Welcome back, Grandpa.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Aaron Sorkin
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Stephen Colbert: So the movie's about Facebook. I saw it last week. Fantastic. It's got that super crisp Aaron Sorkin witty banter back and forth. Can I ask you something about the ladies in it?

Aaron Sorkin: Sure.

Colbert: Okay. You've got the opening scene which a lot of people have heard about. It's very crisp. It's Zuckerberg and his girlfriend? The one who broke his heart.

Sorkin: The girl who would start Facebook.

Colbert: Exactly. She is super smart, and she definitely gets the best of him.

Sorkin: Right.

Colbert: The other ladies in the movie don't have as much to say because they're high, or drunk, or blowing guys in the bathroom. Why are there no other women of any substance in the movie?

Sorkin: That's a fair question.

Colbert: Thank you.

Sorkin: There's one other woman, Rashida Jones, who plays a young lawyer.

Colbert: That's true, that's true. I apologize. She does not do anything in the bathroom.

Sorkin: No, she does not. She's a trustworthy character. She's a stand-in for the audience. The other women are prizes, uh, basically, that you, um, uh, that, uh, that--

Colbert: But are women at Harvard like that? That's what I want to know. I'm trying to figure out, you know, whether I really missed out on a college experience.

Sorkin: I wasn't accepted into Harvard, so I wouldn't know.

The interview continues:

Colbert: You have called Facebook "a performance, not a reality". What do you mean by that?

Sorkin: Yeah. What I mean is that when somebody goes on and says, "I had a girls' night tonight. We split five desserts. Better hit the gym tomorrow!" That's somebody who's trying to reinvent themselves--

Colbert: Are you reading my Facebook page?

(laughter)

Colbert: So you're saying that's not real?

Sorkin: No, no, that's someone who's trying to reinvent themselves as Ally McBeal. I want to make it clear--

Colbert: Are you upset because you didn't write that show?

Sorkin: You do not have to agree with me on this point to enjoy the movie.

[ . . . ]

Sorkin: I would love for everybody to think that I'm as quick and sharp and charming as Martin Sheen on The West Wing. And now everybody gets to do that. But I do think that socializing on the internet is to socializing as reality TV is to reality.

Ally McBeal? That show went off the air before Facebook was invented.

And speaking of reality, Facebook is as real as a certain Orangeman's hair dye and spray-on tan.

Aaron Sorkin. Still as technophobic, behind the times, and sexist as ever.

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I was considering live-blogging the inauguration.

Then I realized I had no concept of time, or proximity to a computer and a television set during the event. Oh well.

For some reason, I now want to watch a marathon of Extras. This is largely due to my viewing the Ricky Gervais episode of Inside the Actors Studio last night. So.

Hooray for the USA! And for round, British comedians.

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Bartlet for America

Last night I was watching the "Election Night" episode of The West Wing, and something struck me. When I first started watching the series, I identified myself as an audience member seeking solace from the horror that is the current administration. I soon shifted my focus to Josh, because I liked Bradley Whitford in Masterminds, starring Vincent Kartheiser. (bt-dubs, did anyone see Mad Men last night? That Roger Sterling is causing dra-ma.)

As I continued to rewatch Seasons 1-4 and I learned more about the characters, I moved onto CJ, then Donna, then Sam, and finally to Will. Surprisingly, I never saw myself as a Zoe or a Charlie, although I certainly enjoy their current roles in the above-mentioned Mad Men and Psych, respectively. During my previous viewings of "Election Night", I felt a strong Will and Sam connection, with a bit of Elsie Snuffin thrown in, too. But things changed last night as I watched the following scene (at 3:15 in the clip above):

President Bartlet has just won a second term in the White House. As the crowd cheers, the President and his wife Abbey walk off the balloon-filled stage.

ABBEY
That was wonderful.

BARTLET
That was fun.

ABBEY
How you feeling?

BARTLET
I feel great.

ABBEY
You want a glass of water?

BARTLET
No, I'm fine.

ABBEY
You seem a little dry. Sure you don't want a glass of water?

BARTLET
Yeah.

ABBEY
Maybe I should get you a glass of water, just in case. You could hold it in
your hand.

BARTLET
[beat] How'd you know?

ABBEY
You were off the prompter.

BARTLET
Just for a minute at the end. I couldn't see it.

ABBEY
It's all right. There are going to be more days like this. It starts now. It's going to be harder this time.

BARTLET
Yeah, I know. We can still have tonight, though, right?

ABBEY
You got lots of nights. Smart people who love you are going to have your back.

BARTLET
All right.

Now I am President Bartlet. Or I will be very soon. Maybe I have always been President Bartlet, but I didn't realize it. I am no longer the person who will write someone else's speeches or deliver someone else's news. I will be the person whose news gets delivered. Though I will probably write my own speeches. I am going to have "people who would walk into fire" if I told them to. People who will show up to lead. People who will show up to fight. It scares me. Because with great power comes great responsibility. Apparently I am also Spider-Man. Talk about a gift and a curse.

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I liked these two posts:

Pink or blue? by Dr. Confused on Feministe.

I’ve been known to hang out on certain bulletin boards where people use abbreviations like “DH” (dear husband) and slightly-nauseating terms like “baby dust” (a magical substance that can get you pregnant, but which is presumably less damp than semen.) In the first trimester, there was a thread on the topic of whether or not to find out the sex of the fetus during pregnancy. (Actually, most posters write "gender of the baby," but let’s go with the correct "sex of the fetus.") Some excerpts of the thread:

"The minute I can. I hate calling the baby “it”, and I don’t like green/white/yellow clothes… I want to know! :D

One point as to why we want to wait… when pregnant with DS we had friends that were also PG. They had 2 u/s and both times were told they were having a girl. So they bought a wardrobe, designed the nursery, etc… all in pink and purple. And they had a boy. Talk about being shocked! DH and I also have a plan to avoid the neutral stuff for a long time. First, we will buy one girl outfit and one boy outfit for hopital pictures and taking the baby home. Grandma will go crazy once she knows the gender and the baby will have several outfits… probably in a matter of a couple hours! Shortly after DS was born, they went to dinner and came back with 3 or 4 boy outfits! Of course we will have some neutral gender stuff, but I am a shopper and it won’t be long before baby has a full gender specific wardrobe!

I have to know. I like to be prepared. I’ve only had boys so far and everything I have is for boys. I don’t have any unisex stuff, even the newborn onesies are blue with trains, planes and cars."

That last one is interesting to me. I design airplanes for a living, and I have a vagina. Nevertheless, if I were to put any daughter I should have into a onesie with an airplane on it, some of these writers would consider it borderline child abuse. But how will people know she’s a girl?

8th Century Scholars by Jill on Feministe.

This professor is fantastic. He was fired from his job for telling students that the story of Adam and Eve should not be taken literally — students apparently felt the professor was "denigrating their religion." But his responses to the situation are hilarious and spot-on:

"I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.

Well, if the Bible says to teach it…

"I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the eighth century."

Regarding the latter post about religion, i.e. Christianity, I like this clip of The West Wing better than the one featured on Feministe: