No commentary here. Just an awesome link to the Museum of Hoaxes.

Thanks to Alas, A Blog

Okay, how not-excited are we for the DVD release of Spider-Man 2.

I'm probably an 8 on the "not-excited" scale.

After a rousing match of rain-soaked ultimate frisbee over the weekend, I learned that Joel Silver had a hand in formalizing and popularizing the game.

But that was just the beginning. For today was the Peanut Butter Candy Taste Test. Yes, this is how Hollywood spends its money. We had Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Reese's Pieces, Peanut Butter M&Ms, and the raison d'etre: Reese's Inside Outs, a limited edition (October 2004) peanut butter cup with the chocolate on the inside and a hard peanut butter shell. They don't sell them anymore. The taste test was delayed a week because we had to order them off of E-Bay. It sort of hurts how little I am making this up.

We set out the candy, complete with little name tags ("Reese's Inside Outs: Rare") and then ballots and pens. We await the crowds of Silver employees. Joel Silver (quasi-inventor of Ultimate Frisbee) mentions off hand that all these peanut butter candies will taste a lot alike, and we ought to have something to cleanse our pallettes. I, feeling witty, ask "what, nobody bought sorbet?" This was a mistake.

Once I return from Ben & Jerry's the taste test can begin in proper. Everyone gets a small cup of sorbet, a pen, a ballot (rank each candy on it's own merits from 1 to 5), and a crack at the four candy buffet line. General merriment ensues. You would be shocked to know how many people will begin to dissect candy at a taste test. It is, I suppose, more science than art.

For the purposes of scientific record, the results were as follows: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (original) led the pack by a wide margin, followed by Reese's Pieces, which had a small lead over the Peanut Butter M&Ms, and the largely reviled Inside Outs bring up the rear.

Okay, this takes the cake. Haaaaaaannnnnnnds down.

Before the 2001 NFL season began, in a survey of 70 celebrities who had nothing to do with football conducted by "The Sporting News," Catherine Bell (from JAG) correctly predicted that the New England Patriots would eventually beat the St. Louis Rams in the season-ending Super Bowl by the score of 20 to 17. This amazing prediction was made despite the fact that vast majority of football experts didn't think the Patriots would even make the playoffs much less get to the Super Bowl. Bell's the only person to have ever correctly predicted the participants in, winner, and final score of a Super Bowl before a season began in a published article in a major sports periodical or book.

News wires are picking up the story of Ukraine's would-be President's mystery illness. Folks, this is not pretty. Even Western media is saying this guy might have been poisoned. I believe it. It's just a stunning and sad transformation.

There are some posts I wish Alex had blessed Mastodon City with. His review of Alexander is one of them.

Go enjoy it.

As if the Bushboard wasn't worrisome enough, this is sure to give Asa a migraine from eye-rolling.

Crayola has renamed several of their colors with more patriotic titles.

Goodbye "blue" hello, "America the blue-tiful"

Say adios "orange", in your place is "Orange you glad you're in America?"

A couple weeks back, William Safire announced his retirement from the Op-Ed pages of the NYT. Since a Safire-less Op-Ed gives the Old Gray Lady just one (nominal) conservative writer (David Brooks), I assume that they'll look to balance things out by hiring a conservative in Safire's place. I assume.

But, who to hire?

First off, Safire was a somewhat traditional, Nixon-style conservative, so I suppose the NYT needs to decide whether they'll want a George Will, or somebody much younger. Maybe somebody from the blogging generation? The time might be right for that. Bloggers recently shook up CBS News and continue to play a great part in checking and rolling back the MSM's power. BUT...the NYT has never really demonstrated any understanding, or even embrace, of blogging. They pretty much like to pretend it doesn't exist. They even treat the liberal blogs crappy.

So, I don't think Glenn Reynolds (libertarian), or Hugh Hewitt (conservative), or David Horowitz (insane), will suddenly pop up on the NYT pages.

Looking at conservative/rightist rags, I think that Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn, or Stephen Hayes would all be great choices. In fact, Mark Steyn could probably end the talk of the NYT being overwhelmingly liberal overnight. He's that strong and smart a writer. Plus, he's prolific as hell. His articles pop up every where.

Ann Coulter would actually be an awesome choice as far as selling papers goes.

Still, part of me would really like to see a serious academic in there. Thomas Sowell would be a great choice, as would Victor Davis Hanson, Thomas Wilson, or Camille Paglia (not a conservative, but a maverick thinker.) Kevin Phillips is very much anti-Bush, but he's also an awesome demographer and would bring historical analysis to pages that often demonstrate weak knowledge of history. He's my dark horse pick.

My official pick, though: Tucker Carlson. He's the only type of conservative that mainline liberals (Jon Stewart notwithstanding) seem to tolerate. He does a news/commentary show on PBS, for chrissakes! I don't know how he managed to put that one past Bill Moyers and Jim Leher. So, yeah. Carlson. Hurm.

See, This stuff freaks me out.



It hits all my "I don't like where my country is heading" buttons. Overglorification of dear leader coupled with big media/big government oligarchy.

Brrrrr.

Matthew Yglesias provides a very clearsighted case for the UN, and our participation in it, despite all of its flaws(which he acknowledges): "Having rules lets us cooperate in positive-sum ways, or at least avoid negative-sum conflicts. The international system is much the same. A rule-based system would have benefits that go beyond the quality of the specific policies adopted by the rule-making body. The favored American alternative to a rule-based system is a system of unrestrained American hegemony, but this is no more a realistic alternative than is my preferred system of US governance where all the policies wind up being the ones I prefer."

If you look at the UN as a macrocosm of the United States of America, with the attendant disparate levels of wealth, education, resources, religions, and human rights concerns, then it becomes easier to see exactly why we all have a stake in maintaining even an imperfect union.

Obviously this is moot for now. America has currently expressed a preference for abandoning the rule of law worldwide by damning the UN, the ICC, and the Geneva Conventions. At some point the problem will probably be revisited, and this is clearly the argument to put forward.

Jeff links to this rather excellentLong story; short pier analysis of The Incredibles' Randian subtext (text?), which quotes Kill Bill: "When Superman wakes up in the morning, he is Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red S is the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby, when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak, unsure of himself… he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race, sort of like Beatrix Kiddo and Mrs. Tommy Plumpton."

No. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

This interpretation of Superman, no thanks to Richard Donner, is a big part of the reason that Superman is no longer a viable character (as opposed to icon). The most obvious (and geekeriffic) rebuttal to this lies in the Batman/Superman dichotomy. Bats is dark, Supes is light. Bats is a vigilante, Supes is a hero. Bats is the man, Bruce Wayne is the costume, and Clark Kent is the man, Superman is the costume. The argument above is a nature over nurture reductionist take which I'm sure the creators of Smallville (in which Kal El was sent to Earth as a conqueror) love to bits.

But it's bull pucky.

Superman was raised by the Kents as an All-American Boy. He is modest, caring, and wants to use what he has to help those around him. But what he has isn't money or fame, it happens to be super powers. So Clark Kent is the man. He is most comfortable sitting at his desk, writing a column, or at his mother's kitchen table with a plate of pie. Sure he affects a few habits to throw people off of his decidedly followable trail: the glasses, the clumsiness (depending on what version you read). But these are not the be all and end all. In a "which one is the disguise" comparison, I'd say that Clark is far more comfortable asking Perry for a deadline than hovering over a crowd of gawking citizenry to say hello.

Most conclusive: If Superman were his true persona it would never have been so important for him to convince Lois to love Clark. Why would he want her to love the charade? He doesn't. Which is why he labors away to make her see Superman for the empty icon he is, and Clark for the man he is inside.

There's a two-page spread in the excellent first chapter of Matt Wagner's Trinity, in which Superman grabs a derailed L train and holds it above his head. His though bubble reads "Golly this is heavy." That's a perfect Superman moment to me, and I don't think Bill would like it one bit.

This article about Deliberate Childlessness, via Pandagon, speaks directly to something that's come up here before.

The author, and I presume a fair number of people out there, seem to think that "The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion." Now I believe that children are our future, and we should give children every possible opportunity, including health care and good public education. I also know that this world is overpopulated, or getting there fast, and it isn't really a bad thing if the birth rate goes down.

Honestly my main concern is that intelligent, creative and driven people are the ones deciding not to bear and raise children (for what seem like obvious reasons) and an increasingly larger percentage of the population will be made of sibling groups of 6 or 7 from the least critical or motivated members of society. I see no easy to solution to this. For while I, high-minded elitist that I am, may restrict myself to 2 children merely on the basis that I wish to replace my wife and I without contributing (too much) to overpopulation, someone who doesn't care, well, won't care.

We look down on China's birth restrictions as an imposition on civil rights, but the fact of the matter is they or something like them may someday become necessary worldwide. We have only so much space and so many resources. We should take any cultural movement which reduces our population growth as a good thing. It keeps us from getting to the point the Chinese have been at for years.

Here's something cool to peruse during work:

The 100 most common surnames in the U.S.

You can really glean a lot about America's demographic makeup. The first 17 names are all ancient English surnames and scattered Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and Irish. 400 years (!) since John Smith screwed Pohcahontas at Jamestown, and the most common last name in America remains Smith. The Founding Fathers and other big-time Americans' bloodlines are also well represented. Washington, Jackson, Adams, and Lee all pop up.

And other than the news that colonials names still rule the roost, it's worth pointing out that the only other ethnicity to really show up in force are Spanish-language surnames.

Fascinating and well-researched LA Times article argues that the future of the GOP lay in the exurban counties of all states.

These growing areas, filled largely with younger [my emphasis] families fleeing urban centers in search of affordable homes, are providing the GOP a foothold in blue Democratic-leaning states and solidifying the party's control over red Republican-leaning states.

They also represent a compounding asset whose value for the Republican Party has increased with each election: Bush's edge in these 100 counties was almost four times greater than the advantage they provided Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee eight years ago.

In states like Ohio, Minnesota and Virginia, Republican strength in these outer suburbs is offsetting Democratic gains over the last decade in more established - and often more affluent - inner-tier suburbs...

... In some of the most hotly contested states - Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Colorado - that trend could leave the Democrats trying to squeeze out even more votes from static or shrinking urban centers and inner-tier suburbs, while Republicans are dominating the counties exploding in population several exits down the interstate.

I find it endlessly amazing that while conservatives continue setting the Republican debate, the GOP is nevertheless the party of "new" America.

Yes, the Wimbledons. Tuesday night at the Derby. 10 pm. Aah, the Wimbledons.

Taking a break from playing X-Men Legends to have Frank, Liz and Jeff do a remarkably accurate a cappela version of the X-Men animated series theme song. All around me. Like stereo surround.

Truly remarkable.

Get Fuzzy is probably the best mainstream strip out ther right now. I remember discovering it in college, back when we got the LA Times, and we were all hooked. It's the only currently running strip I buy collections of (which reminds me I think I'm a few behind). Come on folks, the dog wears a watch! Hi-larious.

This week they're doing "rejected cartoons," where Conley uses the ruse of making the joke "these are so edgy I had to reject them" to do some edgy comics. Frankly they aren't even all that edgy, though I can see how lots of people will be offended because it isn't the Family Circus. And because at one point Bucky Katt literally roasts Jeffy.

But bravo to Mr. Conley. It's funny, which is all that matters.

Because he loathes it, Ebert's review of National Treasure is pretty amusing. One thing jumped out at me though. Apparently Diane Kruger plays an archivist named Dr. Abigail Chase. Uhh, kinda like Abbey Chase, of Danger Girl (quasi)fame?

Oh man Bruckheimer (auteur Producer, get used to it) is such a hack.

Even if you're beliefs/policies/ideas/whatever are based in reality (as they should be), you simply can't sell them that way. There are all sorts of obvious negative moral implications to that, but given the current and presumably self-replicating media (over)saturation/hyperactivity it's just the truth. It isn't necessarily immoral. You can be a huckster for good as easily as bad. But you simply MUST be a huckster.

Word.

Well, maybe, but I don't think Morrison's run is too much for a middle schooler. But most importantly, a girl was reading comics.

Wow, we were just debating Europe and in today's New York Times they have a big article about Germany's dwindling population.

Something I forgot to note in the earlier comments was that it's very hard for an aging, declining pop. to support a massive welfare state. So, if Europe continues to age there will be few and fewer people to pay for the services the aged are entitled.

Dr. Klingholz drew attention here last spring when he calculated that without new immigrants, Germany's population would wither from 82 million to 24 million by 2100. If the country maintained its current rate of 230,000 immigrants a year, it would still shrink by 700,000 over the next 15 years.

As a present to myself for a job well done I boughtActivision's X-Men Legends. And it's so damn good. Remember the X-Men arcade game? The one where you could be Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Colussus, Nightcrawler or Dazzler and Blob screamed "Nothing can stop the Blo-ob" and at one point you fought Wendigo? Yeah. This is like that, but a million jillion times better.

Probably the greatest innovation of this game is that you can play the whole thing through 1 player (with an AI controlling the other X-men on your team) and at any point other people can just jump in and taker control of the AI characters. Genius. Oh, and I don't know about other systems, but on the Gamecube the control is really smooth and well layed out, to the extent that Emily picked it up pretty much right away, and she's not an action gamer at all.

And from what I've seen so far it's rather gloriously faithful to the look and feel of the comics (with a costume nod to the *ugh* Ultimate version). I love it.

Remember those smarter people I was talking about? The ones who would explain how the Euro, nationalized healthcare, and a better educational system would make the EU a formidable superpower ready to overtake us? Check out this Salon article.

It makes the interesting point that Bush v. Kerry was really America v. Europe, in more ways than the Francophobic Right would have you believe.

"Kerry was an internationalist and a secularist (at least by American standards) running against a man who wrapped himself in the flag and was guided by divine inspiration. Bush didn't just run as an American; he pretty much ran as America, which Rifkin calls a nation "living in two seemingly contradictory realms at the same time," those being the evangelical Protestant faith in salvation and the rationalist drive to accumulate wealth and build industry. That cast Kerry in the role of Europe -- intellectual and irreligious, faintly stained by the ghosts of socialism and Catholicism, with a belief in universal human rights and negotiated solutions, but not much in the way of a transformative spiritual vision."

...the more they stay the same.

Elements of the Democratic Party have again found their historical embrace of states' rights (good for them), but also...secession. *cue omnious music*.

Here's the roundup.

Salon

Slate

Tech Central Station

National Review

Secession constitutes a repudiation of republican government as understood by the Founders....When the States ratified the Constitution of 1787, they pledged that they would accept the results of elections conducted according to its rules. In violation of this pledge, the Southern States seceded because they did not like the outcome of the election of 1860. Thus secession is the interruption of the constitutional operation of republican government, substituting the rule of the minority for that of the majority.

My two-cents?

I'm a Republican (but hardly a conservative). But I'm also loyal to the pure Blue States, and as I noted (and many others have done), the red/blue divide is largely a fallacy.

But could modern-day secession and even a Second Civil War really work?

Uh, no. Of course not. As they did in the 1860s, Republican interests control the bulk of American big business and big industry. Sure, the statisitcs show that the Blue States subsidize some of economically underdeveloped Reds, but states don't pay taxes, individuals do. And the rich people pay most of the taxes, and rich people skew Republican. So Republican/Unionists would have a financial and productivity edge over their Democratic/Secessionist opponents. Provided of course that Blue State guerrillas don't blow up GOP-held Blue State factories. But where would these Demo guerrillas get the weapons to blow up weapons factories to begin with? Ah, the rub.

The Union would also have the great majority of the military support, as some 80% (?) voted for Bush. (I've heard this number bandied about on the radio. Sorry, I don't have an official source.) This is historically a reverse of the Civil War, in which the bulk of the U.S. Army officer corps came from the South, and remained loyal to their homeland. It's easy to imagine this same regionalism taking root in today's Army, only in a different cause, to save the Union rather than destroy it.

(Nixon's Southern Strategy continues to pay off!)

In terms of Moral Causes, the Civil War II would be harder to quantify. The Republican/Unionists would love to finally, legally call their Demo opponents traitors and un-American. But, the pure Blues would have an exceedingly strong moral argument of their own. For them, secession is a means to free the gays and preserve a woman's rights.

Inversely, the Republican/Unionists would maintain that Civil War II is the long-awaited real-life battle to perserve the rights of the unborn (a cause that many GOPsters directly link to the party's earlier opposition to slavery).

Man, what a mess. I don't even want to think of the fate that would befall Democratic governors in Union states, and Republican governors in Secession states. I see lots of executions. Lots. Oooh, but think of the fun we could have with crazy border states! New Hampshire would go crazy. And poor Pennsylvania (Asa's fatherland) would probably rip in three.

Well, maybe.

Looks like a write-in candidate in San Diego may have eeked out victory: "SAN DIEGO — Declaring 'let the people be heard,' a judge Monday refused to block the vote count in a disputed mayoral election that has gripped this city while garnering national attention for the unlikely leader — a last-minute write-in candidate, Councilwoman Donna Frye."

This is great Democracy-in-action stuff folks. Write-in candidate surges forward and may become the first mayor to wield expanded power that she opposed. I don't know much about San Diego politics, but I suppose if someone's going to have that extra mayoral power then you're best off with it being someone who is tentative to wield it.

The LA Times today runs with this article above the fold, which makes note of “100,000 anti-America protestors” in Britain.

I think the author is confused. Sure, a lot of those protesters were anti-America, but a lot, and my guess is the majority of them, are simply anti-Bush. Now that we’ve re-elected (some would say simply elected for the first time) President Bush there will probably be a lot more anti-American sentiment worldwide than previously. I’ll leave it to people who are smarter than me to tell you how that might affect our global influence, but the short version is that the Euro is getting stronger, the EU is becoming a solid world power (they're big like the US, but get more votes in international institutions), anti-Americanism is a popular platform in Democracies worldwide, and we just re-elected the President who ran on "multi-lateralism is for pussies and fags."

But let’s not be confused. Bush is not America and America is not Bush. 48% of Americans didn’t even vote for the man. Protesting Bush, or being anti-Bush, is NOT THE SAME as being anti-American. This is something this journalist, and far too many right-wingers, seem unable to grasp. And that in itself is a problem.

George W. Bush seems to think that he and his ideological brethren are America. To insult them, or to disagree with them, is tantamount to treason. The administration is famously closed-minded, coming to conclusions and then searching out the evidence which supports the conclusions they’ve already reached while denying anything that might disprove it. They did this most famously, and disastrously, in the run-up to war with Iraq, which represented a stellar combination of intelligence failures, ideological blinders, and an impatience with the peace process that is truly stunning. And that was with supposed moderates and civilians like Powell and Tenet, on the case. Now they have both been replaced with yes men.

Condi Rice and Porter Goss’s main qualifications for their new posts is loyalty. Condi is considered rather inept at resolving interagency disputes, of which there were many during her tenure as NSA. She is now supposed to be our Chief Diplomat? She is supposed to present our case to a world which increasingly fears and distrusts us? And Porter Goss has already begun purging the CIA of “liberal Democrats.” The fact that these liberals might be, you know, good at their jobs, is apparently of no consequence. If they don’t swear fealty to Bush then they have no place working for the government at all.

Is this truly what One Party rule gets us? Didn’t HW head the CIA when Carter and his Democratic majority ran the country?

But this all speaks to a disturbing larger trend. The Authoritarianization (if it’s not a word it should be) of not just the US, but the entire world. China’s leading rebellious filmmaker sold out with Hero, a tale of Nationalism and faith in single state with a single all-powerful ruler which was readily accepted by the Chinese communist government. Hero then became, despite it’s creepily State above the People thematics, a huge crossover hit here in the US. Putin consolidates his iron grip on Russia and expresses his great pleasure that Bush won over Kerry. We can only guess why.

The great irony, of course, is that as the President leads the charge for “Democratization” of the world, he does nothing to scold his “good friend” Putin, nor to curb his own authoritarian tendencies. Censorship, restricted civil liberties, a one party state with a ruler inextricably wound up with the identity of the country itself. This is a road all too often traveled, and one we best not go too far down. We're not all that far gone as it is, but far enough that it's fair for someone to lean over and say "hey, maybe we should stop and look at the map."

Regardless of one’s political leanings, this is a problem everyone should be paying attention to. Democrats, as the party out of power, have a lot more to fear. But moderate and even hard-right-but-principled Republicans should think long and hard about what they are willing to sacrifice to achieve their political ends. It may not be worth it.

Argh. It took me forever to finally finish this post, but here we are.

What am *I* watching/reading/listening to?

TV: Arrested Development -- This show has been the "it" show for over a year. I'm happy to report that it's funnier than ever. I don't know what else to say here that hasn't already been said, so I'll just move on.

King of the Hill -- Probably one the single most overlooked "great" show off all-time. I love, love, love King of the Hill and often look to it for inspiration when it comes to crafting truly character-driven stories.

Wednesdays are huge for me, as there's a killer line-up of Smallville, Mythbusters, and South Park on.

Smallville has continued its downward streak this season, but there have been interesting moments. Namely the Flash episode and the exceedingly GAY relationship between Lex and Clark. Honestly, they should just make the show about their failed romance. It would be truly interesting. Oh, and kill Lana while you're at it.

Mythbusters is a show on the Discovery Channel that I've plugged numerous times on my solo blog. It has these two quirky guys solving different urban legends with science! It's great.

South Park's second half of season 8 has been weaker than the first half last Spring, but that's to be expected. Trey Parker and Matt Stone worked themselves into the ground finishing Team America, so in all honesty, I wasn't expecting the November South Parks to be that brilliant.

Thursdays I'm watching the Apprentice. This season started strong and then...feh. Trumps fired too many interesting characters. They violated the second rule of reality shows: If you're lucky enough to cast great characters, you have to find ways to keep them on the show.

Oh, my girlfriend's into Gilmore Girls, so I've been catching a lot of those. It's, uh, well, God bless 'em, they're trying.

HBO in my mind, is pretty much empty until August 2005 when ROME premiers. As for now, I'm pretty into their reality show Family Bonds. It's a bit like the Sopranos, but it's, uh, real.

Radio (FM): Let's see, pretty much the usual. Stern in the mornings. Tom Leykis in the afternoons. Conway & Steckler or Loveline at night. Speaking of which, Loveline has had some great shows lately, with Seth Macfarlane, Will Arnett, and Jason Bateman showing up.

AM Talk: I've been catching a lot of Phil Hendrie Show. That's about it. I'm trying to hunt down some tapes/MPEGs of the time Camille Pagilia guest-hosted Rush Limbaugh, however. Saturday and Sunday nights it's Art Bell time.

Books: Nothing of note. I recently ordered this and this, however.

Movies: Wow, I'm so behind. I caught Ladykillers on DVD. It was pretty bad. Just totally over-written, over-directed, and over-acted. The phrase "overbaked" also springs to mind. I actually sat down and watched Joe Versus the Volcano for the first time about a decade. It was awful, but strangely fascinating. It might receive my much-desired, "Brilliant Misfire" label.

Music: I'm not into music. But, I am into Eminem, and I recently got his latest -- Encore. I'm working my way through it. My first reaction is that it's not as inviting as the MMLP or the Eminem Show. That said, I find the notion of this album being a direct sequel to The Eminem Show only -- and not the first two -- to be rather brilliant.

Over at the Basement Tapes Joe Casey describes the Superman story that never was:
"CASEY: The Christ metaphor was just about the only thing I could sink my teeth into. Back in 2001, we'd actually come up with a huge story where Superman's secret i.d. is exposed, Lois is killed and Superman travels to the 5th dimension where he makes a deal with Mr. Mxyzptlk to use his powers to 'fix things.' So Mxy plays a trick on him. He sends Superman back, and everyone had forgotten his secret i.d.... including Lois. The twist was, Superman remembered everything, so the burden of his life was restored... could he now stand to protect Lois by not marrying her? He became, in a weird sense, the Wandering Jew, which to me brought him right back to the kind of superhero Seigel and Shuster created in 1936. Denying that kind of intimate, lifelong relationship... it was the ultimate sacrifice. It was celibacy, basically.

(in case you're wondering... there was one thing Superman didn't remember: Mxy himself. It was Mxy's plan all along when he made the deal with Supes in the first place, that he'd finally be rid of his Achilles heel… the whole 'saying his name backwards sends him back to the 5th dimension'-gag. Now, Mxy could show up on Earth, raise hell and their 'game' could begin anew, their relationship starting from Square One)

So, we'd found a new paradigm that was in the greatest traditions of the character... and the suits shut us down. Perfectly within their rights, but I don't think any of us -- not me, Loeb, Joe Kelly or Mark Schultz -- ever recovered from that kick-back. That was the beginning of the end. First Loeb took off, then Schultz, then Kelly and I. Maybe you're right. Maybe they were shying away from any religious overtones. That's when I started equating Superman to Muhammad Ali. I thought that'd be a safer role model..."

Why wasn't THAT the big Superman relaunch? This muddled-three different directions-Azarello's story makes no damn sense at all-relaunch hasn't solved any problems or increased any readership. I've always felt Lois and Clark's relationship is only interesting as a courtship, and managing to return it to that phase while adding an extra motive to forever keep it there is just sheer genius. I can only imagine Jeph Loeb had almost nothing to do with this, because it's actually good.

The whole column, a Marvel vs. DC discussion, is worth a read. I tend to agree with Casey except on a few points. Namely I think Batman and Wonder Woman are both icons for whom ongoing stories are better than origins (like the greek Pantheon). It's fair to say nobody has hit the right stories for Wonder Woman yet, but I'm sure they're out there. The fact that she has survived this long as a character with no stories of note is proof that she's got something going for her.

Anyway, things tend to be cyclical, and I think it's fair to say that we may be headed for a time when we need our heroic icons back. It may not be too long before people are deriding Marvel for having too many characters and not enough golden gods. We'll see.

I read a long time ago that they were going to launch a Spidey series in India, entirely written and produced in that country, which would constitute a re-imagining of the character for Indian audiences. Sounded like a great idea to me, and I was a bit sad thinking that I, being in this country and all, wouldn't get to read it.

Well, I was wrong. It comes out this week, and I'll definitely be picking it up.

Also this week, Ed Brubaker's Captain America. I do love Ed Brubaker, and it sounds like he's using Disassebled as a 9/11 parable for Cap, who is on an angry and counter-productive rampage. I'll probably buy the first issue to see if it's worth buying the eventual trade. I have a new policy to not buy things in issue form that are clearly written for the trade. Goodbye Astonishing X-Men.

We should all be so lucky to work for NPR.

Our search Query report for October:
8: bela karoli
2: mastodon
1: rebs graffiti houston
1: bela karoli audio
1: nuclear bomb animated gif
1: amanda beard and michael phelps sex rumors
1: bela karoli kerry strug
1: global test thugocracy
1: could this action possibly stabilize oil production
1: is the u.s president a republican
1: aaron piersol gay
1: iraq dehead
1: mastodon blog
1: script from news from lake wobegon 10/23
1: aaron piersol

Want to be terrified? Go read up on the transorbital lobotomy.

This could have been Dorothy if they ever got to make a sequel to Return To Oz:

Only another month of this, I swear.

I've been cruising the DC and
Geoff Johns boards to see what other people are theorizing about IC. Can I say right now that I hate comic geeks?

Meltzer has said over and over again that this would be solved like a standard mystery. The clues are all there. When you reread it knowing the killer you'll say "doh!" a lot. There's no cheap comic book-y out. So why oh why is every damn theory on these boards based around body switching and time travel?

nerds.

To Emmett, whose car was stolen in front of a police station, and who was looking forward to getting a car that was not one of the most commonly thieved in the country. The police have found his car, and he will have to wait for it to be stolen again before getting a new one.

If you Google Search for Bela Karoli the fifth thing listed is the MC archive page that features The Olympic Village.

That ri-goddamn-diculous.

The Iron Giant still makes me cry. Not only does it make me cry like a newborn babe at the end, but early on, in the barn, when the Giant says "Superman," I tear up. This is presumably a sense memory frontback (thank you James Cameron, for inventing the frontback) to the end of the film. That I know in the end it'll all be OK is, time after time, completely irrelevant.

An animated robot connects with me at a gut emotional level far more than most film characters. This either says a lot about me, or a lot about the state of film today. Or maybe just a lot about how good the Iron Giant is.

It's also worth noting that the film has a lot more resonance today than it did 5 years ago. The Cold War stuff dovetails nicely with our current propaganda/scare machine. Reds=terrorists. Duck and cover=taping up your windows. And most importanly, you don't have to be a gun.

2 people in the last week have asked me if I'm married. One because my name is hyphenated (tweren't MY marital status that made that happen) and the other because I was on the phone with her and yelling at Donna and Chancellor. She thought they were my kids.

I'm about as far from married as one could possibly get. I guess I could be dead. That would be further.

"A directory of cell phone numbers will be published soon. This opens the door to solicitors calling our cell phones using up our minutes.  The Federal Trade Commission has set up a do not call list. You must call FROM the number you wish to register. The number is 1-888-382-1222.  It is an automated process and it only took about a minute to do."

An extended post feature. So lengthy posts, like Alex's purple state stuff, and my IC rantings, don't dominate the galaxy with their lengthitude. Anyone know how to do that?

The DLC tells its folks to start eating at Applebees. Seriously.

Meanwhile, conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt (and the only man to completely call this election, from start to finish) tells other conservatives to shut-up with regard to the Arlen Specter bashing.

Both Hewitt and I think the Anti-Specter talk is petty and silly and represents the continued Dixification of the party.

Did the GOP not notice (and thank their lucky stars) this week that Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee said he'd stay a Republican? The GOP establishment caught a HUGE break there. They have to stop fighting and talking like they're still the minority party. The GOP has to wise up and accept a diverse (intellectually speaking) party. Because let me tell them something, even though my massive post below shows that Republicans are respectable in "Blue States," it's only going to get harder for the moderate wing of the party to reach office. Guys like Schwarzengger and Mitt Romney may soon become isolated instances, rather than stepping stones to continued diversification.

Something that irks me in this post-election cycle is the continuing persistence of simple conservatives and simple liberals to maintain that there is a cut-and-dried, Civil War-like division between Red and Blue in this country.

Don't buy it.

Sure, it's fun to laugh at those maps that show the U.S. splitting into the United States of Canada and JesusLand. And it's charming, in a 19^th century sort of way, I suppose, to joke of secession. Just be warned: The states that went for Kerry didn't all go for Kerry; and the state's that went for Bush didn't all go for Bush.

It is much better to look at the county-by-county voting breakdown, or even these tricky, "purple maps."

Best of all, though, is to checkout these numbers that I've crunched!

First let us look at Popular Vote:

(While I stand by these numbers, I should note that I did almost all arithmetic by hand.)

Bush: 59,459,765

Kerry: 55,949,507

Bush votes in Red States = 34,809,995.

Bush votes in Blue States = 24,649,770

Kerry votes in Blue States = 30,766,464

Kerry votes in Red States = 25,182,943

Percentage of total Bush votes from Blue states: 41.4 %

Percentage of total Kerry votes from Red states: 45.0%

In terms of raw totals, Kerry got about 700,000 more votes in enemy territory than Bush did. And because Kerry got fewer votes over all, this 700,000 naturally makes his percentage of Red State votes higher. So, for all intents and purposes, however, both candidates were statistically similar in garnering votes from states on the other side of the so-called Red/Blue Divide.

There are plenty of Republicans, or those simply holding conservative values, in the Blue states, enough that the Blue states don't actually look all that blue at the end of the day (perhaps explaining why four of the six New England states have GOP governors, or why NY has a GOP mayor and Governor. Or why both of PA's senators are Republicans.)

Likewise, the same can be said of the Democratic Party's strength in Red States. There's a 45.5 chance that the neighbor down the way in Jefferson Davis County, Red State, USA voted Democrat. Chew on that, Bushies!

It should be noted, however, that both Bush and Kerry's votes in enemy territory are padded by high numbers from states that they lost...barely.

If we subtract the votes for each candidate from states won by his opponent by less than 3%, we get this.

Bush Purple-Blues

-2,756,361 (PA)

- 330,848 (NH)

-1,345,168 (MN)

-1,477,122 (Wisconsin)

-2,306,324 (Michigan)

Kerry Purple-Reds

-393,372 (Nevada)

-362,340 (New Mexico)

-732,764 (Iowa)

-2,659,664 (Ohio)

Percentage of total Kerry votes from Red States minus Purple-Reds: 41%

Percentage of total Bush votes from Blue States minus Purple-Blues: 32%

So, what we learn here is that Kerry does better in deep Red States than Bush does in deep Blue States.

However, Kerry only topped one-million votes in *one* Purple-Red State, while Bush managed the feat in four similarly plotted Purple-Blues. So, on one hand, Kerry did better in enemy territory than Bush. On the other hand, the Blue States' superior population meant that Bush managed to closely contest a number of urbanized states, and marshal greater strength, even in losses, than Kerry managed in rural, less urbanized Bush states.

Bush was so close to winning in these Giant Purples, in fact, that had he carried 3 of the above 5 Purple-Blue states, the entire Red/Blue divide would have ceased to exist altogether. Hypothetical Bush wins in PA, Wisconsin, and NH would have seriously hindered talk of there being Democratic enclaves on the coasts and upper Midwest, as Red Country would begin right outside New York State and extend from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior.

But, in searching for the real strength of the GOP at the national level, I'm most struck by their ability to elect House and Senate members in Blue States.

19 Blue States

GOP holds 41% of Blue House seats

GOP holds 23% of Blue Senate seats

31 Red States

Dems hold 34% of Red House seats

Dems hold 25% of Red Senate seats

So, with 62 Red State Senate seats to run at, the Dems only hold 16 of them. Statistically they have the same influence in enemy territory as the GOP does in Blue Senate seats, even though they have more seats to work with. Not good.

Similarly, the total number of Red State House seats is 225. The Dems hold 34% of these, while the GOP holds 41% of the 210 Blue State House seats.

But, let's now factor in the Purple-Blues and Purple-Reds.

Purple-Blues

PA: 12-7 GOP majority in House seats; 2-0 GOP majority in Senate seats.

New Hampshire: 2-0 GOP majority in House seats; 2-0 GOP majority in Senate seats.

Minnesota: 4-4 split in House seats; 1-1 split in Senate seats.

Wisconsin: 4-4 split in House seats; 2-0 Dem majority in Senate seats.

Michigan: 9-6 GOP majority in House seats; 2-0 Dem majority in Senate seats.

Total:

House: 31 GOP - 24 Dem

Senate: 5 GOP - 5 Dem

Purple-Reds

Iowa: 4-1 GOP majority in House seats; 1-1 split in Senate seats.

Nevada: 2-1 GOP majority in House seats; 1-1 split in Senate seats.

New Mexico: 2-1 GOP majority in House seats; 1-1 split in Senate seats.

Ohio: 12-6 GOP majority in House seats; 2-0 GOP majority in Senate seats.

Total:

House: 20 GOP - 9 Dem

Senate: 5 GOP - 3 Dem

The states Kerry barely lost are still quite Red at the Legislative level. The states Bush barely lost are a weak Red, but Red nonetheless at the Legislative level.

Overall, I'd say that when it comes to Federal races, the GOP is more competitive in so-called enemy territory than the Democrats. The GOP is better positioned electorally (for the time being) than the Dems, in that they have a rock solid base in the South, and just enough voters in the North to put them over the top nationally. Not only that, but the Upper Midwest appears to be trending Red. A more successful Iraq War or a stronger GOP POTUS candidate could very well have swung Wisconsin, Michigan, or PA into the GOP column. As it is, Wisconsin went Blue by the absolute slimmest of margins.

Look at it this way: Three of Connecticut's five House delegates are Republicans. Two of Alabama's seven House delegates are Democrats.

The Dems cannot be content to just sit back and assume that they have the total loyalty of today's Blue Staters. Statistically and electorally they don't. They must check and rollback remaining GOP power in Blue States, while also reaching out to the South and Heartland. It is a difficult two-step to say the least.

* * *

To throw a big wrench in all of this, check out the map of U.S. governorships (Color Montana and NH blue; Indiana and MO red). There's no real electoral pattern to speak of.

Also, the Wall St. Journal notes that the GOP suffered a series of losses in the State Legislatures in 2004.

Now that I'm thinking about it I decided to go check the Rotten Tomatoes page for The Polar Express. Here are the greatest hits:

"Now it can be said, Santa Claus is a fascist dictator who likes to kidnap and endanger children so that they can learn the true value of Christmas."
-- Michelle Alexandria, ECLIPSE MAGAZINE

  "There's a deeper, shivery tone, instead of the mindless jolliness of the usual Christmas movie."
-- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
(This one was rated fresh, but I think "shivery" wasn't the goal here. -Ed.)

"Zombies have their place, but not in Christmas movies."
-- Tom Long, DETROIT NEWS

 "It's hard to know how much of that intense martial creepiness is intended as satire, and how much of it is just what lies beneath."
-- Walter Chaw, FILM FREAK CENTRAL
(ooh, somebody knows their Zemeckis filmography. -Ed.)

"Good work for the sake of good work -- it delivers something I'll readily admit is enjoyable, but not easily embraceable."
-- Jeffrey Chen, WINDOW TO THE MOVIES

"A holiday oddity of the first rank: a breathtaking visual feast peopled by dead-eyed mannequins."
-- Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE

First off, I didn't know Momus had a blog. Secondly, I've known about the Uncanny Valley (go click that link, lazy bones) for a while, and it's always been rather fascinating. It's coming up a lot now because of the terrifying uber-humans in "the Polar Express," whom I've been saying were terrifying since the first trailer appeared. Momus manages to link it back into all sorts of other things, including the totally canny valley of anthropomorphization in films like "A Bug's Life" and the 2004 Presidential campaign.

Thanks Momus! All of your CDs are imports that I can't afford! Also I haven't really looked since DC! hoorah!

Some things I forgot:

Comics in trades:
Catwoman

Books:
Ray Bradbury, various short story collections
PG Wodehouse's World of Jeeves

Music:
Jill Sobule
Nellie McKay (so political)
Shins (so autumnal)
Bowie (so good)
William Shatner

For what it's worth the new Donna's CD isn't all that great, except for the title track, Gold Medal, which I really dig.

Also, since we're here, Busiek's "Secret Identity" came out in trade today and it's easily the best Superman story written in the last 10 years, even though it isn't quite about Superman.

ARRRRRGGGGHHHH

I really don't think it's him.

If for no other reason than that the narrative begs for a last minute twist ending in issue #7 (one name off my previous list, equally hard to swallow, does spring to mind), I don't think it's him.

But it's killing me.

Because everyone else is.

quick stuff first:

TV-
Lost: Probably the flip-side of the JJ Abrams coin, where Alias is confusing and dumb, but Lost is confusing and cool. Come on secret Nazi base! Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!
Desperate Housewives: Trashy. And alternately brilliant and awful. But since I think I'm dumping the OC I need to get my trash somewhere.
Daily Show: Well, duh. But I don't catch it nearly as much as I'd like.

Movies-
The Incredibles and Sideways: I don't see many movies any more, but these were both great in their own ways, and I'm glad I saw them. Incredibles didn't my joy button as much as it did others, but I went into it in a fairly surly mood, so for once I think I'll actually give a movie a second shot. I love you Brad Bird.

Books-
Goedel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid and A Peace To End All Peace: My comics come in bitesize doses, so my book books come in gigantic hard to swallow granite spheres. Both of these books are really incredibly good, and I don't ever read more than a chapter at a time. I've been reading both for basically all of 2004 and am not even close to done either of them. But really, they're very good.

Now the long'un... Comic books!

Issue by issue:
Gotham Central
Teen Titans
Flash
Identity Crisis
Green Lantern: Rebirth
We3
Y: The Last Man

In trades:
Astonishing X-Men (I gave up on Whedon. Single issues are worthless)
Sleeper
Busiek's JLA (I'm thinking ahead)
Authority: Revolution (ditto)
Planetary
Powers
Ultimate Spider-Man (someone needs to lend me the newest few)

Eagerly awaiting:
David Lapham's Detective Comics run
Black Hole trades (issues are a ludicrous $5 each, and the only trades right now are in Spanish)

Ha! You thought I meant actual parties. Nope. Politics. Nobody wants to make out with someone who only cares about politics and comic books. Well, nbody except me, and as previously stated, I am weirded out by the idea of making out with myself.

Anyway, I've lately come to the conclusion that part of the Democratic Party's long, slow implosion basically ever since I was born has been due in no small part to its majority status. They got the New Deal, and the civil rights, and the feminism, and the Roe v. Wade, and then they basically just had to defend the status quo. Sure there was health care, and gay rights, but it all stems out of pre-existing civil rights and social safety net arguments. Republicans got to be the party of reform, railing against the government.

And railing against the government is always good for business.

So here's my newest argument for a multi-party (why just 3?) system in America: If your interests lie with liberal politics, and you aren't the worst kind of partisan Democrat, then it's in your interest to have at least 2 liberal parties. Let's call them Dems and Greens, you know, just some made up names, for argument's sake. This way when one party is in power, like the Dems in '94, then you can have liberal reformists from the Green party. That way your vague liberal ideals don't get swallowed up by you being The Man, and conservatives don't get to lay claim whole hog to "fighting the man for the little guy."

There will always be a pendulum of conservative and liberal, and sometimes it will swing conservative. But I think this system buys both sides an out in terms of reform. When liberals are in power the reform doesn't need to be conservative, it just needs to be reform. Vice versa as well. For instance, right now I would be plenty happy with a Conservative party which espoused any of the conservative values I actually appreciate, like fiscal responsibility and state's rights (DEAN!). I imagine a lot of moderate conservatives, and a hell of a lot of Libertarians, feel the same way.

So get me my IRV, and get it for me now. Everyone will win. Promise.

The movie I'm working on has a fairly large number of effects shots, almost all of which involve digitally removing a blemish from one actor's face. Today I was down at the FX house we're using, and had quite the learning experience.

All the work they do is confidential (hey did you see me not blasting that name all over the internet? That's right you didn't!) and they aren't allowed to name clients or show their work (because that would be tantamount to naming clients). So this weekend they will be shooting a bunch of random nobody actors in order to digitally "fix" their flaws and blemishes and create a reel. Delightful!

So the guy I'm talking to tells me about all this, then says that they'll do all the ugly people first, and then the hot girls, to show that sometimes (oftentimes) hot girls need fixing too. Fair enough, it's a client base. I'm just sitting on a couch when he calls my name, and I head into the other room. "Hey Asa, can you help us out and tell us who we should save for last?" Well, the girl who wears lingerie in her headshot is a good pick.

One of the first things I notice is that none of these people are, by any stretch of the imagination, ugly. Some are a bit plain, and some are (heaven forbid) old, but even the woman who was clearly 60 was a pretty dishy 60-year old. Then someone points to the headshot of the girl who looks just like Julia Roberts and says "She's great. She looks just like Julia Roberts." I agree. "Plus she's got some obvious work that needs done." And he swirls his finger around the general vicinity of her face, presumably the location of her massive deformities.

I stare at the headshot.

Then it comes to me. There's nothing at all wrong with her face. She has no blemishes. Her radiant beauty and sexuality would drive the girls in any real world high school into murderous fits of jealous rage.

And they want to fix her.

It was a mistake to watch 10 minutes of The Swan last night.

You'd think, from just reading this blog, that I only care about two things: Politics and Comics.

You should trust your instincts.

First off, I'm incredibly happy that there's no Mortal Kombat-style "Kontinues" bullshit I have to dick around with for Identity Crisis.

Secondly, Issue #6 comes out this Wednesday. I hope everyone just loved it last time when I went apeshit trying to figure out who the killer was. Because round 2 is on its way. Probably nobody reads that stuff. That won't stop me though, no sir.

Sorry Everybody

Of course the past week has seen a lot of election post-mortem. This is what we did wrong. This is what we do next time. Blah blah blah.

There have also been a lot of people saying that the Democrats just should have been nicer, or need to work to appeal to the moderates. Blah blah blah.

Well, that's quite obviously a load of horse pucky. Bush isn't a nice man, nor a nice campaigner by any stretch. As Digby says, "Bush doesn't 'connect' with people's better natures, he 'connects' directly to their id. And, I'm afraid that the id trumps finer feelings in many, many people." And he won by consolidating his base, not appealing to the middle.

Frankly I think the Democrats have a lot of problems, mainly with their message machine. One of the biggest problems, though, is their complete unwillingness to call a spade a spade. If Bush wanted you to know that he thought Kerry was weak on defense he said so. If Kerry wanted you to know that Bush was a liar, he said he exagerated. It was a political calculation to be so polite, and it failed. And we are afforded no such politeness from the other side of the political spectrum.

So call a liar a liar. George W. Bush is a liar. This is a verifiable fact. If the media gets in your grill about it then tell them all the ways in which George W. Bush is a liar and ask them to please put the list in the articles they're writing about how uncivil your discourse is. I'm not saying that we should lie, or that we should be unduly mean, but I am saying we should stop dancing around the truth.

Say what you will about Howard Dean, but the man tells it like it is. Yeah, that's right, this whole rant was just inspired by Dean nostalgia. He was a centrist, you morons. More conservative than Kerry. And guess what? We shouldn't have gone to war with Iraq, and neither we, nor our troops, were any safer after Saddam Hussein was captured.

And I believe, deep in my heartiest of hearts, that he would have called George Bush a liar. And he would have been right.

ps- Digby has a running rant about our media age, and how Democrats are foolishly still running candidates and not media creations (see: Reagan, Bush 2, Schwarzenegger). He's cynical as hell, but also sadly right. People should go read.

Smiler '08!

RealClearPolitics.com has their round up of the pollsters who ended up being the most accurate. Despite increasingly erratic behavior in the run-up to 11.2, Zogby didn't fare *that* badly. Gallup got creamed, however. As did FOXNews/Opinion Dynamics.

DEAN WINS!

"During his famous 'Guns and Gays' speech in January 2004, Dean bridged a theretofore vast gap between Chelsea Boys and Good Ol' Boys when he said, 'The Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms, and I support that right with all my heart--I like to shoot things, and I like things that have been shot. I also believe that we, as Americans, have the right to play butt-bongo with whomever we chose, and who among us can say we haven't wondered what it's like on the old 'down low?' If you are gay in this country, I suggest you arm yourself. If you don't like gays--I suggest you look deep into your heart and ask yourself, 'What's with all this phallic imagery in my gun-rack?''"

Going, going, gone? Rudy Guiliani doesn't want the job (it is rather thankless), but damn, do I think he'd be good.

Bush's response to the news that Arafat's died.

Of course, a few hours later they upgraded his condition to "living."

I apologize for not having a link here, so you'll have to take my word.

The other day I was cruising a pretty conservative message board (the Right equivalent of Demo Underground) and they had the following rumor:

Arafat has AIDS, from a lifetime of orgies.

And this wasn't exactly a hateful, paranoid post, either. It was pretty measured. Nevertheless, I think it's crazy.

No, that's not anger at the Bush win. It's anger at blogger. I wrote a huge thing and then Blogger froze (as seems to be it's habit) and I lost it all. Sigh. More later.

It's a quiet day on the Warner Bros. lot, I can tell you that much.

My main though this morning is that in 4 years we will have had essentially 8 years of complete Republican control of every branch of government in the United States. There can't be any excuses, whatever the nation looks like at that time it's safe to say is the Republican vision for our country. What this means in real terms is debatable. I think this election proved that for the most part results don't matter. Most voters cast ballots based on "morals" and that delightful character trait is as subjective and malleable as you want it to be. 4 more years. Then I look out my window and see what the Republican wonderland looks like. I wonder what I'll see.