A visual representation of most/leeast and newest/oldest word usage in presidential addresses through history. Kinda cool.

Seeing all of the ads for Epic Movie, I realized that Scary Movie, and going back a bit, Scream, have ruined the movie parody. Time was that movie parodies like Naked Gun would send up whole genres, while also being generally funny in a "hey, those buildings look like boobs!" way. Naked Gun wasn't parodying any movie specifically, it was a parody of detective/action movie and their conventions in general. Airplane was obviously specific to Airport, and Mel Brooks has always made fairly specific parodies (Space Balls, Young Frankenstein) but even then I felt the humor was riffing on those specific movies to dig around at the broader cliches of the genres - disaster films, black and white horror, big sci-fi.

Then along comes Scream, which is an actual horror film, not a parody, which makes it its business to play with all the cliches. Man, Scream is such a good movie. So when they want to parody Scream with Scary Movie, they had already been beaten to the punch on pointing out cliches for the audience to laugh at - that had been the whole point of the Randy character throughout two films already. So instead they send up very specific scenes, making jokes out of seeing exact scenes recreated in humorous, rather than scary, ways. My favorite example of this (it does reference at least two movies) is when they finally have sex and we get a replica of the blood-ceiling shot from Nightmare on Elm Street, but with cum. It's worth noting that the original title for Scream was, in fact, Scary Movie. Curious.

Now we get to Epic Movie, which doesn't even appear to have a story, as such, but rather a series of loosely connected movie sendups. Same for Scary Movie 4, which was not a movie or story unto itself, but the characters wandering into and out of various SNLesque parody sketches. It seems lazy to me, and more importantly, it doesn't make for great movies.

PS- I realize Loaded Weapon predates Scream, so my thesis is imperfect. I'm OK with that.

4 Dems living in one house!

Highlights include Dick Durbin killing rats with "his bare hands" and a party wear attendees recieve Barbra Boxer shorts. I think the most striking thing about the story is how much it seems like these guys are college roomies. I like the idea that even at the highest levels of power, and well into middle age, sometimes you still just gotta crash with the boys and throw an underwear themed party.

Well, I'm glad Lost and NBC have realized that their smart, savvy audience has long been hip to the show's dirty little secret: It's too slow and made up on the fly.

New letter every week. I'll try not do anything as disturbing (apparently people find it disturbing) as Amphibious.





Wait, that's a lie.

For the next two years that is. Er, not much. Bush will provide plenty of vetoes to Dem plans (negative power), but in terms of proposing ideas, well they had their chance and blew it. Anyway, some conservative thinkers have some quick takes on what GOP minorities should focus on. I like Grover Norquists.

Republicans in Congress need to use the first 100 days and the next two years to lose. Propose House rules that keep the present GOP requirement for a 3/5 vote to raise taxes. And lose. Propose House rules that term limit committee chairmen -- the old GOP rule only applied to Republicans. And lose. Propose a tax cut. And lose. Heck, get denied an actual vote. Have a procedural vote. And lose. Propose an end to earmarks. And lose. Write welfare reform part three. And lose.

A series of ideological losses will at least let them campaign on something positive in '08. Strange as that sounds.