Veronica Mars recaps

If you've been watching Veronica Mars this past TV season, don't miss this excellent wrap-up and exegesis on the series as a whole in Salon:

It's fitting that the first season of "Veronica Mars" ends with more questions than answers. The answer to "Who killed Lilly Kane?" has turned out to be relatively clear-cut. But the whodunit structure of "Veronica Mars" is something of a red herring, because what really entangles us, and keeps us on the hook, are the bigger questions -- they're the key to the show's momentum, its sly sense of fun, and its emotional resonance. Veronica is played by Bell with such eminently reasonable self-assurance that we're almost fooled into thinking we don't need to worry about her -- with her small frame, no-nonsense blond locks and dark, glittering eyes, she seems both sophisticated and mischievously elfin. Veronica can, and does, take care of everything: She tries hard to help out with the family finances, and she gives up her own hard-earned college savings to help her mother straighten out so she can come home. Each successive episode only confirms Veronica's perceived invincibility -- which is why it's so devastating when we see her confused or afraid, or when she's overcome with missing her mother.

And the indispensable Teevee.org has more:

During the course of the season, I twice thought that I’d sussed out the killer’s identity for certain. I was wrong both times.

Why was I so confused? Because on this show, no one’s quite who they seem. The thuggish biker’s got a sense of honor to balance his enthusiastically criminal nature. The snarky, sneering rich kid conceals genuine decency and compassion. That kind, inspiring teacher? He’s getting a little too close to his attractive young students. It would have been easy for Thomas and his team to make the victim herself a flawless little angel, but flashbacks revealed Lily as spoiled, callous and more than a little promiscuous. It’s difficult to feel sorry for anyone like that, no matter what their fate — difficult, but not impossible.

Mars wouldn’t let any character among its talented cast get away with being entirely “good” or “bad” — even Veronica herself. She was tough, smart and resourceful in pursuing Lily’s killer — but despite her reluctance, she was willing to use and manipulate the few friends she had, stretching their trust to the breaking point to further her investigation. Thomas allowed to see what, up until the season’s haunting final moments, Veronica couldn’t: Her search for Lily’s murderer was really an attempt to fix her own screwed-up life. And in that respect, it was doomed from the start.

I remain grateful and amazed that we'll be getting a second season of Veronica Mars; I was prepared to clear out shelf space on the DVD rack for it alongside Freaks and Geeks and Firefly. Now if the TV gods would just give us more Arrested Development and Eyes...

Harold?

Am I the only one who found it odd that John Cho, who played a twenthysomething guy named Harold who lived in New Jersey in last summer's Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, played a twentysomething guy named Harold who lived in New Jersey in this week's episode of House?

Zissou!

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was one of the best movies I saw last year so I was thrilled to see the 2-disc Criterion Collection edition of it on sale this morning for slightly less than the price at Amazon. Plus there were added goodies: The cashier gave both me and She Who Must Be Obeyed official Team Zissou knit caps, a free issue of Entertianment Weekly, and signed us up for 16 free weeks of EW. Is that a great way to end finals week or what?

Meanwhile, I see that at Amazon the 1-disc Criterion Collection edition of the movie costs a whopping 60 cents less than the 2-disc version. So if you're thinking about it, and don't want to go to Suncoast and get free stuff with the movie, at least spend the extra 60 cents and get a disc full of extras.

Hiatus? You hardly know us!

As you might have noticed from the absymal lack of posting, I'm kinda busy right now with end-of-the-semester madness, so there probably won't be another update until after next week. Until then, enjoy this article about the possibly-familial friendship between Jimmy Buffett and Warren Buffett, Cookie Monster's Blog, and Western Democrat.

Pixellated

This is really a lot of fun: How many comic characters can you identify from a 12-pixel image of their torsos?

And speaking of familiar names...

I saw a poster for a History Department conference at which one of the speakers will be an historian named Gunter Bischof. I should attend just to have him sign my copy of Cryptonomicon...

No wonder the name sounds familiar...

For the last few weeks of Papal speculation, I kept getting a weird itching feeling in my brain whenever I heard a reference fo Cardinal Ratzinger (now, of course, Pope Benedict XVI...which still sounds strange to me, since John Paul II is the only Pope I remember).

Then I realized it was because Jason Robards' character in the criminally underrated movie Quick Change is named "Rotzinger." And since I've figured out the source of that weird itching feeling, it's gone away.

In related news, Quick Change is finally coming to DVD this fall.

Sign of the times

How can you tell things are going badly for the Republicans? When John Leo is calling for cooler heads to prevail. It's a fair point, but, gee, it took him this long to notice? And, boy, why is it that his article lead with anonymous nobodies making idiotic statements on the "unhinged left" before talking about the Congressional leadership and conservative activists who are making and encouraging threats against the judiciary?

Beetlemania

Two of the links in Mike Sterling's massive Blue Beetle linkblogging are to custom action figures I've made. There should be one or two more of those on my customs site once finals and my orals are done...

Terri Schaivo was not abused.

This news will come as no surprise to those who were paying attention to the merits of the case:

State investigators in Florida have found no clear evidence that Terri Schiavo was denied rehabilitation, neglected or otherwise abused, according to documents released yesterday by the state's Department of Children and Families.

The agency completed nine reports of abuse accusations made from 2001 to 2004, including neglect of hygiene, denial of dental care, poisoning and physical harm. The accusations, which have been widely reported, focus on Michael Schiavo, the husband of Terri. Ms. Schiavo died on March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed.

Of course, this will almost certainly make no difference to the unholy legions of theocrats who sought do deny Terri Schaivo's wishes -- and even her marriage, for God's sake -- but one more time: Michael Schiavo did not abuse his wife. Will those who have defamed him for trying to carry out his wife's wishes about her own medical care apologize? I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

Weed

Scalzi on legalizing marijuana:

...sure, why not. A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for the Willamette Weekly arguing that we should legalize pot because doing so would kill off the entirely asinine pothead culture, and that could only be seen as a good thing. The potheads were of course outraged, and thus I became perhaps the only person ever protested by the pro-legalization folks for arguing for making pot legal. As you might expect, I found this almost unbearably amusing.

The pursuit of trivia

Slate takes a look at what it sees as the decline of Trivial Pursuit, which I played far, far too much of in college:

Trivial Pursuit became a great repository of middlebrow culture. Flip through a stack of cards at random and you assemble a list middlebrow writers (James Thurber, Gore Vidal), movies (Mutiny on the Bounty, Love Story), and television shows (Gunsmoke). In 1983, a marketing consultant named Linda Pezzano shipped board games to actors featured in the entertainment questions. Pat Boone, Gregory Peck, and James Mason sent back adoring fan letters, which Selchow & Righter used in promotions. When Time reported that Trivial Pursuit had become popular with the cast of The Big Chill—the quintessential boomer flick—the game attained a newfound cachet. To win at Trivial Pursuit was to achieve something greater than mastering a board game. It was to achieve mastery of one's subculture: to have successfully determined which bits of information to retain (anything about Gunsmoke) and which to discard (anything about Rimbaud).

With nothing less than cultural identity on the line, Trivial Pursuit matches became pitched battles. "This game can make you feel incredibly brilliant or incredibly stupid," a player told the New York Times in 1984. The social stigma of losing necessitated strategy, even chicanery. In a 1983 volume called How To Win at Trivial Pursuit, author Robert J. Heller suggests that a player memorize all 6,000 answers before his opponents arrive and be prepared to contest the validity of any question in which his answer is deemed to be wrong. He continues, "If your opponents are people with whom you may expect to play again, you will be better served by suggesting that the correct answers not be read aloud." If that fails, a player may attempt to "throw his opponents into a tizzy by providing extra bits of information or alternative correct answers they will have to look up, only to grudgingly agree that he is right." And, finally: "The possibilities are limited only by the deviousness of your mind and the viciousness of your competitive drive. Have fun!"

[...]
Trivia lives; it's generalist trivia, the kind of fluency that Trivial Pursuit prized, that's ailing. Just as the Internet splintered trivia into thousands of niches, Trivial Pursuit has contented itself with turning out games like "90s Time Capsule" and "Book Lover's," and, more frighteningly, those devoted solely to the vagaries of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Gone is the proud generalist of the original Trivial Pursuit, who knew the most common Russian surname (Ivanov) and the international radio code word for the letter O (Oscar). In his place is the specialist, who knows every inch of Return of the Jedi. There are many of us have a nagging fear we belong to the latter group. "What jungle planet do Wookiees hail from?" a Star Wars card asks. Let's say, hypothetically and only for the sake of argument, that I know the answer. Who is supposed to be impressed by that?

Hey ho, I'm from Idaho!

Idaho is Napoleon Dynamtie country.

Breaking political news

This just in: Rick Santorum is sleazy. In other news, run, Bob, run!

Too something for comfort

TV Shows On DVD has the lowdown on whether the DVDs of the second season of Too Close For Comfort will include the network versions of the episodes or the shorter syndicated cuts. On other news, there are apparently people who care whether the DVDs of the second season of Too Close For Comfort will include the network versions of the episodes or the shorter syndicated cuts, and these people should really take their pills like the nice doctors told them to.

Belated fools

Teevee.org is not only one of the best television web sites on the Internets, it's also one of the only places to do funny April Fools Day gags. Last year's spit-take on Salon was hilarious, and they managed to top it this year with a send-up of vapid celebrity blogs. They're all worth reading, but far and away the funniest was NoahHathaway.org, a blog supposedly by the actor who played the annoying kid on the original Battlestar Galactica. Any resemblance to Wil Wheaton's bizarre cyber-celebrity is, I'm sure, purely coincidental.

Good news, bad news

There is an impressive number of TV series I've fallen for only to have them killed by idiotic TV networks and programming executives: Firefly, Freaks and Geeks, Andy Richter, Undeclared, and Wonderfalls are just the tip of the iceberg. So it's always nice to hear that a great show struggling in the ratings will be returning for a second season, like Veronica Mars will be in a triumph of hope and quality over low ratings:

For UPN, gambling on a sophomore year of "Veronica Mars" was an easy call, network president Dawn Ostroff said. The Tuesday 9 p.m. drama starring Kristen Bell generated significant affection from critics and pop culture chatter, especially for Bell.

"This is the type of smart, compelling show we want viewers to expect from UPN," Ostroff said.

Unfortunately, ABC is screwing around with Boston Legal:

Meanwhile, ABC has demonstrated its faith in its highly promising midseason entry "Grey's Anatomy" by confirming that the medical ensemble drama that has taken off behind "Desperate Housewives" on Sunday will remain in that slot for the rest of the season, displacing another freshman drama, "Boston Legal." "Legal," however is assured of returning in the fall by an early pickup ABC gave the drama last week.

Granted, the show's been picked up for another season, but it's hard not to look at this sort of network futzing around with a good show and see it as bad mojo on the wall.

DOOM!

And on Tuesday, there came custom Doom Patrol Mini-Mates, and they were adorable, and there was much rejoicing.

Books meme

Via Chris "Lefty" Brown:


- Bold those you have read
- Italicize those you started, but didn't finish
- Add three books after the last one

001. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
002. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
003. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
004. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
005. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
006. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
007. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
008. 1984, George Orwell
009. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
010. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
011. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
012. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
013. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
014. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
015. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
016. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
017. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
018. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
019. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
020. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
021. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
022. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone, JK Rowling
023. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
024. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
025. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
026. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
027. Middlemarch, George Eliot
028. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
029. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
030. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
031. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
032. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
033. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
034. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
035. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
036. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
037. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
038. Persuasion, Jane Austen
039. Dune, Frank Herbert
040. Emma, Jane Austen
041. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
042. Watership Down, Richard Adams
043. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
044. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
045. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
046. Animal Farm, George Orwell
047. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
048. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
049. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
050. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
051. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
052. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
053. The Stand, Stephen King
054. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
055. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
056. The BFG, Roald Dahl
057. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
058. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
059. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
060. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
061. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
062. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
063. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
064. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
065. Mort, Terry Pratchett
066. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
067. The Magus, John Fowles
068. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
069. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
070. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
071. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
072. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
073. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
074. Matilda, Roald Dahl
075. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
076. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
077. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
078. Ulysses, James Joyce
079. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
080. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
081. The Twits, Roald Dahl
082. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
083. Holes, Louis Sachar
084. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
085. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
086. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
087. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
088. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
089. Magician, Raymond E Feist
090. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
091. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
092. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
093. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
094. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
095. Katherine, Anya Seton
096. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
097. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
098. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
099. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-mith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan
208. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
223. Anthem, Ayn Rand
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. Tartuffe, Moliere
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller
228. The Trial, Franz Kafka
229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
232. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
240. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. Candide, Voltaire
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle
251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony
258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
261. Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
264. A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Black Bird Pond, Joyce Friedland
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt Bleh.
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Jester
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan
277. The Bone Setter's Daughter, Amy Tan
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookman's Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magic's Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magic's Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison.
301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving.
302. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lion's Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
312. War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk
313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Lilith's Brood), Octavia Butler (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago)
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)
322. Beowulf, Anonymous
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. Beloved, Toni Morrison
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
340. Paradise Lost, John Milton
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime O'Neill
351. Othello, by William Shakespeare
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Divine Comedy, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline L'Engle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
336. The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
339. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
340. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
343. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
348. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
349. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
350. Time for bed by David Baddiel
351. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
352. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
353. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
355. Jhereg by Steven Brust
356. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
358. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
360. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
361. Neuromancer, William Gibson
362. The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
363. A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
364. The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
365. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
366. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
367. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
368. A Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
369. Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
370. The God Boy, Ian Cross
371. The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
372. Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
373. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
374. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick
375. Assassin's Apprentice, Robin Hobb
376. number9dream, David Mitchell
377. A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
378. Five Quarters of the Orange, Joanne Harris
379. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
380. Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman
381. Dance On My Grave, Aidan Chambers
382. Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Leguin
383. Hyperion, Dan Simmons
384. Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
385. Checkmate, Dorothy Dunnett
386. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
387. A Clash of Kings, George RR Martin
388. The Egyptian, Mika Waltari
389. Moab Is My Washpot, Stephen Fry
390. Contact, Carl Sagan
391. Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
392. Feersum Endjinn, Iain M. Banks
393. The Golden, Lucius Shepard
394. Decamerone, Boccaccio
395. Birdy, William Wharton
396. The Red Tent, Anita Diaman
397. The Foundation, Isaac Asimov
398. Il Principe, Machiavelli
399. Post Office, Charles Bukowski
400. Macht und Rebel, Abu Rasul
401. Grass, Sheri S. Tepper
402. The Long Walk, Richard Bachman
403. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
404. The Joy Of Work, Scott Adams
405. Romeo, Elise Title
406. The Ninth Gate, Arturo Perez-Reverte
407. Memnoch the Devil, Anne Rice
408. Dead Famous, Ben Elton
409. Scarlett, Alexandra Ripley
410. Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
411. Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks
412. The Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller
413. Branded, Alissa Quart
414. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
415. Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
416. White teeth, Zadie Smith
417. Under the bell jar, Sylvia Plath
418. The little prince of Belleville, Calixthe Beyala
419. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
420. A King Lear of the Steppes, Ivan Turgenev
421. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
422. Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Peter Kropotkin
423. Hija de la Fortuna, Isabel Allende
424. Retrato en Sepia, Isabel Allende
425. Villette, Charlotte Brontë
426. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
427. Ubik, Philip K. Dick
428. Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
429. Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
430. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
431. Nausea, Jean Paul Sartre
432. The Island of the Day Before, Umberto Eco
433. The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq
434. The Angel Of The West Window, Gustav Meyrink
435. A Farewell To Arms, Ernest Hemingway
436. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
437. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
438. In the Eyes of Mr. Fury, Philip Ridley
439. Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks
440. Into the Forest, Jean Hegland
441. Middlesex -Jeffrey Eugenides
442. The Giving Tree -Shel Silverstein
443. Go Ask Alice -Anonymous
444. Waiting For Godot, Samuel Becket
445. Blankets, Craig Thompson
446. The Girls' Guide To Hunting And Fishing, Melissa Banks
447. Voice of the Fire, Alan Moore
448. The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler
449. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
450. Hip Hop America, Nelson George
451. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
452. Basquiat, Phoebe Hoban
453. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
454. Prelandria, C.S. Lewis
455. The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And my three:

456. Democracy In America, Alexis de Tocqueville
457. Nine Hundred Grandmothers, R.A. Lafferty
458. The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

Josh Marshall on Pope John Paul II

Josh Marshall has posted a remarkable entry on the life and likely-impending death of the Pope that's well worth your time.

Packed!

Because you demanded it, here is everything you ever wanted to know about packaging but were afraid to ask.

He's a reporter! He's an actor/director/writer! They're cops!

Joel Achenbach catches up with his college pal David Duchovny:

I lived in a dorm room next to a kid from New York named David Duchovny. He was smart, athletic, talented and confident. Over the next few years, we didn't hang out a lot, but we did play a fair bit of a pinball game named Xenon. I took the left flipper, he took the right. When we dropped in a quarter, the machine would say, in an alluring female voice, "Enter Xenon," which represented pretty much my entire college sex life.

I sensed that women found Duchovny attractive, because when they saw him they would instantly start weeping, writhing on the ground and speaking in tongues. (Standing there, ignored, I'd announce, "But I'm better at pinball.") Occasionally a beauty would disappear into his room, and seconds later the stereo would be cranked to deafening volume. I never understood how they could talk with the music so loud.

There's more about Duchovny's foray into grad school and his writerly yearnings. While I went to college with a number of folks who have gone one to some level of fame, I wasn't actually friends with any of them, and am unlikely to be writing about them in twenty years or so.

Ad Sense

A few weeks ago I signed up for Google's AdSense program; the code for it seems to generate advertising links based on keywords in the content of the pages on which it appears. And I think one knows one has posted a lot of stuff about the Terri Schiavo case when the ads appearing at a given moment are for "The Grateful Dead" and something called "Dead Doctors Don't Lie."

Mars needs viewers

Salon on why Veronica Mars rocks:

Like any high school heroine worth her weight in greasy cafeteria tater tots, Veronica Mars' mix of alienation, sarcasm and angst is palpable from across a packed gymnasium. But there's something else that sets her apart, an angry, stubborn self-confidence in the face of a very dark past, one that includes a dead best friend, a mom who skipped town, and a night when she was slipped a roofie and raped. Even with Buffy setting the precedent, this is not the sort of darkness you'd expect to find on a teen show. But as screwed up as her life has become, each week Veronica learns that the other kids at school could be facing bigger demons than she is.

This is the tasty little truth at the heart of "Veronica Mars" and one of the main reasons -- among many -- that the show has gathered a loyal audience and some promise of a second season despite unimpressive ratings. Each week, using the skills she's picked up from her detective dad, Veronica unearths the vulnerabilities and torturous circumstances behind those seemingly flat characters -- the nerd, the jock, the outsider -- who haunted us way back when. And so, along with a barrage of crimes, mysteries and missing persons, Veronica discovers that the popular jackass at school, Logan, has a self-absorbed, brutal movie-star father (played hilariously by Harry Hamlin) and a mother who, out of the blue, drives to a local bridge, parks her car, and jumps off. Duncan Kane, the dreamy ex-boyfriend who's kept Veronica at arm's length, has epilepsy, a murdered sister, and wildly dysfunctional parents to boot. And Carrie, the gossipy girl Veronica doesn't trust, who claims Veronica's favorite teacher got her pregnant? She is lying, but with good reason -- she's helping vindicate her friend, who really did have an affair with the teacher.

While such fully realized characters might be common on, say, "Deadwood," such depth is unheard of in most teen dramas. Providing this peek behind the curtain not only offers a remedy for those teenage snap judgments, it lends the world of "Veronica Mars" depth and color. We can trust, as viewers, that we'll be treated to a look at the sad or confusing or deliciously sick layers that exist underneath the pretty myth of other people's families, those layers most of us don't discover until at least our 10-year high school reunions.

Plus there's an interview with show creator Rob Thomas.

New episodes return tonight on UPN.

Undeclaration!

On a far, far lighter note, Undeclared will be out on DVD on July 5. Put it on a shelf with Wonderfalls and Firefly and make your own personal "Good Shows Killed by FOX's stupidity" collection!

More Schiavo posts

I had intended to write a thoughtful post about how my feelings on this matter derive not from any sort of medical or metaphysical certitude on my part, but rather from my recognition of my own limited knowledge and information, and the fact that the authoritative means by which these tragic situations are decided have, time and time again (I heard on CNN that there have been something like 26 separate hearings on the case), concluded that Terri Schiavo made known her wishes not to be kept alive under these situations and that her wishes should therefore be honored.

Then Josh Marshall did pretty much the same thing. Here's an excerpt:

The only clarity I've been able to see in this case or find in it is that there is a set of laws governing these issues in Florida and those laws appear to have been followed. Not only followed, but now submitted to numerous appeals. As for the medical questions involved -- specifically, Shiavo's level of awareness or consciousness -- from what I can tell, every independent doctor who has examined her has put her in the PVS category. Those who don't turn out to be either quacks or doctors who didn't do a complete examination.

That doesn't mean those legal or medical judgments are correct. But I know that those judgments have been arrived at by people with vastly more expertise and information at their disposal than I have.

Obviously, I lack any medical understanding to judge these issues myself and I don't know that much about the legal history of the case. But the one thing I'm quite clear on is that I won't get any more clarity on either point from the comic book coverage coming out of CNN and the rest of the cable networks. And the folks who've poured gasoline on this fire for cheap political reasons are truly beneath contempt.

And it turns out that they're also wildly out of step with public opinion on this issue. I pity the responsible, reasonable Republicans and conservatives who are caught up in this circus of cretinism; visit John Cole's site to see what I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, conservative radio host Neil Boortz, of whom I don't think I'd ever heard until I clicked a link at Andrew Sullivan's site, has this to say:

These feelings give rise to some questions of my own; questions for the devoutly religious people who are fighting to keep Terri Schiavo alive. Do you believe in God’s promise of everlasting life? Do you believe that the reward for a life well spent on this earth is a life with God in heaven after you die? If you do, then a few more questions if you will.

Do you believe that the human soul can make the transition to everlasting life while the human body that carried that soul through life clings to life on this earth? If you do, then you must surely believe that Terri Schiavo has earned and is already enjoying her reward in heaven. That being the case, why is it so important to you that the now-unneeded body of Terri Schiavo is kept alive?

But perhaps you believe, as I do, that the human soul is so connected to and integrated with its earthly body that any transition will not be made until that body ceases functioning -- until death occurs.. That being the case, why do you so ardently desire that the soul of Terri Schiavo spend five, ten, perhaps 30 years or more trapped in a useless and non-functioning body, unable to move on to whatever reward awaits her? Isn’t 15 years enough?

Encyclopedia Treadmill

H over at the Comic Treadmill is doing a comprehensive review of last year's DC Encycolpedia, which I found underwhelming. H gets into far, far more detail in his account and it's well worth a read.

If I had $704...

...I'd still be outbid on the mother of all action figure auctions. Behold, and drool.

The name game

One of the nuttier language games being played in the wingnuts' use of Terry Shiavo as a political football concerns her last name. Here's an example:

And for those who wonder why people are suddenly referring to Terri Schiavo as “Terri Schindler-Schiavo": Her husband clearly wants nothing to do with her anymore. He’s moved on to another woman, with whom he has two kids. He’s denied her rehabilitation and treatment. He just wants to kill her, destroy the evidence, and move on with his life. Clearly, her parents – the Schindlers – love her much more than he does. If she’s going to die like this, let’s help cut one of the cords that tie her to this creep.

So when Hillary Clinton started, of her own free will, going by "Hillary Rodham Clinton" in 1993 it was part of the eeevil librul feminist plot to turn women into lesbians witches who got pregnant just to have abortions, but now the right wing is proudly hyphenating a brain-dead woman's name -- without anything resembling her consent or wishes -- to make what they think is some sort of political point. That's not really surprising, I guess; after all, they're the same people who are arguing that Congress has every right to overturn umpteen court decisions affirming Michael Schiavo's status as legal guardian and medical decision-maker -- to make a decision that the same courts have concluded, time and again, is in accord with Terri Schiavo's own wishes -- just because they don't like the results of that due process.

It's almost like Terri Schiavo, her own wishes, and her marriage are absolutely nothing but means for these dirtbags to score cheap political points or something. Nah, that couldn't be it...

Go read now.

Dalia Lithwick's column on the grotesquerie of the GOP trying to ride a brain-dead woman to political advantage is must-reading. Here's an excerpt:

Let's be clear: The piece of legislation passed late last night, the so-called "Palm Sunday Compromise," has nothing whatever to do with the rule of law. The rule of law in this country holds that this is a federalist system—in which private domestic matters are litigated in state, not federal courts. The rule of law has long provided that such domestic decisions are generally made by competent spouses, as opposed to parents, elected officials, popular referendum, or the demands of Randall Terry. The rule of law also requires a fundamental separation of powers—in which legislatures do not override final, binding court decisions solely because the outcome is not the one they like. The rule of law requires comity between state and federal courts—wherein each respects and upholds the jurisdiction and authority of the other. The rule of law requires that we look skeptically at legislation aimed at mucking around with just one life to the exclusion of any and all similarly situated individuals.

And what is the overwhelming constitutional value that supersedes each of these centuries-old legal notions? Evidently, Congress has a secret, super-textual constitutional role as the nation's caped crusaders—its members authorized to leap into phone booths around the world and fly back to Washington in a single bound whenever the "culture of life" is in peril. Republicans acknowledged this weekend that their views on "the sanctity of life" trump even their convictions about federalism. Or, as Tom DeLay put it, when asked how he reconciles this bill with conservative calls to keep the federal government out of state matters, "We, as Congress, have every right to make sure that the constitutional rights of Terri Schiavo are protected, and that's what we're doing."

This congressional authority to simply override years of state court fact-finding brings with it other superpowers, including the power of gratuitous name-calling: Members of Congress unable to pronounce Schiavo's name just last week are denouncing her husband as an adulterer and common law bigamist who withheld proper medical care from her. I wonder what they'd say about my parenting—or yours—if they decided to make a federal case out of every domestic-custody dispute currently resolved in state court proceedings.

For God's sake, read the whole thing.

One silver lining, at least: The public is smarter than the GOP gives them credit for.

Let's be clear on this: The Republican Party has descended to new depths of cynicism and deceit. The party that claimed it wanted to protect marriage has voted to destroy a husband's ability to make health-care decisions for his incapacitated wife. The party that has wrapped itself in the mantle of states' rights has declared that it can and will invent from whole cloth reasons to overturn state decisions that it doesn't like. The party that imagines it has a monopoly on family values and claims it wants to get government off of people's backs has announced to the world that the government, not you, has the final say over your family's medical decisions. What's shocking isn't the new depths these cretins have found, it's the raw, naked cynicism and corruption of this showboating that's surprising.

Weird.

Hecate


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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Before she was LOST...

...Evangeline Lilly appeared in a bunch of TV ads for a chat line/web site called www.livelinks.com, and her image appears prominently on their web site. Oh, the things one learns when one is up late watching TV.

PSA: Free light rail in Minneapolis

Light rail service will be free this evening to encourage people celebrating St. Patrick's Day not to drive after celebrating.

In other news, stay off of light rail this evening if you don't want to be vomited on.

How did Kent Brockman put it? "The day when everyone's Irish...except blacks, gays, and Italians!"

Alton Brown follow-up

When we saw Alton Brown on his current book tour, at one point he asked everyone in the assembled crowd to pretend they were asleep so he could take a picture with his digital camera and post it on his website. Which he has done, as you can see here. And the lovely blonde woman front row in the extreme left of the picture is none other than She Who Must Be Obeyed.

But that's not what I'm blogging this for.

No, I instead direct your attention to the insipid couple seated right next to She Who Must Be Obeyed, who rivalled the Gelatinous Cube from last February's Neil Gaiman event for sheer neighborly annoyingness. For starters, they were both fans of the insane stalker variety; they announced to everyone else around them that they'd seen Alton earlier in the day at another book store. The male half of the couple smelled funny, and, as you can see from the picture, he was one of those seat hogs who is somehow entitled to three chairs' worth of ass and leg room because he's a bigger fan than everyone else. And the female half, as you can see, lacked the class to actually go along with the gag, and instead is looking at the camera.

Fuckwits.

Bat-thoughts

Johanna's reaction to the Batman in the 80s collection was very similar to my own. The book seemed to exist to showcase lots of fun and exciting things that were happening the Batman books of the early 1980s, and were discarded, destroyed, or ignored in the following years. Over the weekend, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I watched a featurette on the first volume of the Batman: The Animated Series DVDs that talked about how influential the series was. And I scratched my head, because to my mind the incredible thing about that cartoon was how much better it was than 99% of the Batman comics being published at the time and since then.

Batman's starting to pop up everywhere with the new movie coming out, of course, though it's a far cry from 1989's Batmania. One new book I noticed was something called The Batman Handbook, the chief purpose of which was to draw attention to all of the parts of Batman lore that should be ignored if one wishes to tell entertaining Batman stories. It dedicated page after page to features of Batman's uniform: It's liked with Kevlar! It contains a distributed taser network that allows Batman to repulse any attacker with 300,000 volts! The cape is also armored! (One imagines that a real-world person putting on such an outfit would bear a passing resemblance to Ralphie's younger brother bundled up for winter in A Christmas Story. The secret identity gets lots of unnecessary attention, too: Batman has such strong control over his facial muscles that no one could ever mistake him for Bruce Wayne! Alfred specially tailors Bruce Wayne's suits so he can wear his armored Batman costume beneath them! And so on. I mean, just write good stories about Batman fighting villains and solving mysteries and stop thinking so much about how things that don't work if you analyze them too hard are supposed to work. Just accept the costume and secret identity and move on. Paul Dini gets it. Bruce Timm gets it. Their friends get it. Why does DC refuse to get it?

Social Security privatization, you're DEAD...DEAD...DEAD!

Style points for anyone who gets the reference that title was swiped and adapted from.

Geekery aside, here's Jonathan Chait's excellent postmortem on the all-over-but-kicking-the-corpse-down-the-street death of Bush's attempt to destroy Social Security.

Schmospotting

Were the creators of Arrested Development big fans of Spike TV's two incarnations of The Joe Schmo Show? Several cast members have appeared on AD in recent episodes.

Bryce the Stalker from JS2 appeared in the background of an episode as a bartender at Lucille's country club. Last night, the actor who played Piper and Austin's fathers, also in JS2, was the emcee at Motherboy XXX, and the actor who played Molly The Virgin's boyfriend on the original JS was working the front desk of the Motherboy XXX hotel.

Other cast members keep popping up elsewhere. Lance Krall (AKA Kip The Gay Guy from the original Schmo played a used car dealer on last year's Monk season finale; the actress who played Ashleigh The Bitch on the original is appearing in some sort of feminine hygeine control product ad, and the actress who played Piper has been in an electric shaver ad. Jon Huertas, TJ The Playa from JS2, has a small part in Without A Trace several episodes ago.

All of which is quite nice for these actors, and it's nice to see them meeting some success beyond fake reality TV, but when will we see Kristen Wiig, AKA Doctor Pat, again?

Some housekeeping

A few things that may be of interest: I've updated the Amazon links under my blogroll to reflect things that I've read and watched/listened to more recently than the fall of 2003. I remembered the link-generating process as much more onerous than it was this afternoon; either Amazon has streamlined things or I'm misremembering. Either way, if you want to get a sense of what's been going into my brain lately, there it is.

And I've added a handful of new names to the blogroll, so if you haven't checked those links out in a while, now is a good time to do so.

I will not be stamped, spindled, or mutilated

In theory, prelim exams are graded anonymously; a number is the only identification on the exam faculty members receive. (In practice, of course, one might be the only person taking an exam in a given field, or has discussed the exam with enough faculty members that one's identity is apparent simply from the answers one gives to the questions one chooses.) When I was given my exam by the department's executive assistant, I was told, "You are number six." I replied, as one must, really, "I am not a number! I am a free man!"

No one got it. It's not easy being geek.

Once in a while you get shown the light

Because you demanded it, here is everything you ever wanted to know about the Grateful Dead song "Scarlet Begonias." If you want to hear a great cover of the song, pick up Jimmy Buffett's recent album License to Chill.

Not dead yet

...a state that still doesn't seem quite real after yesterday's prelim exam (the second of two eight-hour, three-question exams I must pass before proceeding on my way toward my PhD in political science; they're very much an end-of-the-beginning sort of rite of passage), which -- in addition to a surprising number of injuries I managed to suffer the last few weeks -- was the reason for the recent paucity and then absense of posts hereabouts. I'm back now, and have something resembling free time, so expect more regular posting for a while...at least until finals, anyway!

Accidental Science

Last week on House, we learned that if you're in pain, and you experience new, stronger pain, the pre-existing pain gets pushed aside so your brain can concentrate on the new, more urgent pain.

This morning, I learned that if you have a truly hideous case of the flu, you can make your body forget about it for a few hours by falling down the stairs to your basement office so hard that the right side of your body, from jaw to kneecap, turns into a giant scrape-cum-bruise.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Superhero TV thoughts

On this week's Smallville: "Hi, Metropolis University? This is Georgetown. We'd like our colors and mascot back, thanks."

On tonight's Teen Titans: Who'd have thunk they could get such emotional impact and resonance from an episode whose plot was largelt lifted from Army of Darkness? This show's best moments continue to astonish me.

On tonight's Justice League Unlimited: I love Mister Miracle. I've never quite been able to quantify why exactly he's probably my favorite Jack Kirby character...but after tonight's episode I suspect it's the boundless, joyful sense of hope and imagination and freedom the character embodies. Now, if only Mattel would get to work on a figure...

PSA: Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is a masterful work of film -- one of those movies so perfect it's impossible to imagine it being done any other way, one that resonates and stays with you long after you've left the theatre. I give it my highest recommendation.

That said, if you're like me, you spent a fair amount of the movie trying to figure out where you'd seen some of the actors in it. This happens a lot with Clint Eastwood's films, since he tends to use lots of working actors. Anyway, Danger, the young boxer, is the guy who played Steven on Undeclared. The actor who played the priest was the IRA terrorist being temporarily held in Oz who tried to blow up the prison with Ryan O'Reilly's help.

Unfortunately, there are some self-righteous lackwits who are, apparently, too damn stupid to understand that art thrives on ambiguity and the presentation of an act is not necessarily an endorsement of that act, and so have taken it upon themselves to destroy the film -- literally spoil it -- by spreading plot details best unknown before entering the theatre. If you haven't seen it, don't click this next link; if you have, though, Roger Ebert does an excellent job of detailing just why this is such a despicable and lousy thing to do.

Doctor 6?

Watching tonight's episode of House, I was struck by what a Patrick McGoohan vibe Hugh Laurie gave off in that horrid turtleneck.

That is all. Go read Polite Dissent for a review of the medicine in the episode.

One more thing: Fox now has two shows -- House and That 70s Show -- featuring characters named Eric Foreman who are beset by demanding and curmudgeonly father figures. I'm just sayin', is all, here.

The Cat and the Canary

Two thought on last night's episode of Justice League Unlimited, entitled "The Cat and the Canary":

1. Casting Dennis Farina as Wildcat was perfectly inspired. I just hope Mattel's Wildcat figure lives up to the depiction of the character we saw last night.

2. On Black Canary: I didn't know you could make a cartoon character do that. Not that I object, mind you...

A rational choice query

If one forgets that one has a bottle cap for a free 20-oz. Coke product, and buys a 20-oz. Diet Coke, and that bottle cap is also for a fre 20-oz. Coke product, has one lost money on the deal, come out ahead, or what?

Ossie Davis, RIP

The AP is reporting that Ossie Davis has died after the kind of life and career that makes you feel like a complete slacker in comparison. I think his last role was in the superb, and oddly affecting, Bubba Ho-Tep, which you should run out and see if you haven't already.

Weird Sesame Street moments

This Monsterpiece Theatre transcript is probably the closest thing we will ever see to a Sesame Street/Twin Peaks crossover. Me love Cookie Monster. Him very funny.

Behind the cowbell

All you ever needed to know about the cowbell on Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper."

At my funeral, "Don't Fear the Reaper" will be played, and mourners will be given miniature cowbells and asked to play along. So if you're planning to outlive me, don't say I didn't warn you when an usher hands you a cowbell and tells you to start playing.

Boldly Gone

Star Trek: Enterprise has been cancelled. I'm going to miss the weekly adventures of that guy from Quantum Leap, and the other guy who sorta looks like Dubya did in college, and the Vulcan chick, and the black guy who did things, and the Asian lady who did things, too. I won't miss that horrid, mawkish opening song, though. It would be nice if Paramount would strip it from the episodes and replace it with an instrumental theme, or a song by Pink Lady, or sweet and blessed silence, for syndication and DVDs.

Groundhog Day

If it's almost February 2, it must be time for articles praising the sublime genius that is Harold Ramis' film Groundhog Day. Roger Ebert has written a long reflection on the film and how Bill Murray makes it work by, well, being Bill Murray.

Springtime for Smallville

I've spoken before about how Smallville has taken leave of mere shark-jumping and has instead attained a truly insane and almost willful abandonment of anything resembling sense. Last night's episode was a new high (or low, depending on how you're scoring it), so awful that we watched, slack-jawed in horror, like the opening night crowd watching the opening number of Springtime for Hitler. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a disingenuous, incoherent, and just plain hideous piece of television. "Spock's Brain" is like a fourth-season episode of Homicide in comparison.

For starters, there was the plot: Audrey, the teleporting girl who's obsessed with Clark, is discharged from the crazy house, so of course she beelines for Clark. Now that she's certifiably Not Nutty, they start going out. Jonathan and Martha contribute to Clark's ongoing psychological problems by objecting not on the grounds that the girl USED TO STALK CLARK but because she knows his secret.

Meanwhile, Lana is stalking her boring boyfriend and decides the problem is that she's not having sex with him. At which point we learn that Chloe boinked Jimmy Olsen off-screen after the first season of the show.

Let me repeat that: Chloe boinked Jimmy Olsen. I'm just sayin', here, is all.

That's a pretext for Chloe's stilted, statistic-citing speech to Lana about making sure you're ready and what-not. And so Lana goes off and tries to sleep with Boring Guy, who turns her down and then babbles on about plotlines no one, including the writers of the show, actually cares about. Meanwhile, Audrey wants Clark to run away with her so she gives him a necklace make of Red Kryptonite roofies and they run off to Vegas, get married, and nearly boink, but then Audrey decides she really wants Clark Clark, not Red K Clark, so she takes off the necklace, Clark freaks out, goes home, and Audrey teleports in fromt of a bullet that her former doctor -- who is now stalking her, and ealous of Clark -- shoots at Clark. But she's not killed, so it's OK. And then Marths yells at Clark for everything he did under the influence of Red Kryptonite.

If you don't watch Smallville, you may read this and think, boy, this show is really confusing, but it must make more sense if you watch it every week. You would be wrong.

I guess there are several lessons to be learned here:
1. Sex is bad.
2. If you're slipped roofies, whatever happens is your fault. Good thing the Kents didn't adopt Veronica Mars.
3. If you really want to show that sex is bad, have your characters running around half-nekkid for most of the episode.
4. A scene of a character who's been drugged for sexual purposes cavorting around a Vegas wedding suite with the person who did the drugging can be played for laughs. If you're a fucking moron, that is.

There will be bluenoses who criticize the episode for its racy content, but these people are missing the point. The problem isn't the content per se, it's the leering, sniggering tone of the whole thing and the sheer sloppiness and crappiness of its storytelling. It reminded me of the worst treatments of the sex lives of the characters on Buffy during that series' first UPN season, only worse by a factor of ten.

Smallville dug itself a pretty deep rut for its characters' romantic lives early on. Instead of setting up a Betty-and-Veronica or Gwen Stacy-and-Mary Jane dynamic among the cast members, the creators of the series opted instead to focus on everyone pining for everyone else: Pete (remember Pete? I didn't think so) secretly pined for Chloe, Chloe pined for Clark , Clark pined for Lana (apparently he likes 'em without a personality), and Lana was dating a football player...with the net result that nothing much ever actually HAPPENED to the characters, romantically.

As a contrast, consider Buffy. We knew that there were different things at stake (no pun intended) for the characters in their various relationships throughout the series, and as a result what they did and who they did it with mattered. So when Xander hooked up with Faith and we saw Willow crying her eyes out when she found out about it even though she was dating Oz, just to take one example, we cared and we understood her, emotionally. On Smallville, we've watched these people spin their wheels for so many years that as squickish as the idea of Chloe boinking Jimmy Olsen is, well, at least she did something about something. And besides, we all know Clark and Lex are the ones who want to get together...

Orange crush

The great Alton Brown was in town yesterday as part of his book tour. He was, in person, everything you'd expect him to be; he talked briefly about baking (the subject of his new book), then answered questions before signing books for the several hundred people who were there. He practices the classy celebrity art of introducing himself to everyone as they come up: "Hi, I'm Alton." Mary Jo Pehl did the same thing after her live show last year. In line, I finally had a chance to get an answer to a stupid question that's perplexed me since I was a wee lad: Why is it that, at a picnic or cookout, orange soda gets warm so much faster than the other sodas?

In fine Socratic form, Alton (if you were present for the Neil Patrick Harris incident last summer in New York, I can call him that because he introduced himself to me as such) asked me why I thought that might be the case.

"Um...it's a bright colored liquid in a transparent bottle..."

"Would it happen in cans?"

"Not if what I just said is right, because they're opaque..."

"Exactly. It has to do with the spectrum of the liquid and the opacity of the bottle. And that is not a stupid question."

I was impressed by how singly he focused his attention on me while we spoke and how damn serious he was about telling me my question wasn't stupid. He really takes the educative part of his work seriously. That's really damn cool.

Johnny Carson

As a member of the last college graduating class that watched David Letterman at 12:30 am on NBC, I really only remember Johnny Carson as the guy who was on before Letterman. So if you want insights into the man and his career, go read Mark Evanier's site. Which you should do before you read mine anyway.

Achenblog!

Dudes: Joel Achenbach, the Washington Post writer with whom I'd most like to have a beer and the author of the mind-blowing book Captured By Aliens has a blog.

Small world dept.

De Baisch of the incomparable Retroactive Continuity blog had a close encounter with the crazy, annoying guy who sings hymns on the Metro. The Washington Post's Marc Fisher wrote a column a few years ago that depicted him as a harmless, charming eccentric; Mr. Fisher has no doubt never been a captive audience for this guy's hideous, atonal performances. What I always found most intrisuive and offensive about the singing guy is that there is literally no way to avoid his singing when you're on a subway with him; you can walk past a street performer, but you simply cannot get away from an idiot singing badly in a small, confined space full of people who would probably rather be somewhere else to begin with.

A surreal question

I just spent part of the afternoon unable to turn away from the deranged awfulness that is VH1's Surreal Life. That Chyna person from wrestling -- someone, please, tell me: Is that a man?

Empirical proof

And so it turns out 30 really IS too old to pull an all-nighter on a paper. I used to just suspect it. Now I have proof. Hideous, awful, hammers-pounding-on-me-wee-brain proof. Ignorance was bliss.

Accidental TV viewing

Mikester accidentally watched Battlestar Galactica earlier this week. That's pretty awful, but not as awful as accidentally watching Galactica 1980 like I did yesterday. The horror...

Things we can learn at Newsarama

1. Hugh Laurie is likely to play Perry White in the new Superman movie.

2. Fanboys don't watch House.

3. The guy who runs Newsarama has never watched OZ.

4. The notion of "acting," in which dramatickal roles are played by individuals capable of recreating a wide range of different personality types, emotions, etc., is an alien one to the 21st Century fanboy.

5. One should really try to find one's casting news elsewhere than insular message boards.

A friend indeed

A good friend is one who, when you call her and explain that you're stressed out and need to hear something funny or interesting or gossipy that has nothing to do with that which has stressed you out, pauses, and then tells you she has a date tomorrow night with a bouncer she met on New Year's Eve.

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

It was a very nice touch

Last night's Sherlock Holmes-themed episode of CSI was good on its own terms; learning that it was broadcast on Sherlock Holmes' birthday earns it additional style points. Kudos to the CSI folks!

Super DC Direct thoughts

Looking over DC Direct's scheduled offerings for 2005, I can't help wondering if the Composite Superman figure means a Curt Swan-George Klein style Superman figure isn't in the pipeline. The Composite Superman figure has much more of a Weisinger-era Swan feel than any of DC's previous Superman figures.

And that would be fine with me; just before Christmas I picked up the utterly perfect First Appearance Superman figure, based on his depiction in Action Comics #1, and I'd love to have a whole shelf of different artists' interpretations.

Why burn out when you can fade away?

Fox has apparently never met a show it wouldn't strangle the life out of:

Fox's disco-era series had been widely expected to be deep-sixed following its current season, especially with stars Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher indicating they're ready to leave the grind of sitcomdom for the movie world, and with show ratings way down.

But now Daily Variety reports that network executives are moving toward renewing the show for another season and have locked down contracts for several cast members and have outlined a plan that would even see Kutcher come back for a eighth season in a significantly reduced role.

It's not that I'm worried about the artistic integrity of That 70s Show -- I haven't watched a first-run episode in a few years -- but, damn, it's amazing to watch history repear itself. Remember how well David Duchovny's reduced role worked out on X-Files?

Hey, maybe they could bring Robert Patrick aboard to replace Topher Grace...

Trio

Mark Evanier reports that Trio has disappeared from his DirectTV, which probably means the weird little cable channel that could, well, can't for very much longer. Which is a damn shame; any channel that could bring us Brilliant But Cancelled, Flops, and Quentin Tarantino Week is a channel worth having.

If they hang around that long, they're scheduled to show the complete series of Spaced, the British sitcom by the same folks who did Shaun of the Dead, on January 29th and 30th. Spaced isn't available on DVD in the United States, sadly, so I wonder: Are there any technophilic video junkie bloggers out there who'd be willing to take up the challenge of burning Trio's presentation of Spaced onto DVD as a public service?

It's never too early...

One of the things I've found fascinating about the aftermath of the election is the continuing high profile of John Kerry. Kerry's in an almost unprecedented position in modern politics: A nominee who came very close to defeating an incumbent President and still holds office in Washington, D.C., which helps keep him in the national spotlight. So it's no surprise to read that he's thinking about another run for President in 2008. Part of his strategy has to include looking and acting like the leader of his party, and he's in a good position to do that, as long as the rest of the party goes along with it. I'm not sure it will work for him, and even if it does, I'm not sure he can win a national election, thanks to the disgusting smear campaign that was run against him, but you can't really blame a guy for trying.

This puts John Edwards in a tough spot, of course; how do you run against someone you ran with? I can't see him willing to risk a run against Elizabeth Dole in 2006 for the other North Carolina Senate seat, even if the political winds are blowing favorably, because a loss would knock him permanently out of contention for 2008 and a win would keep him from devoting full time to another run. But I also can't really see Kerry picking the same guy to be his running mate in 2008 should he manage to pull off a second nomination. I'm sure he'd have a place in a Kerry administration, but who the hell wants to be the Dick Schweiker of the 21st Century?

Less is more

I'm not especially thrilled to read that a new Angel comic may be "resolving some of the lingering cliffhangers from the series finale". As cliffhangers go, that one was pretty damn awesome and thematically perfect for the series. And comics based on TV and movies generally suck. And finally, Joss Whedon's shows start fray after five seasons or so; if Buffy had continued, the current season would probably consist entirely of Andrew and Kennedy sitting on the porch drinking lemonade.

NB: The "comics based on TV and movies generally suck" rule does not apply to the forthcoming Buckaroo Banzai comic.

Catfisting update!

Catfisting is now legal in Missouri.

What about Festivus?

I've been taking the ongoing kerfuffle over "Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas" with a rather large grain of salt and a healthy dose of skepticism. The whole thing stinks of astroturf, in spirit if not in actuality, and I really wish Christmas were a much smaller-scale holiday without the spirit of enforced, coerced cheeriness that so many people often seem to demand from everyone else on the holiday. I found the bit in the otherwise delightful Elf in which James Caan's character saves Christmas because he joins in the Christmas carols! And he really means it! And it changes him for the better! to ring profoundly false.

Of course, Bad Santa is my favorite Christmas movie, so what do I know?

At any rate, I hadn't planned to comment on the matter one way or the other, but I want to point out these two recent pieces. The first is from Virgina Postrel:

Why criticize merchants for including all their customers in wishes for a happy holiday season? The holidays do, after all, stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year's, both nonsectarian holidays. "Happy Holidays" includes Christmas, for those who celebrate it. But it also includes holidays we all share, as well as some others only a minority observe.

When you extend these greetings, are you wishing people happiness? Or affirming your Christianity? Do you want people who don't celebrate Christmas to be happy (or merry)? Or do you want to make them at least mildly uncomfortable? The answers will determine what you say.

And this editorial from my local paper, the Star-Tribune, nails it:

What must be dealt with is the misplaced martyrdom of the complainers. Yes, there have been silly incidents, particularly in public schools where Christmas symbols, songs and stories were discouraged while elements of Ramadan, Hanukkah and Kwanza were elevated. There was no need for Maplewood, N.J., to pull Christmas carols -- even the instrumental versions -- from school performances, or for Denver to exclude a religious float from its Christmas parade. Well-meaning people occasionally go overboard in trying not to offend minority cultures.
[...]
We are puzzled that those professing faith seem faithless in the power of the Christmas story to overcome whatever small slights occasionally appear. Indeed, it seems a nice gesture to wish "Happy Holidays" to those you don't know well, while reserving "Merry Christmas" for the festival's deeper meaning. It seems a hard task to celebrate a baby's humble birth with a chip on your shoulder.

Books for kids

Every year, Barnes & Noble runs a program where you can buy books for needy kids in the store. They have tags or cards that say "Boy Age 12" or "Girl Age 8" or whatever on them, and you pick one of these up, go buy an appropriate book, and the store gets the books to the kids. It's a great way to do something that actually helps someone during this time of the year.

This year She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have noticed, though, that a lot of cards are going unclaimed at our local stores. We're talking big fat stacks of unclaimed cards. I know it's just a few days before Christmas, but this is important; if you're reading this blog, you're undoubtedly extremely literate and remember just how damn important books were when you were a kid. And this program will put books in the hands of kids who wouldn't have them, otherwise.

So go here and find a nearby Barnes & Noble and go buy a book for a kid who needs one, or go here and do it online, OK?

Quick JLU thoughts

Last night's episode, "Wake the Dead" (a title rich with multiple interpretations), was quite good and an improvement on the previous week's episode. I loved the Swamp Thing poster on the wall in the opening scene, and the Not-Hellboy statue we also saw there. I'm amused by the continuing use of the animated DC Universe's Non-Defenders team, with Amazo now apparently stepping in as a Silver Surfer type. The meat of the story, Grundy's return and Hawkgirl's ongoing issues with herself and her fellow heroes, was nicely done and at times honestly moving. It's a bit disturbing to learn that John Stewart is a serial co-worker dater, and part of me wishes we never learned how the League's vote on Hawkgirl shook out. My one real concern is that I hope we continue to see fallout from Hawkgirl's actions; redemption stories can be done well, (cf Angel and even Spike, in the final analysis) or hideously (cf the waste of screen time known as Andrew).

As for last week's episode, it's not that it was bad so much as unmemorable. The use of the Atom was fun, except for his SuperFriends-caliber exposition to no one and his dialogue was a little too Standard Warren Ellis Curmudgeon off-the-shelf. But it's always nice to see (or hear) John C. McGinley, and the design for the Atom oddly resembled him, to my tired grad student eyes, at least (She Who Must Be Obeyed agreed with me on this, and thought the manner in which Wonder Woman carried the Atom was gratuitous).

An Emily Litella moment

Sigh. I was all set to write an entry about how the New York Times is looking for Bernard Kerik's nanny and how Bob Greenberger's hired her, but it turns out that my memory and reading skills are fuzzy, and Greenberger actually had hired Zoe Baird's nanny, so never mind.

Words that make me feel old

"Jenny McCarthy's Comeback Pictorial."

I mean, for God's sake, she's MY age, and I know I haven't gone anywhere...

I'm gonna freak out with my geek out*

Can I get an "Amen" and a "Heck yeah!" for Saturday's episode of Justice League Unlimited?

Saturday night we saw the League dip its toes into metanarrative waters, as we got riffs on both Super Friends -- represented by the modern series' versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman -- and The Authority -- in the form of "The Ultimen," thinly-veiled versions of lame PC characters Samurai, Apache Chief, and Black Vulcan, plus updated, less-stupid versions of the Wonder Twins. Genius! Particularly since it was the Ultimen who were deferent, respectful, and polite to the point that Superman thought they were corny -- an amusing spin on the tiresome posing we've come to expect from hip, kewl, "extreme" super-teams.

Add to that appearances by late-80s DC mainstays Amanda Waller and Maxwell Lord, and a continuance of the government-conspiracy plot to create its own super-beings and you're really cooking with gas. I also couldn't help notice that the credits included clips from a future episode in which we see the Shining Knight, Vigilante, Green Arrow, and the Crimson Avenger -- that's 4/7 of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, for those of you counting, and we've already seen Stargirl and S.T.R.I.P.E. in previous episodes -- fighting alongside one another. If they actually do a Seven Soldiers episode I think fanboy heads will explode with glee all over the country. Can someone please put Bruce Timm, Dwayne McDuffie, Alan Burnett, and friends in charge of DC Comics?

* with apologies to Stifler.

Sax for sale!

A public service announcement: Amy Lee, Jimmy Buffett's stupendously talented saxophone player, is having a sale when you buy both of her albums.

Fooish inconsistency

Kevin Drum decries the most irritating thing about our haphazard, all-but-useless security screening at airports:

But for crying out loud, can't they make up their minds about what the policy is and then enforce it the same way at every airport in the country? I'd just like to know what they expect instead of playing a guessing game every time I get on a plane.

In the past year or so, I've been told that my sneakers don't have to be removed, because they won't set off the metal detectors, that my sneakers have to be removed, because they could set off the metal detectors, that a blazer needn't be removed, and that a blazer must be removed -- all in four different trips. No wonder nobody takes airport screenings seriously, or as anything but an annoyance between the curb and the plane.

A quasi-MSTie moment

Remember that time Mike, Tom, and Crow were turned into the cast of Renegade?

Mmm...falafel

Via Drudge, Bill O'Reilly defends Dan Rather and decries the smearing of people's reputations via "Internet mouses." Who's up for some falafel?

More comics journalism that sucks

Who the hell complains that someone's death has gotten too much media attention?

Stupid, stupid networks...

What programming genius put Veronica Mars, House, and Scrubs all in the same hour? Not even DVR can solve that conundrum. Dumbasses.

Who knew?

Geraldo owns -- or rather, owned -- a newspaper.

Synergy!

Jerry Seinfeld has donated The Puffy Shirt to the Smithsonian. In completely, utterly unrelated news, Seinfeld has just been released on DVD.

An observation

The use of mass transit in the Twin Cities is complicated by the fact that Minnesota is a state populated entirely by Weeble People.

Oh, yes. She will be mine.

One more thing: 80s headband Supergirl gets an action figure in February. Sweeeet.

DC in February

Some thoughts on DC's upcoming wares for February:

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: SUPERGIRL HC
Written by Jeph Loeb, art and cover by Michael Turner.
Award-winner Jeph Loeb and the red-hot Michael Turner reintroduce a classic character into the DCU. This fantastic hardcover includes the entire "Supergirl from Krypton" storyline, originally presented in the best-selling Superman/Batman #8-13.

All of Michael Turner's women look like slow-eyed anorexic crack whores. And yet his books sell like hotcakes and people pay buckets of money for his sketches. I should have stuck with drawing.

ALL STAR COMICS ARCHIVES VOL. 11 HC

Written by John Broome, art by Arthur Peddy, Bernard Sachs, Frank Giacoia, and Bob Oksner, cover by Peddy and Sachs.

The adventures of the world's first super-team continue in this extra-sized final volume of the series at no extra cost. In Volume 11, collecting All Star Comics #50-57, the JSA face the Diamond Man, Mr. Alpha, and more.

I think this is the first Archives series to close out a run. And I guess this means the 1970s revival of All-Star won't be getting the archive treatment.

GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH #5

Written by Geoff Johns, art and cover by Ethan Van Sciver.

The penultimate chapter of the stunning tale that restores Hal Jordan as Earth's Green Lantern. In this shocking issue, learn the final fate of Kyle Rayner. And as Hal Jordan's rebirth explodes across the DCU, the JLA continues its epic battle against one of the oldest powers in the Universe. But are the heroes prepared for the return of Hal Jordan, Green Lantern?

I'll be curious to see if DC's strategy is to cram all of the insane Green Lantern continuity clean-up into this mini-series and then never refer to it again in the subsequent ongoing series. That's too much to hope for, isn't it?

JLA CLASSIFIED #4

Written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, art and cover by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein.

A follow-up to Formerly Known As The Justice League begins as the second story arc of this hot new series! The 6-part "I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League" begins innocently enough with the newly established "Super Buddies" open for business -- complete with their very own theme song. But things hit a sour note when a former foe opens a bar next door to their new "headquarters" in the strip mall downtown!.

I liked the DC Universe so much more back around 1988-91 or so when Keith Giffen was writing eveything and no one was dead except, like, Barry Allen. Sweet Jebus, I'm old.

SEVEN SOLDIERS #0

Written by Grant Morrison, art and cover by J.H. Williams.

I'm there, dude.

Boids

We finally dropped Birds of Prey from our pull list at Dreamhaven last week -- there's only so much either of us can take of reading about strong women who always prevail against the forces of evil because they are strong, because they are women, and women are strong, because they're strong women. It's a nice message and all, but it gets kind of repetitive fifty-three times an issue.

A horse of a different color

This looks more entertaining than the Van Helsing movie I actually paid money to see.