Microsoft will pay me $1 for everybody to whom I forward an e-mail.
• Gary Williams is retiring and Gus Johnson is leaving CBS. Great day to be a college basketball fan!
• It's quite possible that Dos Equis' douchebag "Most Interesting Man in the World" is the only person who knows what Cinco de Mayo actually signifies which, therefore, makes him less interesting.
• Random Pop Culture:
• I do think Parks and Recreation is the best comedy on network TV, but Community broke off another epic episode tonight with its follow-up to last year's great paintball episode. The spoof of westerns, from the new theme song to Troy wearing Cleavon Little's outfit, was strong. Any Lost fan, though, has to have loved Josh Holloway's part, including his nickname that he dropped on Alison Brie at the end. And speaking of Alison Brie, she totally stole the show.
• "Birthdays were invented by Hallmark to sell cards." How many more of these do we need before we can get a Ron Swanson Quote-a-Day calendar?
• I couldn't be more in favor of gay marriage, but Grey's got way preachy about it tonight. Bailey's line implying God is in favor of same-sex marriage is bound to have gotten a few people riled up.
• Random Music Video:
• He's a moron and this is a weird-ass video, but the man is a musical genius.

Worst of the Worst: #45, My Baby's Daddy

Here's a quick synopsis worthy of a review. Anthony Anderson, Eddie Griffin, and Michael Imperioli are best friends from birth who all get their girlfriends pregnant at the same time. They all have to deal with life issues while learning about being fathers. The babies actually are not consistent players in the movie, just coming in here and there for comic relief. Plus, they're like a year old for almost the entire movie, other than a quick poop and pee joke early on. The plot makes no sense and the idea of having Eddie Griffin play a nerd makes even less sense. It's just stupid and disorganized.

So, to give you a sense of how coherent this movie is, here is a quick synopsis worthy of the movie.

Three guys are friends, but babies poop and pee in their faces and one girl is obnoxious to them. Birthing class and Asian stereotypes galore, plus white rappers talk like black people until they go to the Apollo and get in trouble. Babies crawl and slide down laundry chute and then crawl out the door to sit on couch and hang out. Marriage proposals, hey, isn't that Naomi from Lost, baby mama is a lesbian, jogging suits and baby carriers. Laughter to signify friendship.

Reaction

Spent a lot of time today just reading people's thoughts on blogs, seeing how my own thoughts fit in. I think this news is a big deal, like really big. The Fix tweeted last night asking how many stories in the past decade have been bigger this one. I agree with him on 9/11, Katrina, and the 2008 election, but other than that? May not be a bigger one. I feel weird celebrating someone's death, but it doesn't feel wrong in this case.

Along those lines, there have been some quotations that have been very popular today. I'll print them both below -- you may have seen them in countless tweets and Facebook statuses -- along with a third that has something in common with the first two. You see, none of them are actually real.

“I’ve never wished a man dead. But, I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” – Mark Twain

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." -- Abraham Lincoln

I've Been Here For Years

I was going to write a bad movie review, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow. As I was getting ready to write it, the news of a press conference broke out, followed by a great Twitter night. Tweet of the night was from Patton Oswalt: "No matter how collected Obama is during his speech, he's hearing LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" blasting in his head."

Indeed.