Amy's Robot

Now that Snoop Dogg and Lee Iocacca are tv golfing buddies, there's no point pretending that golf is only for rich guys who run the business world. It's the sport of rich guys who run the entertainment business world, too.

In today's edition of Who'Dat?™, see if you can tell who this golfer is, then click on the picture to see if you are right.

After you've played, see some more info about this celebrity golfer after the break.

OK, it's time to say something definitive about television this fall. Here it is:

There is exactly one (1) funny show on network tv this fall.* And that show is 30 Rock.

I wasn't wild about the premiere, but the last two episodes have been great. Did you watch it last night? If you missed it, you can watch it on the NBC site for free. It's good. The blind date set-up, the poker games, and Alec Baldwin's fantastic Hannibal Lecter-derived speech to the page, about him growing up in his mama's tract house in Stone Mountain, GA, "you dreamed of making it all the way to En-Bee-Cee."

Awesome. I can't believe how many good jokes they get into 22 minutes.

The Office doesn't seem as funny this year, even with the addition of Ed Helms. So it's 30 Rock or nothing, people.

*ADM interjects: Ugly Betty is pretty funny too, but it's hard for me to watch (personal reasons).

Today German tabloid Bild published photos that they claim were taken in 2003, of some German soldiers in Afghanistan clowning around with a human skull.

The photos are pretty typical of what we in America are no longer so surprised to see from our soldiers in the War on Terror: shots of a soldier posing with the skull, positioning the skull as the hood ornament of their Jeep. One creative soldier, in a reversal of the pointing at the prisoner's penis pose that Lynndie England made famous, took out his own penis and photographed it next to the skull.

Here's the Bild article in German and translated.

Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said, "These pictures revolt and mystify me. It is clear that such behavior cannot be tolerated from German soldiers. It runs counter to the values and codes of conduct we try to instill in our soldiers."

Posing for pictures with a skull that military sources say may have come from a mass grave is certainly not as bad as posing with actual live, tortured prisoners, like some U.S. soldiers did. The German pictures probably are revolting, as the Minister says, but after Abu Ghraib, how mystifying can they really be? "We must investigate exactly how such degeneration and misbehaviour can happen despite good training and good supervision," said Bernhard Gertz, who represents German troops.

Bernhard: this behavior happens because of the training, the supervision, and the entire approach that our countries have taken to this war.

If you grew up in the '80's and listened to music, you knew all the popular artists and the couple of hit songs they released each year, and you probably liked a few of them. Then there were Weird Al Yankovic's parodies of those same songs, by all the different artists, and even if you didn't love the original, you pretty much had to admit that Weird Al's versions were at least as good or better. His best videos made parodies not only of the original songs, but the whole ridiculous MTV-generated celebrity culture.

His first singles, "My Bologna" ("My Sharona") and "Another One Rides the Bus" ("Another One Bites the Dust") came out in 1980. His newest album, Straight Outta Lynwood, came out in September, and last week it was in the Top 10 (his highest chart position ever!) His latest single, "White & Nerdy" is hilarious [video]. How has Weird Al lasted all these years, never varying his basic formula, and never wearing out his welcome?

Slate has a great article about the improbable 25+ year career of Weird Al Yankovic that says everything I have to say about him and his role in popular culture. Weird Al's unique and seemingly everlasting importance in music is best described by Chamillionaire, whose song "Ridin'" he parodies in "White & Nerdy": "It's one thing to go platinum. Where do you go from there? Then Weird Al calls."

The Boston Globe also did an adoring piece on Weird Al over the weekend, describing him a "sort of cultural Geiger counter."

Here's one of the most bizarre things on his MySpace page [sound on]: a photo of Weird Al done up as a thoughtful acoustic singer-songwriter:

Doesn't this freak you out?

Have you seen the ads for KFC's new Cheese and Chicken Mashed Potato Bowls?

Here's one of them.

In case you're wondering, the Cheese and Chicken Mashed Potato Bowl is like some unholy 7-layer dip - mashed potatoes, corn, fried chicken, gravy and cheese. In a bowl.

Oh, KFC. At last you've realized that Americans are nothing but sad little piglets waiting to be slopped. My only regret is that the Cheese and Chicken Mashed Potato Bowl is not yet available in a styrofoam trough.

Today's edition of Who's Older?™ asks you to consider two world figures who used function as bogeymen for the free world, and these days have become more or less cuddly and harmless: Muammar al-Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.

Both men used to be terrifying threats to the U.S., but have been replaced by more active lunatics like Kim Jong-Il and the more-wacky-than-scary Hugo Chávez.

Gaddafi was an Islamic socialist, and had ties to Black September and the Lockerbie bombing, but more recently has denounced al-Qaeda, and revealed Libya's WMD program in 2004 and invited weapons inspectors to come in and dismantle it. In April of this year, Libya hosted a Concert for Peace marking the 20th anniversary of US bombing of Tripoli, where Lionel Richie performed and praised their current peacefulness.

Saddam is in the news today for his ongoing trial, where a Kurd testified about a massacre by Saddam's army in 1988 ("I ran and fell into a ditch. It was full of bodies. I fell on a body. It was still alive. It was his last breath"), but who can forget last year's reports of him eating Doritos in his cell, gardening, and writing poetry?