Yesterday was a great day to be an American. Joey Chestnut finally vanquished that foreign aggressor Takeru Kobayashi. For years Kobayashi was laughing at America, eating all our American "Hot....Dogs." But one man stepped up, and said "enough is enough is enough, this is the US of A and across this line you do not..." By the way dude, the picture on the right is of Chestnut, but not from yesterday, I chose this one because he was surrounded by a couple ladies. Anyway, no longer wil Takeru Kobayashi shame us on our proudest of days, Joey Chestnut put an end to this reign of terror, and it just makes me a little more prouder to be an American.
Just after Joey proved that no one eats better than Americans, I was off to the movie theater to see Sicko. For those of you who haven't heard, this is Michael Moore's new film and instead of going after George Bush this time, he's going after the health care system. Sure George Bush is a small target in this one, along with Richard Nixon, but so is Hillary Clinton. Why Hillary you ask? Well in the years after her proposal for universal healthcare was shot down by the Republicans in congress, Hill has sold out her ideas and now receives millions from the health care industry in campaign contributions. But I digress, the real key to this movie is showing the succesful universal healthcare systems in many other countries, and while the United States is at the forefront of many things, in health care we rank 36th. Mostly because we're more than happy to leave the poor and needy off to the side while the rich are blessed with great help through more expensive policies paid by their employers. This is really the American way. Anyway, this is obviously a piece of propaganda and not a true documentary, but it has me convinced more than ever before that we need to change the system. I always enjoy Moore's films, and I realize that you have to take them with a grain of salt, but I think that deep down he always has a good argument to make and he's very passionate about driving for change which is refreshing. One idea that he pushes in the movie that I can't quite agree with is that eh attacks the pharmaceutical companies as well. Unlike healthcare, the US pharmaceutical companies are at the forefront in terms of developing new drugs worldwide, so we can't just tell the companies to stop charging a lot for these drugs because they're spending fortunes on developing the new drugs and advancing medicine. So that's my small rebuttal. I'd be happy to start a dialogue with Mr. Moore if he's reading.
While I'm on the subject of films, I wanted to give a short review of the new reality show, On The Lot. I had high hopes for this show where amateur filmmakers compete for a million dollar development deal from Dreamworks. It was created by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, so basically one of the all-time greatest filmmakers teamed up with the ruler of reality TV (not to damn him with faint praise.) And they even brought in Garry Marshall and Carrie Fischer to be part of the show, both of whom I enjoy, but the show just isn;t doing it for me. Maybe I just don't enjoy short films enough, but to me the shorts have been mediocre, none of these people has really been able to shine with their three minute films, maybe they're too rushed to get their creative juices flowing, I don;t know. I'm not gonna stop watching it, but that's mostly because with the type of crap that is shown during the summer there's plenty of room on my DVR. If only they could recreate the magic of past summer TV shows, like Me and Mrs. C.
The only other shows I've been watching this summer have been Etourage, The Loop and Man Vs. Wild. Entourage has been getting beat up a little by some critics, but I think it's as fun as ever. Ari is great and so is Johnny Drama and I always get a kick out of the inner workings of Vince's career and the celebrity lifestyle. I don't know how realistic this show is, and it's more than likely that I'll never know, but if all movies are made the way Medellin is, I can see why a lot of crap makes it to theaters. As for The Loop, I don't know why I watch this show other than the fact that I'm a huge Eric Christian Olsen fan. I also like the main character played by Bret Harrison, he was on the short lived Grounded For Life an under appreciated comedy a few years back. The Loop usually makes me laugh a couple times per episode and I feel like I might as well watch it now because it won;t be around for too long. As for Man vs. Wild, this show is just great, they drop a survival experted named Bear into the middle of the wilderness and he tries to survive and get back to civilization. I haven't seen too many episodes but I love it, nothing beats when Bear has to buil;d himself a fire and shelter out in the middle of the wild. I think everyone should check this out, it's on discovery channel fridays at nine, so set your DVRs.
That's all I've got for this special holiday edition of The Bender, I'll try to post again soon about all the goings on in the NBA and how great the Red Sox season is going, but I make no promises.
-Bender Out
