Superman Movie made by anti-Americans

Ever since artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel created the granddaddy of all comic book icons in 1932, Superman has fought valiantly to preserve "truth, justice and the American way." Whether kicking Nazi ass on the radio in the '40s or wrapping himself in the Stars and Stripes on TV during the Cold War or even rescuing the White House's flag as his final feat in "Superman II," the Krypton-born, Smallville-raised Ubermensch always has been steeped in unmistakable U.S. symbolism.
But in the latest film incarnation, scribes Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris sought to downplay Superman's long-standing patriot act. With one brief line uttered by actor Frank Langella, the caped superhero's mission transformed from "truth, justice and the American way" to "truth, justice and all that stuff.""The world has changed. The world is a different place," Pennsylvania native Harris says. "The truth is he's an alien. He was sent from another planet. He has landed on the planet Earth, and he is here for everybody. He's an international superhero."
We were always hesitant to include the term 'American way'
Seems like a bad weekend to open the movie if the film-makers are ashamed of patriotism.

I'm Not One Of Those Fancy College-Educated Doctors

You want to know where I got my doctor's degree? At the Medical School of Hard Knocks, that's where. No matter what they say, advanced graduate studies won't teach you when somebody needs a shot of whiskey. Yale and Harvard don't tell you when to throw a bucket of water on a patient. And they can never teach you how to tell when someone just needs a good solid punch in the nose to bring them around.
I got my M.D. on the street. These people think they're suddenly a "doctor" because they memorized a lot of big words and took a bunch of formal tests. But there's plenty of things about being a doctor they'll never learn in their ivory-tower medical school.
For example, did you know that human intestines, if they spill out of the abdomen during surgery, can spool out all over the floor if you're not careful? You won't find that in a book, my friend.

A Dangerous Obsession

An article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine describes the growing poker addiction problem among college students:
Online, Hogan would play 60 to 100 hands an hour — three times the number of his live games. There was no more shuffling between hands, no more 30-second gaps to chat with his friends or consider quitting. Each hand interlocked with the next. The effect was paralyzing, narcotic. "Internet poker induces a trancelike state," says Derevensky, the McGill professor, who once treated a 17-year-old Canadian boy who lost $30,000, much of it at PokerStars. "The player loses all track of time, where they are, what they're doing." When I spoke with an online hold-'em player from Florida who had lost a whopping $250,000 online, he told me: "It fried my brain. I would roll out of bed, go to my computer and stay there for 20 hours. One night after I went to sleep, my dad called. I woke up instantly, picked up the phone and said, 'I raise.' "
On-line poker is a dangerous and seductive mistress. I fight her allure (usually unsuccessfully) every night.

A Case of Plagiarism?

I took my son to see the movie "Cars" today. I was going to write a long post comparing the movie to "Doc Hollywood," but someone at Canada.com has already done so:
The makers of Doc Hollywood called. They want their movie back.
Cars rolls along like an animated, automotive version of that 1991 Michael J. Fox gem, from its basic plot points to its feel-good conclusion.
Stop us if you think you've heard this one before: A young hotshot on his way to Los Angeles causes a crash and gets stuck in a small town. Before he can leave, he must spend several days doing community service, only to find out that he likes the simple life there and that he's learned more about family and friendship than he'd ever imagined.
The main difference in Cars is that the characters are . . . well, they're cars, hence the title.
I was unable to find any attributation to the movie/book "Doc Hollywood" on the "Cars" website, or when I was watching the credits in the theatre. If Neil Shulman, MD didn't get a cut of the movie "Cars," he should sue.