Vs.

Go read now: Robin vs. Wolverine.

SIEGE!

Over at TPM Cafe, Paul Begala provides some insights about what it's like inside a White House under siege:

This is when a White House staffer earns his pay. The pressure of a federal criminal investigation - especially one in the media spotlight - is bone-crushing. My guess is that the strain is taking a gruesome toll. Already we hear rumors of President Bush exploding at his aides, at the President blaming Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and anyone else in sight for his woes.

This I know first hand: when The Boss explodes like that, there are two kinds of aides -- those who fight and those who flee. When he came to Washington, Mr. Bush surrounded himself with tough-minded people who seemed not to be afraid to stand up to him. But now his team is loaded with weak-kneed toadies, and Mr. Bush is home alone. Karl Rove, of course, is fending off a potential indictment. His prodigious brain has not entertained another thought in months. (That's why, I suspect, some months back Rove popped off and said liberals wanted to give terrorists psychotherapy after 9/11. It was a loopy, stupid, and distinctly un-Rovian, meltdown - the first public sign that the pressure was causing Karl to crack.)

Miers? We hardly knew 'er!

You know who the big loser is in the Harriet Miers withdrawl? Aside from an president who's looking like a lamer and lamer duck with each passing day, that is? Rachel Dratch. I'm just sayin' is all, here.

And while I'm on the subject of Saturday Night Live, I should mention how strange it was to learn of the sad death of Charles Rocket earlier this month. I first encountered him playing David's brother Richie Addison on Moonlighting, and was surprised to learn he'd been on SNL long before I could stay up late enough to watch the show...

Remember Sea Quest?

I don't know what's stranger, the fact that someone has written a very, very detailed analysis of why the early-90s TV series SeaQuest DSV failed, or the fact that it's written in a staccato prose style that's reminiscent of Hemingway as read by Shepard Smith:

Ground control to major disaster...in the ratings. Except for MURDER. She still writes big ticket. SQ's budget gets bigger. Demographics get higher. But ratings still low. More sci-fi plots. Blow up ship. Redesign. Entire show. Rename title. Change cast. Alter uniforms. Remix music. Move to Florida. Scheider's had it. Bring in Michael Ironside. Focus still murky. All three years. Manic changes. Appears desperate. Save the whales? Or the universe? Keep Darwin? No matter. Watership down. Audience at bay. Dive. Dive. Dive. Cancelled. Lost at sea, though still loved by hardcore fans, surfers, now on the Web.

I never watched the show while it was on, but there was a string of several months in the year immediately after I graduated from college where I'd come home just as the Sci-Fi Channel was starting its 11 pm rerun of it (I vaguely recall the show being touted as a major acquisition for them, but I could very well be mistaken), and let its sheer sucktitude lull me to sleep. Then I'd go to work the next day and e-mail my friends about how much last night's episode of SeaQuest was. I'm feeling much better now.

Alas, poor Rampage...

The incomparable Fanboy Rampage is closing up shop today. To get a sense of just what we're losing, take a look at this hideous Michael Turner-styled Supergirl figure, solicited just hours ago, and imagine the comments thread it will never have the chance to inspire. Godspeed, O Fanboy Rampage!

Eternal Neil

Neil Gaiman talks about his next project for Marvel, an updating of Jack Kirby's Eternals, here.

De Baisch rocks.

Consider this a very public and heartfelt thanks to De and Em Baisch of Retroactive Continuity for hooking She Who Must be Obeyed and me up with the first two episodes of the second season of the new Battlestar Galactica series, bringing us up to speed with the Sci-Fi Channel's reruns of it. I can't believe it took us so long to discover the show, but we're both very glad we have.

Features and bugs

Whedonesque links to a blog entry criticizing the Firefly universe for having a thoroughly Asian character without the presence of any Asian characters:

My beef is this: why would a man intelligent enough to read the Asian tiger on the wall (having all the characters in his future world speak an English/Chinese patois, and all of the spaceship names and call signs translated into Chinese on their hulls), be too stupid to include a SINGLE ASIAN CHARACTER in said world? Sure, there were maybe enough Asian extras in Serenity to count off on (one of) my hands, but where's the recognition, folks? The slopes are coming, and not just to buy your cheap-ass products (which they're sweat-shopping anyway.) Asian economies are just that: economies. Not wet, gaping holes for you to fill with your junk, but rather whole, integral eco-bitches of cash and power, that will only invite you to join their orgy if you're very, very relevant.

In the world of Serenity, Asians are literally inscrutable. We somehow rule the universe enough to get our main lingo (Chinese, natch) spoken everywhere, yet you can't scrut us. Anywhere. But in fifty years the world really will look more like the establishing shot of Blade Runner (which Whedon jacks with abandon, sans, of course, Asianyness), with the massive moving billboards of future cities burdened with the facets of Asian beauty and Asian power. The politicians you'll love to hate will be Asian. The CEOs who own them will be Asian. The guy in the corner store? Still Asian, but so, too, the cops that park there illegally to grab a dozen you tiu with their coffee, and the kid that stupidly holds up the store while the cops are there. You can't make up, like, over half the world's population, be poised to swoop down upon the new global economy like a hawks on a dazed field mouse, and not end up everywhere. In fifty years, much less five hundred, Asians will be more scrutable than the sky. You won't be able to look away.

At one point during our viewing of the Firefly DVD set, I made a similar comment. But then I thought that this may be a feature, not a bug, of the Fireflyverse. Think about it: You've got a future civilization in which the newspapers elite families read are printed in Chinese, highly-paid courtesans wear makeup that's at least slightly Asiatic in its effect on their appearance, everyone curses in Chinese, and yet there are very, very few actual Asians in evidence.

Sure, that could be an oversight or a hole in Whedon's worldbuilding -- or it could be a fascinating storytelling opportunity. I'm reminded of David Brin's question: Where are all of the civilizations between the Federation-Klingon-Romulan level of technology and all of those ultrapowerful, superadvanced races like the Organians and the Q Continuum? If we ever see more Firefly on the large screen or small, I'd love to see an attempt to explore just what happened on Earth in the run-up to its evacuation to new worlds...

Further adventures with the Best Wife Ever

A snippet of our commentary while watching the new Battlestar Galactica on DVD last night:

Matter-Eater Blogger: Is it wrong that I'm enjoying this as much as I am?

She Who Must Be Obeyed: No, because this is fucking awesome!

Banned books meme

Via Chris "Lefty" Brown, what I've read is in bold, what I own is in italics, and those I own AND have read are in italics:

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Some thoughts: Da fug? They banned BLUBBER? The don't-pick-on-chubby-kids book? What the holy hell is up with that? How is THAT on the list and not Then Again, Maybe I Won't? At least that one's got the evils of self-gratification to get bluehaired church ladies up in arms over.

I remember the fact of having read Beloved in college, but nothing else about the book. This is probably because I read it in the car, in the dark, coming back from Thanksgiving break.