Catfisting update!

Catfisting is now legal in Missouri.

What about Festivus?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books for kids

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

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

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

Quick JLU thoughts

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

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

An Emily Litella moment

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

Words that make me feel old

"Jenny McCarthy's Comeback Pictorial."

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

I'm gonna freak out with my geek out*

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

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

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

* with apologies to Stifler.

Sax for sale!

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

Fooish inconsistency

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

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

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

A quasi-MSTie moment

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

Mmm...falafel

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

More comics journalism that sucks

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

Stupid, stupid networks...

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

Who knew?

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

Synergy!

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

An observation

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

Oh, yes. She will be mine.

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

DC in February

Some thoughts on DC's upcoming wares for February:

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

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

ALL STAR COMICS ARCHIVES VOL. 11 HC

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

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

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

GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH #5

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

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

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

JLA CLASSIFIED #4

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

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

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

SEVEN SOLDIERS #0

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

I'm there, dude.

Boids

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

A horse of a different color

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

Spectre? I hardly know 'er!

If you ever needed to see Alex Ross dressed up as The Spectre, go here now. Fortunately, he went with the classic version, in the trunks, and not his own Kingdom Come version, who was nekkid under that cloak. Betcha we never see DC Direct make a Kingdom Come Spectre figure.

Harry Lampert

The comics press is reporting that Harry Lampert, the artist who co-created the Flash, died this past weekend. I mention this only because Mr. Lampert talked my ear off at the San Diego con in 2000, and seemed like a terrific guy who was thrilled that people were still interested in something he drew five decades and change prior. Tom Spurgeon has details and a comprehensive listing of links in his report.

Small thoughts

Mike Sterling articulates my immediate reaction to last week's Smallville. It's becoming increasingly more difficult to watch that show with much of my brain functioning. Thank Jebus for Allison Mack and Erica Durance. Smallville has always been at its best when it deals head-on with the fact that we're watching the formative experiences of The Boy Who Will Be Superman instead of wallowing in teen angst and doe-eyes, but of late the show has pretty much been saving that sort of thing for the season openers and finales, and spending the rest of each season in as much of a generic status quo as it can.

On the plus side, though, Allison Mack. And Erica Durance. I'd love to crash a Lane/Sullivan family reunion some time...

Is there a crazy doctor in the house?

So it turns out that the title character in Fox's new medical drama House is, in fact, Hugh Laurie (looking kind of like he's doing a Xander Berkeley impression), and not some American actor who kinda looks like Hugh Laurie. She Who Must Be Obeyed was right, and it means we'll be giving the show a chance tomorrow night. I just hope it doesn't make the same mistake previous crazy doctor shows like Chicago Hope and Gideon's Crossing did, namely, creating a fascinating and multi-layered central character of dubious stability and then surrounding him with a cast of intensely boring people who suck all of the drama out of the show whenever they're on-screen. Adam Arkin, I'm looking at you.

Night Court on DVD

If you've been dying to see that season of Night Court that was full of characters you don't remember from when people actually watched the show and Dan acted totally different and Bull had hair, well, it's coming out on DVD next year.

I wonder how many shows have a really bad or different first season that's making studios leery of putting them on DVD. St. Elsewhere's first season, for instance, is almost unrecognizable as the show it would become later on in its run.

Well, SOME sequels don't suck...

Potentially good news: Pierce Brosnan will return for a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair.

Potentially bad news: Rene Russo is not yet signed on.

Really freaking weird news:

According to Brosnan's producing buddy Beau St. Clair (who spoke with Variety), the sequel will try and examine the character of Thomas Crown in a "post September 11th" light.

Because, you know, 9/11 had such a huge impact on dashing international art thieves who are in it for the fun and return their stolen goods immediately. Look, if I go to a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair, I'm going because I want to see a fluffy, exciting caper movie with a really weird romance between actual grown-ups in the mix. I'm surprised I have to explain this.

(Thinking about it, 24, with its intensely dark and paranoid spin on domestic and international politics, may be the only real piece of pop culture that truly gets at a post-9/11 mindset...)

A wish for 2008

Do you know what would be nice? An election where neither party's ticket featured anyone named Bush, Dole, Gore, or Clinton. That would be a first in my lifetime.

Bad mojo

If one has hung a rosary from one's rearview mirror, for what I imagine would be to bring luck or blessings or something like that, shouldn't one take care to hang it so that the crucifix on the end doesn't bang on the dashboard every three seconds or so?

Pointless waste of time

Resolved: Raking leaves is the most idiotic activity which a homeowner is expected to do. Discuss.

One more thing

When you're reading the election post below, feel free to insert a joke to the effect of "When did American politics turn into a late-period Allen Drury novel?" wherever you feel it's appropriate and most humorous. Thanks.

Election thoughts

I don't have much to offer in the way of specific diagnoses of the 2004 election; it's amazong how close Kerry came against a sitting President during a war, and I suspect one analysis I heard on C-SPAN yesterday, to the effect that 51% was the upper bound of Bush's potential share of the popular vote, is spot-on. It's far less of a mandate than the administration is claiming, but it's not like strategeric exaggerations are anything new for this administration. I'm glad that there were no large voting irregularities or problems, I remain confident that I voted for the better man, and I'm truly proud to have voted for John Kerry.

That said, I think two of the best and most sober analyses of the election I've read are this one by Kevin Drum and this one by Josh Marshall. I also think much of the hand-wringing that this is somehow the end of the Democratic party is premature (though it may also be what kicks the party's ass into gear for 2008). Bush's coalition is a pretty precarious one, and there's no clear heir apparent for the next time around; Cheney has said he has no interest in running (cue dusted-off Howard Baker Chief of Staff joke here) and there just aren't that many names that spring readily to mind who could appeal to evangelicals in the same way Bush does. (Snark: Perhaps he'll thank them by actually going to church some time.)

As readers of this blog probably know, I'm working on a PhD in political science. The day after the election, several dozen faculty and grad students met to discuss the election. And after about an hour of kibbitzing about turnout, demographics, exit polls, and the like, a student from China got in the last word. He told us about a discussion he'd had with his landlady, who lamented the Supreme Court decision that gave us Bush in 2000. His response was along the lines of:

Your Supreme Court made a bad decision. But the Supreme Court has made bad decisions before. And that bad decision wasn't as bad as Dred Scot or Korematsu. And we have another election this year. That's a wonderful and precious thing and you should all cherish the mere fact that you were able to vote and will be able to vote again.

And, finally, Ken Layne has been on an entertaining rampage that will satisfy the most bloodthirsty Democrat. He also links to this map which is, frankly, chilling when compared to the 2004 electoral map.

Too much time for comfort

No one should have the time to go to this:

If you're anywhere near the Hollywood area, and if you're free next Monday night, you can meet the cast of Too Close For Comfort as Rhino throws a reunion party.

...
We are told that Nancy Dussault, Jm J Bullock, Lydia Cornell and Deborah Van Valkenburgh are all confirmed to appear. There will be DVD set giveaways and screening of episodes.

Election

Well, THAT was unexpected. Oy. And ugh.

Voting

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I cast our ballots this morning; we registered on-site (yay same-day registration!) and then voted. I was voter #400 at our precinct ar about 8:15 am; I don't know if that means turnout is heavy or light or indifferent. This vote felt particularly good, and both of us afterward reported taking extra care filling in the ovals on our ballots.

My prediction: Kerry with at least 289 electoral votes. Could be a long night, but I wouldn't be surprised if we knew who won relatively earlier than we're all expecting.

This just in

In other news, water is wet.

Separated at birth

Mark has a terrifying observation about the new Legion comic.

The center of the political universe

I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which just may be the center of the political universe this election cycle. My parents and their friends have all been volunteering on the Kerry campaign and will be driving people to the polls tomorrow. And another Scranton expatriate has written about the surreality of seeing one's hometown get so much attention from Presidential candidates. This description of the town really struck home:

It's ironic to see Scranton become now the subject of so much national interest, to see powerful men lavish so much attention on a city that has been so neglected for so long. Scranton has been mocked for a reason, cruel and unnecessary as it is. To grow up in Scranton was to know that your hometown was in decline. You couldn't miss it. Year after year, the downtown became less vibrant. Stores boarded up one after the other. You'd drive through your neighborhood and notice more people weren't keeping up with yards grown mangy with weeds. They weren't replacing the siding on their houses, letting it crack and peel. There was less money for such things. Jobs were leaving town, heading to Mexico or overseas or wherever. It didn't matter where they went -- they weren't coming back.

My parents' generation grew up with the belief that they could always get a decent job working with their hands or doing a trade if they weren't college material. But over the years, good-paying jobs -- union jobs -- moved away, and were replaced by low-paying ones like telemarketing. And for those of us who were college material, staying became less possible, despite all of Scranton's unique and endearing qualities -- its mountainous beauty, sense of safety, and small-city intimacy. It's something my parents, who still live within six blocks of where they grew up, could probably never fathom until it happened. For their children to pursue their dreams, they had to leave Scranton -- home -- where generations of our relatives have lived. And so my two sisters and I and countless of our former schoolmates and friends have settled elsewhere.

Green Bay Day

Today marks the first time in the history of ever that I cared about the outcome of a football game. It's not that I'm superstitious, I just like all the signs and portents pointing in my preferred direction...

Here endeth the Whedonverse

I got a weird feeling reading the news that the final season of Angel will be released on February 15, 2005. Once it's out, that's that, barring the ever-more-unlikely news of some spinoff or another.

I do wish there were going to be commentaries for "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" and "Smile Time," two of my favorite episodes of any series, ever. Ah, well...

There's a good buck in that Hell racket

Remember the King of the Hill where a new neighbor set up a "Holy House" to protest Halloween and bring eight-year-olds to Jesus? Apparently it's a good way to make some cash:

Perhaps the most extreme incarnation is Hell House, a morality play featuring a gay man dying of AIDS, a lesbian suicide, drunken driving and a botched abortion -- and the reeking, fiery hell that is the consequence of such sins, said the Rev. Keenan Roberts, pastor of Destiny Church of the Assemblies of God near Denver.

Since 1996, Roberts has sold 600 $299 Hell House how-to kits that include scripts, detailed suggestions on music, costumes and props -- including how to select the best cut of meat to depict an aborted fetus -- and tips for dealing with skeptical journalists.

Covers

Ian Brill links to an awesome Marvel cover from the 70s: The Fantastic Four vs. Godzilla. It's the kind of cover that would leap out at you from the quarter bin, because it's just that awesome a cover.

Problem is, I suspect, that the story inside doesn't come anywhere near the scenario the cover makes you imagine. I wonder if that's not where so much of the appeal of comics, particularly long-running shared-universe superhero comics, comes from. Once you've got a basic knowledge of who characters are, covers invite you to fill in the blanks yourself. This cover would be really silly if you didn't know who the Fantastic Four were. But if you know Reed's a brilliant scientist, Ben's a brawler, the FF has faced lots of monsters, and so on, you start to wonder if Sue's force-field can contain Godzilla, or if Godzilla's radioactive breath can put out Johnny's flame or make Ben sweat, and so on. It's not all that different from the thought-process that takes place between panels, it just happens on a larger scale and draws on more of the reader's existing knowledge of characters and situations.

That Julie Schwartz fella, I think he was onto something with having the writers try to come up with stories for covers that had already been drawn.

Wonderfalls

Good news: Wonderfalls' DVD release is set for February 1, 2005. Later than I'd like, but better late than never.

Weird news: If your little-known series stars a strikingly attractive young woman, would you make your cover art look like this? Is that View-Master attached to her head or something?

Quiz time

The "Bush was wired" story refuses to die. What I want to know is, given how incoherent Bush was in that first debate, who was on the other end of the wire that night? Was it:

A. Cookie Monster,
B. Forrest Gump,
C. Grimlock, or
D. Bizarro?

Baseless election prediction

If Bush loses, Martha Stewart will get pardoned.

I have zero evidence to support this. Just a weird hunch-like intuition.

The weight of office

Something struck me while I was watching the third debate (even if it's taken me weeks to get around to writing about it): George W. Bush should never have been President.

I don't mean in terms of the fiasco that was the 2000 election. Rather, it was hard to watch him and not conclude that this was a man who had never really thought about what holding this job would and could entail. You can't be President and have your hands clean. And I don't think that ever really penetrated his brain, and has helped contribute to the weird disconnect from reality we saw at times in the debates.

If he hadn't won (or run), he would have finished his term as governor of Texas and retired to that semi-royalty status that Texans grant their former governors, sat on some corporate boards or something, and had a nice quite semi-retirement. He would have been better off. So would we have been.

Unfair, but funny. And that's what matters!

Here's an amusing, if hideously unfair, photo from the ongoing debacle of the Kentucky Senate race.

Uphill

The Washington Post's Jabari Asim is holding out hope that UPN's Kevin Hill will be that rarest of television animals, a successful dramatic series with an African-American lead. I understand his point; I remember waiting at the D.C. courthouse with She Who Must Be Obeyed to get our marriage license in the fall of 2000. Instead of muzak, the waiting area had a local radio station feed, and I remember hearing the DJ urge people to watch that night's premiere of Gideon's Crossing, because (paraphrasing) "We don't get many shows like this." That made an impression on the white guy waiting for his number to be called.

Kerry, Catholics, and abortion

Andrew Sullivan is one of many bloggers speculating on John Kerry's surge of support from Catholic voters following the debates:

My own hunch is that undecided Catholics have been repulsed by the way in which the hierarchy has intervened in this election, and the outrageous notion that voting for one candidate can amount to a sin worthy of confession. Catholics know what is appropriate in politics, they know how they feel about the moral standing of the current hierarchy, and they can vote freely in a secular democracy.

Which is a good point. But I think there's more to it than that. My ears perked up during the third debate when Kerry described the decision to have an abortion as one between (paraphrasing here) "a woman, her doctor, and God." I suspect that the addition of God into the mix did a lot to make Catholic voters who are uncomfortable and uneasy about both the legality of abortion and the cost a ban would have (since making it illegal wouldn't stop abortions, it would just mean messier, uglier, more dangerous ones) see Kerry in a new light; I think he spoke to the deeply conflicted feelings many Catholics -- among whom I suspect many of the teachers I had in 17 years of Catholic education are included -- have on the issue, and gave them a reassurance that he saw a moral dimension to the question that many previous Democratic candidates have seemed to miss.

To infinity...and BEYOND!

Shatner wants to go into space. Did I mention that William Shatner rules?

The Jesse Show

Really, should anyone be surprised that the Ventura endorsement of Kerry is news as much for the fact of the endorsement as for Ventura's weird behavior during it?

Bored bored bored bored bored

It's really amazing how this season of Smallville is capable of a having subplot that involves a guy moving from Paris to Smallville to be with his underage girlfriend and getting a job at her high school -- which must be some sort of stalker distance record -- and said girlfriend's body being mysteriously scarred by some alien power, and making said subplot unspeakably, impossibly boring. Sometimes I get the feeling no one on the Smallville production staff has ever sat down and thought about just how creepy every single relationship they've put Lana in is...at this rate, they won't need to write a tearful, wistful parting of Lana and Clark in the final days of the series, because she'll be dead in a gutter somewhere. I mean, DAMN.

The Seven Soldiers of Victory get archived

Several thoughts ran through my mind at the news that DC is releasing a Seven Soldiers of Victory Archive in January.

1. What the hell? (This Fanboy Rampage comment thread is probably right that it's tied into Grant Morrison's upcoming Seven Soldiers revamp)
   
2. There are only six of the seven soldiers on the cover. Why no love for Stripesy?
   
3. Guess we won't see Legion Volume 13 in January.
   
4. Versions of six members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory have appeared on Justice League Unlimited: Crimson Avenger, Green Arrow, the Shining Knight, Stargirl (AKA the new Star-Spangled Kid), S.T.R.I.P.E. (AKA Stripesy), and Vigilante. The rights to Speedy are probably tied up because of his appearances on the Teen Titans cartoon.
   
5. This archive reprints the SSOV's appearances in Leading Comics #1-4 (Great name for a comic, by the way; I guess "Noteworthy Comics" was taken...). According to this fan site, the team appeared for 14 issues. Will we see another three or four volumes to collect their whole run?
   

The Internet is weird.

So this afternoon I decided to check some blogs before I did some class reading. I headed over to Atrios, where he'd linked to a post by Matt Yglesias about the "the creeping Putinization of American life," which was very interesting and thought-provoking, and then I read a little further and discovered another post Yglesias had made about a comment I'd posted back in July about the From Hell movie adaptation to a blog comments discussion about idiot plots.

The Internet is weird.

Our Vader, who art in...?

I had no idea.

Reap as ye sow

I know I'm not the only Democrat who was vaguely, kinda, sorta uncomfortable by JOhn Kerry's reference to Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's gay lesbian daughter who's a gay homosexual. I asked myself if that was fair, if it wasn't some sort of sop to bigotry or something, if that was the kind of thing I wanted my candidate doing.

But then I remembered how the Bush campaign turned John McCain's adopted daughter into a political football in South Carolina in 2000. So, fuck it.

Best DVD cover ever

Behold: Sealab 2021 Season 2.

Without a rehearsal?

TNT has been showing the earliest episodes of Without a Trace on Monday nights, and this week's was fascinating to watch from an acting perspective.

Throughout the episode, Anthony LaPaglia's Jack Malone and Poppy Montgomery's Samantha Spade have a very odd dynamic going on; she's being flirty and he's being withdrawn. At the end of the episode, we learn that Jack and his wife have been separated for three months. Later on in the series, we learn that Jack and Sam had had a relationship that ended before the series began (if I'm remembering correctly). And that's how LaPaglia was playing this episode, while Montgomery seemed to be playing it as if she were flirting with the safely married guy she wouldn't mind having a relationship with if not for the inconvenient fact of his marriage. It all made for a very weird viewing experience, and reminded me of how William B. Davis has said he made up a different backstory for Cancer Man in every episode of X-Files he appeared in.

DVR

After a major-league VCR FUBAR last weekend (which resulted in us missing the finale of THE COMPLEX: MALIBU and the third episode of WORST WEEK OF MY LIFE on BBCAmerica; if anyone can provide copies, please e-mail me at cgaldieri-at-yahoo-dot-com) we bit the bullet and signed up for a DVR box from our local cable company.

We've had it for less than 8 hours and I'm already in love.

We taped SMALLVILLE and LOST at the same time, as well as the debate. TNT is showing the "Smile Time" episode of ANGEL tomorrow so I'm recording that one just for fun. I've programmed it to tape every new episode of CSI, WITHOUT A TRACE, TEEN TITANS, JUSTICE LEAGUE, SOUTH PARK, LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION, and SCRUBS. We'll give the new season of ENTERPRISE a try, as well as VERONICA MARS.

I am giddy with delight and in awe of the DVR's power.

There is the love of a man for a woman, and then there is the love of a man for a fine Cuban cigar, and then there is the love of a man for his DVR.

Spitting image

I found it really, really strange that President Bush seemed to have spittle-flecked lips at some points during the debate.

Christopher Reeve links

Mark Evanier has some thoughts on the various ironies of Reeve's life, and the ending we won't get to see now.

John Kerry, who referred to Reeve in an answer about stem-cell research during Friday's debate, released a statement.

Kathleen David shares a funny encounter with Reeve in which he was a clueless actor and she was a clueful stage manager; readers who have spent time in and around theatres will appreciate it.

Bad craziness

Kos links to reports of bad craziness and assorted weirdness in the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky.

Christopher Reeve

I saw the news this morning and doubt I can say anything memorable, but what's worth doing is worth doing badly. Christopher Reeve will always be the face I think of when I hear the name "Superman." I've lost count of the number of times I've watched Superman: The Movie; I was four years old when I saw it in the theater and it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought. He made me believe a man could fly, and in fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, and did it with a dignity and grace and charm that other renditions of the character have rarely approached. Since his accident in 1995, I have watched, astonished, at his continuing creative life and his activism for medical research, and I can only pray for that sort of determination and courage should I ever find my world shattered in an instant as he did. Rest in peace, Mr. Reeve, and thank you.

What a Dick

Am I the only person who saw Dick Cheney checking out Cate Edwards after tonight's debate? What a pantload. Big time.

Encyclopedia Disappointmenta

When I read DC was updating its classic Who's Who series with an oversized hardcover DC Comics Encyclopedia, I was more than a little curious; I loved the original and wondered what an updated version would look like. I took a look at the book at Barnes & Noble today and was extremely disappointed, to the point that when I came home one of the first things I did was go online and remove it from my Amazon wish list.

The book's biggest problem might be on the conceptual level; it can't decide if it's a catalog of the DC Universe and its continuity as it stands today or if it's celebrating of everything DC has ever published as a company. The selection of entries is just plain bizarre: We get weird little entries about characters no one has thought of in years and don't exist in DC's continuity any more, like Celeste Rockfish from the Giffen/Bierbaum run of Legion of Super-Heroes, half-page entries dedicated to short-run comics like the universally reviled Lab Rats series, and teeny-tiny listings for members of groups like the Russian super-team The People's Heroes, plus a group entry that duplicates all of the information contained in the individual member listings.

Artistically and production-wise, the book is a mess. Much of the artwork consists of low-quality reproductions from other comics or even past editions of Who's Who, and many of the listings don't even bother presenting a simple, clear full-body shot of their subject. Some of the ones that do THAT do it with shrunk-down, barely-visible copies of art from previous versions of Who's Who. Finally, the colored backgrounds for each entry are distracting and often clash with one another.

It was also depressing to realize just how far the DC Universe has fallen since the glory days of the original series. Entry after entry commemorated some forgotten character created for a stupid sales stunt, like the repulsive "Bloodlines" event, or all those annuals introducing foreign heroes who promptly dropped off the face of the earth, or the all-new, all-lame adjectiveless mid-90s Teen Titans series, or the hideous manga-flavored run of Superman comics from the not-quite-relaunch that came before this not-quite-relaunch.

It was sad, I tell ya, just plain sad.

There were also a few sloppy errors I noticed paging through it: Black Lightning's entry depicted him in the MD Bright-designed costume that was never used in a comic, and Minuteman was depicted in the entry for Mr. Scarlet.

Worst of all, entries contained no credits for their creators or the artists whose work was used in the entries. There was simply an "Artist Acknowledgements" listing in the back of the book.

I'm afraid my verdict is to save your money and buy back issues or some TPBs instead.

Lileks, you ignorant slut.

I didn't realize just how bad the debate had gone for Bush until I read Lileks' insane and stupid rant about it this morning. Here it is, with my comments interspersed:

I hate the debates. I have a vision of 65 million undecided Americans tuning in and making a snap judgment for all the wrong reasons.


Wrong reasons? Like listening to a candidate field questions about major issues in a forum without aides, handlers, and notes? This isn't shooting the messenger, this is shooting the medium. Marshall McLuhan would be proud. Next time just come out and say "Presidents don't need none of that fancy book learning!", m'kay?

Wow, he pounded the podium to emphasize each word - but the other guy pounded each syllable. What’s this about sealing Fallujer? Is it leaking? Did they have a flood?

"Pay no attention to the city in Iraq that has spiraled out of control into a sea of violence and misery! Don't look at how the President has ceded it to the terrorist insurgency in Iraq! Look, look! An iMac!"

But mostly I hate the debates because I simply cannot abide hearing certain statements I’ve been hearing over, and over, and over again. I can’t take any more talk about bringing allies to the table. Which ones? Brazil? Mynmar? Microfrickin’nesia? Are there some incredibly important and powerful nations out there whose existence has hitherto escaped me? Fermany? Gerance? The Galactic Order of the Belgian Dominion? Did we piss off the Vulcans? Who?

Maybe it's the allies Bush touted as part of the "coalition of the willing" that have been dropping like flies, because this President can't even hold that together? And that "bringing allies to the table" would involve actually maintaining the alliances one makes, and working to keep one's allies on one's side instead of cutting and running because you had no farking idea what you were getting into?

If we mean “France and Germany,” then please explain to me why the reluctant participation of these two countries somehow bestows the magic kiss of legitimacy. They want in? Fine. They don’t? Fine. At this point mooning over France is like being that sophomore loser dorm pal who spent his dateless weekends telling his loser roommate about a high school sweetheart who stood him up for the prom. Give it up. Move on. I understand; they are wise and nuanced, we are young and dumb. We’re the cowboy leaning with his back against the bar, elbows on the rail, watching the door; we need our European betters to teach us how to ape the subtle forms of Nijinsky, limbs arrayed in the exquisite form of the Dying Swan.

"Look at how pretty the iMac is! Isn't it a pretty iMac?"

Understood. But I don’t want to be the Dying Swan. And I don’t want posture lessons from a country that spent the last 20 years flopping on its back and grabbing its ankles when Saddam showed up waving stacks of Francs in exchange for bang-sticks. Don’t you think I know about France’s relations with Saddam? Surely the advocates of the French Touch must know, and don’t care. Or they don’t know – in which case their advice is useless.

"This iMac is the only creature in the world that I would ever let marry my child, who is the first child in the history of children to do anything, ever!"

Germany? Whatever.

And it took lots of dead Americans to be able to say that.

The mind boggles at whatever the fuck is meant by this.

Also dead Russians. Is Russia the great ally we’ve dissed? If we invite Russia to help, then we have to tell them things. I don’t want to tell them things. At least as they relate to the battlefield.

"Mustn't tell the things...my precious, precious things..." Because, you know, if the Russians were providing manpower or logistical support or whatever in Iraq now we'd also have to give them the keys to the nukular football, like we did with Poland. Don't forget Poland!

Hmm. Maybe you should, actually. It seems the Poles would like you to.

Perhaps the “ally” is that big blue wobbly mass known as the UN, that paragon of moral clarity, that conscience of the globe. You want to really anger a UN official? Tow his car. Short of that you can get away with anything. (Sudan is on the human rights commission, to cite a prominent and amusing detail. It’s like putting Tony Soprano on the New Jersey Waste Management Regulation Board.) I don’t worry that the UN is angry with us. I’d be worried if they weren’t.

The sad thing about this sort of nonsense is its myopic insistence that just because this administration is incapable of bringing the UN to its way of thinking, the institution must be completely useless and evil to its core. It's utterly impossible to imagine any other President using a combination of carrots and sticks to bring the UN around to supporting his policy and providing an additional framework of support for securing and rebuilding Iraq. "This President can fly to the moon under his own power and could best a rhinoceros in single combat! If Bush can't do it, it not only can't be done, it's wrong to think about doing it!"

And I find it interesting that someone who would complain about outsourcing peevishly notes that we hired HALLIBURTON to do the work instead of throwing buckets of billions to French and German contractors who sold them the jets and built the bunkers.

I’ve been hearing this shite for years! That’s why I can’t stand the debates! ENOUGH WITH FRANCE AND GERMANY!

Lileks, you ignorant slut, it's about more than France and Germany.

(pause; huffing into a plastic bag to restore blood chemistry)

Uh, dude...there's no spray paint in blood.

OK, the next six paragraphs are so relentlessly stupid, and were so obviously written in that fog of incoherence and lunacy that comes in the immediate aftermath of a really big hit of spray paint, that I'm just going to skip them and move on, because it's not fair to pick on a man in the midst of spray paint fever. That, and I have things to do today.

Ask yourself this: you’re a dictator who has violated the terms of a peace treaty over and over again, and frequently shoots at the planes enforcing the treaties. Who do you fear the most? A) The magnificent concert of allies in the UN, some of whom you’ve bought off, who are desperate to prove their legitimacy by prolonging the process into the 22nd century

B) The United States, Britain and Australia, who have several hundred thousand troops on your border and frankly are in no mood to put up your crap any longer

What would you want in this situation? The answer starts with “S” and ends, five letters later, in “T.”


Wow. Lileks has managed to provide a rationale for the war in Iraq that actually incorporates none of the usual suspects: no mention of WMDs, nor of the capacity to develop WMDs, nor the possibility Saddam was thinking about WMDs, or even my favorite, the half-assed human rights argument that argues the same baseline "no Saddam" condition that has existed since April 2003 is not affected by increasing violence and chaos in the streets that's a direct result of Bush's incompetence in planning and executing the occupation.

Also, does the description of the coalition as consisting in the United States, Britain, and Australia mean that Poland doesn't count? Or that the other nations in the coalition were window-dressing, making minimal and easily reversible committments and contributions to provide a slender shade of cover for this administration's inability to keep the alliances it made?

So, I get it. We are wrong and bad and stupid and stupidly wrong-bad. We failed to make France act as though it wasn’t, you know, France, a militarily insignificant nation that is understandably motivated by self-interest, and we haven’t convened a summit so we could be castigated for ignoring the extralegal use of Israeli helicopters to turn Hamas kingpins into indistinct red smears. You’d think we nuked Paris and converted everyone to Lutheranism.

That, or that we'd gone to war without anything resembling plan for what to do after we won, or the resources to get the job done properly, and that as a result the country we said we were going to liberate has watched that promise of freedom unravel into a nightmare.

Here’s the thing. I’d really like to live in John Kerry’s world. It seems like such a rational, sensible place, where handshakes and signatures have the power to change the face of the planet. If only the terrorists lived there as well.



Right. John Kerry's whole life is about nothing but rationality and handshakes. That's what he did in Vietnam: Go around shaking hands with the Viet Cong. The Purple Hearts were for carpal tunnel, and the Silver Star was because he hurt his back stooping over to shake hands with this one Viet Cong guy who was very, very short.

Who does Zarkowi fear the most - France, summiteers, or Marines?

"These are THE ONLY OPTIONS, people! France, summiteers, or Marines! No chance a summit would put more Marine-like people on the ground to actually, like, find him or anything!"

Let's play parallel universe: If a Gore or Kerry administration had passed up an opportunity to nab Zarkawi so it would have his continued presence in Iraq to bolster its paper-thin case for going to war with Iraq, how many pages of screeding would Lileks subject us to?

If the rightness of a cause is measured by the number of one’s allies, would Britain have been right if the US had stayed neutral in World War Two?

"Hey, have you seen the new Apple G5? If Bush's tax cuts go away I might have to save up before I get it or something!"

You know, I used to enjoy Lileks, particularly his genius for pop culture detritus, back before he became a disingenuous shill for the administration. As a political commentator, though, he's a hell of an expert on pop culture detritus. I should look on the bright side: Every time he writes about politics, at least he's not writing about taking his kid to Target.

Conspiracy Theory Market

Bush was really, really awful. I think the particular awfulness of his performance -- its repeated moments of fumbling, stammering incoherence -- will quiet down the crazy left-wing-nut theory that he has his "lines" fed to him via an earpiece, and boost the crazy left-wing-nut theory that he has a neorlogical disorder that's degrading his ability to think and speak.

TV helps your brain.

Have you ever noticed that the casts of CSI and Teen Titans match up, personality-wise, almost one-for-one?

Grissom : Robin
Catherine : Starfire
Warrick : Cyborg
Nick : Beast Boy
Sara : Raven

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

The liver's connected to the...oh, crap...

Scott at Polite Dissent tries to make sense of some nonsensical anatomy in a recent Legion of Super-Heroes tale.

Martha Stewart Living. In Prison.

The Washington Post takes a look at the facility where Martha Stewart will serve her jail sentence for lying about crimes the government admitted it couldn't prove were committed:

"There's a tremendous loss of control. Your life is regimented from when you get up to what you wear to what belongings you can have," said white-collar defense attorney Michael Kendall.

Stewart also may find herself under constant scrutiny from longer-term prisoners seeking to curry favor with the guards by reporting potential infractions, said Todd A. Bussert, a New Haven, Conn., lawyer who specializes in post-conviction work. "She's going to have a tougher time than most," he said.

Alderson was founded in 1927. The federal government had found itself with a large number of female inmates thanks to laws that made a federal crime of prostitution targeting military bases. Over the years, it has housed such well-known women as Holiday, who served time for illegal drugs and worked in the prison's garment factory, and Iva "Tokyo Rose" D'Aquino, the notorious World War II propagandist. Before the prison was converted to a lower-security camp in 1988, it housed a higher-security unit that held the two women who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore.
[...]
Both Fromme and Moore attempted to escape before they were transferred elsewhere. But they and most other inmates who have walked away were easily recaptured in this isolated area that lost its Amtrak passenger service in 2001 and has only limited air service nearby.

That isolation is why West Virginia was not on the multimedia entrepreneur's list of preferred prisons. When Stewart volunteered earlier this month to serve her time while continuing to appeal her conviction for lying about her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. stock, she asked to be assigned either to Danbury, Conn., or Coleman, Fla. But the Florida federal prisons have been hit hard by the hurricane season, and Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said Alderson, Coleman and Danbury all are over capacity.

So subliminable it's SUPER-liminable!

Reason's Jacob Sullum takes down his daughter's homework worksheet that talks about "hidden persuaders" in advertising. Is it just me or does that term sound like something out of the Donnie Darko time-travel cosmology?

Vincent, we hardly knew ye

So it turns out that Mark Hale of ChaosMonkey is the guy who named The Goat. Lucky bastard!

The company you keep

The inspiration for this blog's title makes McSweeney's list of "Actual Superheroes From the Pages of International and Obscure Comic Books Who Are Unlikely to See Their Origin Stories Developed Into Movies." Which doesn't strike me as precisely fair; I mean, Matter-Eater Lad was simply born with his power to consume matter in all its forms because that's an ability natural to the people of his homeworld of Bismoll. And then he joined the Legion of Super-Heroes. As origins go, it's pretty prosaic; it's not like there's radiation or cosmic rays involved. A fuller -- albeit borderline reverential -- picture of our namesake's history can be read here.

Hmm. Looking over that list a second time, methinks the author of the McSweeney's piece has been spending a lot of time over at Gone and Forgotten...

Bwah-HAH! I got your ass!

I've been saying for years that, for all of George Lucas' protestations to the contrary, that a DVD release of the theatrical cuts of the original Star Wars trilogy will probably come in 2007. That year will be the 30th anniversary of the first movie's release and provides a perfect opportunity for a "because you demanded it..." non-apology.

Yesterday Van Ling, producer of the newly-released DVD set, did a chat on WashingtonPost.com, and lo, there came a hint:

I don't believe there will be another release of the Star Wars Classic Trilogy for several years, until probably 2007, which is the 30th anniversary. So this is money well spent now.

I'm just sayin', here, is all. I'm also going to guess that the 2007 release will feature BOTH versions of the films to avoid the embarassment of the theatrical cuts outselling the special editions. (Though I must ask: Does anyone really care about the changes to Jedi?)

Thanks to De Baisch's Retroactive Continuity for the link to the chat.

Skyeteer

I haven't seen Sky Captain yet, though it's nice that it's done so well in its first weekend of release. As enthusiastic as so many of my fellow geeks are, however, I can't shake the nagging, wholly irrational feeling that its target audience is everyone who still insists that The Rocketeer was the Best Superhero Movie ever...

William Shatner rules

Bob Greenberger gives praise to the Shatner.

UPDATE: The link should be working now. Sorry 'bout that.

Now that's just sad

I find the news of Britney Spears' wedding just plain depressing; some people can handle fame and some people, clearly, can't. It's hard not to look at her public crackup of the last year and change and not suspect that she'd be better off if she'd never gotten rich and famous and had married a perfectly nice footbal player right out of high school. Or not; what the hell do I know?

The League of Extraordinarily Mercurial Gentlemen Who Were Impish Scamps in Their Early Appearances But Became Detached, Brooding, and Dour Later On

1. Charlie Brown, who in the early years of Peanuts was a little wiseacre running around playing pranks on Patty and had a tagline, "I still get my laughs!" that causes me to crack up whenever I read it.
2. Angel, who was a smirking mystery dude who oozed charm all over the first episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer before becoming tortured and brooding later on.
3. Gil Grissom, who in the first two episodes of CSI flirted with three women, cracked bad jokes, and played to the crowd when tossing dummies off the roof of a casino while investigating a murder -- a far cry from the later presentation of the character, whose response to Sara's advances is generally a blank stare.

Any I missed?

I'm surprised I have to explain this

The new Justice League Unlimited series has been a hoot, with its increased cast of characters, short-form storytelling, and a slowly emerging season-long storyarc. As with any such endeavor, of course, there are nitpicking fanboys picking nits. Two in particular demand a response, even if that response is so obvious that I'm surprised I have to explain this.

1. The Question's depiction as a conspiracy theorist in "Fearful Symmetry" in no way, shape, or form diminished or insulted the character or his creator, Steve Ditko, because the Question is right about everything. That doesn't make him a nut, that makes him the smartest (or at least most perceptive) guy in the room.
   
2. The reason J'Onn J'Onzz included Vibe on the mission team before Booster Gold was to show the audience how apprehensive J'Onn was about Booster's abilities as a hero. That wasn't the writers insulting Booster, that was J'Onn using shorthand to show his exasperation with Booster's quest for fame and fortune through super-heroics.
   

Like I said, I'm surprised I have to explain this.

It's not like I didn't pay to see Starsky & Hutch...

The Dukes of Hazzard movie looks like it might actually be worth seeing:

Broken Lizard's Jay Chandrasekhar is directing the movie with the script having been penned by the five person comedy troupe.

That's right, the Super Troopers guys are writing and directing it. I'm predicting now that Brian Cox will be tapped to play Boss Hogg. Oh, and the article also has some info about casting some guys to play the leads, but that's much less interesting than who's writing and directing it.

Legendary

Lauren Bacall took issue with a reporter's description of Nicole Kidman as a "legend":

When the interviewer referred to Kidman as a "legend" Bacall got a little snippy.

She cut off the interviewer, saying "She's not a legend. She's a beginner. What is this 'legend'? She can't be a legend at whatever age she is. She can't be a legend, you have to be older."

Bacall went on to say that real legends do cheesy TV commercials for Tuesday Morning.

Time, time, time...

It's natural to feel like you've wasted three days at mid-afternoon on the last day of a holiday weekend. Then you read about something like this and think maybe wasting time without accomplishing anything is OK.

Fortune favors the quick

I thought it on Friday, but Ken Layne actually blogged it:

After being shot, Reagan famously quipped to his doctors that he hoped they were Republicans. My hunch is that Clinton also had a quip for his surgeons: "Thank god we made the Friday morning news cycle."

Wayne...I feel kinda funny...

Rank these people from most wrong to find vaguely somewhat I've-been-drinking attractive to least:

1. The animated Supergirl;
   
2. Megan Mullally (but only in CheapTickets.com commercials);
   
3. Kirstie Allsop of the BBC's Location, Location, Location;
   
4. Lindsay Lohan.
   

Apparently, spending is going out of style.

Watching Bush's speech tonight, I couldn't help but wonder how a candidate presenting himself as a fiscal conservative and ideological heir to Ronald Reagan could kick off and intersperse throughout his acceptance speech with calls for increased government spending. Turns out I'm not the only one, as Howard Kurtz, who is far from a liberal, is wondering the same thing:

As the president delivered an almost Clintonian laundry list of proposals -- after months of offering few second-term specifics -- some questions popped into my mind.

How's he gonna pay for it?

There was, you might have noticed, no mention of the nearly half-trillion-dollar budget deficit. And Bush called for making his tax cuts permanent. So that doesn't leave him a whole lot of money to play with. More job training, more community college funds, more Pell grants, 7 million more affordable homes -- where does he get the cash? How does he then pivot and call Kerry a big spender?

A "simpler, fairer" tax code -- very Reaganesque. The Gipper pulled it off in 1986. But how exactly does Bush plan to do this? Which "special interest" provisions will he get rid of? Surely not the mortgage tax break, or his new, lower capital gains rate for investment income.

The president's regulatory proposals -- on tort reform and Social Security -- were definitely crowd-pleasers. But these went nowhere in the first term.

Bush said Kerry wants to raise taxes -- but omitted the fact that the proposal is limited to the $200,000-plus crowd. Hey, a speech doesn't have room for everything.

I demand satisfaction

After watching lunatic turncoat Zell Miller challenge him to a duel for the high crime of asking him questions, I take back everything bad I've ever said about Chris Matthews (whom I saw eating at Booeymonger's in Georgetown on Columbus Day 1994, a factoid appropos of nothing except perhaps that my fellow Hoya Norah O'Donnell was one of Matthews' panelists tonight).

UPDATE: Here is what's said to be a link to the Matthews/Miller exchange (I'm at home on dialup, so I'm taking a commenter at Washington Monthly at his word). This needs to be remixed like the Dean Scream.

Scotty gets his star

Laura Gjovaag links to these pictures of James Doohan getting his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. I see George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and Grace Lee Whitney in attendance, and at least one of those "that guy" character actors. I've always been fascinated at the enduring popularity of the "second tier" characters from the original series -- their characterization took place in the margins of the series, while Kirk and Spock and, to a lesser extent, McCoy sucked up most of the dramatic oxygen available (which is not a knock on the series, its creators, or any of the actors; that just seems to be how TV series worked in the late 1960s). And so it seems to have fallen to the fans of the series, during the liminal decade between the series' cancellation and its return on the big screen, to have projected and extrapolated much of their impressions of the characters from their repeated viewings of the 79 available episodes. In a way, the limited nature of their characters made this simpler; there just wasn't all that much TO know about Scotty or Sulu or whomever, and if they never attained the depth or screen time of their counterparts on the later, more ensemble-style Trek series, I think they've come to occupy a place in the popular culture firmament that none of the later characters can ever hope to match.

All of which is a very rambling, roundabout way to say it's cool that Mr. Doohan has gotten this honor as he retires from the public stage. Sail on, Scotty.

Squeal like a...um, wait...

Via Obscure Store: A man makes love to a pig. The story is perhaps the most deadpan use of the inverted triangle AP style I've ever seen.

Hercules goes bananas

Listening to Governor Schwarzenegger's speech last night, I found myself agreeing with many of the broad principles he discussed, even as I found myself thinking, gee, it's pretty tough to see how the GOP can now claim to have stood with Nelson Mandela (when the Reagan administration was, shall we say, less than critical of apartheid) or the protesters in Tiananmen Square (when the first Bush administration [which I'm quite amazed to realize I now think of as "the good one"] reacted to the Chinese government's massacre by giving China most favored nation trade status). Schwarzenegger himself is an oddly compelling messenger and I've got enough libertarian leanings that my head nodded a few times early on, until I came to my senses and remembered that Republicans by and large have a hell of a time living up to any of their stated principles, and tend to spend money like drunken sailors and vastly increase the scope and snooping power of government whenever they get their hands on it. William Saletan goes even further, with this argument about why you shouldn't vote for Bush even if you're a Schwarzenegger Republican:

The GOP under Bush is nothing like what it was under Lincoln or even Roosevelt. The notion of wartime deficit tax cuts would have made Lincoln ill.

There's a curious gap in Schwarzenegger's speech as he segues from his litany of Republican principles to the case for Bush. Essentially, the principles vanish. He stops talking about accountability and starts talking about faith. He asks for "faith in the resourcefulness of the American people, and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie men!" The audience roars—it's the loudest moment of the convention—but the descent from logic into grade-school humiliation is unpersuasive and revealing. The American economy is performing far below par. Bush got the tax cuts he wanted when he came into office. He said they would fix the economy. They didn't. He will be the first president in Schwarzenegger's lifetime to preside over a net loss of jobs.

[...]

Schwarzenegger implies that giving up on Bush would be un-American. "We may hit a few bumps, but America always moves ahead. That's what Americans do," he says. But remember that Republican principle about the government being accountable to the people. The suggestion that giving up on Bush means giving up on ourselves—which is essentially the argument of the Bush campaign—directly subverts this principle. Bush is your employee. You don't have to vote for him just because he's in charge and represents the spirit of the nation. That's Communist talk.

Same goes for Bush's Iraq policy. It's a betrayal of everything Republicans claim to stand for—fiscal prudence, the reservation of U.S. military resources for the protection of the national interest, and skepticism of government's ability to shape society. The weapons of mass destruction that Bush touted as the reason for spending our blood and treasure in Iraq are simply not there. We were not greeted with sweets and flowers as the administration suggested. We have lost nearly 1,000 soldiers. We have sunk about $200 billion into this mistake, and there is no end in sight. It's a complete failure.

Unable to defend the policy, Schwarzenegger defends Bush as "a man of inner strength. He is a leader who doesn't flinch, who doesn't waver, who does not back down." But "inner strength" is exactly the kind of New Age pap no hard-headed Republican should fall for. Accountability means judging a president by visible results. Schwarzenegger says leadership is "about making decisions you think are right and then standing behind those decisions." Fine. But standing behind your decisions means taking responsibility at election time. This is election time, and Bush's decisions have turned out to be disastrously wrong.

Schwarzenegger applauds Bush for taking a hard line on terrorism. So do I. Bush's clarity on this subject is his finest quality. But it doesn't make his foreign policy wise, any more than liberal piety about compassion makes liberal social programs effective. In Iraq, Bush has confused a mortal enemy with a less urgent one, and he has botched the worthy idea of American military leadership by biting off more than we can chew. The hatred manifested by terrorists "is no match for America's decency," Schwarzenegger opines. Decency? Do you think we're going to defeat Osama Bin Laden with decency? That's liberal talk. What we need is smart allocation of our resources. At this, Bush has utterly failed.

Resolved:

Underworld is the Derek Zoolander of vampire movies. Discuss.

Tom Shales kinda sorta likes Lucy

The Washington Post's Tom Shales has an odd review of a DVD collection of Lucille Ball's series Here's Lucy, which I'm pretty sure I've never seen except for a clip of the now-governor of California asking her "Vhere do you vant to do it?" in an hilarious misunderstanding. Lucy's appeal has always escaped me, and I don't have anything to say about the series, but this bit of the article struck me as interesting:

But bad TV can be as revealing and as representative of its time as good TV. "Here's Lucy" was awful, but it was no flop, as Ball herself says in a promotional film that is one of many extras included with the episodes. In the film, made to pitch the series for syndication after its network run, Ball says the 144 episodes averaged a 23.2 rating and a 34 share, numbers that, if achieved today, would put a show in the blockbuster league.
[...]
Beyond all that, there's the elemental fact that a bad old TV show is usually more fun than a bad new TV show. It may be particularly true of sitcoms; in earlier times, writers couldn't stoop to smut for a cheap laugh when their wits otherwise failed them. "Here's Lucy," unlike a typical 21st-century sitcom, was filmed straight through, performed much the way a live show would be, with only occasional stops when someone blew a line or a prop malfunctioned.

Damn you, television! No, wait, I take it back!

She Who Must Be Obeyed will be out of town this weekend and I've been hoping to spend the time concentrating on getting some serious studying done for an upcoming exam. Last night, I saw an ad on TNT for a 14-hour Law & Order marathon that will air Monday. I can be strong, I told myself. Then today I'm pretty sure I saw that Spike TV will be doing a CSI marathon on Monday, too. I think I need to find somewhere with no TVs to go on Monday, is all...

Does this mean Vin Diesel will star in the next Thomas Crown Affair remake?

According to this article at Slate, the new thing in audacious art heists is sheer force:

The problem, paradoxically, is newly sophisticated security measures. Imagine how the criminal sees it: In the ideal heist, you steal works when the museum is empty—there are no witnesses, and you have lots of time to flee before the theft is noticed. But museums have been installing better "perimeter defenses"—including motion detectors, body-heat sensors, and bulletproof glass—to prevent just such crimes.
[...]
The more widespread such systems become, the harder it is to steal using subterfuge. Which leads us ineluctably to armed robbery—by far the riskiest tactic, but also the surest way to actually leave the premises with works in hand. While the Munch theft was certainly the most high-profile violent art heist, it was not unprecedented. Last year, for example, a gang of thieves sledgehammered display cases containing art deco jewelry at the Antwerp Diamond Museum. Another team drove an SUV right into the Rothschild family's English mansion, crashing through a reinforced window to launch a four-minute, multimillion-dollar raid that garnered them a passel of antique gold boxes. Perhaps the only upside of the Munch heist was that nobody was killed; in May, thieves slit the throat of a guard during a robbery at Antigua's Museum of Colonial Art.

Art thieves are supposed to be silk-gloved gentleman criminals. You can't rely on anything these days...

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Why Don't We Turn Off the Lights?

Rob Long on Christian rockers and the GOP convention:

There are rumors, of course, that Britney Spears is a closet Bushie—which might be true; she's from Orlando, right?—and we've all seen Ted Nugent's Republican spiel. But the sad truth is, the real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that their celebrities are, like, actually famous and ours are, well, singing weirdly erotic songs about Our Savior.

Metaphorically, anyway. It's not so much that Republican celebrities are all Christian rockers, it's that they all pretty much adhere to the Christian Rock Principle—it sounds like rock, for about one second you think it's rock, but it isn't quite. Something's off. The performers and celebrities who will appear at the RNC certainly sound famous—they have Grammys and awards and huge followings, apparently—but they aren't, quite.

30

I may be older than Superman, but at least I can run for the United States Senate now.

At Least It Had Cheerleaders In It

Bring It On was not a very good movie, but it took seeing parts of the direct-to-video sequel Bring It On Again on USA to realize how very more more not bad the first one was. I missed the setup of the sequel, but I'm pretty sure it was one of those DTV sequels that featured none of the characters from the original film...

It's About Freaking Time

Superman: The Animated Series finally gets some DVD love, just in time for Christmas.

J.T. Walsh Kicked Ass

Salon runs an appreciation of the late character actor J.T. Walsh:

The intrinsic weight of J.T. Walsh was greater than the sum of his roles -- he was a heavy, and not just in kilos -- an actor who could convey the kind of baritone-black moods that shook the ground like a Panzer with funk in the trunk and who could just as easily refuse to take himself seriously. His hair-raising scariness, when he felt like it, was the same machete edge that made his comic timing so deadly. Maybe he had a prescient sense that he wasn't going to live very long; maybe this gave him a kind of desperate need to be extra, 200 percent, alive and make all his better selves and demons wrestle right on the surface of his eyeballs when he was on-screen.

From there, the article is a film-by-film rundown of Walsh's career, although it oddly omits what I think was his final role, in Pleasantville. Still, it's worth a read if you know who Walsh is.

Truckin'

Our college friends Jenn and Dave decided to turn their cross-country move into a road trip; last night brought them to the Twin Cities, where they crashed in our (finished) basement and were able to get their picture taken at the original Target store. They're blogging their trip, so you should find their take of the visit on their site, www.nocureforgravity.com, soon.

Local Girl Makes Good, I guess

Odd:

Eager to promote her career as a Hollywood actress, Laurie Coleman, wife of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, has authorized our exclusive publication of photos that show her in glamorous, provocative poses -- just in time for next week's Republican National Convention, where her husband, coincidentally, is among the operatives striving to add sizzle and star power to President Bush's coronation.

"A little edgy," the onetime model called the publicity pix, "but relatively tame by Hollywood standards." They include boudoir shots accented with the requisite bustier, stockings, garters and four-poster bed. "Honestly, I've done swimwear collections where I've had less on than that," she told us by phone from her home in St. Paul earlier this week.

Beer Bad

Scott of Polite Dissent presents the funniest afterschool special ever in this Legion of Super-Heroes remix. Aside from the humor factor, this reminds me of all the reasons why I never really liked Jeff Moy's artwork on the Legionnaires title: Stumpy figures, oddly flat profiles, and goofy expressions on every face added up to way too much cutesy factor for me and was one reason I called the book "Archie Space Adventure Teens" during this run.

Good thing I've never seen Logan's Run

Today is the last day of my twenties. Tomorrow I will be older than Superman.

Tyops are funny

I noticed this in an e-mail from the Kerry campaign:

It has been more than 30 years since Minnesota voted Republican in a presidential election. In just XX days, this campaign -- with the help of thousands of you, our Minnesota supporters -- will send a very clear message to be heard by all: Minnesota is still a Democratic state.
Emphasis added - CJG.

No big point here, just kind of funny. Move along.

Legion of Whipper-Snappers

Today the Comic Treadmill takes a look at Best of DC #44, the digest-sized comic that first introduced me to the Legion of Super-Heroes 20 years ago. Boy, do I feel old doing that math and realizing I'm 12 years too old to join the team...

Crossing Over with Tommy Westphall

When I started watching Homicide more than a few years ago and started poking around online to learn more about the series, I was amused to learn how many crossovers, explicit of otherwise, it had done with other TV series. Whereas comics universes always seem rather, well, obvious -- generally speaking, at least for superhero comics, it's virtually a given that all of the characters from one company's books know or could team up with each other -- on TV this sort of thing accrues more gradually, often while no one's looking. When Law & Order characters appeared on Homicide, or a Homicide characters appeared on The X-Files, even the most casual viewer knew what was up. But how many people caught the veiled reference to an X-Files episode on Picket Fences, or could place the name of the Doctor Richard Kimble paged on the final episode of St. Elsewhere, or knew why it was hysterical when the Weigert corporation took over the prison hospital on OZ? Sometimes these things work, sometimes they don't; when part of an episode of St. Elsewhere was set in Cheers, complete with appearances by Carla, Norm, and Cliff, the results were not very pretty.

Even the most dedicated fan of TV crossovers might be amazed to discover just how many of these things have taken place over the years, and how many of them can be traced back to two series, Homicide and St. Elsewhere. You can learn more about them than you ever imagined it was possible to know at this web site and look for your favorite series on its insanely large chart.

I'm kind of surprised that neither Buffy nor Angel appears to be on the chart; those shows, though, were always rather self-contained up until Angel's final season, when we suddenly had an explicit reference to Captain America (in the World War II episode) and offhand references to corporations from the Buckaroo Banzai and Alien movies. (Prior to that season, the closest I could come to tying the Buffyverse to any other series was a reference to Mulder and Scully in an episode of Angel a season after the hysterical L.A.-set "X-Cops" episode of X-Files, which timing meant that it could have been a reference to them as "real people" in the context of the show, rather than as TV characters, but that seems a bit of a reach...) And while I've got a sneaking suspicion that Alias' SD-6 was the power behind The Initiative from Season 4 of Buffy, there's not much textual evidence to prove that.

Up and Let's Go

Rumor hath it that DC, possibly in conjucntion with Grant Morrison, "is looking to make The Atom 'a top tier book'." If that's the case, the Filmation cartoon I just watched on Boomerang is an object lesson in how NOT to write the character. Essentially, the Atom used his power of shrinking to six inches in height and controlling his mass and weight to be really, really annoying: To free a group of scientists being held captive, the Atom did things like throw very small rocks at the captors, make the captors trip over things, and, well, tease them. It was all very embarassing to watch, really.

Don't mess with cocker spaniels

Via Obscure Store:

Medford police Lt. Mike Moran said Peoples used a folding knife to cut through a screen on an open kitchen window and enter the home. Police believe Gillespie acted as a "lookout" during the burglary, Moran said.

Peoples allegedly walked to a bedroom where the home’s residents slept and opened the door. Little did he know that Cassie, a diminutive 4-year-old black cocker spaniel, was prepared to protect her owners.

"She’s actually a very timid dog, which makes this so funny," said Cassie’s owner. "I mean, she’s afraid of her own shadow."

The woman was able to laugh about the burglary on Wednesday afternoon, but admitted it was "terrifying at the time."

"We’ve been treating (Cassie) all day long — calling her our hero," she said. "We’re going to start calling her a ‘pit cocker.’"

Hey, check out the cool titles!

Pretty cool, huh? Except for one-line posts like this one.

Remember the walrus idea Douglas Adams never got around to using?

Al Gore ticketed for speeding. I wonder who was more embarassed, the cop or the XVP...

An operatic inquiry

Earlier this summer the Internet Explorer on our computer became FUBARed, and we've been using Opera (which is really better in just about every way) since. The only problem I have is when I read some blog templates, including this one and the one used at placed like Fanboy Rampage and The Hurting. Specifically, the right-hand column on this template (the left-hand one on the other examples cited) gets pushed all the way down to the bottom of the screen, still on the right but located beneath the content in the other column. Has anyone out there encountered this problem, or come across/used a solution for it? Barring that, any ideas on where I might find a better, Opera-compliant template?

It looks like the second season of Joe Schmo will also be the last, according to producer Rhett Reese:

The bad news, at least for us: 'Joe Schmo' has probably run its course.

The good news, at least for now: We’re still trying to make more TV! At least one miniature series is in the can (Spike TV, Tuesday nights starting September 14th, 10 P.M., concept to be revealed soon!). Mark your calendars!

I think JS2 just wasn't as good as the first season. Neither Tim, Ingrid, nor Amanda was as likable as Matt, and attempts to make them look like they were fell flat; the video messages from the actors to the Schmos after this season's big reveal just felt canned and empty. Joe Schmo worked the first time in large part because it was completely unexpected; no one tuned in expecting that they'd be rooting for Matt by the end.

Another problem was that the cast this time around just wasn't as good as the first season's. The actors playing Bryce and Gerald were terrific, and Cammy had her moments, but TJ was a waste of time and space and Rita and Ernie just weren't that funny. (I realize I'm conflating characters and actors; leave me be.) Most of the characters were ciphers -- we were TOLD TJ was a playa, but we barely saw it; the Gerald joke was funny, but it never went anywhere. I think the first season actors did more with their characters and kept it up more completely, particularly Hutch, Molly, and Dr. Pat.

And I've never quite shaken the feeling that Ingrid was set up to figure it all out this time around. Still, I enjoyed this season a lot, in spite of my criticisms, and I'll be checking out this new series from the JS folks next month.

Rather than excerpting it, I'm just going to urge everyone to read this devastating evisceration of the Swift Boat Liars For Bush ads over at Slate.

Actually, I'll excerpt this one paragraph:

Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam and, once there, volunteered for dangerous duty. He killed enemy fighters, was injured and decorated. Then he came home and distinguished himself in opposition to the war. That a president who shirked any similar duty would try to make an issue out of Kerry's war record is simply amazing. Bush won't get away with it—unless Kerry lets him.

And while you're at Slate, you can read about the national Scrabble championship and Dairy Queen's tragic MooLatte.

DC Direct's upcoming Kilowog action figure looks like it will be an interesting addition to my roster of DC Direct Figures I Hope Someday To Own. And the costume it's wearing suggests that the relaunch of the Green Lantern franchise will be using costumes based on the one John Stewart wears on the Justice League cartoon. But that raises some more costuming questions: Why keep the white gloves, and not go all the way to the animated design with black gloves and green gauntlets? Why does the DCU version of John Stewart in the JLA comic similarly wear an inexplicably tweaked costume: Identical to the cartoon one but for the absence of gloves? And instead of getting rid of the green trunks on Hal Jordan's costume, why not just put him in the sleeker cartoon-inspired suit?

You know the comics gods are having a big laugh when the East Coast HBO feed is showing the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie and the West Coast HBO is running Steel at the same time. I guess Showtime has dibs on Batman and Robin this month or that would have been on at the same time, too...

Anyway, about the only decent thing to come from watching this tremendous turd of a movie was that She Who Must Be Obeyed and I figured out that Richard Roxburgh, who plays "M" in this and was "The Duke" in Moulin Rouge is the same guy who played Dracula in Van Helsing. It's remarkable how much difference a mustache can make on some faces. Other than that decidedly meta-filmic benefit, though, this movie sucked like a great big sucking thing that sucks. Every clever or subtle bit of characterization or business or literary reference was removed and replaced with crap, bad SFX, or ham-handed reworkings of stuff that didn't need to be reworked in the first place. Feh.

Can someone please explain the original Star Trek DVD packaging? I'm serious: What the hell is up with that?

This Newsarama article on Spider-Girl mentions that she's been wearing a variant of Spider-Man's black costume from the mid-80s. Which makes me wonder if there's a chance we'll see it in the next Spider-Man movie. God knows how they'd work it in there, but it could be neat; the black-suited Spidey was always my favorite Secret Wars figure when I was a kid.

And speaking of deception-fueled reality TV, WB Superstar USA's deluded Nina Diva has a website.

The Joe Schmo 2 blog has been updated with an early post on the finale, with a more detailed one promised for later. The finale was entertaining, and the reveal was really well done (I'm being deliberately vague in case anyone hasn't seen it yet), but it also reminded me how different in tone this season was without a schmoe of Matt Kennedy Gould's caliber; by the end of the first Joe Schmo, I was really rooting for him; this time around, Tim came off as something of a tool (albeit a harmless one), and Amanda was just kind of boring and nice and tediously quirky (She Who Must Be Obeyed described her as "a drip"). The best thing about this season was flipping Ingrid from schmo to actress; I found Ingrid marvelously entertaining simply because she's such a standard Washington, D.C. type: The pretty smart driven career girl who's convinced she's twice as smart as 1) she is and 2) everyone around her and whose casual wardrobe is a cacophony of mixed intentions.

Still, this season had its high points, including Bryce, Gerald, and Porked'N'Beans, and Montecore, and it certainly brightened up the dismal wasteland of summer TV. Maybe we'll see a Joe Schmo 3 someday...

Is it just me or was Bill Clinton's appearance on The Daily Show last night kind of, well, lame? Clinton was restrained to the point of appearing almost uncomfortable and Jon Stewart just seemed starstruck. Neither state is especially conducive to a great TV interview. It's a shame.

Via Political Wire, Lyndon Johnson orders some pants. This is an especially useful link if Alan Keyes' recent exploits have whetted your appetite for political comedy. Except this is real. Which I suppose Keyes is, too. But this is funnier.

Mike Sterling of Progressive Ruin points to John Byrne's nonsensical rantings about a supposed "glaring plot hole" in the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons story from which Saturday's episode of Justice League Unlimited was adapted. The alleged hole is that, if the telepathic plant Mongul uses on Superman creates a simluation of his heart's desire, why is Superman's vision of a Krypton which never exploded and on which he's married to his lost love Lyla Lerrol such a dystopic one, where Jor-El is a discrecited crank and violent anti-Phantom Zone gangs assault Kara Zor-El?

But a quick look at the original story shows that the criticism is a pretty hollow one, for two reasons. First, we only start to see the "wrong" parts of Superman's vision after Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman arrive at the Fortress of Solitude and discover an entranced Superman. It doesn't seem to be reading overmuch into the text to draw a connection between their efforts to free him and the decline of his imaginary Krypton. Second, Mongul tells Batman et al that the plant feeds its victims "a logical simulation of the happy ending they desire" (page 22 in the recent Alan Moore DC collection), which suggests that the fantasy world it presents is not simply ongoing wish fulfillment.

At any rate, this is more attention and effort than the matter deserves; read the discussion at Byrne's forum here if you're so inclined.