The Right To Colbert Arms

I try not to post about The Colbert Report too often because practically every single episode is worthy of a page-long retweet. But the episode from Monday January 14 is one for the time capsule.

At Eleven Dark Thirty, Colbert emerged from his bunker to take up the case of every right wing survivalist and gun nut out there with Stephen Colbert's Double Barrel Blam-O-Rama.

He of course sung the songs of the persecuted and their guns: Alex Jones, Larry Ward, Ted Nugent, and viral You Tube sensation James Yeager.

"I'm not gonna let anyone take my guns. If it goes one inch further, I'm gonna start killing people."

Colbert obviously surmised "Now why would you want to take this guy's guns?" and showed Yeager's contrite follow-up from the next day.

"I probably let my mouth overrun my logic. But I don't retract any or my statements...I don't condone any kind of felonies up to aggravated assaults or murders. Unless it's necessary."

Colbert says you can't blame the guns themselves, the civil rights victims of our time. And it's not just a coincidence that most of them are black. Or that Gun Appreciation Day falls within the same weekend as Martin Luther King Day. And after all, Ted Nugent compared gun-owners to Rosa Parks.

The interview appropriately enough was Piers Morgan, who has become a lightning rod for the fringe. Colbert pressed Morgan on Britain's draconian gun policies, and repeatedly handed him pocket-sized copies of the Constitution. The right to have guns is to keep the government from taking our guns.

It was a classic episode of what the show is all about. And whether we have armed insurrection, a military police state, nuclear winter, or a zombie apocalypse, this 30-minute block will survive in my DVR.

What Makes You Beautiful

One of the sites I've been advocating recently is The Thinking Moms' Revolution. It's a grassroots group that's picking up steam nationwide to "come out" in the battle against autism.

When I say "come out" I mean not only the sharing of information and the critical thinking necessary to take the fight to doctors, schools, insurance companies, and government. But it's also a forum for parents to "come out of the closet" and share the heart-breaking, complicated, and sometimes hilarious struggles in raising special needs children. 

As I consider myself to be a Thinking Mom, I decided to join the revolution with a recent story of my own. I opted for hilarious to break the ice. Look for "What Makes You Beautiful" to be posted to the website soon. The events of the below story took place about a month ago: 

I had always described the relationship between my 8-year old "E-Man" and 5-year old "C-Love" as 95% best friends, 5% mortal enemies.

But something happened in recent weeks that created a seismic shift in their universe: We stopped listening to Kids Place Live on XM in the car, in favor of the Disney channel.

It was sort of the end of innocence. There would be no more belly-laughs from Kenny Curtis and the crazy characters on The Animal Farm. Now Justin Bieber is touting himself as a boyfriend, and Carly Rae Jepsen is soliciting phone calls from strangers.

But both kids love the bubblegum pop, and there's no going back to the way it was. This was never more evident than the time One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful came on. If you haven't heard the song, it's extremely catchy - bordering on soul invasion.

And it was the subject of an EPIC lyric deconstruction on The Colbert Report. I dare you to watch the video and not laugh out loud.

But I digress. The point is E-Man knows every word and sings the whole thing. Whether you like his rendition isn't the point. He was diagnosed on the spectrum at 2, and wasn't speaking until he was almost 3, so every note is music to my ears no matter how repetitive it gets.

"You don't know you're beautiful! Oh-Oh! That's what makes you beautiful!"

Well, younger sister C-Love already knows she's beautiful (and talented, and funny, blah, blah, blah) and she's screaming for him to shut up so she can hear the real song. But he wouldn't stop, he couldn't stop, even if he wanted to. So she started lunging across the backseat, wildly hitting to try to get him to shut up.

This was further complicated by the exhaustion of a day at the pool, 95 degree weather, and that they were each holding ice cream cones. And as I often find myself, a single parent behind the wheel, I was powerless to stop any of it.

It's one of those situations that seemed impossibly frustrating at the time, but too funny in retrospect. Which I guess is the mission for the TMR website.

I followed up on my threat and turned the radio off. C-Love was outraged, which was exacerbated by E-Man's continued singing even though the music was off. He claimed the song was stuck in his head. Then as a determined 5-year old might do, she reached across and planted her ice cream cone on her older brother's neck.

I kept my lid from flipping for one minute until we pulled up at our destination, the Kroger parking lot. I used wipes to clean up the kids and I used the swim towels to clean up the car, all while trying to keep them separated. Cooler heads prevailed for about a second until we started walking toward the grocery store entrance.

"You don't know you're beautiful! Oh-Oh! That's what makes you beautiful!"

If I hadn't physically restrained C-Love at that moment, The CSI Unit would be poring over E-Man's chalk outline in the Kroger parking lot.

I should have known better. That was Rule #252, "never play harmonizing boy bands in the car after swimming on a hot summer day while headed to the grocery store with ice cream cones." Shame on me for not following my own rules.

The grocery run didn't happen. The kids were forced to listen to the baseball game in the car on the way home. So there.

You have to be flexible and abandon the plan sometimes. Life doesn't always take you in one direction.

Breaking Bad Returns: Magnets Have Two Sides

After a exhaustive and thorough post-mortem on The Freeh Report, it's time to return to my favorite criminal activities, fictional ones. Breaking Bad is back and like a huge magnet, it draws the polar opposites back together.

****CAUTION-SPOILERS****

As a season opener generally does, it sets up more story than it provides. This contrasts with last season's premiere which featured a memorable scene involving the now deceased Gustavo Fring, a box-cutter, and an associate's throat.

The opening scene jumps about a year ahead. Walt's got a new name, New Hampshire plates, and a high-powered assault weapon. The title of the episode "Live Free Or Die" (the New Hampshire state motto) would be cute and apropos, except it was already used in The Sopranos when Vito Spatafore was outed at a gay club and broke north, ultimately hooking up with a New Hampshire firefighter.

The episode itself shifts back to the aftermath of Gus' demise. Walt has sold Jesse and somehow convinced Mike on the clean-up, a high-risk, low-probability use of a super magnet to infiltrate a guarded Albuquerque Police Department evidence room.

One of the trademarks of Breaking Bad, what separates this show from other one-hour dramas, is that the great acting isn't cluttered with a bunch of monologues by the main characters. Facial expressions do the exposition work of a good two pages of clever back-and-forth banter.

Mike is the exception. His old Irish curmudgeonly ways fit well. And he gets a pass from his exceptional breakout as Frank McPike in Wiseguy, the first great Mob series. His exchanges with Walt are real and anecdotal (remember Half-Measures?) and illuminating, even though they're a little long.

Meanwhile, Skyler White has very much established herself as a co-kingpin. With (somewhat) more humanity that Walt, she is the one moving the pieces on the chessboard while Walt has become the bull in the china shop, relying on pure intimidation.

Skyler has become the one that Saul Goodman turns to when even a shady lawyer finds himself in an ethical quandary. And she's the one who makes sure that Ted Beneke doesn't talk.

We were sure that Ted was dead, right? Turns out he's just badly injured, and just another good-looking bald man in Season 5.

As Skyler and Walt now have similar levels of accountability in the scheme, expect that they will repel each other as similar ends of a magnet would.

As season 5 continues on, I expect this will eventually all lead to the foreshadowed war. But I think it will be Walt vs Jesse, who was way too even keeled right out of the box.

And there's the business of business. Walt and Jesse need a new lab and a new distributor.

I was happy to see that AMC wasn't one of the channels on the DirecTV chopping block. The relief will be short-lived if the Viacom deal isn't worked out by the time the Colbert Report returns tonight.