TCM: great; Fox Movie Channel: not so much

Robert Osborne: classy, smart, knowledgeable, a true movie lover and the face of Turner Classic Movies. Three years ago I was in line at a Judy Holliday film festival and saw him leaving the theatre as I was walking in. I leaned toward him. "When will you show 'About Mrs. Leslie?' "Ahh. Shirley Booth.," he said. "That's a good one. It's out of print. " A little wave, without breaking his stride. The man knows his movies, and knows exactly what to tell you in his intros and outrows. He picks interesting themes. There's "Thirty One Days of Oscar," with a month's worth of Academy Award winners in all the categories. Ethnic film festivals, including Native Americans, and the African American one doesn't run during Black History Month, by the way, which is unheard of. What else. "Guest Programmers" who choose four (sometimes five) movies they love and get to talk to Robert Osborne about why they love their movies. And the TCM Film Festival next April, and I'm going.

Tom Rothman: God awful. On Fox Movie Channel. Hosts "Fox Legacy With Tom Rothman," starring himself, which is fifteen or so minutes of his dull anecdotes before the movie starts. Why does he do this? Because he can. It's his studio. He talks about the "alchemy" of movie-making (?), or he yaks his way through through the entire plot, or he states the obvious. I don't need him to tell me how brilliant "All About Eve" is, and sorry, but "Die Hard 2" isn't in the same category. His idea of "programming" is putting the same stupid movies back to back, and calling it a Triple Play, and in the TV promos the poor announcer has to sell this idiocy as if six hours of the same shit is something to look forward to! Classics like "Revenge of the Nerds!" "Zardoz!" "Without A Trace!" (TV Land and Nick At Nite do the same, with four hours straight of "Roseanne," or "Everybody Loves Raymond," or "The Nanny," sometimes "The Cosby Show." They don't even bother to pretend it's some kind of "marathon," this is routine. Eight hours each of 3 sitcoms, and that's a day. And someone gets a paycheck to arrange this. I only hope they'll be affected by the Bush tax cuts, but now that the GOP wants to protect the hardscrabble top three percent of the country that make more than $250,000 a year, those inventive programmers should be fine. )

Before I Forget

I've been seeing the trailers for Tyler Perry's "For Colored Girls" (written for the screen, produced, and directed by Tyler Perry, based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire), and the voiceover is by a white man! Not by a "colored" "woman?" Er, what's that about? Not even Keith David?

There's an awful lot of straight hair in that movie. Movin', shinin', hangin'. Whoopi's wearing a turban. I've got to see if there's an afro anywhere in sight.

And by the way, there's a last-ditch GOP ad (more like infomercial, almost a half-hour long) running in some of the states with tight races, that trashes President Obama and brings up all the old crap: Rev. Wright, Obama as secret Muslim, Obama as white-people-hater, Obama as taking your hard-earned money and giving it to ethnics, and so on. Saw excerpts of the commercial on Rachel Maddow's show tonight. And the voiceover on that spot is by a black man. Now, I don't know if this guy is a "true believer" in Republican smack-talk, or if he saw this as a script and a gig so what's the difference; and I know that "we" all don't think alike, and since I've constantly been accused of "sounding white," what the hell do I know? Maybe it isn't a white man's voice on the "Colored Girls" spots, maybe this isn't a black man shilling for the GOP, and who am I to begrudge anybody getting a job. But both ads bugged the shit out of me. So there.

I had a moment of truth this afternoon at the Popeye's drive-through in North Bergen, NJ, on my way home from the Volvo shop. I needed something delicious to eat after paying mo money mo money mo money to get my car fixed. All I wanted was chicken and a biscuit. No sides, no drink, just the meat and the bread, because I already had collard greens (from Whole Foods, way overpriced, like four bucks for two and a half scoops, and I didn't realize that until I paid for them and didn't have it in me to just leave them with the cashier) and was planning on taking my little meal home and maybe eating it at the table.

So I'm getting my thigh and wing, mild not spicy, and a biscuit.

"Anything else?" said the voice in the middle of the menu board.

"Can I get an extra biscuit?"

"Miss, you can get three biscuits for $1.29, would you like three biscuits?"

Of course I would like three biscuits, but I don't need three biscuits. "How much for two?"

"Excuse me?"

"How much would two biscuits cost? I don't want three."

"$1.26."

"Excuse me?"

"It's a dollar twenty-six for two biscuits." The voice waited.

Do you see the dilemna? Spend three more pennies and your biscuit count goes from 2 to 3. This is the kind of pricing that makes gluttony worth it. Jesus, what to do. I worked out twice in the last three days and finally, after more than a year, actually felt a slight ache in my abdomen, as though Saturday's sit-ups reached past the wall of pudge that is my stomach and actually worked a muscle buried deep, deep inside.

I took a deep breath. "I'll just take the one biscuit."

"Three-sixty-three is your total. Drive to the next window please."

I paid, got my bag and drove away. God knows what the Weight Watchers points value was on my yummy meal, but this was a teensy triumph. I passed on the biscuit sale and resisted the chance to overeat. And that was my dinner. A wing, a thigh, the Whole Foods collards (more expensive than the meal itself) and one biscuit.

Shit. Writing this down is making me hungry.

It's Election Eve, 2010. Make sure you vote, whatever you believe.