Greg In The Desert

Here’s a little something for someone special. Answering the issues of today with soul. What Up With That?

From Saturday Night Live, episode 4 on 10/17/2009

From Saturday Night Live 11/21/2009

There’s still good stuff on SNL and Kenan Thompson is one such good stuff.

Vincent Price’s 1958 Thanksgiving Special (Saturday Night Live version) via a Hulu. Happy Thanksgiving.

I admit to watching Saturday Night Live and while some shows and skits are better than others, I wouldn’t have expected MacGruber to be one of them to be made into a movie.

The MacGuyver parody started being filmed in Albuquerque starting August 31 and stars Will Forte and Kristen Wiig. New Mexico native Val Kilmer will play the villain and no word if Richard Dean Anderson will be in the movie.

The MacGruber movie will be released April 16, 2010.

• 3 TV stations to share helicopter to cover the news – Three Valley television news stations announced an agreement Tuesday to share the operations of a single news helicopter in an effort to cut costs.

  Channel 5, Channel 3 and 12 News announced that beginning Sunday, each station will use the same aerial footage for breaking news and traffic. The move will provide a single shot for each station to narrate as the stations see fit during a newscast.

  "This was done as a response to this economy and for financial reasons," John Misner, president and general manager of 12 News said.

• Inx to build WiFi system for N.M. trains – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Inx Inc. has received a $2.7 million contract from the New Mexico Department of Transportation to provide the state’s Rail Runner Train Wireless System.

  The project provides free public wireless Internet access in all trains and stations to help the state meet a goal of improving traffic congestion during peak hours and to make public transportation service options more attractive to commuters.

• Mexican drug wars may cross into Ariz. – Violence involving Mexican narcotics cartels threatens to bleed across the border into Arizona and other states already coping with an epidemic of drug-related murders and kidnappings, law-enforcement officials told an Arizona Senate subcommittee on Monday.

  During their testimony, the experts described recent gunbattles just south of the border where Mexican gangs fought rival cartels as well as police, blasting away with machine guns and lobbing hand grenades.

• Simple elixir called a ‘miracle liquid’ – Los Angeles Times – Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job.

  The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water — hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso — the miracle liquid.

• OhGizmo Preview: Pixar’s Up – I’m a big fan of Pixar movies, as you may have noticed. Even so, I was a little bit, um, let’s say, skeptical when I first saw the trailer:

  It wasn’t the flying house that I was worried about. It was the crotchety old man versus the slightly chubby, irrepressibly annoying little kid. What a hilaaaarious juxtaposition, as proven by myriads of mediocre sitcoms!

  All I can say now is, I should have had more faith in Pixar. Over the weekend, Disney invited us to meet with director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera, followed by a screening of the first half of the movie… And at this point, the only thing I’m worried about is how I’m going to survive until May 29th a whole 45 minutes short of the entire movie. More about Up (spoiler-free except for one little tidbit), after the jump.

• Study: It’s All About The Calories – If you've taken your dieting advice from pop diet book authors in recent years, you'd think that calories are not important or at least of secondary importance when it comes to battling the bulge. The largest dietary trial of its kind – published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that calories matter – no matter how you split them.
• Psion: Intel has "unclean hands," we demand $1.2 Billion – Ars Technica – Psion's new filing, which matches Intel's bellicosity measure for measure, also goes toe to toe with Intel on legal matters of substance to the case, alleges a great deal of malicious wrongdoing, and demands a jury trial to decide the awarding of statutory damages which may total well over a billion dollars, with punitive damages beside. This is getting big.
• Perverse Security Incentives – Incentives explain much that is perplexing about security trade-offs. Why does King County, Washington, require one form of ID to get a concealed-carry permit, but two forms of ID to pay for the permit by check? Making a mistake on a gun permit is an abstract problem, but a bad check actually costs some department money.
• News : Foreclosure rate highest in the state – Rio Rancho Observer – Rio Rancho could be called the foreclosure capital of the state. Statewide, 1 out of 5,257 households filed for foreclosure.

  RealtyTrac’s 2008 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report shows that Stockton, Calif., had the highest foreclosure filing rate with one in 11 households filing and one out of 17 households in Phoenix filed for foreclosure.

• Lennar Homes talks about Chinese drywall – News- msnbc.com – The drywall has sulfur in it and many experts believe when it's combined with the Florida humidity; it emits a gas that can corrode copper and smells like rotten eggs.