That would have been a good idea:

You know what would have been a great way for one of the candidates to counteract the Gore endorsement? Call a press conference, keep the reason a secret, and then invite a "regular person" up onto stage to endorse you. Get a steelworker, or a soccer mom, to say, "I'm voting for John Edwards. I may not be a big, famous politician like Al Gore, but last time I checked my vote counts just as much as his does. Here's why I like John so much." It would be cheesy-populist endearing (just like Edwards!), and it would make a pretty powerful point about this thing not quite being over just yet.

Stuart Benjamin on Strom Thurmond:

So the choices with Thurmond seem to be that either he was a hypocrite or someone who would say anything to get elected, even if he disagreed with the words he was saying. Which one was he -- hypocrite or liar? My guess is that he really did believe what he said in the 1940s and 1950s, so I think he was probably a hypocrite. One piece of evidence that provides some support for this position is that, unlike some other former segregrationists, he never did repent.

The second disturbing question is, what did he do to cover this up? One big question is why Ms. Williams never went public while he was alive. She now has given us an answer, and it's not pretty: "Williams said her earlier statements had been a cover, part of an agreement she made with the senator to keep quiet in return for decades of financial support." She had little money -- she was, after all, a daughter with no father (and a mother who worked as a maid and died young). Thurmond helped to create her penury by not raising her, and then exploited her poverty by apparently making a deal in which he would give her money in return for her silence about her true parentage. I don't blame her -- she was dealt a pretty lousy hand by life (and by Thurmond more specifically), and she made a rational decision given her choices. I do blame him. His decision was rational in the way that hush money is often rational -- the briber would rather pay the money than have the information revealed. But it's a pretty despicable business when the hush money is paid to your daughter to further a career built on discriminating against her and others like her.

If they're allowing unsupervised furloughs for John Hinckley Jr., what's next? France banning students from earing religious gear like headscarves, yarmukles, and crosses? Oh, wait...

Three down, fifteen pages -- and 25 hours -- to go.

Finals suck.

Dumbass:

A top Vatican (news - web sites) official said Tuesday he felt pity and compassion for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and criticized the U.S. military for showing video footage of him being treated "like a cow."

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations (news - web sites), told a news conference it would be "illusory" to think the arrest of the former Iraqi president would heal all the damage caused by a war which the Holy See opposed.

"I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures," he said.

"Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he said in answer to questions about Saddam's arrest.

Quick question: What the hell dentist does the cardinal go to, that footage of a murderous kleptocratic ex-dictator getting free dental care -- as opposed to being given some face time with the fathers and brothers of Uday and Qusay's rape victims, say -- equals treating him "as if he were a cow"? Does his dentist have a cow fetish or something?

Dumbass.

Thank God at least one reviewer is, David Elliott of the San Diego Union Tribune, is taking a stand against the LOTR fangasm:

Here is an epic that divides viewers, maybe more than the "Matrix" films. Its many young fans, who did not grow up on "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Godfather" or even "Star Wars," revel in "awesome" visuals and slow, backfilling narrative.

You can't blame people (like a few Lordites who called to tell me I was too old to really relish the series) for not having seen movies made before they were born, but some perspective beyond the Tolkien or fan-site kind does help you evaluate Jackson's film achievement.

It was my awareness of what Coppola, Lean, Gance, Kobayashi and other creators of epics have done that helped prompt questions in my head, as the latest film rolled along. Call them snarky, but they may be pertinent:

Since we know that cute Frodo must save mankind by returning the gold ring to Mount Doom, why the endless padding of "heroic" suspense? Jackson really thinks we needed such touches as the episode with a huge spider worthy of a '50s monster film (reputedly he's an arachnophobe).

Details, details (Jackson loves them): How come good guys are essentially defined by ears (usually pointed) and bad guys by teeth (nearly all grotesque)? You could gnaw greasy steel wool for 2,000 years and not have teeth like these.

Why is hero Frodo (Elijah Wood) often so wan and floppy, as if in need of smelling salts? Why is he so slow to notice that creepy mini-nudist Gollum is no friend? And his pal Sam (Sean Astin) calling him "Mr. Frodo" starts to seem like a joke.

Why does the villainy, though large, lack stature? With evil Saruman not back again (and Christopher Lee is mad as blazes about it), we're stuck with Sauron, nearly as dark and abstract as the monolith in "2001," plus gruesome Orcs and medieval mammoths.

Why, in these many realms, are the only viable occupations warfare, sorcery, music and carousing? Who built and sustains these mountain-scaling keeps (perhaps Merlin, the original digitalizer)?

...

Jackson has achieved not Tolkien. He has made a cornucopian and corny hash of Tolkien, old John Martin spectacle paintings, head comix, Arthurian tales, Bob Howard macho-lit, New Zealand travelogues, Thomas Kinkade kitsch, '30s serials and the mountain films of Leni Riefenstahl, whose spirit hovers over the grand shots of relay bonfires on snowy peaks.

"Lord" is All Epic, All the Time. Jackson loves battles, which means: hurling dense masses of mostly computerized fighters at one another. "How are the battles?," he recently asked a British reporter about "Master and Commander," and one hopes the reporter had the sense to tell him that Peter Weir's sea saga involves realistic men fighting a historical war with only modest help from special effects; nothing seems cartooned, and death, though bravely won, is not mythic.

This may be the best bit:

Impressively mounted, technically dazzling, the series also italicizes in neon every feeling, while some characters (like a gloomy, inept king) function as filler.

Preach on, brother! Ever Lordite who says these are the best movies that absolutely ever were should be strapped down, Clockwork Orange-style, and forced to watch Lost in Translation until they Get It.

There are probably better things to drink while proctoring an exam than a Naked brand smoothie whose flavor is called "Man-Go-Go." The name alone could probably justify 87 sexual harassment suits...

You know an SNL host -- in this case, the insufferable Elijah Wood -- is about as funny as a field amputation when they bring in a former cast member and a taped segment to punch up the monologue. If they had to have a LOTR cast member host, why not bring back Ian McKellen? Dumbasses.

UPDATE: I do have to say, however, that the kid from Kenan and Kel is hysterical.

This is some fun, happy news:

ANGEL's big guy is getting behind the camera lens for an upcoming episode of the show. David Boreanaz told Sci Fi Wire that he's directed an episode of the show, "Soul Purpose", which will air on January 21 next year. "It's got a JACOB'S LADDER feel to it," the actor told the website.

I noticed a few years ago that, rather surprisingly, none of the BUFFY or ANGEL cast members had directed any episodes, which was rather odd considering how often that seems to happen on long-running series. (HOMICIDE's Clark Johnson may be one of the best examples of someone making the TV-series-actor-to-director jump; he directed SWAT this past summer, which was far more fun than it had any right to be.) This season of ANGEL has been surprisingly strong, given the age of the series, the addition of Spike to the cast, the mysterious loss of Charisma Carpenter from the cast, and the potentially shark-jump-inducing premise switch. Boreanaz himself has been doing some rather subtle acting, as someone who's lost nearly everything he had but can't quite give up, either.

Plus, they did that amazing flashback episode about the demon-fighting Mexican wrestler brothers, which featured the immortal line, "Andale! Andale! The devil has built a robot!"

Gary Farber has thoughts in the key of "F".

Horribly under-rated writer Priest is going to be writing a new CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON series for Marvel, starring, well, Captain America and the Falcon:

The foundation of CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON is the unshakeable friendship between these two men. The friendship is non-negotiable and the trust between them is implicit, despite the rather damming evidence that, in issue #1, The Falcon has violated National Security, and the government has given Cap just 24 hours to bring Falcon in before they go after Falcon with guns blazing. If you use the trust these two men have as a compass, it makes negotiating the many twists and turns of "Two Americas," CAF's inaugural story arc, much easier.

In four issues taking place in just over 24 hours, Cap tracks the fugitive Falcon through rural Cuba as a hurricane slams the island, trying to stay one step ahead of government agents and Columbian drug warlords-- all out gunning for Falcon who has apparently and inexplicably turned against his own government. Cap's faith and trust in his old partner is put to the test as Falcon leads Cap through a dangerous steeplechase, ending in a major firefight in Miami. Using all the training he's received from Cap to stay one step ahead of his old partner, Falcon comes into his own as a worthy adversary for Cap as he manages to evade not only Cap but the good guys and bad guys as well. Complicating matters is a powerful rogue agent, a mysterious new threat developed by the US Navy, who is determined to stop Falcon from revealing classified secrets and who will stop at nothing-- not even Cap's death-- to achieve that objective.

I'm there, dude.

Neil Gaiman's brain farts are much more interesting than my brain farts.

I woke when Dave Mckean phoned this morning.

"Did you get my e-mail?" he asked. "I need the dialogue overhaul. Stephen Fry will be here in a couple of hours."

"Hang on," I said, puzzled. "That's not happening until Thursday."

"Right," said Dave. "Today. Thursday. Stephen Fry. Couple of hours from now."

My brain farts never involve celebrities.

This word you are using, "precious," I do not think it means what you think it does...

The only good thing about the impending premiere of the third excruciating installment of the relentlessly tedious Lord of the Rings trilogy is that the three-years-and-counting Internet geekgasm about these fricking movies will finally, FINALLY, end soon.

The cast members, alas, still labor under the delusion that they have taken part in the making of The Greatest Movies That Anyone Has Ever Made In the History of Making Movies.

Orlando Bloom led co-stars Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen in the goodbye dance for excited fans. Cast members had attended the world premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," the final film in Peter Jackson's trilogy, in this capital city on Monday.

"It's amazing. The whole experience has just been the most precious time ever," said Bloom, who plays Elf warrior Legolas.

Still, I imagine that it couldn't be as bad as the fifty thousand DVD featurettes of Elijah Wood smirking about how very, very wonderful and precious being part of these very, very wonderful and precious -- and by "very, very wonderful and precious" I mean "very, very long and overwrought" -- movies has been.

And there's only one more Oscar season of fanboys griping that the movies had better win this time OR ELSE, never mind that there have been dozens of amazing motion pictures this year like Lost in Translation, American Splendor, Matchstick Men, Kill Bill, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Bend It Like Beckham, A Mighty Wind, all of which were a hell of a lot better than the previous installemnts in this turgid, bloated trilogy.

Vote Lieberman! He Eats More!

Blogger seems bloggered again. Blogger.

Silver Bullet Comic Books features a long interview with my online pal Tony Isabella about DC Comics' mishandling of his creation, Black Lightning, and DC's treatment of black superheroes in general. What's happened to these characters over the years is simply depressing; Tony's faith in and aspirations for his creation are inspiring.

Well, that's a relief.

I'm crazy Howard-Dean-Head-Man! Give me some candy!

Photo via Drudge.

Meanwhile, Political Wire links to a WTOP poll showing that Dean leads with 45% among the candidates actually running in the DC primary. That's the good news. The bad news is that the other candidates running in DC are Shaprton (11%), Moseley-Braun (8%), and Kucinich (4%). You'd think he could manage 50% or better versus the bottom tier of the primary field.

An open letter to the Teasdalian pepperpot who sat behind me at Bad Santa this weekend:

Dear Pepperpot,

Thank you for your running commentary throughout Saturday's showing of Bad Santa. Had you not been sitting behind me, I would not (to take just one instance) have known that actress Lauren Graham appears in a TV series called Gilmore Girls, nor known that you thought she was "so cute." In fact, you were even kind enough to repeat your observation of her cuteness no less than four times during the film. This knowledge affected my moviegoing experience in ways which I am sure you cannot even imagine.

I do have a few questions, however. Throughout the film, you made frequent exclamations about how shocking you found some of the events and behaviors depicted. Given that the movie is a black comedy about an alcoholic, sexaholic department store Santa Claus planning the latest in a series of Christmas Eve heists, I must ask, which part of the title "Bad Santa" did you not understand? Did you not expect that the film would address the less savory side of the life of an alcoholic department store Santa? Were you thinking he would be a wacky drunk, in the Nick and Nora Charles tradition? Did the advertisements for the film featuring Billy Bob Thornton, as the titular bad Santa, vomiting, cursing, passing out, stealing things, and so on not communicate this aspect of the film to you? Or did you simply assume that all of those scenes were staged expressly for the film's advertising, like that ad for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels fifteen years ago?

Clearly, you possess remarkable and unique cognitive capacities. Please contact me regarding medical research for which I believe you would be well suited.

Very truly, etc.

Some things I learned at the Science Museum of Minnesota yesterday:

1. Never, ever, ever go to downtown St. Paul at the same time as a hockey game and some cultural festival in which hundreds of children and their families run around the area dressed in silver-and-black lame and neon tassles and ribbons. Unless you LIKE spending an hour trying to get into the museum's parking garage. And why the hell do they call parking garages "ramps" around here? Did the locals decide they wanted a clear, unambiguous "Please rob me" sign for when they visit real cities?
   
2. Minnesotans possess a truly remarkable power to stand exactly where you want to go, and possess no understanding of the concept of a "straight line," let alone walking in one.
   
3. Just about every single non-extinct major fauna in the museum was shot by a Twin Cities businessman and donated to the museum after his death. One imagines the wives of all of these businessmen waiting for their husbands to kick off so they can get the freaking polar bear out of the foyer.
   
4. Forensic entomology is really, really cool.
   
5. Even the museum store doesn't carry stuffed toy penguins.
   

I think I've found the unintended consequence of the "Christmas season," at least as far as shopping goes, starting earlier and earlier every year: It's protected Thanksgiving and left it relatively untouched by commercialism. Not that I'm not a big fan of commercialism, capitalism, consumerism, mind you -- but it's nice to have one holiday, and especially the Thanksgiving holiday -- comfortably overlooked by the forces of commerce.

Another thing I love about Thanksgiving is that there are no real social expectations, beyond, well, eating. It's not like Halloween where people dress up in costumes that, generally, would be laughed off the stage of an eight-grade production of South Pacific or Christmas with its coercive demands for holiday cheer. It's just a nice day to take a break, relax, and think about the things you should be thankful for.

And eat turkey until you pass out, too.

It's pretty weird that I've seen two movies this year that featured Japanese characters named "Charlie Brown" (Lost in Translation and Kill Bill) and another two that used the Los Angeles subway as a plot device (SWAT and Hollywood Homicide.)

The picture doesn't do justice to the wonder that is DC Direct's action figure of the armored, middle-aged Batman of Mark Waid and Alex Ross' epic Kingdom Come. The wings are articulated and span more than a foot. The paint job and sculpting are dead on and flawless, at least on the figure I got Saturday as an early Christmas gift. And you can't quite see in the photo just how perfect Batman's slightly nasty, slightly eager-to-brawl grin is. This thing looks like an Alex Ross illustration come to life.

Now if DCD could just do something about those damn stickers on the Kingdom Come Green Lantern figure...

Well, this is different:

Kentucky U.S. Rep. Ken Lucas, a Boone County Democrat, will announce today that he will retire from Congress and not seek a fourth term next year, sources close to Lucas said Sunday.

Nick Clooney, a television personality, newspaper columnist, Democrat from Augusta and the father of actor George Clooney, will announce plans to run for Lucas' Fourth Congressional District in the 2004 election, the sources said.

Two things occur to me about Peter David' latest attempt at political commentary, in which he takes George W. Bush to task for saying, in response to the protests in London, "I am so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their mind. That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing."

1. A similar statement from a politician of whom David approved would no doubt be seen as a clever riposte that illustrates a deep and profound understanding of the pluralistic values that undergird a democracy.
   
2. Bush's critics and opponents have been telling themselves that his comeuppance and exposure as The Absolute Worst Person Who Ever Lived In The History Of Ever is just around the corner for nearly a decade. Hasn't happened yet. Not that I'm any fan of Bush -- I voted against him twice in 2000 -- but maybe, just maybe, "Bush is the devil!" is not a winning campaign slogan.
   

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

Was it just me, or was Anthony LaPaglia's Aussie accent really fighting to get out during last night's episode of Without A Trace?

This line from a rundown of DC Comics' publishing plans for next year, including a NEW TEEN TITANS graphic novel begun in the 80s, is just plain irritating:

The graphic novel was drawn well before the World Trade Center collapsed, but DC decided not to have the pages that feature the WTC redrawn. DC is considering this to be an "untold tale." (Emphasis added. - CJG)

Isn't that a bit like saying "well before the USS Arizona stopped floating" or "well before President Kennedy stopped waving to crowds in Dallas?"

Weird:

TASTY TIDBIT: Sun-Times food columnist Nigella Lawson will share her passion for food with President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair today -- serving lunch at No. 10 Downing Street.

According to the Prime Minister's press office, Lawson was asked to plan the menu and supervise its preparation.

No word on whether the saucy Lawson will be breaking bread with the men.

Also no word on whether the President will make a pass at the saucy serving girl with whom the PM has fallen in love, thereby precipitating an international incident...

OK. Can't blog. Writing paper.

Good news from DC Comics:

THE DOOM PATROL ARCHIVES VOLUME 2 HC
* A hardcover collecting DOOM PATROL #90-97
* Written by Arnold Drake with art by Bruno Premiani and Bob Brown, a new cover by Brian Bolland and a foreword by Roy Thomas
* Scheduled to be in stores in March with a cover price of $49.95 U.S.

There are enough Doom Patrol stories to fill five volumes; at 2 years between volumes, I'll be 35 or dead when the series is finally complete...

COURTIER THE FIRST: Shall we inform the queen?

COURTIER THE SECOND: Inform the queen of what?

CTF: You know.

CTS. No, I don't.

CTF: Of course you do.

CTS: No, really, I don't know what you want to inform her of.

CTF: Well, it's sort of an emperor's new clothes sort of thing.

CTS: I thought you were talking about the queen.

CTF: I am.

CTS: You said emperor. Which one is this about, now?

CTF: It's a figure of speech. This is about the queen. Just have a look at her, OK?

CTS: She's not even queen anymore. She's a senator.

CTF: True, I suppose.

CTS: And even then she's just an actress. So what's she got us courtiers for?

CTF: Hmm. I suppose she doesn't.

CTS: So we don't even bloody exist?

CTF: I suppose not. The hell with it, then, I'm not telling her everyone can see her ta-tas.

I defy anyone to look at Lileks' perm link graphic for this week (scroll to the end of the page) and not misread it as "Porn Link."

Sweet galloping Jebus, how did Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (or SUV as we call it 'round these parts) make it to 100 episodes? Does anyone even know anyone who watches this thing? Is there that much frisson from seeing actors from OZ playing cops?

Game over, man, game over.

Stuffed animal penguin toys are much harder to find than you might expect.

Robin Givhan takes a look at the hair of the men who would be President.

In a locks-to-locks comparison, Clark would be judged more favorably. Dean's hair looks as though it was ordered from an old Sears catalogue. But there's a certain Mayberry charm to Clark's barbershop cut. Yet who can linger over Clark's perfectly trimmed, supreme-Allied-commander hair when his taut profile is competing for attention? His jaw line is so perfectly sharp that a draftsman could use it as a straight edge. Clark has an ideal nose, one that should be cast in plaster and used as a teaching aid in a course on rhinoplasty. Given all that, he doesn't even need hair.
...
Seven of the nine Democratic candidates have the same haircut, with only slight modifications to accommodate the texture of their hair. It is the haircut that boys are often given on their first trip to the barber. And as many men are loath to experiment with their hair, it is often the cut that, decades later, they take to the grave. It is the "regular guy" haircut: parted on the side, clipped short at the temples, not too much layering lest it look as though a Hugh Grant/Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise degree of thought might have gone into it. It is self-consciously unstyled, a cut that camouflages any furtive use of a blow dryer or styling product. It is the cut that Dan Rather ditched when he wanted to look more modern. Richard Gephardt, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Dean and Clark all part their hair on the left. John Edwards, 50, parts his low on the right and a thick mane flops across his forehead like an inverted Nike Swoosh. It is an old man's haircut -- neither short nor rakishly long. Just unremarkably there.
...
Candidate Kerry -- he of the dramatic jaw line and a 59-year-old physique that looks particularly fetching in a motorcycle jacket -- has a thatch of hair that always looks as though it is one percentage point of humidity away from floating up and off his head. But on arid days, Kerry's hair has a thick, glamorous quality. It edges toward dashing, hints at vanity but steers clear of roguish. It is leading-man hair with a politician's part.

David Greenberg writes a sharp examination of the deification of Ronald Reagan:

For most of his career, Reagan took bold and provocative (and often wrongheaded) positions. For that boldness, he elicited affection but also distrust and even hatred, and not just from a small band of liberals in Hollywood. By airbrushing out those qualities that made Reagan controversial, by trying to turn him into a beloved George Washington-like icon, his boosters are doing him a disservice. In forsaking insight into the antipathy he often engendered, they seek to render him a sunny, universally adored, wholly benign, and two-dimensional figurehead—a portrait that, even more than this idiotic docudrama, would utterly conceal for posterity the reasons that Ronald Reagan mattered.

The whole piece is worth reading. Reagan was a complicated figure; he should, at least, be remembered and explored as such. That's a hell of a lot more interesting than reading about St. Ronald of Eureka.

You are Jesse Custer.
Jesse is as tough as they come and always willing
to prove it. He'll kick your ass for being a
jackass. Or back you up if you prove that
you're a man. An actual good guy, Jesse's word
and honor is without reproach.


What Gritty No Nonsense Comic Book Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Is there ANY occasion David Broder can't take and turn into a lament for the good ol' days of compulsory military service?

Living, eating and working together with Americans of different races, educations, religions and backgrounds, as millions did between 1940 and 1970, had benefits that lasted a lifetime and helped every aspect of our national life -- including politics.

It contributed to the sense of community that supported local schools, built local hospitals and endowed local athletic, recreational and artistic facilities. It sustained the national spirit through the decades of the Cold War and helped the nation recover from assassinations, riots and other travails of the 1960s.

It was the glue of what we have come to call the Greatest Generation.

Gee, you think maybe part of the reason a draft did all that had to with the massive military threat the Axis powers presented? And that a because-it's-good-for-you draft like the one folks like Broder trot out every time they can't come up with a real idea for a column would meet with massive resistance and criticism from just about every corner of society?

Yes, there are situations that warrant compulsory service. But those situations are on a scale comparable to the threats faced in World War II, not simply to make the Broders and Putnams of the world feel like those irresponsible young people are learning their lesson and eating their spinach.

Damn. I didn't even know Art Carney was still alive.

Art Carney, who played Jackie Gleason's sewer worker pal Ed Norton in the TV classic "The Honeymooners" and went on to win the 1974 Oscar for best actor in "Harry and Tonto," has died at 85.

Carney died in Chester, Conn., on Sunday and was buried on Tuesday after a small, private funeral. He had been ill for some time.

Jeff Jarvis has the last word on The Reagans and Saving Jessica Lynch (and, sweet galloping Christ, couldn't NBC have at least bothered to use Lynch's proper rank in their title?) and all other TV-movie brouhahas:

TV movies are crap. To act as if they matter is like acting as if we should care about the political pronouncements of, say, Robin Leach. If he came out tomorrow and said anything about Iraq, would we care or notice? No, because it's just Robin Leach. If a TV movie claims to depict the story of Jessica Lynch or Ronald Reagan, should we care or notice? No, because it's just a TV movie.
And that makes the stinks all the more fake news.

It's certainly a saner response than, say, this.

Jeff Jarvis has the last word on The Reagans and Saving Jessica Lynch (and, sweet galloping Christ, couldn't NBC have at least bothered to use Lynch's proper rank in their title?) and all other TV-movie brouhahas:

TV movies are crap. To act as if they matter is like acting as if we should care about the political pronouncements of, say, Robin Leach. If he came out tomorrow and said anything about Iraq, would we care or notice? No, because it's just Robin Leach. If a TV movie claims to depict the story of Jessica Lynch or Ronald Reagan, should we care or notice? No, because it's just a TV movie.
And that makes the stinks all the more fake news.

It's certainly a saner response than, say, this.

I just returned from the U of M Law School's 2003 Silha Lecture, which was by Ken Starr on "Campaign Finance and the Freedoms of Speech and Association." I'm skeptical of campaign finance reforms on a good day, so I was intrigued as to what he had to say.

Most of the lecture was a recapping of the basic arguments against CFR/BCRA/McCainFeingoldShaysMeehan. What I found most intriguing was Starr's tentative step into the area of policy-making. He argued that the current, command-and-control system of campaign finance law is bad policy and contrary to the spirit and tradition of free speech, association, and political discourse. His recommendation was that we outgrow it and replace it with a system of transparency and disclosure, which I tend very strongly to agree with. A perfectly transparent system of campaign finance disclosure, open to citizen monitoring (hell, sounds like a perfect job for the blogosphere) would do a hell of a lot more good than fining organizations that dare speak the name of a candidate in a broadcast ad 30 days before an election.

Joe Bob Briggs presents the "The Complete, Comprehensive, and True Story of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for your reading enjoyment. It's a frighteningly long and sordid -- and thoroughly entertaining -- tale of guerilla low-budget filmmaking.

[Director Tobe Hooper made] the most financially successful film in the history of Texas, a film that is still shown in almost every country of the world, and whose innovations have continued to influence the horror genre for the last 25 years. Using $60,000 raised by an Austin politician, he filmed mostly in and around an old Victorian house in Round Rock with a crew that used exactly two vehicles--a Chevy van for the film equipment, and a broken-down 1964 Dodge Travco motor home for the actors' dressing rooms. The result was "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," a movie whose very title has become America's cultural shorthand for perversity, moral decline and especially the corruption of children. (It remains the favorite example of Congressmen calling for the censorship of television.) Yet the movie's pure intensity, startling technique and reputation as an outlaw film have brought praise from a group as diverse as Steven Spielberg, the Cannes Film Festival, the inmates of the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary, Martin Scorsese (Travis Bickle watches it in "Taxi Driver"), the Museum of Modern Art, Paul McCartney, almost every metal band of the past twenty years, and the Colombo crime family of Brooklyn, which gleefully ranked it right up there with "Deep Throat" as one of their major sources of income in the seventies. The film itself is a strange shifting experience--early audiences were horrified, later audiences laughed, newcomers to the movie were inevitably stricken with a vaguely uneasy feeling, as though the film might have actually been made by a maniac--but the story behind the film is even stranger.

...

It was conceived, shaped, filmed, edited and released in a kind of mild doper's haze, like a free-love happening that, on the third day, turns a little ugly. Hooper would go on to direct "Poltergeist," "Salem's Lot" and many other films and television shows, but through it all he retained, like his friend Spielberg, a latent counter-culture shabbiness, with his unruly beard, mop haircut, professorial wire rims, and gravelly halting voice. (He rivals Dennis Hopper for the number of times he uses the word "man.") Hooper's scenarist, Kim Henkel, was a lanky, drawling textbook illustrator with a droopy handlebar mustache who had starred in Hooper's first feature, "Eggshells," as a dope-smoking sexaholic poet who likes to write in the nude and discuss politics in the bathtub. Henkel was also living the Austin hippie lifestyle--"but I joined the hippies one week and got fired the next. There were too many rules. It's easier to be a redneck than a hippie." And likewise, most of the "Chain Saw" cast had some connection to the counter-culture. Allen Danziger, who played the van driver "Jerry," was a childhood friend of Stokely Carmichael who had travelled from the Bronx to Austin to work with the mentally retarded in one of LBJ's Great Society programs. Dottie Pearl, the makeup artist, was a cultural anthropologist who had received government grants to make films about the Navajo. Gunnar Hansen, who played the actual chainsaw killer, was the editor of the Austin poetry journal Lucille at the time he got the part.

Yet the more you learn about "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," the more it seems less the invention of a screenwriter, or director, or acting company, than the product of Austin itself at the end of the Vietnam era. It was a different, now vanished Austin, a place where the canonical six degrees of separation had been reduced to one or two, where the governor and the small-time marijuana dealer were likely to both know the chairman of the Public Broadcasting System, and where legislators and lawyers and lobbyists could easily form marriages of convenience with poets and quirky filmmakers.

All these years later, almost everyone involved feels permanently changed, or, in some cases, permanently scarred by the film. At least one actor--Ed Neal, who played "The Hitchhiker"--can't speak about it without becoming enraged. Robert Kuhn, a criminal attorney who invested in the film, would waste years fighting for the profits that should have poured into Austin but were instead siphoned off by a distribution company that absconded with the funds. The late Warren Skaaren, who would become one of the highest-paid rewrite men in Hollywood, could trace his whole career to his association with "Chain Saw." Ron Bozman, the film's production manager, would ascend to the very pinnacle of the profession. He accepted the 1985 Academy Award for Best Picture as the producer of "The Silence of the Lambs." Still, even he says that "Chain Saw" was the greater thrill. "It was by far the more intense experience--nothing compares to it for density of experience--it was just such a wild ride."

Read the rest, as they say.

Oh, man, this is purty.

I'm not much of a reality TV sort of guy. My wife and I watched the first Joe Millionaire because we were attracted to the Stanley Millgram-esque cruelty of the whole thing, but other than that the entire phenomenon has just sort of passed us by. Never seen Survivor, don't know a Big Brother from a Bachelorette.

But we did watch the first episode of The Joe Schmo Show on The Nashville Network, I mean, TNN, I mean, yeah, Spike TV, that's the ticket...and we were hooked. The premise, of course, was that all of the participants in the show were actors except for one guy, Matt Kennedy Gould, the titular Joe Schmo. Who, as it turned out, may be the nicest damn schlub ever to walk the planet in the last few years or so.

We finally saw the last episode, in which the whole thing was revealed to Matt, last night. Here's what his hometown paper had to say about it:

Spike TV's "The Joe Schmo Show," which seemed at the outset to be the cruelest reality show yet, turned into one of the most entertaining and ultimately uplifting series as it introduced viewers to the nicest, most down-to-earth reality show contestant ever.

On last night's finale, the show's star, Mt. Lebanon resident Matt Kennedy Gould, was let in on the big secret of "Joe Schmo": It was all about him.

Gould thought he'd signed on for "Lap of Luxury," another run-of-the-mill reality series. But on last night's finale, taped in June, he learned that all the other "contestants" in this rigged reality show were actors working from a script outline. He was Joe Schmo, winner of a spa vacation, a trip to Tahiti, a flat-screen TV and $100,000.

He took it well, smiling and shaking with emotions that ran an upbeat gamut from laughs to tears of joy. This good guy was in shock, but he still had the wherewithal to continue his role as Pittsburgh's unofficial ambassador, talking up the town with genuine enthusiasm.

"Ask me now that I've won where I'm gonna go," he said to his co-stars in the finale. "I'm going to Pittsburgh!"

"Did that come off as good as I felt?" Gould asked yesterday in a phone interview from New York. "Did you get the 'Yeah!' feeling? It's really the way I felt. That's the one place I wanted to be at that moment."

The Big Reveal was one of the most stunning, oddly moving things I've ever seen on television. It was like something David Mamet might have written in a universe where he's been properly medicated for all these years -- slowly, all of the actors fessed up while Matt slowly realized that the whole thing was not what it had seemed for the last ten days.

And, jeez, it couldn't have happened to a better guy. The reason the scene was so moving was because Matt, the show had made clear, was not in a good place when he started -- he was in the kind of amiable-but-maddening directionless that hits a lot of people in their mid-late twenties. Seeing him see these actors who had been so damn impressed with what a plain old good guy he turned out to be was just plain wonderful.

Funny how the fakest reality show of them all turned out to have so much genuine emotion in it.

Mark Evanier's thoughts on Halloween largely parallel my own.

Geoff Duncan of Teevee.org writes a love letter to Cartoon Network's Teen Titans series:

Teen Titans' production style differs radically from other animated series derived from DC Comics, like the various Batman series, Superman, and the currently-airing Justice League: in fact, it owes as much to Pokémon as to the original comics and other WB animated superhero shows. For diehard fans of the original comics, this alone is cause to dismiss the series outright: they might concede Japanese anime can have merit, but an Americanization of Japanese anime for kids? No way. And taking major liberties with their oh-so-favorite characters? Bzzt. Two thumbs down. And I'm sure all those people have written their snotty opinions on snotty bulletin boards on (other) snotty Web sites.

Meanwhile, I'm sure kids are eating up Teen Titans faster than a box of sugar puffs. Even I think it's great, and I say that having never been much of a comic book or anime fan. Teen Titans works because it's not afraid to be silly, it's not afraid to be serious, it treats its characters with respect, and -- most importantly -- because it's not trying too hard.

What he said. As much as I enjoy the show, I wish it had been around when I was the age of its target audience.

Meanwhile, Teevee's sidebar blog has a snarky comment about FOX's Eliza Dushku vehicle Tru Calling. I caught about three minutes of that last night, and, Lordy, that girl can't act. She can't act so badly that you can tell she can't act while she's walking down a hallway. Plus, she has the stupidest actress name since Calista Flockhart.

Still, I'm not rooting for her show to fail, if only because I want her too busy to show up on Angel ever again...

Can we please, pretty please, export the Kilborn-era Daily Show staffers to somewhere far, far away? Like France?

Beth Littleford, Brian Unger, I'm looking at you. And don't try to hide, Mo Rocca -- I was going to give you a pass until that stupid Smoking Gun special -- otherwise known as Half An Hour I'll Never Get Back -- you did for Court TV.

I mean, Jebus, has there ever been a less talented and unfunny collection of snide, sneering, would-be ironicists? Just shut up and go away, God damn it.

Brilliant! Bloody well brilliant!

MONKEYS AND ROBOTS, LIVING TOGETHER!

Best headline ever:

Monkeys Control Robotic Arm With Brain Implants

The story is pretty cool, too:

Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.



The technology could someday allow people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries to operate machines or tools with their thoughts as naturally as others today do with their hands. It might even allow some paralyzed people to move their own arms or legs again, by transmitting the brain's directions not to a machine but directly to the muscles in those latent limbs.

The brain implants could also allow scientists or soldiers to control, hands-free, small robots that could perform tasks in inhospitable environments or in war zones.

In the new experiments, monkeys with wires running from their brains to a robotic arm were able to use their thoughts to make the arm perform tasks. But before long, the scientists said, they will upgrade the implants so the monkeys can transmit their mental commands to machines wirelessly.

"It's a major advance," University of Washington neuroscientist Eberhard E. Fetz said of the monkey studies. "This bodes well for the success of brain-machine interfaces."

I wonder if Fetz will be so enthusiastic when the monkey-robot armies come for him!

It's about damn time someone has spoken out about this:

On the street, on television, even in the office, women of all ages and sizes are wearing tight, low-slung, butt-hugging jeans and pants that hit at, or often far below, the hip. The trend isn't new—it began around '95 or so—but what is new are the unlovely depths to which the pants have now, as it were, sunk. The crotch-to-waist measurement, or rise, on a standard pair of jeans (the sort we haven't seen much of since the early '90s) is somewhere between 10 and 12 inches. Early low-riders had a rise of about 7 inches. Over the past couple of years, the rise has dipped as low as 3 or 4 inches. Low-rise, it seems, has become synonymous with no-rise. Gasoline, a Brazilian company, has even created Down2There jeans, which feature a bungee cord that allows the wearer to lower her pants as she sees fit, as though adjusting a set of Venetian blinds.

...

In their way, low-rider jeans bear a creepy similarity to Chinese foot-binding—they constrict a woman's action, rendering her ornamental. And like foot-binding, the jeans can have deleterious medical consequences. In 2001, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a doctor's report stating that low-rise jeans can cause a condition called meralgia paresthetica, characterized by numbness or tingling in the thighs, by pinching a nerve located at the hip. Left untreated, the numbness can become permanent. Forget the question of style: This is a human rights issue.

The big question...

...is, will tonight's CSI finally explain what the hell is up with Grissom's beard?

Some post-recall thoughts

1. Good luck, Governor-elect Schwarzenegger; you're going to need it. I'd really like to see him succeed -- and I can't see bringing more socially moderate and inclusive Republicans into that party as a bad thing at all.

2. Davis and Arnold both gave extremely gracious speeches. Maybe Davis will find some safe House seat to run for in a few years or something. He's going to have the same sort of martyr status among true believer Democrats Al Gore now enjoys.

3. I have a grudging respect for Tom McClintock for sticking by his guns and essentially saying, "Dammit, the people deserve the chance to vote for an authentic conservative and I'm not dropping out for a movie star."

4. I finally figured out what bugs me so much about Bustamante's speaking style. He sounds just like a fresh-out-of-the-seminary priest giving a homily at a First Friday Mass for fifth-graders.

5. I don't think this is a big Republican victory; I think this is more about free-floating, anti-status-quo anger on the part of voters.

6. With 96.4% of the vote in, more people voted for Schwarzenegger than "No" on the recall -- in other words, Schwarzenegger essentially won the head-to-head race against Davis.

7. Democracy is fun.

This is interesting:

Wed Oct 8, 3:58 AM ET



Afghani women clad in burqa walk pass a billboard in Kabul featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) on October 8, 2003. The man they know as 'Arnold, the American man, the bodybuilder', was elected as the new governor of California on Tuesday. Schwarzenegger is a hero among many in Kabul where bodybuilding is a popular sport. REUTERS/Rathavary Duong

Teenage brains

From Glenn Reynolds' interview with Neal Stephenson:

TCS: One of the themes in Quicksilver seems to involve the relationship between money and knowledge. I remember a scene in Stranger in a Strange Land in which Michael [the Man From Mars] suddenly understands money, and he's staggered -- he thinks it's the most beautiful thing humans have created. Do you remember that scene?


NS: I don't remember that. I read the book as a teenager, but I think I was more interested that he was sleeping with so many people. The money part must not have made an impression.

Final thoughts on the recall

1. How did Davis and Bustamante ever get elected to anything in the first place? Watching these guys has been like watching paint dry. Smarmy, sanctimonious, condescending paint. It's not that they have no personalities, it's that if they had no personalities they'd be better off. How come what's arguably our most interesting state produces such bland pols? California's politicians should be able to give New York's a run for their money on the sheer weirdness and entertainment scale.

2. If Schwarzenegger gets elected, he'll owe at least some thanks to Bill Clinton and his apologists, who spent years telling us personal conduct doesn't matter.

3. If Davis wins, we'll be treated to the sorry spectacle of him saying "Hasta la vista!" in his speech. We'll also probably get to hear Schwarzenegger say "I'll be back" again, maybe to make up for the fact that he didn't say it (IIRC) in TERMINATOR 3.

4. If Schwarzenegger wins he'll also, probably, say "Hasta la vista" in his speech. He'll also be able to go to Kennedy family events and make fun of all the actual Kennedys who have lost elections in the last few years.

5. This recall was fun. Can we have another one?

This, on the other hand, is just plain weird. Well-meaning, but weird.

John Edwards and his entire family designed and handpainted this one-of-a-kind clock! Show your support for this hardworking family man! The hand-painted and custom designed (by Mrs. Edwards and daughter Catharine) ceramic clock features a stylized American flag, with the custom message "Time for Change John Edwards 2004." Senator. Edward's signature is apparent in the lower right corner on the rear side of the clock. The clock features a photograph of Mr. Edwards helping to paint the clock while visiting Bedford, NH in August 2003. The clock is free standing (easel back) and requires one AA battery (sorry - not included). All proceeds from this auction go to VSA arts of New Hampshire. VSA arts brings the arts to people with disabilities. Our 501c3 number is 02-0398863. Thanks go to You're Fired of Bedford, NH and Mr. Edwards' New Hampshire campaign staff for all of their assistance. Please visit our other auctions to see clocks by other presidential candidates. All clocks - including those made by local artists and regional baseball team the Nashua Pride - may be bid upon and viewed at VSA arts annual fundraiser, Chocolate Blues, taking place at PSNH in Manchester, NH on October 3, 2003 from 6-10pm. Contact karen@vsaartsnh.org for more information about the clocks or the event.

This is so weird it just might be true:

So, yes, I do think there is a distinct possibility that we're going to wake up some time after October 7 and realize that Schwarzenegger planned this whole thing out like a Hitchcock movie (except for the LAT's unexpected last-minute demonstration of [Spanish slang for "guts"]) ... "I haven't lived my life to be a politician," he says. O.K. Would you believe the last decade? ...

Sharon Waxman of the Washington Post is back from Iraq and on the Hollywood beat with a lengthy interview with Quentin Tarantino.

About three years ago Tarantino ran into Thurman at an Oscar party, at which she mentioned: When are we going to do "Kill Bill"? The story was something they'd dreamed up together when they were working on "Pulp Fiction" years before. At the time Tarantino had written a 10-page synopsis and put it in a drawer.

With neither his nor Thurman's career flourishing, Tarantino pulled out the treatment and got to work. The writing came easily. Production had to wait for Thurman to have a baby. Then came: martial arts training in March, April and May 2002. Pre-production in China in May. Shooting in June, July, August, September. The crew moved to Los Angeles, but still shooting continued. In January they took a break, then, exhausted, shot some more. The Cannes Film Festival came and went. Editing started this summer. Finally Weinstein saw a cut and proposed a solution to what would have been a three-hour-plus martial arts epic: Slice "Kill Bill" in two, making it a two-part, R-rated epic that seems destined to entice adolescent movie fans who will have a hard time getting in to see it. Weinstein said that the violence hasn't turned off test audiences, male or female, and that the rating doesn't worry him. "There is always a sizable audience for a good film," he says. "Women get the movie just as much as men do. They get that the action is cartoonish. I think 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Reservoir Dogs' are both more violent than this film."

...

Watching him, one is reminded of what was striking about the man when he first burst onto the scene in 1992 with "Reservoir Dogs," which was his unabashed, unadulterated love for the movies, all movies. Whatever else has happened to Quentin Tarantino in the interim that, at least, remains untouched.

Four days to Kill Bill!

Why School of Rock rocks:

And part of what's so touching about School of Rock is that it's clearly from the work of shy people: It's a rock-'n'-roll anthem for the timid. It's about kids—and grown-ups—who need to rev themselves up to transcend their own self-doubt. Rock—or dreaming about rock—is how they get out of themselves and connect with the cosmic oneness.

School of Rock is totally formulaic: There are stuffy killjoy parents and a stuck-up stick insect of a principal—even though she's played with delicious fidgety self-consciousness by Joan Cusack. You've seen this Battle of the Bands climax a thousand times. But there are rare formula pictures—the bicycle movie Breaking Away (1979) was another—that seem to be arriving at the formula from the inside, with a kind of naive hopefulness that seems as much a product of movie-love as it is of a desire to reach a mass audience. For all its slickness, School of Rock has a let's-put-on-a-show quality that touches you in the most direct way a movie can. It's as if the filmmakers had said, "I'd like to teach the world to kick butt—in perfect harmony."

Hit and Run reports that Rep. Patrick Kennedy is criticizing Howard Dean for his pro-gun stance, but misses a big howler in the original report of Kennedy's statement:

"This is a personal issue with me, and I'm very disturbed at the fact that people are not paying attention to Dr. Dean's record" on guns, said Kennedy, nephew of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, both of whom were assassinated by guns.

I'm no NRA member, but I seem to remember two fellas named Oswald and Sirhan doing the assassinating in those cases. I hasten to point out that it's not Rep. Kennedy but the Washington Post's Helen Dewar making the claim that guns and, apparently, guns alone killed John and Robert Kennedy. Perhaps it's just a case of tortured-by-deadline syntax, but someone should have caught this.

Whoa:

ADAPTATION director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman are working on a top secret horror movie for their next film -- and that's all anyone really knows at this moment, except that it's happening at Columbia Pictures. Columbia is where the duo made ADAPTATION. This would be the first horror piece for either Jonze or Kaufman and both men will also produce the new film.

Neil Gaiman: Not dead yet. Just reading his journal makes me tired...

Heh.

MoveOn.org, a group that came into existence to defend Bill Clinton from impeachment, is launching an ad campaign "devoted to putting Schwarzenegger's problem with women into the public eye."

In the words of Baseball Annie, the world is made for those who are not cursed with self-awareness.

CBS's craptacular new cop show Cold Case airs its second episode tonight. It would be possible to create a detailed account of why it merits the description "craptacular," and that account would include the protagonist's really bad Kirsten Dunst impression and the pilot's use of a watered-down retelling of the Martha Moxley case, but, really, all you need to know is that it's basically the BBC's Waking the Dead only without the compelling cases and interesting middle-aged characters.

Whose idea was it to upgrade the painfully unfunny Jeff Richards from featured player to full cast member on Saturday Night Live?

Jesse Ventura's MSNBC show is now on the air, surprisingly. I say surprisingly not just because it's been in development hell for seemingly as long as the Tim Burton Superman movie that was never made, but also because we went to a test show this summer and it was, well, painfully bad. The umbrella problem, as it were, was simply that there was no reason for the show to be hosted by Jesse Ventura. They'd tried to add some vague, wrestling-ish aspects to it -- the working title was The Arena, at one point the audience voted thumbs-up or thumbs-down on which side of a debate it agreed with -- but, essentially, any guy in a suit could have been the host. There were about seven different formats crammed into the hour, and Ventura had no idea how to steer a television discussion; at one point he blithely derailed a guest by lobbing a non sequitur at him a minute or so before that segment ended.

On the other hand, it's not like anyone watches MSNBC...

Raging Jess links to an article that argues for the use of "they" as the third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun in place of "he." What I find most maddening about such suggestions is that they seem more interested in trying to score points in the gender wars that, presumably, still rage in some obscure parts of the world than in suggesting that better writing would, in almost every case, make the whole question moot.

The article in question uses as an example the ad copy, "Everyone's having the time of their lives at Mammamia's." That could simply be written as "People are having the time of their lives at Mammamia's" or "You'll have the time of your life at Mammamia's."

This seems, to me, a lot like the problem with split infinitives; proscriptive grammar aside, most sentences read better (at least to me) when infinitives are not split and the rare exceptions (ie, "To boldly go...") are precisely that: rare.