Oh, Joe.

This is probably not a good day to bring up the fact that Joe Biden and I went to the same middle school, albeit several decades apart, given his latest gaffe...though if this kills his campaign, who will fill the role of the Veteran Senator Who Does Poorly In The Primaries (cf Bob Graham, Orrin Hatch, Dick Lugar...)?

The Phantom Stranger is neither a phantom nor a stranger. Discuss.

Two truisms of teaching American politics

1. If a writing assignment requires students to research an interest group, at least one student will write about marijuana legalization, no matter how small the class is.

2. The identity of this student will never, ever come as a surprise.

St. Eligius hostage crisis ends

After nearly a month, Disc 1 of St. Elsewhere is finally on its way to us from Netflix. Yay!

For the record, our lengthy delay in getting this disc is noteworthy because it's so rare: We're still very happy with Netflix and this sort of month-long delay is not something that's ever happened to us before. There are few things in life better than movies and TV shows arriving in your mailbox several times a week.

Super-sickness

So it turns out being really, really disgustingly sick puts one in the perfect frame of mind to appreciate crazy-ass Silver Age Superman comics. There's something about being in a vaguely feverish state that makes the insane leaps of plot, logic, and characterization found in such tales seem perfectly sensible (which is slightly different from rational). Grant Morrison is right -- for all the weirdness of the storytelling and plots of these things, there's often an oddly resonant emotional core to many of them, under the high concepts and giant krytonite gorillas and Phantom Zone villains, as when Superman thinks his dead foster parents have traveled to the future to visit him in Metropolis and he's showing them around. Sometimes it just takes lots of over-the-counter cold medicine to see that.

YO! Hollywood!

When is someone going to make a movie where Owen Wilson and Dennis Hopper play the same character, Wilson in the flashbacks and Hopper in the present?

You know what's great?

Stepping onto an elevator that has a giant wet blotch that reeks of sawdust and vomit in the middle of the floor. And then riding it for 13 floors.

Art Buchwald, RIP

Take a moment and read Art Buchwald's final column, won't you?

St. Eligius held hostage, day 19

Disc 1 of St. Elsewhere is still listed as "Long Wait" at Netflix, 19 days after we added it to the queue. It's great that so many people are still interested in the show after all these years, but WTF?

Awesome.

I'll set the DVR for this:

Freshman Sen. Jim Webb will deliver the Democrats' response next Tuesday to President Bush's State of the Union address.

The selection was made Tuesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith.

Webb's upset victory over Republican Sen. George Allen was the decisive race in giving the Democrats control of Congress in last year's midterm elections.

Webb will speak for about five minutes shortly after Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Jan. 23.

UPDATE: Study up on some important facts about Jim Webb.

Reading while tired

You know you're not getting as much rest as you should when you read a headline that begins "Fire freaks out..." and think that sounds pretty cool, only to realize that the headline REALLY says "Fire breaks out..."

He's still got it

From Roger Ebert's recent update:

And I am working on the follow-up to "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," tentatively called, "Your Movie Sucks."

Another open letter to my fellow Netflix subscribers

Dear fellow Netflix subscribers,

Thank you for easing up on your viewings of The Wire long enough for us to get the second disc of season one. Now, I must ask, WHY ARE SO MANY OF YOU WATCHING ST. ELSEWHERE?!? The bloody show's been listed as "Long Wait" since before New Year's...

Respectfully,

Matter-Eater Lad

Googlebombing John McCain

What the hell, it worked last time:

McCain, John McCain, Senator John McCain, McCain 2008

Details here.

The title of the post I'm linking has already made the only pun possible on the name "Dodd"

Someone else asks the same questions I'm asking about Senator Christopher Dodd's heralded-by-no-one candidacy for president:

What motivates a man like Chris Dodd to throw his hat in the ring? It's a mystery. I understand why impossibles like Kucinich and Sharpton run; they're driven by causes and/or addicted to the self-promotion. Even somebody like Brownback has an outside chance of becoming the darling of his party's base. He's a missionary.

Dodd is (just) a solid, respectable senator with sensitive political antennae. Why embark on such an expensive, exhausting adventure? Maybe it's a way of announcing his availability for the VP slot. Maybe somewhere in his mind he can imagine the blindfolded, quadruple bank shot that knocks out Hillary and Edwards, keeps Gore and Obama out, gives Richardson and Biden food poisoning, and leaves the golden chalice sitting at his feet.

Astonishing Irony

Is it just me, or is it rather ironic that in the final storyarc in Astonishing X-Men -- the book that began by putting Marvel's merry mutants back into traditional super-people costumes -- nearly everyone on the team is wearing street clothes?

Overdue Twilight Zone marathon blogging...

The Sci-Fi Channel's New Year's marathon of Twilight Zone has become as much of a holiday institution as the old MST3K and X-Files marathons on Thanksgiving. If you missed it, though, here's what you missed:

• Nuclear war!
  
• The monsters are human beings!
  
• The past was a better place!
  
• Nuclear war!
  
• Hitler!
  
• The monsters are human beings!
  
• The past was a better place!
  
• Nuclear war!
  
• The past was a better place!
  
• Nuclear war!
  
• They're toys!
  
• She's a mannequin!
  
• Hitler!
  
• Irony!
  
• The monsters are human beings!
  
• Nuclear war is terrifying!
  
• It can happen here!
  
• The past was a better place!
  
• The past was a better place!
  
• The past was a better place!
  
• Hitler!
  
• The monsters are human beings!
  
• The monsters are human beings!
  
• Nuclear war!
  
• The monsters are human beings!
  
• Hitler!
  

An open letter to my fellow Netflix subscribers

Dear fellow Netflix subscribers,

WHY ARE SO MANY OF YOU PICKING NOW TO START WATCHING THE WIRE?!?

All best,

Matter-Eater Lad

In honor of the new Congress...

...a nice little (NSFW) video. (Via Oliver Willis.)



And may I also say that my Congressman's kung-fu is mighty? I knew one of the fringe benefits of his election would be that it would piss off all the right people, but I didn't expect it to pay off so much so quickly.

In today's pointless video link...

...Garth Marenghi expounds on an involuntary trip to wee Glasgow toon. The more H.P. Lovecraft you've read, the funnier you'll find this.

The Wire

We finally started watching The Wire via Netflix last night. Usually, when everyone tells you how great something is, it isn't. The Wire is one of those happy and rare cases where everyone really is right. Plus you get to play "Spot the Homicide/Oz actor" in just about every scene!

D'Oh!

I probably should have mentioned that posting would be nonexistent through the holidays. We now resume our regular schedule of intermittent and haphazard postings.