Comedy Central, here he comes! By all reports, President Barack Obama’s comedy routine at the Alfalfa Club Dinner — an annual event packed with political and media bigwigs that’s supposed to be off-the-record but part of it always leaks out — wowed ‘em. USA Today’s The Oval blog has this great roundup of the event which includes some of Obama’s jokes. Here’s...

Every once in a while you get a story that just makes you laugh and given the bad news we see every day I thought I’d offer us all a little smile. Two men were heading to court for trial when they decided to plot an escape. The men were handcuffed together but quietly planned how they might make a break for it and even braced themselves for the pepper spray from the police. They made their run  for freedom,...

I have to break up the stimulus hubbub with a belated goodbye to one of my favorite actors of the large and small screen: Ricardo Montalban. Mr. Montalban passed away two weeks ago but with all of the inauguration craziness going on… I did not get an opportunity to write my farewell to him. Of course, Mr. Montalban is best known for his role as the proprietor of “Fantasy Island.” The show...

It’s this bad…

This is one of those stories which I initially hoped would just go away, but for some reason it keeps hanging around like that old set of luggage you just can’t take down to the good will store. Our new president made an off hand comment the other day, invoking the name of Right wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh. “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP...

You will remember that when Larry Lessig was interviewed on The Colbert Report, Stephen warned viewers. Nobody should…ever ever never ever take anything of mine and remix it! Some have… Colbert is mad! And so he’s upped the ante: Now let me be very clear here. I do not — NOT! –  want you to take my interview with Lawrence Lessig and remix it with a pumpin’ k-hole groove....

As most of you know over the last week many celebrities, including Ashton Kutcher have declared themselves devoted to public service and wanting to help America and serve President Obama. I know that some on the right have mocked the videos as being over the top (and I will admit that some of the sentiment is a bit much) but I prefer to take a different attitude toward these pledges. Speaking as someone who...

Virginia Heffernan’s Confessions of a TED Addict: A TED talk begins as an auditorium speech given at the multidisciplinary, invitation-only annual TED conference. (This year’s 25th-anniversary conference takes place next week in Long Beach, Calif.) TED then creates videos of the speeches and puts them online so they can find a broader audience — and usurp my life. There are around 370 speeches and...

Politicians are notorious for giving voters a song and dance. Here’s President Barack Obama giving a song, at least, with one of his favorite fans — Obama girl (with the little help of some media technology):

A song for our times: Financial Crisis Revisited byThe Astroturf:

I mean, really…People will devote three hours of their life a day listening to someone demonize people who disagree with them. Just read and re-read the quotes in that link. Racism is the province of the left, just as stupidity and a penchant for trying to divide people and whip them up by arousing hatreds that this linked interview illlustrates is the absolute province of the right. Both sides have...

Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons

Actor Bob May, best known for playing the Robot in the 1960’s series Lost In Space has died at the age of 69. “He always said he got the job because he fit in the robot suit,” said June Lockhart, who played family matriarch Maureen Robinson. “It was one of those wonderful Hollywood stories. He just happened to be on the studio lot when someone saw him and sent him to see Irwin Allen about...

Following up on my earlier column, in which you learned to understand the basic concept of money, it is only natural that you would now wish to get a large supply of it for yourself. The problem facing many of you, of course, is that you haven’t the first hint of an idea where to begin. You might be laboring under the tired, old “conventional wisdom” which seeks to convince you that you either...

The list is here. What — no Michael Moore flicks?

News today that two of the legends of Hollywood have passed on. The first loss came this morning with word that Patrick McGoohan had died at the age of 80. McGoohan gained his fame during the James Bond mania of the 1960’s when he starred in two spy series, first the show Secret Agent and then leapt to superstardom in The Prisoner. Once described in The Times as an “espionage tale as crafted by...

Many of you may be familiar with Tippi Hedren from her long and storied movie career, starting with her iconic role in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror film, The Birds. But you may be unaware that for the last 25 years she has also been heading up an important preservation project. Shambala is a sanctuary for big cats located north of Los Angeles. The Roar Foundation, founded in 1983 by Tippi Hedren,...

In an interview with conservative John Ziegler, Sarah Palin lashed out at Katie Couric and Tina Fey for exploiting her during the campaign: I did see that Tina Fey was named entertainer of the year and Katie Couric’s ratings have risen. I know that a lot of people are capitalizing on, oh I don’t know, perhaps some exploiting that was done via me, my family, my administration — that’s...

President Elect Barack Obama yesterday urged members of both parties in Congress to move swiftly to act on an economic stimulus package. Here’s a song that tells us what we are likely to get:

Here’s some classic jazz for those who hate jazz as well as those who love it (one that almost everyone loves). The great jazz pianist/singer/composer Fats Waller doing his song “Your Feets Too Big” (circa 1940s): More on Waller’s music HERE.

Since I (we) nearly forgot to mark his birthday, this seemed the best video pick. Still one of the greatest, if only he could have stuck around to celebrate with us today.

One of the talk shows I periodically listen to is the Clark Howard show. Howard is a consumer advocate and often provides some useful advice regarding how to protect yourself financially. I have heard a couple pretty important tips in the last few weeks so I thought I would take a moment to pass them on. We at TMV not only like to offer endless recitations of our own opinions, from time to time we like to actually...

David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

Larry Lessig is pleased that president-elect Obama has chosen Elena Kagan, his dean at Harvard Law School, for solicitor general. Kagan is credited with attracting major legal scholars to Harvard, especially Cass R. Sunstein from the University of Chicago and, more recently, Lessig himself from the Stanford University Law School. But Lessig may be less pleased with some of Obama’s justice picks, says CNet’s...

And a headache for cable and telephone companies. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix: We want to watch what we want, when we want, where we want, and discover the content how we want. So how well are we doing in the areas of “where,” “when,” “what” and “discoverability”? We’re about 15 percent of the way to “what you want,” 100 percent at “when you want,” 15 percent towards “where...