I was confused, and somewhat excited, earlier this week when I first saw a link to a video that purported that the Norwegian Army was captured on video doing the Harlem Shake. Memories flooded back to my time in high school in Flint, MI, and watching my classmates pull off the moves associated with the dance in the darkness of the gym. I clicked, curious to see how a dance associated with Harlem had made its way to Norway after all these years.

That hint of excitement soon gave way to disappointment. Expecting the smooth choreography that I had known, what I was greeted with was a mass of flailing to an electonica song I’d never heard before. The song wasn’t the issue, called “Harlem Shake” and released by Harry Rodrigues, also known as the producer Baauer, last year. No, my problem was with the dancing itself. No unity, no precision, no sense that anything was going on other than pure chaos hiding under the label of a dance that’s existed for years.

That disappointment in turn gave way to dismay when I realized that the Norwegian video was by no means a fluke, but instead just one entry in what has become a meme of global proportions. That meme reached what I can only hope is its breaking point as the anti-debt group “The Can Kicks Back” posted their own version of the video, showing former Former Comptroller General David Walker and former Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin taking part:

If that truly is the death knell of this meme, I certainly will not miss it once it’s gone.
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Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino boxing champion who regularly pulls in guaranteed purses north of $20 million a fight, is now refusing to hold his next bout in Las Vegas because the United States insists on taxing the income of people who make money inside its borders.

The fight, Pacquiao’s fifth against rival Juan Manuel Marquez, would guarantee him a $25 million purse if it’s fought in Las Vegas. But American taxes would eat a significant chunk of that, while fighting it in either Singapore or Macau wouldn’t tax his earnings, the fight’s promoter said. That’s a major concern for Pacquaio, who needs to hoard as much money as he can before his career ends, his manager told Yahoo:

“We were talking only this morning about where and when and against who he would fight next,” Koncz told Yahoo! Sports. “One thing we agreed on is that the taxes make Vegas a no-go. You’re a fighter up there risking your life in the ring, so you have to maximize what you are going to get out of it.

“I know, Manny knows, that he only has a certain number of fights left, maybe one, maybe three. We don’t know. So that means the priorities change a little bit at this point.”

Pacquiao isn’t the only professional athlete to complain about American taxes recently. Professional golfer Phil Mickelson, who made more than $40 million last year, threatened to move from California and even give up golf because of high tax rates in his home state. Anti-tax groups have trumpeted both Mickelson and Pacquiao as examples of high taxes hurting the U.S., even if the rich are still paying historically low tax rates amid budget cuts to programs that benefit people who don’t have the luxury of making millions of dollars to hit a golf ball or box for a living.

These athletes, of course, have the right to perform their craft wherever someone will pay them to do it. But it’s hard to feel sympathy for Pacquiao, who would still clear $15 million — an amount that would take the average American household 284 years to equal — if the fight were held in the United States.

The bridge is yours.

-Will the PS4 controller get rid of thumbsticks?

-Hannibal will start airing on NBC on April 4, for those Mads Mikkelsen fans amongst us.

-SXSW just added more films by ladies.

-They’re going to try to make a show about the business development of the Sunset Strip.

-I liked The Host, but I’m not sure I’m compelled by the special effects and action sequences here. This looks…not great, right?

Disgraced former college president and conservative pseudointellectual Dinesh D’Souza would very much like to be relevant again:

While President Barack Obama was finishing up the State of the Union address during a nationally televised speech Tuesday night, hundreds of copies of a DVD featuring an interview with his impoverished half-brother were being mailed to senators, congressmen, the governors of all 50 states and the nine Supreme Court justices.

One copy of the movie, 2016: Obama’s America, also was mailed to the president at his White House address and another went to Vice President Joe Biden. The film tries to make the point that Obama’s agenda is bad for America and that the rationale for his policies stems from a hard-left ideology that was instilled in him by the example set by his absentee father.

2016: Obama’s America is the second best-performing political documentary of all time. But just because it drew a paranoid sector of the electorate to the box office doesn’t mean it’s an effective political advocacy tool. Congress already has a terrifying number of members who believe that President Obama is a socialist whose birthplace remains in question, and who probably aren’t going to make time to watch a movie that reaffirms their convictions. And I doubt that Nancy Pelosi is going to settle in for movie night with some popcorn and end the evening shaken, dash her oversized pearl necklaces to the floor, and hustle off to brunch with Michele Bachmann to discuss how they can work together. In both cases, no matter what members of Congress (and Joe Biden) think of the president and his ideological motivations, the fact remains that Barack Obama was reelected. That he is president and has the power to push for legislation and make executive orders and decisions is a fact, and not something that you can wish away.

Besides, if you’re going to entertain Congress with insane conspiracy theories about President Obama, the actual documentary to watch is Dreams From My Real Father. A truly uproarious piece of cinema, the movie uses old pin-up photos to argue that Obama’s actual father is the left labor activist, publisher, and deeply pretentious poet Frank Marshall Davis, and suggests that Obama had a nose job so he’d look less like his real father. The movie never explains why it would have been better for Stanley Ann Dunham to have become pregnant by a Kenyan PhD candidate than a semi-wacky American. But its self-seriousness is at least really, really funny. And it’s a truly delightful illustration of how deranged Obama’s made people. This movement isn’t just about deligitimizing his claim to the presidency. It’s about running permanently down rabbit holes.

I’ve been writing conventional recaps of Parks and Recreation all season, but this was an episode of the show that made me feel like I needed to sit back and reflect for a moment. All season, Parks has been wrapping up loose threads. Leslie and Ben are engaged, and appear to be getting married in next week’s episode of the show. The fight with Councilman Jam to claim the former pit for Pawnee Commons, the issue that introduced Ann and Leslie and was the first frame issue the show ever had, appears to be at its tipping point. Ron Swanson is as close as it’s possible for him to come to outrageously happy. Tom Haverford has a small business up and running. Chris is in therapy, and Ann is looking for a sperm donor, a pair of trajectories that seem designed to bring them back to each other as more stable, confident individuals. All of this is wonderful—I’ve come to like all of these people very much, and I wish only the best for them.

But their happiness, and the resolution of Parks‘ major issues, raises an interesting question. What would Parks sixth season look like? At the beginning of this season, I would have said that this year seemed likely to be Leslie Knope’s last on our screens. But NBC’s ratings have been so dismal this year, and its comedies have performed so badly, that I now think we’re going to get another season in Pawnee. And while I like that idea in theory, I’m starting to have some doubts about it in practice. If Parks and Recreation is going to come back for a final season with its characters issues largely resolved, rather than sticking around to see that happiness dissolve as The Office has done with Jim and Pam, what will it be about?

I actually think there’s a fairly successful version of Parks to be made that shifts its focus away from Leslie and towards its strong supporting cast. I’ve been rooting towards a show that has more A stories focused on April and Andy, particularly one that would follow Andy through his first year in training to become a police officer—despite his failing the personality test last night, I imagine the show will find a way to get Andy in uniform, and not just when he’s roleplaying as Bert Macklin—and April as she finds an independent job in city government. I can actually see April doing fairly well at the library, pitting her particular brand of deadpan smackdown ability against the wildness of Tammy 2. It’s also way overdue for Parks to spend more time with Retta, and to give her plots that don’t revolve around her being sassy and sexually voracious.

I also think Parks could do something it should have done this season, and find a new issue for Leslie to champion, and spend more time with her colleagues. Councilman Jam’s been one iteration of the kind of person who goes into local politics, a petty man who uses his office to benefit himself financially by fighting for Paunchburger’s expansion. And the wacky, aged racist who is one of Leslie’s other colleagues is in keeping with Pawnee’s…questionable history. But they’re not even close to the full potential of local government. If the Parks Department could exist in a world that felt so huge and varied, how come Pawnee City Council, once we and Leslie finally got there, feels so small?

But whatever the show decides, I think, as funny as Andy’s enthusiasm, and Ron’s meat fixation, and Ann’s singleness are, Parks and Recreation needs a shift of emphasis in its sixth season. Getting us out into parts of Pawnee, and hey, maybe even into Eagleton and Indianapolis a little more, could give Parks a creative revitalization rather than a slow coast towards its end. The show, and Amy Poehler in particular, deserve as good as 30 Rock got.

I have essentially no hope that America will embrace a show that’s about Jason Isaacs playing the Surgeon General of the United States, but for however-many episodes it airs before it gets cancelled, it will probably be my favorite show on television. Well, except for the idea that his character is supposed to be too noble for the politics of the job:

The medical show centers on America’s doctor: the surgeon general of the United States, with Isaacs set to play Dr. John Sherman, a man of solid build and character. He’s got a rare mix of resolve, humanity and dry wit. When he’s injured during his service as am military medic, he becomes a national hero and is appointed to the office of Surgeon General upon his return to America. The character is a widower who is raising two teen girls on his own, with a bit of help from his mother-in-law and doesn’t take kindly to the political aspect of his position. All he wants to be concerned with is the nation’s health, but he can’t ignore the politics that come with the job.

There’s a great cable show in the career of, say, C. Everett Koop, the Surgeon General under President Ronald Reagan, who resisted political pressure to say that abortion harmed women, even though he was philosophically opposed to the procedure and waged a long-running battle to avoid releasing a report that would come to those conclusions, while also acting on both HIV and tobacco, even if his actions on the former garnered mixed reviews from AIDS activists and public health experts. Then there’s Luther Terry, who oversaw the production of Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States, which produced a seismic change in American use of tobacco. But what’s interesting about the best Surgeon Generals is the way they dived into politics, and often behaved in ways that were politically unpredictable. The best way to get at that tradition of independence isn’t to pretend they were aloof, but to highlight the way they fought for public health precisely because they were engaged and politically savvy.