This week's 24 lesson

You cannot sneak up on Buckaroo Banzai, for he will kick your ass. Even if you're Jack Bauer.

And while I appreciated the shout-outs to George Mason and Nina Myers, I really wish Ryan Chappelle had been mentioned, too.

Spin

A post about it at Washington Monthly was enough for me to pick up Robert Charles Wilson's science fiction novel Spin this weekend and I'm glad I did. It's a high-concept, big-mystery story that manages to resolve the mystery in a satisfying way without being about the mystery itself. And that's all I should really say, lest I spoil it for you. If you're interested, here's an Amazon link:

My lifetime point total playing organized basketball is, I think, 4...

...but this is still one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Via Kung Fu Monkey.

Whew!

Now I just have to worry about graduate-level stats class...

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Oh my stars and garters!

Comic Book Resources has an interview with Kelesy Grammer about his role as the Beast in X-Men 3. And I think it was the news of his casting is what made us decide to start Netflixing the first season of Frasier. The interview really focuses on the acting challenges of working in makeup and playing such a well-established role, and it's really worth a read.

Tie 'im up, tie 'im down

If you're wondering why Saddam Hussein never wears a tie to his trial -- on those days when he bothers to show up -- Slate explains it all:

The necktie has a knotty history in the Middle East. For some hard-core Islamists, its crisscross shape resembles a crucifix. For other, less fanciful Muslims, it's simply an emblem of encroaching Westernization. In the 1920s, when the secularist leader Mustafa Kemal came to power in Turkey, he encouraged his countrymen to abandon traditional Muslim garb in favor of suits and neckties. The modern style quickly swept the country and hasn't changed much since. In neighboring Arab countries, this advance of the necktie—like Kemal's Romanized Ottoman alphabet—was perceived as yet another inroad on traditional Islamic society.

In Iran, the tie became a much more controversial symbol of Westernization. The CIA helped Reza Shah Pahlavi take power in the early '50s, and in the years that followed, the shah's necktie linked him with his U.S. backers and their corporate oil interests. For many Iranians living under the shah, it was also a sign of his subservience and decadence. (Iranians still sometimes refer to the shah's rule as "the regime of the Crown and Necktie.") After the shah's ouster in 1979, the tie came under fire from Ayatollah Khomeini, who sought a return to Islamist—or at least anti-Western—attire. Ever since the revolution, Iranian officials have adhered to an unspoken dress code of dark suits, unkempt beards, and bare collars. (One of the ironies of Saddam's tielessness was that it made him look more like Iran's President Ahmadinejad than he would probably have cared to admit.) With their loaded history, neckties now make for a ready symbol of dissidence for pro-Western Iranian students, who nearly always wear them in protests.
[...]
The added bonus of an Islamist look for Saddam is that it might help him overcome his considerable image problem. In 2003, the once-dapper tyrant emerged from his "spider hole" looking more like a homeless man than the autocrat whose pristine French cuffs made for a stark contrast with his bloodstained hands. He later graced the cover of the New York Post in a grungy pair of briefs that evoked a diaper. It's important for Saddam to get these embarrassing images behind him, especially in the midst of a war in which photographs have had no small impact.

There are other possible reasons for Saddam's courtroom appearance. Perhaps he didn't think the tribunal deserved the gesture of a necktie. There's even a chance that U.S. and Iraqi officials are controlling Saddam's attire, though that seems highly unlikely. Saddam has complained about many indignities of his confinement—the lack of showers, the infrequent laundry service, the physical abuse by guards—but so far he has voiced no discontent with his wardrobe. "I'm very sensitive about these matters," he reportedly told his former tailor, who also cuts suits for Pervez Musharraf and Nelson Mandela. For those sensitive enough to see it, Saddam is using every stitch available to make his allegiances known.

Without a Trace

Is Without A Trace part of your Thursday night TV viewing? Perhaps you should try playing the Without A Trace betting game when you watch tonight's installment.

(Speaking of wagers, anyone have a bet as to when teevee.org will ever update anything again?)

Belated Valentine links

Ken Levine shares the true meaning of love, as voiced by Louie DePalma:

Louie is trying to win back his girlfriend, Zena. He asks if she loves him. She says she doesn’t know what love is. He tells her she’s in luck because he does. And he’s the only person alive who can say that. He’s read what everyone else says love is and they’re always wrong. She finally asks him what it is, and Louie says:

“Love is the end of happiness!

The end. Because one day all a guy’s got to do to be happy is to watch the Mets. The next day you gotta have Zena in the room watching the Mets with you. You don’t know why. They’re the same Mets, it’s the same room…but you gotta have Zena there.”

And if that's not romantic enough for you, read Hank Steuver's exegesis on the legend of Lloyd Dobler.

Top 5 things I learned while watching too much of VH1's Top 100 Teen Superstars this weekend...

1. Deborah "Debbie" Gibson now looks better than she did at 19.
2. Tiffany now looks like a man trying to impersonate Tiffany.
3. Corey Haim now looks like a man who ate a man trying to impersonate Tiffany.
4. If Kirk Cameron had been the Roman guard to whom Peter thrice denied Christ, Christ probably would have been a lot more understanding about the whole thing.
5. Scott Baio: What the hell?

Mike Parobeck

It's hard to believe it's been ten years since the phenomenally talented Mike Parobeck died after far too short a career. There's a very nice retrospective about him and his work over at Newsarama that's worth a read. And maybe it will prompt DC to get around to putting some of his work, like the Justice Society series or Elongated Man mini-series that he drew, back in print...

Watching Batman Begins...

...I realized that Cillian Murphy looks like the long-list love child of Tom Welling and Michael Chabon.

I'm just sayin', is all, here.

Snort.

Via the Washington Monthly comes this news -- presented without editorial comment -- about the House leadership election:

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.

Oddly, She Who Must Be Obeyed pointed out to me that the Washington Post's account describes the first ballot as merely "inconclusive," which seems rather euphemistic...

Happy Groundhog Day!

Celebrate the day by re-reading Roger Ebert's appreciation of the movie that features one of Bill Murray's two or three best performances:

His journey has become a parable for our materialistic age; it embodies a view of human growth that, at its heart, reflects the same spiritual view of existence Murray explored in his very personal project "The Razor's Edge." He is bound to the wheel of time, and destined to revolve until he earns his promotion to the next level. A long article in the British newspaper the Independent says "Groundhog Day" is "hailed by religious leaders as the most spiritual film of all time." Perhaps not all religious leaders have seen anything by Bergman, Bresson, Ozu and Dreyer, but never mind: They have a point, even about a film where the deepest theological observation is, "Maybe God has just been around a long time and knows everything."

What amazes me about the movie is that Murray and Ramis get away with it. They never lose their nerve. Phil undergoes his transformation but never loses his edge. He becomes a better Phil, not a different Phil. The movie doesn't get all soppy at the end. There is the dark period when he tries to kill himself, the reckless period when he crashes his car because he knows it doesn't matter, the times of despair.

We see that life is like that. Tomorrow will come, and whether or not it is always Feb. 2, all we can do about it is be the best person we know how to be. The good news is that we can learn to be better people. There is a moment when Phil tells Rita, "When you stand in the snow, you look like an angel." The point is not that he has come to love Rita. It is that he has learned to see the angel.

Penguins!

I didn't get to see March of the Penguins when it was in theatres last summer, but I was amused and baffled to hear that some quarters of the fundamentalist right had embraced it as a demonstration of intelligent design. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I finally saw the movie on DVD last night, and after watching the torturous process that it takes for the emperor penguins to reproduce in one of the harshest environments on earth, I have to ask: On what planet could the design of that system possible be considered intelligent?

As for the movie itself, it was enjoyabe but oddly ephemeral; I suspect this was one that you had to see on a big screen -- the bigger, the better -- to get the full impact.