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.

Gotham Girls!


Which Sexy Comic Book Villainess Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Click here to read how She Who Must Be Obeyed responds to the Secret Spider-Man Movie people. Just put on some goggles first.

Via Fark, some news from the "No Shit" section of the paper:

Finding your way around Boston can drive you crazy. It's the most challenging city to navigate in America, according to Avis, which based it decision on driving factors such as street layouts, congested freeways, days of rain and snow and complexity of directions needed to get from the airport to the city center.

Oddly, the story makes no mention of the Boston drivers, who must get points shaved off of their licenses for every out-of-state car they hit or cause to get into an accident; Boston drivers are far and away the worst drivers in the country.

Some thoughts on the weekend's TV:

• The words "Best of" and "Superfriends" should really never, ever appear together. I say this after watching too much of Friday and Saturday's marathon on Boomerang. Good Lord, it's amazing that show didn't warp my brain even more than it did. The scripts made Bob Haney look like a master of logic, the voice actors didn't seem to want to be there, the villains plans never made any sense, and the animation seemed to exist to find new ways to destroy Alex Toth's elegant character designs and storyboards. Were kids in the 1970s as mental defective as this show thought they were?
  
  I do have to single out the last iteration of the various Superfriends series as being merely dumb, rather than insulting, and having animation several orders of magnitude better than the other series. Although the whole "Darkseid wants to marry Wonder Woman" schtick was kind of creepy. One thing this series did right was replacing the execrable kid sidekicks of the previous versions with two young heroes, Firestorm and Cyborg. I never understood why, if the creators of the show wanted "young characters the young people could relate to," they didn't just use, say, Robin and Wonder Girl instead of creating Marvin and Wendy (whose presence can only be explained if one assumes Marvin is dying of brain cancer, Wendy is his nurse, and the whole thing has been arranged by the Make-A-Wish foundation) and then the Wonder Twins (who I think are supposed to be Donnie and Marie, because, you know, that's what the young people are into).
  
  
• Friday's Monk was a weak entry in the series. Each episode's mystery can be solved by asking which guest star you recognize (in this case, Emma Caulfied), and the real reason to watch is the characterization of Monk in different situations that cause him stress. This week, though, that situation was a new nurse who improbably had not been notified of Monk's obsessive compulsive disorder, his job as a detective, or really anything at all about him. The unlikely situation, combined with a too-far-over-the-top performance by Nicey Johnson of Reno 911, was unbelievable and just plain boring.
  
  
• The new Justice League Unlimited series was terrific. The creators of the series have expanded the roster, cut the episodes down to 30-minute one-parters, and turned the volume up to 11. Here's hoping subsequent episodes continue the background cameos by practically everyone in the DC Universe.
  
  
• Six Feet Under continues to improve this season, as we watch Nate become an irredeemable asshole, Rico screw up everything, and David deal with the aftermath of his abduction. That last plotline was especially chilling this week; they're really bringing the audience inside the character's head at a time where that's not a fun place to be.
  
  
• George Eads was, like, everywhere this weekend: Spike TV's Friday night CSI rerun, voicing Captain Atom on Justice League, and, of course, starring as Evel Knievel on TNT. Hey, who names their kid "Evel," anyway? That's even worse than Sinestro...
  

Political Wire reports that Alan Keyes may be the Republican candidate for the Senate in Illinois. This is great news since a) it almost certainly means Barak Obama will get elected, b) Keyes is one of the most reliably entertaining political figures around (and there's something to be said for people who are unapologetically passionate [albeit crazy] about their views), and c) this would be, I think, the first ever Senate race in which both major party candidates are African-American, which will probably produce some nice research topics for my colleagues who concentrate on elections.

E.J. Dionne on the Democratic Convention:

Kerry does not shrink from being cast as a 1960s figure. He welcomes it. But note also that Kerry's 1960s are defined not by the despair that took hold at the end of the decade, as the Vietnam War was grinding on to its dispiriting end, but by the optimism of early and mid-decade. This was the 1960s of John F. Kennedy -- and, yes, of Lyndon B. Johnson before his presidency was ensnared in Southeast Asia. It was an era in which idealism forged genuine achievements that the nation does not wish to roll back. Kerry is insisting that in so many ways, the 1960s were good for our nation.

It is not surprising that the man who would be the first Vietnam veteran in the White House has taken on the task of binding the wounds inflicted by that war. Kerry, a product of the 1960s, insists on an understanding of that era that would allow the nation to pick up on the best of the decade's legacy while leaving aside the rancor with which it closed.

Is there a political purpose to all this? Of course. In the short run, Kerry's Vietnam service allows him to stand apart not only from the incumbent he is trying to defeat but also from Bill Clinton, whose decision to avoid the draft gave conservatives ample opportunity to keep alive the divisions created during the '60s. And, yes, the military testimonials will make it hard for Republicans to label Kerry a wimp whenever the terror alerts are sounded.

For the longer haul, Kerry is sending a signal that he is tired of seeing his party walk away from the best parts of its inheritance. Conservatives revere their own tradition, and good for them. It's about time that liberals did the same.

Emphasis added, for, well, emphasis.

Even Alex Ross' young Superman action figure looks old. His Flash figure, oddly enough, reminds me of Darwyn Cooke's rendition of Flash in New Frontier. I say "oddly enough" because it's hard to imagine two more dissimilar artists in comics -- Ross is on the far edge of photorealism (most of the time, anyway; his cover of Marvel's 9/11 benefit book HEROES was much looser than most of his other work), while Cooke is, if possible, even more stylized and stripped down than Bruce Timm's "animated" style of drawing.

Mineapolis' new light rail, much to the chagrin of those who whine about the wires, is looking to be a hell of a success:

Restaurants along the Hiawatha corridor are getting a boost from downtown Minneapolis workers riding the rails, with many reporting their lunch business is up 20 to 30 percent since light-rail trains began running in June.

"I didn't think it would affect me one way or the other -- but, boy, was I wrong," said Don Mattson, owner of Cap's Grille, which sits alongside the rail station at E. 50th Street.

The first day the trains ran a regular weekday schedule, Mattson said, he had 50 rail-borne diners at his barbecue joint. A month later, that number has settled at about 25 to 30 a day.
[...]
Some restaurants are seeing a baseball boost, as well. Mattson and others said they're getting a fair amount of business from Twins fans who park their cars, eat dinner and then ride the train to the Metrodome for the game.

Restaurateur Dave Koch renovated an existing restaurant with the train in mind. The Rail Station Bar & Grill, formerly Jimmy's, opened three weeks ago at 3675 Minnehaha Av. S.

"I have noticed a lot of men in suits," Koch said. "People have really accepted the train, compared to a few years ago when they were strapping themselves to trees" to protest development of the line.

Since we bought a house a mile from the 50th Street rail stop in January, I say to you: Ride! Ride that light rail! It's good for my property values!