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At some point Hollywood is going to run out of TV shows to remake into movies, but until that happens, you can look forward to a big screen adaptation of the popular 1970s series Kung Fu, which featured David Carradine as a monk living in the Wild West. Now, usually these adaptations aren't really worth seeing, but the Kung Fu movie has at least one good thing going for, which is that the screenplay was written by Ed Spielman (the creator of the original series) and another writer from the original series, Howard Friedlander. Apparently, the movie will explore the origins of the characters from the TV show.

This is both hysterical and bittersweet. Someone has found footage of film critic Roger Ebert and his late partner in crime, Gene Siskel, shooting promos for their syndicated program Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. Listen as they both go off on a hilarious tongue-in-cheek rant about WASPs and Protestantism, laugh as they try to get through yet another promo while lobbing insults at one another, and try not to wet your pants when Gene explains that Roger's answer to every question he's asked at McDonald's is "yes."

Funny as all of this is, it does make me miss watching these two guys lock horns with one another. Richard Roeper does okay holding his own against Roger, but it's nothing compared to how he and Gene used to go after one another in what often seemed like an extremely vicious and callous manner. And yet, when it was all said and done they still remained friends.

Note: Links above contain swearing, so probably NSFW.

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(S10E14)  When you're young, there's usually only one way to deal with a bully, and that's to give them a taste of their own medicine. It gets a bit more complicated, however, when you're a grown adult and your bully is a ten year old kid. In last night's episode, new neighbors move into the neighborhood whose unruly child, Caleb, begins harassing Hank by calling him "dusty old bones, full of green dust," trashing his work space, and, the most unforgivable crime of all, riding his bike on Hank's lawn.

If beating your own kids is frowned upon, beating other's children is probably more so. Hank thinks he has a solution when he takes Caleb's bike until Caleb learns to behave better. Unfortunately, Caleb's parents don't see their son as a troublemaker, but rather a feisty young sprite with a "precocious sense of adventure." When Hank swipes Caleb's bike to teach him a lesson, they don't make Caleb apologize, they call the cops. Hank finally realizes that the trouble lies with the parents, so he sicks Bobby on them to taunt and harass them as Caleb did. It's not until the parents actually start being parents that Caleb starts to behave. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the children of inattentive parents knows how frustrating it can be. I used to babysit for extended family whose children were so unruly the only thing I could do was try and keep as many sharp objects away from them as possible while they ran amok.

Last night's episode of Everybody Hates Chris focused on a sibling rivalry between Chris and his younger brother Drew, who is better than Chris in everything that matters to young teenage boys, especially fighting and getting girls. Jealous, Chris decides to enroll in a karate class, where his instructor informs the class that karate is about learning ways to kill people, and then not doing it.

I grew up with two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, and all three of us were so radically different in our personalities and interests that there was never any real jealously between us. I couldn't really empathize with Chris' desire to do something better than his little brother, but I do remember wanting to take karate at a young age. My reason for wanting this, as is the case for most boys, was so I could beat the living crap out of anyone who tried to beat me up at school. I never did take lessons, but I did develop my own form of karate which involved placing one foot in front of the other, and using this motion to propel myself quickly in the opposite direction of my assailant.