Paul Newman

I'm pretty sure the only Paul Newman film I saw in a theatre was Nobody's Fool, and my attention was not entirely on the movie, as I was also trying to figure out if I was on a date. (I wasn't.) Even in my distracted condition, though, I recognized the sheer casual magnitude of Newman's talent. Later I enjoyed his performance in The Sting, and pointing out to comic geeks that he was Gil Kane's original "model" for Green Lantern.

Roger Ebert has a nice appreciation, and reposted an interview with Newman promoting Nobody's Fool. And now I'm going to do update my Netflix queue.

Time horizons

Roughly put, a time horizon is how far ahead one is planning: Next year, next quarter, next month. An important part of growing up is learning to think in terms of longer time horizons: You can't control what happens this week, but you can make long-term plans that will endure whatever roadblocks flare up. You can also avoid making short-term plans that will hurt you later: If I eat a third helping of dessert, it will taste good now but I'll feel sick later. If I buy that expensive thing I don't need, I'll enjoy playing with it but I won't be able to pay the rent. That sort of thing.

Looking at the McCain campaign, I'm pretty sure we've got a potential president whose time horizon goes to lunchtime tomorrow, tops. It's clear McCain had no endgame for his phony campaign suspension, he simply wanted to grab a bunch of headlines that afternoon. Same thing applies to Sarah Palin: No need to vet her record, the important thing is to pick somebody dramatic! And then that dramatic pick can't match wits with Katie Couric. But, hey, who can think as far ahead as three weeks from the announcement?

Palin the polar bear?

WaPo's Ruth Marcus on the under-noticed Sarah Palin-Sean Hannity interview:

The way she answers questions brings to mind -- I have Alaska on the brain, admittedly -- the image of a polar bear, jumping from rhetorical ice floe to ice floe, drifting some but eventually managing to get safely to dry land. No flubs, but you get the sense that she could plunge into the icy water at any moment. Palin has an odd tendency to use the same word twice in a sentence, as in, “The people of American realize that inherently all political power is inherent in the people,” or, about John McCain, “He can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.” Or, combining word repetition with another Palin verbal tic, word dropping, this about the economic meltdown: “Well, you know, first Fannie and Freddie, different because quasi-government agencies there where government had to step in because the adverse impact all across our nation, especially with homeowners, is just too impacting.”

Too impacting? Are Fannie and Freddie wisdom teeth?

All-Star Superman

The genius of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's masterful Superman epic is that they've taken the archetypal Superman -- the one who doesn't appear so much in comics and movies and cartoons as he does in your head when you're a kid absorbing all these things -- and made him the center of the story. This is a series that celebrates and ennobles every Superman story you've ever loved by distilling the purest essence of the character into four colors and twelve issues; it defines every character so perfectly and precisely that you wonder if there's anything left to say about them -- and then you remember the surprises each character has for us throughout the series. This, after all, is a book that, in its final issue, gives Steve Lombard, the Daily Planet sportswriter who makes a hobby out of bedeviling Clark Kent, a redemptive moment. He learns better and he changes and he tries to make amends. That's not just a grace note, it's an encapsulation of the theme of the book and meaning of the character: We can be better than we are, if we only try. And Superman can help us do it.

Palin thoughts, serious and otherwise

In no real order:

• As the father of a daughter, I applaud any breaking of the glass ceilings in our society. I am glad that a mediocre female politician has been given the same opportunity that a mediocre male politician would have had in the past.
  
• Palin is not really supposed to appeal to disaffected Clinton supporters or women; she's intended to appeal to the hardcore theocratic right-wing faction of the Republican party. These are the folks who have always been suspicious of or hostile to McCain, and he'd be certain to lose if they stayed home in appreciable numbers on November 4. The question now is whether Palin, who among other things is a creationist, tried to ban books as mayor, is lying about her opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere" (she was for it before it was convenient for her to be against it), abused her office seeking payback against an estranged relative, and more, is sufficiently nutty as to alienate voters in the middle of the political spectrum.
  
• I suspect she is; in 2004, rallying the base was enough for Bush to eke out a narrow win over Kerry, but that base -- and Republican identification among the electorate -- is much smaller now than it was four years ago.
  
• As Lance notes, it is a mistake to assume Palin is a lightweight. On the other hand, I cannot listen to her without recalling Stuart's mom offering Beavis and Butt-head breakfast burritos.
  
• Imagine for a second that the Obamas had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter. Now imagine the right-wing freakout over it. Go ahead. Get back to me when you stop screaming for it to stop.
  
• I really figured that Tagg was going to be the weirdest candidate's child's name in 2008.
  

Shocked, yes, SHOCKED

Isn't it amazing how Senator Clinton gave a speech last night that reaffirmed the core principles of her own campaign while criticizing the opposing party's nominee and expressing full-throated support for her party's candidate? Who would have thought that a smart, savvy, and tough politician -- and whatever criticisms I may have made of her during the primary campaign, she is all of those things -- would do exactly what she needed to do in her speech? It's almost like she's a smart, savvy, and tough politician or something.

Scranton

As I watched the prospect of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate get kicked around on cable the last few nights, I was struck by something I noticed during the endless death march that was the Pennsylvania primary. Namely, when did Pennsylvania, and Scranton in particular, become this magical land filled with "regular people"? I was a hardcore political junkie as a teenager -- to the extent that in 1990, my Sunday afternoons revolved around C-SPAN's weekly airing of campaign ads from around the country -- and don't ever recall hearing Scranton invoked as the heart and soul of "regular America." Was it after I left in 1992?

Unfocused linkblogging

Neat stuff I've run across this week:

• Wired profiles Neal Stephenson in advance of his next novel, Anathem.
  
• Take the McCain house tour!
  
• John Scalzi talks about the neurology of emotional reactions to written and visual fiction.
  
• Absolutely nothing has changed in the presidential race. Obama has a small but steady and significant lead. He has had a small but steady and significant lead for months.
  
• More than you ever wanted to know about the novelization of Gremlins, which I'm fairly sure I owned at one point in my preadolescence (which means it's got a good chance of still being in a box in my parents' basement).
  
• The Savage Dragon endorses Obama.
  
• Obama's reshaping the Democratic party.
  
• Bronze medal winners are happier than silver medal winners.
  

This sketch seems vaguely familiar somehow.

Edwards

The more that comes out about the John Edwards scandal, the more disappointed and disgusted I get. What goes on in a marriage is the business of the people in it -- but to act as recklessly and stupidly as Edwards did while running for president, in a campaign that placed Edwards' marriage to Elizabeth Edwards front and center, makes it more than just a private matter. Suffice to say that my support for Edwards was predicated on his not being terminally reckless and stupid.

The only other thing I have to say is that Edwards should consider this advice that was offered to Tom Delay a few years ago and follow the example of the British politician Jack Profumo:

In 1963, a British politician named John D. “Jack” Profumo became embroiled in a scandal when it was revealed that he was having sexual relations with a young woman who was also seeing a Russian diplomat widely acknowledged to be a spy. (The incident was dramatized in the excellent 1989 film “Scandal” starring Ian McKellen as Profumo.)

At first, Profumo denied he was involved with the young woman. But as the evidence mounted, he admitted the affair and resigned his position as secretary of state for war. The scandal rocked the conservative government, leading to the downfall of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

What Profumo did after his resignation is interesting. Unlike the young woman he had been involved with, Profumo didn’t write a book or try to capitalize on his behavior in any way. He maintained a public silence and went to work at a soup kitchen called Toynbee Hall, in London’s gritty East End. (His wife stayed with him and also devoted herself to charitable work.) Eventually, Profumo became the chief fund-raiser for Toynbee Hall. His contacts brought in millions. Independently wealthy, Profumo never accepted a salary from Toynbee.

Profumo died on March 9. Of course the obituaries mentioned the scandal, but all went on to say that Profumo had earned redemption. He was lauded for his service to society. Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford and a well known social reformer who died in 2001, once remarked that he “felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I’ve known in my lifetime.”

There are second acts in American life. But you have to earn them.

Also note: Profumo started out cleaning toilets, and had to be persuaded to use his contacts to fundraise.

More Twin Peaks talk

ME: I even bought the soundtrack.

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: OK.

ME: And the Julee Cruise spin-off album.

SWMBO: I...see. (SWMBO sidles down the couch a bit)

Isaac Hayes

Signs of the times

You know you're watching a sweeps-period episode of a sitcom when it guest-stars a professional sports team and an actor playing himself in one scene at the end of the episode.

You know you're watching an sweeps-period episode of a sitcom from 1982 when the sports team is the Boston Celtics and the actor is Daniel J. Travanti.

Twin Peaks

I was expecting to enjoy watching Twin Peaks on DVD; I haven't really seen the show since it was canceled in 1991 and remember it fondly. But I wasn't expecting to be hit with an almost overwhelming sense of remembrance. It was as if I was both watching the show and watching myself watch the show as a 15 year old, and remembering just how stunningly weird and strange the show was.

I might go so far as to say that you can divide the history of American television into pre- and post-Twin Peaks. The pilot is an audacious piece of storytelling that drops us into the middle of a town full of the sorts of secrets and lies you'd find in a typical primetime drama or soap opera and then blows it wide open with the murder of Laura Palmer. I'd never seen anything like it before -- while townsfolk were running around double-crossing each other's business deals or hiding their illicit relationships there was this strange, unknowable world happening just behind it.

This sense of weirdness, just out of sight, is reflected several times in the pilot. Watch the backgrounds of each scene carefully -- there are a number of scenes in which something important is happening behind whichever character is the focus of the scene: The sheriff's truck pulling up far in the distance while Leland Palmer tries to calm his wife, or deputies walking toward the principal's office while teenagers talk to and ignore each other in the halls of the high school. It's a signal that this show is going to be different from anything else you'd ever seen before.

And it was.

And it paved the way for serialized shows where weirdness unapologetically happens. Twin Peaks paved the way for The X-Files and Buffy and Angel and Lost and Battlestar Galactica and dozens of other shows that have made TV infinitely more interesting than it was before 1990 -- and instead of being the goofy shows that made it on the air because everything else fell through, they're the tentpoles of their networks. Twin Peaks got canceled but made TV safe for smart, weird shows, and TV's much the better for it.

Another thing I remembered was that FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper was, hands down, the coolest man on the planet, and I wanted to be him when I grew up, except that my hair cannot do that.

And there was one more thing that made the show irresistible to my restless teenage brain. Well, three things:

I have always liked Jerry Brown

Because he is made of kickass.

Do you like spaceships, toddlers, Model T cars, and jars of beer?

Spaceships, Toddlers, Model T Cars, and Jars of Beer from Backbone on Vimeo.

I guess it depends on what your definition of "no one" is

In today's column, David Broder wrings his hands and writes of Barack Obama that

No one in recent decades has emerged as the party standard-bearer from so truncated a political career: four years in the U.S. Senate, during which he has yet to lead on any major domestic or foreign policy issue, preceded by largely anonymous service in the Illinois state Senate.

Broder neglects to mention the eight years Obama served in state government, which brings Obama's total years in elected office to twelve. Meanwhile, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had spent a mere six years as governor of Texas -- one of the weaker governorships in the Union, and one where he accomplished nothing of note, at that -- when he ran in 2000. But I guess that was, you know, different.

(While I'm critical of today's column, I have to give Broder credit for this 2001 column in which he calls Jesse Helms what he was: "[T]he last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country.")

I'm all for openness in government...

...but this seems a bit excessive:

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Turns out I live in Canada, eh?

At least according to this map of How Californians see America.

Tom Servo's Canada Song

GIT OFFA MY LAWN!

You know you're getting old when you look at the photos in the liner notes of a Traveling Wilburys CD and think, boy, everyone looks so YOUNG.

Rowsdower!

Rowsdower!

Congratulations, George & Brad!

Captain Sulu is getting married:



Live long and prosper, guys.

Five-Minute Hate: Infected

Until I read Infected, I'd never had cause to imagine a book as low-budget. That's the beauty of words, after all -- it's all imagination. If you can describe it, your reader can imagine it. It's even better than comics on that score, since you don't have to worry about whether an artist can capture what you're describing. But Infected. Infected. This book is rank nonsense, a cynical attempt to churn out a pile of crap that people who like a better caliber of this sort of crap might pick up. It's a fetid waste of paper that reads like a novelization of a movie treatment written on spec by someone who was warned that the total budget of the movie would be $4.28, tops. Each time I turned the page, I was expecting to see the silhouettes of Mike Nelson, Tom Servo, and Crow T. Robot mocking the book as I read, and I imagined each of the characters looked like a classic MST3K victim.

The tough-guy caricature CIA agent, haunted by Vietnam (which would make him, at a bare minimum, well into his 60s) and incapable of speaking in anything but cliches? Joe Don Baker of Mitchell and Final Justice fame.

The sneaky CIA director? Joe "Don't call me Martin, well, OK, sure you can" Estevez.

The pathetic, broken-down heap of an ex-college-football hero (who fights the alien infection in his body by -- and I kid you not here -- drawing on the lessons he learned from his abusive, alcoholic father)? Zap Rowsdower from the Canadian horror flick The Final Sacrifice.

The female scientist who the book forgets about a third of the way into it or so? That redhead with the geographically untraceable accent from Werewolf.

Do not read this book. This book is not your friend. This book hates you. If you are tempted to read this misbegotten abortion of a novel, do something constructive like make plans to attend a Ron Paul rally, or alphabetize your socks, or watch Fox News. Reading is fundamental. Infected is crap.

Ezra Klein on Tim Russert

...it's going to be strange indeed to turn on the TV on Sundays and not hear his voice. Presumably, he's up somewhere beyond the cloudline, hectoring God about His inconsistencies. "But Lord, in Exodus 6:12, you clearly said..."

What Obama means

A lot:

I suppose I live a sheltered life, but for some reason it hadn't crossed my mind that many African-Americans would think not just that it was very hard for a black man to win the nomination, but that it was impossible. But once it did, I found it horrible and heartbreaking, all the more so because, on reflection, I thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing to think. (At least in its milder form -- 'he can't win' -- as opposed to the more ominous 'they won't let him win.')

I thought: it is awful that people should think that no one who looks like them could possibly be nominated by a major party; that any candidate who looks like them has to be "some kind of stunt"; that if they tell their children that maybe they'll grow up to be President some day, they believe, in their heart of hearts, that they are lying. That should never, ever be true. Not in our country.

When Barack Obama won Iowa, the ground beneath that fear began to crack. Now it has been blown apart, in the only way it could have been. And whatever any of us think about this race, or Senator Obama, that is cause for celebration; as is the fact that it turned out not to be true.

I add one thing to this: The president is the first political figure children tend to recognize, and that they do so at a pretty young age. I very much like the idea of Barack Obama being the first president that my daughter is really aware of.

Since I can't be in St. Paul tonight...

...I'll post this, instead:

Indiana Jones

The sweetest moment in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull was discovering that by 1957 Dr. Jones had gotten tenure. It's good to know that this rejection letter wasn't the final word on that subject.

Accent accident?

Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that Paul Giamatti's Colonial New England accent on John Adams sounds pretty much identical to Eddie Izzard's American accent on The Riches?

MSNBC thought

MSNBC would be ever so much better if they got rid of all their on-air talent not named Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann. And maybe brought Chris Matthews down from the attic for election nights.

Billy Mays outtakes

Follow the money

Remember, all I know about forensic accounting I learned from The Wire. That said, the timing and increments of Hillary Clinton's loans to her campaign strike me as telling: $5 million on April 11, $1 million on May 1, and $425,000 on May 5. The Clinton campaign has been using this as an indication that Clinton is all in on the final 6 primaries, but the downward amounts over time strike me as the kind of thing you'd see from someone who's running up against a hard limit on their resources. I'd be surprised to see further loans for the closing weeks of the campaign, but then again, I was surprised when John Kerry lost in 2004.

Rants! Getcher rants!

Here are two lovely rants that should brighten your day:

• National Review's John Derbyshire rips into Ben Stein's creationist apologia Expelled
  

  And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: “Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!”

  The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism.
  

• This one argues that bicyclists suck, and reminds me once again to ask why "Share the road" apparently only applies in one direction:

  Bicyclists drive me nuts. In Philadelphia, as in cities across this great country, bicyclists routinely flout the law, riding on the sidewalk when it's convenient and holding up traffic in the street whenever possible. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a bicyclist at a stop sign or even a red light, or wait behind a car that is correctly stopped at such an intersection. Instead, the man or woman on the bicycle will weave between parked, stopped, and moving cars to gain a fractional advantage. Yet if an automobile so much as grazes a bicycle lane, all hell breaks loose.
  
  Yes, I know that an automobile bears greater mass, velocity, and force than a bicycle and that the consequences of a motorist's mistake almost always outweigh those of a bicyclist's. But come on. Half of these people on bikes are just jerks.

Exit strategy

Is it just me, or is the way many Democratic Party leaders are studiously avoiding suggesting Hillary Clinton drop out of the presidential race somewhat reminiscent of the way folks delicately tiptoed around telling Nixon he should resign?

Update: So it begins.

Dare I suggest...?

After reading about the origins of this summer's Hulk movie mulligan, and seeing the trailer for Frank Miller's movie adaptation of The Spirit (featured below), I have to ask: Why doesn't Marvel Studios make its next movie do-over a Daredevil feature by Frank Miller? No one remembers, or much liked, the 2003 movie with Ben Affleck (except, I imagine, Affleck and Jennifer Garner and their kid). So why not let Miller return to the character in a great big graphic green-screened tale?

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

Is this a great country or what?

MS Word's spellchecker recognizes "Schwarzenegger" as a word.

Random links

• Lawrence O'Donnell presents one scenario for settling the Democratic nomination fight.
• Science fair photos. I must remember to use the phrase "juicy beans" more often.
• Gender inequity in the new Horton Hears A Who movie.
• When did the present-day parts of Cryptonomicon take place? (Which strikes me as something of an impossible task, since the book clearly takes place in a world not-quite-just-like ours, with Attorney General Comstock, not Reno, the existence of Qwlghm, and the use of "Nippon" in lieu of "Japan"...)
  

That's ONE way to name a kid

Reading about the curious tale of Batman Jones, I am suddenly grateful all over again for the easy time we had driving V. home from the hospital...

Redeemed!

I'm always vaguely embarrassed by the fact that I watch Hell's Kitchen; it's not very good, it's so overblown you can cut about ten minutes from each episode just by forwarding through the recaps and credits; and the whole thing is so forgettable that I forget what's happened in each episode about two minutes after it ends. Last summer, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I agreed that the show would probably drop off our schedules once the baby arrived. But when it popped up on our scheduled recordings list last week we decided we'd watch the first episode at least.

And we were rewarded in our faith, for Chef Ramsey hath delivered unto us the kind of thing that keeps me watching stupid reality shows. For one of the contestants, when charged with whipping up his signature dish, created something he calls "Hen in a Pumpkin."

Hen.

In.

A.

Pumpkin.

I imagine it would go well with bacon on a cat.

Things I learned watching "Michael Clayton"

Tom Wilkinson is in better shape than I am.

McCain's new ad

John McCain's first general election ad describes him as "The American President Americans have been waiting for." That seems one step up from this pitch:

Open letter to Senator Clinton

Dear Senator Clinton,

Always remember: The Caseys are patient. Very patient.

Blame Florida

Watching the ongoing drama over whether Florida should have a do-over primary after scheduling its first primary in violation of national Democratic party rules, part of me wishes Bill Clinton hadn't carried the damn state in 1996 in the first place. If not for that, Florida might not have become the lynchpin of what Mark Warner called the "carry 17 states and pray for Florida" strategy, and Al Gore might have put all that energy toward places like New Hampshire, Colorado, Arizona...

Sometimes a picture says 1,000 words...

...better than I can manage at the moment, anyway. And so here's Captain Jack, saluting the Doctor:

Happy Valentine's Day!

As Scarlett Johannsen goes...

So Scarlett Johannsen is making robocalls for Barack Obama. And while I'm sure Ms. Johannsen is a darn persuasive young woman, I can't help but wish her call sounded a little more like this:

Wallpaper

I'm addicted to home improvement shows, even ones that deal with projects I can't imagine ever undertaking myself. Still, whenever one of these shows involves someone using wallpaper, I can't help but think it would be simpler and cheaper to just run a card with the words "DON'T USE WALLPAPER" on screen for the length of the show.

Mitt Romney can't spell, either

From an e-mail I just received:


I like how the selection ends in a question mark, too.

What would Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen do?

The strangest thing about the GOP debate last night? Aside from the ancestor-worship of Ronald Reagan?

Air Force One hanging in the middle of the cavernous chamber in which the debate was held.

All I could think of was Chester's mansion in Cryptonomicon, and how it had an exploded airliner suspended from the ceiling, and how much it freaked out Amy Shaftoe.

Also weird? A random cut to the mother from The Wonder Years sitting in the audience.

Edwards bows out

A tip of the hat to John Edwards, who ended his campaign today where he began it, and pushed the agenda for this nominating contest in an important direction it would not otherwise have gone without his presence.




Edwards' decision makes several things about this election historic, barring the unforeseen:

• For the first time, a major party will nominate a candidate who is not a white male.
  
• For the first time since 1960 (given the likelihood that John McCain will be the Republican nominee after last night's primary in Florida), a sitting US Senator will be the next president.

When political junkies marry

ME: Do you have your copy of The Federalist Papers handy?

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: It's in the library. What happened to your copy?

ME: It's on campus. (thinks about it) I think.

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: Use mine.

ME: Crap!

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: What?

ME: It's not under "F!"

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: What?

ME: Found it!

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: Where was it?

ME: Under "H" for Hamilton.

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: Phew!

ME: Phew!

Flashback snark

For a couple of years right after college, a bunch of my friends became inexplicably attached to the Brickskeller, an overpriced, hard to get to, unpleasant bar in Dupont Circle that invariably did not have whatever beer I tried to order from their admittedly extensive list of beers. So it's with no small amusement that I see it included on this list of soul-sucking Dupont Circle bars to avoid.

Oh, and about that hiatus in posting...

...we were kind of busy!

If not separated at birth, perhaps really close cousins?

Gil Kane's cover of Omega The Unknown #8 (May 1977)...





...and his cover for The New Adventures of Superboy #48 (December 1983)?

Great minds

Me, while watching Wednesday's Project Runway: "Victorya's dress looks like something Mike Grell would have drawn for a girl Legionnaire during the team's half-naked disco period."

Tim Gunn, blogging about Wednesday's Project Runway: "Frankly, the decision to toss Victorya this win eluded me. In my view, the electric blue textile said “superhero” not prom. Furthermore, the jewel emblazoned panel on the front of the halter made the dress look more appropriate for a hostess at a Vegas cocktail lounge than a teenager attending a suburban prom."

Late Christmas links

First, a funny take on a Christmas carol. It helps if your college had an omnipresent a capella group:



Second, Paul Cornell's Doctor Who Christmas story, The Hopes and Fears of All the Years. Cornell's scripts for the Doctor Who TV series are very good at ripping your heart out and stomping on it, and I mean that in the best possible way. This short prose story is not much different.

Separated at birth?

Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore...





...and Doctor Lucien Sanchez?

Thanks, C-SPAN!

How else would I know Wilford Brimley is a) supporting John McCain and b) alive?

This is not a caucus post.

This is a Fox News post. I rarely watch Fox, but tuned in a few times last night when CNN and MSNBC were both on commercials. And I couldn't help being struck by how shabby the whole enterprise looked -- badly lit sets for their panels of talking heads, ugly graphics, and, well, everyone looked like they'd had lots of bad plastic surgery, except for Shepard Smith, who is what I imagine you'd get if you beat John Barrowman up very badly and didn't let things heal quite properly.

Politics and pop culture mash-up of the day

Which Buffy villain will the Republicans pick? And will Superman be able to stop him?

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Quick holiday linkage

Just a few links to tide you over through the holiday season:

• Ken Levine talks about A Christmas Story.
  
• Roger Ebert reviews Bad Santa, one of my favorite Christmas movies.
  
• 100 reasons Kirk is better than Picard.
  
• Hugh Jackman sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas:
  
  

This will exceed your recommended daily allowance of WTF

Via John Scalzi:

Anchoring

The student who showed up ten minutes late for her make-up exam should thank the students who were forty minutes late for their make-ups yesterday. Compared to them, ten minutes is practically on-time.

Bacon

I just got an e-mail from Kevin Bacon telling me why he's supporting John Edwards. Does this give me a Bacon Score of 1?

Quote of the day

From a write-up of an anime convention:

I was reminded much more of a science fiction con than a comic-con, to be honest. A sense of proud, or even defiant, nerditry prevailed over the proceedings, but rather than being anal retentive it was more, anal explusive, I suppose.

Really, I should go home and go back to bed, because nothing I read or write today is going to top that.

Campaigning can be weird.

Just ask Bill Clinton:

About seven minutes into the former president’s fourth speech of the day, the man stood on a chair on the press riser and shouted that robots wanted Clinton to say he was sorry for statements he made 15 years ago.

"Bill Clinton, I want you to apologize to Sister Souljah. Robots of the world want you to apologize to Sister Souljah. We want you to apologize,” the man said as one observer gasped "Oh my God.”

A volunteer demanded to know who had let him in and the audience heckled the heckler with boos and screams of "Get out of here!” He then threw dozens of orange, green, hot pink and yellow cards into the air. A woman yanked what appeared to be a microphone out of the man’s hands, and he was escorted out of the room without further incident.

The cards read: "Robots are mad at Bill. MR-IFOBCA stands for Mad Robots In Favor Of Bill Clinton Apologizing. Mr. Ifobca says, "Bill Clinton should be ashamed of himself for slandering a Black woman named Sister Souljah," followed by a website address (www.Mr-Ifobca.org ). Posted on the site is a "manifesto" entitled “"Why Did I Bum Rush Bill Clinton?”

I got nothin'.

UPDATE: I take that back. I got video.

Star Trek XI is going to be AWESOME.

The very lovely and very talented Rachel Nichols has joined the cast:

"I'm very restricted on what I'm allowed to say," she says. "But yes, there's a good chance you'll see my shining face in the new Star Trek ... My mom even e-mailed me about it because she saw it (online) and I hadn't told her yet. There's a lot of buzz about it, but honestly, I don't even know the name of my character."

Now if only someone would release her short-lived Fox series The Inside on DVD...

WTF Theatre: The Apple

There are bad movies that are bad. There are bad movies that are guilty pleasures. There are bad movies that are so-bad-they're-good. And then there are movies that are so bad you're not quite sure you can't think clearly about them, because they're so amazingly terrible that they've blown your brain out the back of your frakking head leaving you to wonder if THIS is what taking all the drugs would feel like.

And then there's The Apple. Which was ably deconstructed by Nathan Rabin a few months ago over at the Onion's AV Club. I can't quite top his summation of the movie:

The peculiar genius of The Apple is that every time it appears that the film cannot get any crazier, it ratchets up the weirdness to almost indescribable levels. It belongs to the curious subset of movies so all-consumingly druggy and surreal that they make audiences feel baked out of their minds even when they’re stone-cold sober. The Apple is both the perfect mind-fuck to see while high (on life of course, this column in no way wishes to promote the disgusting, disgusting practice of consuming drugs) and a movie that makes drugs seem redundant and unnecessary.

I think everyone in the world should see The Apple. It should be taught not just in film classes, but in regular schools as well. It should replace the Bible and the Constitution as the immutable cornerstone of our civilization.

Rabin is right -- I don't so much remember watching the movie as experiencing it, and when She Who Must Be Obeyed came home I made her watch a few scenes just to get confirmation from someone who hadn't already been exposed to it that I had not imagined the whole thing after accidentally taking Sudafed and NyQuil at the same time. Which I suppose is par for the course for a science-fiction-ish retelling of the Adam and Eve story where Satan is a record producer and Adam and Eve are an innocent Canadian folk-singing duo. The damn thing moves into your brain with its relentlessly and surprisingly catchy-but-terrible music -- did I mention it's a disco opera with more musical numbers than most Bollywood films? -- and while the movie is not good by any definition known to man, the mere fact of its insane, improbable existence makes it some sort of demented triumph. I didn't like the Apple, and I don't actually recommend it, but I think you should see it anyway.

Always remember...

Jack Bauer isn't locked in the Glendale City Jail with you.





You're locked in the Glendale City Jail with HIM.

Links count as a post.

No, really, they do. So here are a bunch of links:

• John Scalzi presents The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time.
  
  
• Check out Keith Giffen's Legion poster from way back when.
  
  
• Johanna brings us fun with fanboys who will not do as they're told.
  
  
• Ken Levine shares the background of that episode of M*A*S*H that's shot from a wounded soldier's point of view. He should know, since he wrote it.
  
  
• This defies description, and may well drive you mad.
  

PSA: Amazon's Veronica Mars sale

Longtime readers of this blog will remember how much I loved the too-short-lived Veronica Mars. So I'd like to let you know that Amazon is currently selling the first two seasons of the show for fifteen bucks each. Enjoy!

A gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth

Just ask Senator Bob Corker (R-TN).

We're heading out of town for a bit...

...so posting will be light-to-nonexistent for a bit. In the meantime, enjoy this year's Doctor Who Children In Need special, which is simply fantastic, even if I personally would have switched the billing order. Seniority and all that...

THIS JUST IN!

Airport screening is a joke. A bad joke that wastes everyone's time, millions of dollars, and does absolutely nothing to make anyone safer.

UPDATE: Don't worry, that won't stop TSA from coming up with new ways to waste everyone's time and damage your expensive electronic equipment.

Things like this make me miss THE BRAVE & THE BOLD

Batman meets Tim Gunn.

Kids, you prayed and you failed!

The moral is, don't pray!

Hey!

Hey! I have a question: Why do the e-mails I get from the Obama and Dodd campaigns all start off with "Hey!"? Will this continue if either one wins the election?

What he said.

This bit from a recent Lance Mannion post needs to be repeated, loudly, everywhere:

Before we go any further, a note to any members of the Media who may be reading. The Catholic League is not a religious group, it is not a Catholic group, it is a political pressure group pushing a reactionary political agenda that has virtually nothing to do with the teachings of the Catholic Church. If you feel you need a Catholic to give you a good quote for your story, the Church has people on their payroll who'll be glad to talk to you, and none of them is Bill Donohue.

Alternately, you can call up the theology departments at one of the many Catholic colleges and univerisites and ask somebody there to explain things to you.

You don't need Donohue and his minions for anything.

Thank you.

"Is Artie Bremer here tonight? Where's Artie Bremer!?"

He's right over there, apparently. Weird. I wonder how many people today have ever heard of Arthur Bremer. Or even of George Wallace...

It's not that I didn't enjoy "Ed"

...at least for the season and a half or so before he turned into a deranged stalker, and I'm always glad to see Tom Cavanaugh guest-star on Scrubs, but when exactly did he become made entirely out of David Gest?

The greatest movie never made

This is completely and totally unsafe to watch at work, school, or even, probably, at home. On the other hand, it's completely hysterical and awesome.

And they say political science isn't a science

Political Scientists Discover New Form Of Government

(Via Poliblogger.)

I don't think this can actually count as a TRIBUTE to Robert Goulet, exactly...

...and it's probably in poor taste, but I can't quite resist:

Stupid DC

I heartily agree with this sentiment:

It’s certainly nice that DC is re-re-re-re-releasing the first Justice League International trade paperback (I think that’s as many times as they’ve printed it in the past) as a fancy hardcover (for 25 bucks! on page 92), but wouldn’t it be nice if they released the rest of the Giffen/DeMatties run? I mean, the second trade is way out of print, I think, and no others exist. I mean, if this signals that the rest are coming, then fine. But a 25-dollar hardcover probably won’t sell well, especially for something that’s available elsewhere. DC: Masters of Marketing!

The JLI run is one of my two or three favorite comics runs ever, but DC has handled reprinting these stories about as well as it has not killing off these characters in gruesome and stupid comics. A hardcover reprinting the same contents as a still-in-print trade is, well, just about useless. One of the best things about collected editions is having an entire run of a series on your bookshelf, whether that's the Morrison Doom Patrol and New X-Men or Neil Gaiman's Sandman or Bob Haney's Super-Sons lunacy. And there's no way in hell DC is going to reprint a run that included sixty issues of JLI, 35 of JLE, plus multiple annuals and specials and the occasional story by Giffen & DeMatteis in Mister Miracle in a series of seven-issue hardcovers. If the hardcover included the first year of the series and the relevant annuals, I might be willing to hope DC would eventually put out another eight books to complete the run. But trickling them out seven issues at a time? Pull the other one.

Fred Thompson is a GENIUS.

Don't believe me? Read for yourself.

Snark of the day

From this article about torture porn movies:

The Saw films represent the flagship series in the "person tied to a chair and tortured" horror genre (see also: Hostel, Captivity, The Passion of the Christ).

Becoming Dexter

Jim Emerson takes a look at the tour-de-force that is the opening credits of Dexter, one of our favorite shows:

Creating, assembling, integrating, asserting, and maintaining a personality is routine for most of us, but there's no denying it's hard work. Some of us have to do it from scratch every day. That's what so chillingly magnificent about the opening credits sequence for Showtime's "Dexter." It shows a man putting himself together (piece by piece, close-up by close-up) in the course of enacting his morning rituals. Yes, there are plenty of playful groaners about knives, flesh, and blood. Dexter is a serial killer -- albeit one who's trying to use his control-freak instincts to keep his habit manageable, within certain ethical boundaries, even as he daylights in forensics for Miami homicide. (He's a blood-spatter expert, naturally.)

It's an amazing opening sequence that's unsettling enough that we to fast-forward through it most weeks.

Five years later

Paul Wellstone died five years ago today. Ezra Klein has written a wonderful piece in remembrance:

Wellstone's populism was not an affectation, or a political posture. It was laced into the fabric of his personality. It's what made him different than other politicians. His measuring stick was not the poll numbers, not the editorial pages, not the political prognosticators, not the Sunday shows -- it was the farmers, the students, the seniors, the people. His fealty to them explains his frequent lonesomeness in the Senate. When the people are your judges, you can stand against the Iraq War in an election year, you can lose votes 99-1. You can fail to pass legislation, because you know the compromise would fail your constituents. "Politics is not about power," he would say. "Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."
[...]
It's easier to be a liberal today, to be a progressive, to be proud. But there was a time when it wasn't. When liberalism in defense of peace was mocked, and moderation in service of imperialism was praised. In those days, it was hard to be a liberal. It must have been hard to be Paul Wellstone. He never showed it, though. He liked to quote Marcia Timmel. "I'm so small and the darkness is so great," she said. "We must light a candle," Wellstone would reply. He was ours. Would that he was here to enjoy the dawn.

My one and only encounter with Wellstone took place my sophomore year at Georgetown, when I met him at an event on campus and told him how much I'd loved the ads he'd used in his 1990 campaign. Next thing I knew he was asking me where I was from, what I was studying, how college was going, why they called the political science department the government department, what Pennsylvania was like, and how he'd almost gone to Lehigh but decided he wasn't into engineering. I'm sure there were more influential, more important, and more interesting people there, but I don't think he'd have paid one of them any more -- or any less -- attention and interest than he gave to a 19-year-old college kid. I have met a fair number of politicians in my life. Wellstone was the best of them.

Oh, for FRAK's sake...

The idiots are starting to bleat about the "War on Christmas" nonsense again.

You know, the war on Christmas that doesn't actually exist.

Shouldn't this crap wait until after Thanksgiving, at least?

(Via Oliver Willis.)

Chris Dodd on telecom immunity

Chris Dodd has impressed me lately by showing real leadership opposing retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by illegaly providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization. He's now got a page of his website where you can track the latest developments on this issue, and a widget for keeping track of where the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee stand:



When Dodd announced he was running, I was skeptical. But it's nice to see him putting the bully pulpit of a presidential campaign to positive use on vitally important policy issues.

Quick question for readers...

Can you see the Amazon links in the right-hand column or in the 1980s in Duluth post below?

The Office gets a convention

It's nice to see that my hometown has embraced The Office so completely that they're throwing a convention this weekend. If you're attending, though, just make sure you don't put pink highlights in your hair or curse at an overflowing toilet.

RIP Viva Laughlin

Viva Laughlin has been canceled after just two episodes, which should surprise precisely no one. The show was a muddled mess from the word go. It was an adaptation of the BBC musical murder mystery Blackpool, aired on BBC America as Viva Blackpool, and seemed determined to act out every single cliche of bad Americanizations of British TV.

Taking a limited-run show that works because it's got a limited run and turning into an aimless, open-ended mess? Check.

Taking the high-concept that's the point of the show in the first place and shunting it to the corner like that weird relative no one likes in a holiday picture? Check. The musical numbers barely showed the actors singing, or doing much of anything but walking or driving while singing.

Taking characters played by interesting-looking British people and replacing them with generically pretty American actors grown in pods? Pretty much check -- sure, Laughlin lead actor Lloyd Owen is himself a Brit, but he's much more normal looking than Blackpool's David Morrissey and his hair and wardrobe were toned down to the point of nondescriptness -- Morrissey's thinning would-be pompadour, Elvis sideburns, and bolo ties are gone, and in their place is nothing that would ever warrant a second glance on the street. Worse still is the replacement of David Tennant with some perfectly boring guy with a perfectly rhinoplastied nose.

The bottom line is that there was no point at all to making this remake; it richly deserves its cancellation and I hope it will stop any thoughts of Americanizing Stephen Moffat's amazing Jekyll series.

Tales of the Gold Monkey. On DVD.

I had forgotten this show -- which I recall quite enjoying as a kid -- even existed until I read the story about a possible release next year. I suppose it's fitting that a show that probably made it on the air to capitalize on Raiders of the Lost Ark will now make it onto DVD thanks to the fourth Indiana Jones movie. It's nice to see those wisecracking 1930s adventure heroes sticking together.

1987 all over again.

We just spent a lovely weekend in Duluth at a charming bed and breakfast with a name like something out of I Know Where I'm Going. But the important thing is that, at least in upper Minnesota, it's apparently 1987 again, if the big hair, blue eyeshadow, denim jackets, and footless tights are any indication. I suppose it's also possible that the 80s are simply making their way south after migrating to Canada in the mid-1990s, though.

Lovely.

In upgrading this blog, I seem to have completely lost all of my old Haloscan comments. This may be the last post I make here, because I am just that irritated.

UPDATE: I've turned on the Blogger comments, and am getting slowly seduced by the improved functionality of the new stuff. But if I'd known this would wipe out all the old comments, I would have relaunched this as a new blog...

Texas ruminations

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has announced she won't run for re-election in 2012, and may run for Governor in 2010. What's notable about this, to me, is that I first became aware of Hutchison when she was Texas' state treasurer and her name was routinely floated as Ann Richards' likely Republican opponent in 1994.

That changed when Bill Clinton named Lloyd Bentsen to be his Secretary of the Treasury and Richards appointed an embarassingly weak replacement for him. Hutchison ran for Senate in a special election 1993, and the 1994 Republican candidate for Governor wound up being George W. Bush. I can't help but wonder how things would be today if Clinton hadn't appointed Bentsen and Hutchison, not Bush, had run against Richards in 1994.

Still more candidates to note

People I vaguely know keep running for office; this time, they're both running for Congress in 2008.

First up is my college classmate Dan Grant, whom I did not know well but took several Government classes with, and who's running in a tough-but-winnable district in Texas.

Next is longtime Superman writer Elliot S! Maggin, whom I interviewed a few times back when I was pretending to be a comics journalist and who I've maintained an amiable and friendly e-mail acquaintanceship with since. He's running in California's 24th district.

Anyway, check out their sites, see what they have to say, and if you're so inclined, send a couple bucks their way.