Drive-Bys

I'm still not back on my A-game, but here are a few goodies for you in the meantime:

They've now wrapped filming on the first season of Game of Thrones. Here's a behind-the-scenes peek that has me positively giddy:



I put the tee-shirt (either one of 'em, actually) on my Christmas list.

Now if George would just get back to finishing A Dance With Dragons, I'd be a completely happy fan girl.
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Also on my Christmas list:
I got this for a couple of my bosses. They've all raved about it and loaded it up immediately. Now I want one for myself!
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Excuse me while I howl with laughter:

Mayoral challenger James Meeks scrambled Thursday to put out a political fire touched off by his suggestion that only African Americans should be eligible for city contracts set aside for minorities and women.

Meeks made the statement on Wednesday during an interview on WVON-AM (1690). It happened during a discussion of why African-American businesses got a 7 percent sliver of Chicago’s $1 billion spending pie through Aug. 31, down from 8 percent a year ago.

“The word ‘minority’ from our standpoint should mean African American. I don’t think women, Asians and Hispanics should be able to use that title,” he said. “That’s why our numbers cannot improve — because we use women, Asians and Hispanics who are not people of color, who are not people who have been discriminated against.”

Hours after making those remarks, Meeks back-tracked by saying he would only exclude white women if elected mayor. The set-aside program currently earmarks 25 percent of all city contracts for minorities and 5 percent for companies owned by women.

Now tell me again who's the racist?

Buh-bye, Reverend Meeks. You just publicly shot your campaign for mayor in the left ass-cheek. (Major style points there, though!)

Update: He clearly doesn't understand the basics of back-pedalling.
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It's bad enough when it happens in the movies. When you've paid good money to see a top-notch play and it completely throws the rhythm of the acting off, it's outrageous:

Just before the end of Edward Albee's “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” a cold and brutal dawn rises over New Carthage. The dangerously destructive nocturnal games of George and Martha are subsumed by their mutual loneliness. In Pam MacKinnon's very arresting and intense Steppenwolf Theatre Company production, which takes its audience on an exhausting voyage through some of the horrors of marital codependency, Tracy Letts' George finally puts his hand gently on the shoulder of Amy Morton's Martha. She puts her head back. He is about to sing, softly. Their nonsense song — “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf” — has become a kind of lifesaving lullaby. On Saturday afternoon, the audience was rapt.

“Are you all right?” asked George of his Martha.

Suddenly, from the back of the house, a boppy, perky, electronic tune rang out in answer to that deeply existential question. Letts and Morton froze. Mouths of audience members dropped open. The phone rang on. And on. And on. Freed from its merciful, muffling confines, it got louder. Instead of staring into the depths of a New Carthage exorcism, we were suddenly transported to a pachinko parlor in Shinjuku.

Make no mistake — the moment was gone forever. Letts and Morton gamely paused and then finished the last minute or so of the play, but this was like a fumble with seconds to go. There was no time for the team to recover. And, at that instant, the ringing cell phone of Saturday, Dec. 11, became the most egregiously timed audience-caused interruption of my entire theatergoing career.

When are people going to learn act like grown-ups and turn their fucking phones off???
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Giggle of the Day: