Miami Vice white Ferrari Testarossa

While riding an elevator today, I was mistaken for an accountant.  Damn, what happened to my dreams of being an undercover narcotics officer in Miami?

TV show Entourage Lincoln Continental convertible

Tatra car in Discover card ad commercial

I'm guessing the art director for this ad is a car freak.

Todd Margaret IFC trailer starring David Cross

A sitcom starring David Cross (Tobias Funke) and Will Arnett (GOB Bluth)?  For the British market?  With jokes about Kazakhstan?  I'm in!

Clip of pilot here.

Max Headroom Coke ad commercial and TV show intro

I was just thinking about Max Headroom earlier this week.  And what do you know, I learned today that his 80s TV series is coming out on DVD!  Here he is selling the New Coke.

And here is the intro to his show.  Look at Jeffrey Tambor!  Nice 'stache.

PBS A Walk to Beautiful documentary: Fistula victims in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia (and many developing countries), girls carry water and wood as soon as they learn to walk.  Coupled with malnutrition, they grow up tiny.  Many are married off young-- ten, eleven, sometimes even eight years old.  They get pregnant and when they deliver (without ob-gyns* or even qualified midwives), complications arise because the babies are too big for the mothers' tiny bodies.  Fistulas often result and the women become incontinent (urine and/or feces).

It gets worse.  Without treatment, the young women are ostracized.  They cannot work or even socialize.  Husbands leave them.  The "lucky" ones get to stay in makeshift, glorified doghouses on their family's property, as outcasts.

This is a story about a hospital in Addis Ababa that helps these woman.  Below is the trailer and you can watch the whole documentary here (52 minutes) or on Netflix Watch Instantly.

There are billions of people in need and a million worthy causes.  But this is definitely something that caught my attention.

*Ethiopia has a population of 77 million and it only has 160-odd ob-gyns.

Rubens Barrichello beats The Stig on Top Gear!

FIFA World Cup geography snafu

From WGN, home of the Chicago Cubs and Bozo the Clown.

Via Urbane Musings.

Anthony Bourdain's favorite car is...

...Checker Marathon.

What is Anthony Bourdain's favorite car?

Writer-chef-TV personality Anthony Bourdain will be signing books at Book Passage in the Ferry Building tomorrow at 10 am.  Barring a riot or fainting while waiting in line, I'll let you know what his favorite car is.  Because, hey, isn't that the first and only question you would ask him?

Answer here.

A-Team movie trailer and A-Team TV show intro

If there's anything I shun more than blockbuster movies, it's remakes of classic TV shows.  The Brady Bunch, Starsky & Hutch, The Transformers.  Pass.

However, I must see the new A-Team movie this weekend.  The trailer is not exactly awe inspiring, but I'm drawn to it.

It's good to see the GMC van back.  In the 80s, you could go to Universal Studios' theme park in LA and there was an ultra light 1:1 replica of the van.  The driver's side wheels were bolted and hinged to the ground.  Kids, like me, could go on the passenger side and lift the van up with our superhuman strength and have our proud parents take pictures.  Good times.

Credit

I wonder if Face's original Corvette with the round taillights will make a cameo.

Here is the TV show's trailer.  I've always been bugged by the scene where BA Baracus is in the convertible's driver's seat and turns around.  Have you noticed how his right elbow bumps into the seatback, thus making his turning motion kind of stuttered?  I've always asked myself, even as a kid, couldn't they do another take so that the motion looked smoother?

2010 Nike World Cup soccer football futbol ad advert commerical

I know nothing about soccer and even I think this is epic.

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo video

I just watched a 90 minute documentary on PBS.  It's about two Americans who retraced Marco Polo's journey in the early 1990s, right after the fall of the Soviet Union.  The production value is so-so but the story is amazing.  You can watch the entire documentary online.  My favorite parts include:

• World of Warlords (their meeting with a Northern Alliance warlord and being kidnapped by AK-47 brandishing Hazaras).
• Through the Wakhan Corridor.
• The Deserts of Western China (Kashgar and the Talkamakan).
• Mongolia and Tibet.

Top Gear compares Porsche 924 with Mazda RX7 FC

RIP Dixie Carter Diff'rent Strokes Maggie Drummond

Most will remember Carter from Designing Women.  But I'll always remember her as Sam's mom Maggie Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes (season 7 only).  And +2 to Arnold for his Culture Club shirt.

The worst Kyrgyzstan news coverage. Ever. Thanks, CNN.

This is why I'm pulling my hair out at a prodigious rate.  I'm talking clumps.

Let's first go back in time to 2005.  Here is a conversation CNN anchor Kyra Phillips had with space shuttle correspondent Miles O'Brien about Kyrgyzstan:

Miles O’Brien: Well, it looks like we’re talking about another revolution in a country some of us can’t pronounce. We’re not mentioning any names, of course. It’s kind of like Kyra-stan, but it really isn’t. We’re calling it ‘The Tulip Revolution’: People power in the ’stans, coming up.

Kyra Phillips: I love tulips… Hey, Miles, is that a new portable PlayStation?

Then, we got this piece of turd reporting from CNN.  What is wrong with it?  Oh, let me count the ways (and this list is by no means exhaustive).

• Dozens of people died, Ms. Phillips.  Can you not sound so apathetic and bothered, as if the producers are making you read a story about how some reality star just got caught cheating on her significant other?
• Can't we spell things out fe-ne-ti-ca-lee on the teleprompter?  I mean, really.
• Good luck finding it on a map.  Why the f' should we as AMERICANS care?  Way to make everything about us.  
• "...rising utility prices, you know, electricity and gas."  I don't want to hear the following words out of a reporter's mouth: um, like, and you know.  Was that actually on the teleprompter?
• You can describe Central Asia and Kyrgyzstan in a number of ways.  Muslim is probably about #36 on the list of relevant one word descriptors.
• Josh Levs was an up and comer until he landed a job at CNN.  He is doing no favors for his career by being stuck working on stories based on his research using the Wall Street Journal, Google Earth, and about.com.  About.com!
• So the segment is about to end.  What will Ms. Phillip's last question be?  What has Moscow's reaction been, in light of the fact that Kyrgyzstan is within its sphere of influence and has resented America's presence at Manas?  Or, will the opposition that kicked Bakiyev out end up being corrupt and undemocratic, just as Bakiyev became after he kicked out the ancien regime in 2005?  Or a tougher question, how much has the country's north-south dichotomy played a role in the overthrow?  No, she ends up asking, why do these countries have -stan at the end?

I am now completely bald.  Thanks.

Separated at birth: Never Say Never Again's Klaus Maria Brandauer and It's Always Sunny's Jimmi Simpson

Who's creepier?  Maximilian Largo or McPoyle brother Liam?

Perfume ads with Bond girls and cool cars

Sophie Marceau (The World Is Not Enough) ad with Citroen XM:

Carole Bouquet (For Your Eyes Only) Chanel No. 5 ad with Ferrari:

Top five TV cop show intros themes

In no particular order:

ChiPs:

Police Squad:

Hawaii Five 0:

Sledge Hammer:

Miami Vice:

Safari Top Sites feature ruins my Sunday

As I woke up today, wondering how I lost an hour, I purposely avoided finding out who won the Bahrain GP.  I didn't check my email.  I didn't listen to the radio or watch TV.  I didn't check Google Reader.  I read the local news instead on the net.

I planned to sit down with my breakfast and watch the race on my Tivo.

But then, this happens.  I click on the Top Sites feature on my Safari browser, a sort of reflex of mine.  On the home pages of the New York Times, Le Blog Auto, and the Hungarian site Stipistop, they all show Felipe Massa's mug.  Oy, I wonder who won.