If you missed it back on May 24th, the SpittingLlamas television critic posted his pick of the Top 10 Television Series of All-Time. After a number of comments and much introspection, I have decided that many of the television shows not listed in the top ten would fit finely in the next 11 through 25. Here then are those series (in alphabetical order):

All in the Family
Barney Miller
Carol Burnett
Happy Days
Hill Street Blues
La Femme Nikita
Law and Order
Mod Squad
The Honeymooners
Seinfeld
The Shield
The Sopranos
St. Elsewhere
The Three Stooges
X-Files

As we pause to remember on Memorial Day, we should also pause to ask ourselves why the human condition ever forced it to come to this.

Anthony Lane of The New Yorker absolutely slams Episode III.

A choice nugget:

The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.

I think I’ll wait for the DVD or just download it sometime next week.

P.S. I finally saw Hitchhiker’s Guide. It’s awful…simply terrible. Avoid at all costs.

Demonstrating that he’s not only a purveyor of falsehoods and first-rate hypocrite but also a nincompoop, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has attacked the television show “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” for what he called a “manipulation of my name.”

During an episode in which a search for the murderer of a federal judge was proving fruitless, an officer with no leads suggested putting out an all points bulletin for “somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.” As you know, DeLay has been at the forefront of an effort to rein in what he calls “activist judges.” (Though you might note he’s made no comments about this bit of idiocy.

While DeLay complained by penning something that made absolutely no sense, Dick Wolf, the show’s executive producer and creator, suggested the so-called Senator has an inability to distinguish between fiction and reality.

“Every week, approximately 100 million people see an episode of the branded ‘Law & Order’ series. Up until today, it was my impression that all of our viewers understood that these shows are works of fiction as is stated in each episode.

“But I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show.”

A People magazine poll showed 62 percent of its readers think the Cruise-Holmes affair is a stunt.

Not ecstasy, email. America Online and Opinion Research Corporation report that people are addicted to email.

Here are their findings:

• 77% of people have more than one email account (average: 2.8 accounts)
• The average person spends 1 hour a day checking email
• 61% check personal email at work
• 23% check email in bed
• 12% while in class
• 8% while in business meetings
• 6% check email while in the bathroom
• 4% check while driving
• 1% check while in church

That’s a lot of email checking. But I take issue with their claim that we must be addicted to email because they left out two major aspects.

1. Nearly every device known is email compatible.
You can check your email with your PDA, your cell phone, your blackberry, your Treo, you tablet PC, your webTV. Hell, I could practically check my email with my wedding ring. In other words, we’re surrounded by email. With so many things jacked into email, it’s hard not to check it.

2. People check email wherever they are because they are either bored or busy.
People don’t check email because they are hooked… they check email because they are bored. The college prof is teaching to the lowest common denominator. You actually read the chapter, but he has to teach to the kids that didn’t. So what are you going to do? Check email. Maybe that hottie 3 rows over will finally email you back.

Rev. Firebrand is talking (again) about how homosexuality is the highway to the Devil, and since you don’t agree with it you zone out (and grab your blackberry). But you keep going back to church because all that hate-mongering talk is suppose to make you feel closer to God – in a society where those that are supposedly Christian are taking us to war (and lying about it).

Why do people check email why in their car? Because it’s super easy (see point 1) and what the fuck else are you going to do in your car? We are trained to be master multitaskers and there just isn’t enough to do in a car to satisfy that. After you turn on your radio or pop in a CD, what are you going to do? Pop open your cell phone and check messages.

Checking email while pinching off a grumpy in the can… absolutely! My days are packed. Drop the kids off at day care, try to cram in as much work as I can around countless meetings so I don’t have to take it home (which I always do), then I pick the kids up from day care, take one to soccer practice, go home make dinner, play/bath/homework the kids, get them in bed, field a call from my parents. By the time I do that, it’s 9pm, easy. So hell yeah I’m going to pull out my blackberry while I’m sitting on the can. If it saves me 5 minutes later, well, that’s like saving 5 hours. Why? Because I still have to finish writing that memo for work the next day and prepare for a presentation. I can do that while I lay in bed, watching the shows I DVR’d because I can’t watch them when they are really on. While I’m tapping away on my laptop, Thunderbird will be checking my email every 10 minutes.

And that lunch meeting I had to sit through… boring. So I check my email because I’m still waiting to hear from a vendor if he got the files he needed. I have to keep my job because of this bad economy, if I loose it there is no telling how long it’ll take me to find another one. And keeping my job has more to do with keeping my vendor’s on track than sitting through another pie chart-filled meeting with the CFO.

Am I addicted to email? No, I’m addicted to getting my job done the best I can so I still spend time with my kids and hopefully raise them to be smart enough to invent a better way to conduct business so that I don’t have check email on the toilet.

Shitting in peace. That’s my life goal.

Presenting the Top Ten Television Series of All Time as chosen by the SpittingLlamas’s television critic. Unfortunately a list of ten requires that I be extremely selective, so there was no room for classics like Mama’s Family and Manimal. On with the list (in alphabetical order):

Cheers
The Cosby Show
E.R.
I Love Lucy
The Jeffersons
M.A.S.H.
Sanford and Son
Scrubs
The Simpsons
The West Wing

Come back tomorrow and throughout the week for complete coverage, including reviews from our television critic.

Despite the manner in which the media is playing up the filibuster showdown, like it’s some WWE cage-match, the process itself is… well, quite boring.

Here is how the brawl will take place:

Probably Tuesday, the Senate will take a “test vote” to show majority support for nominee Priscilla Owen (as probably all Republicans would vote for her). After the test vote, the process leading to the nuclear option will occur.

1. Sen. Frist will raise a “point of order” to the presiding officer — most likely the lovable Dick Cheney. He’ll make the case that Owen’s nomination has been debated long enough and that only a simple majority of 51, rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes, should be needed to confirm a nominee.

2. Cheney will rule in Frist’s favor.

3. Democrats will appeal Cheney’s ruling.

4. Republicans will ask for a vote to “table” the Democrats’ appeal. This is the vote that would actually change the rules to the so-called nuclear option. Fifty-one votes are needed to kill the appeal; Cheney would, of course, break a tie in Frist’s favor.

5. If Frist has enough votes to kill the Democrats’ appeal, he would then call for a vote on Owen’s confirmation. With the new rule in place, filibusters on judicial nominees would be prohibited; only 51 votes would be required for her confirmation. And with 55 Republican Senators, Bush’s nominees would then most likely be confirmed.

And thus ends checks-and-balances as we know it.

According to Bloomberg’s Janine Zacharia, these are the democrats considering voting for John Bolton, according to aides of each.

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana
Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut
Ben Nelson of Nebraska
Mark Pryor of Arkansas

If you are a democrat and you live in one of those states, get on the phone and bitch those people out. Call their offices and ask them how they could vote for a thug like John Bolton.

This is the John Bolton that was going to make a case that Fidel Castro has WMD. When a staffer said there was no evidence, John Bolton tried to fired him. Yes, friends, Bolton was going to set Castro up as the next Saddam with the same lying and under-handed abuse of the intelligence community that got us into the Iraq war. This is the guy they want to send to the UN.

There are two reasons I don’t read movie reviews until after I’ve seen a movie. One, I generally disagree with the reviewer and two, I don’t want them to color my opinion or dish spoilers without warning. This list falls under the generally disagree category.

It’s been well-documented in film laboratories across the globe that any Greatest Movies List that doesn’t include Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, and Fight Club is worth less than the trash bins in which half the movies on the actual list now sit. Of course, if you have a time machine or membership in the foreign bondage film society, you might have actually seen some of the films included on this list, which is clearly intended to make the folks at Time look like they appreciate true art and mask their true intent: encourage discussion of their latest list and in turn spike circulation. It’s a truly sad marketing ploy that those who appreciate art would never consent to doing.

By the way, visit spittingllamas tomorrow to see our list of the Ten Best Television Series Ever.