YOU SHOULD BE THANKFUL THAT YOU'RE MISERABLE

The biggest new release on DVD today is the boxed set Preston Sturges: The Filmmakers Collection, an awkwardly titled collection of some of the best comedies ever made, including Sullivan's Travels and Hail the Conquering Hero. It unfortunately doesn't include The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek or Unfaithfully Yours, and regrettably does include The Great Moment, an unwise excursion into earnest biopic country, but all in all, essential stuff.

Film historians prattle on about the tragedy of Sturges' career, from hotshot screenwriter in the thirties to acclaimed director in the forties, but his career was surprisingly brief. Did the well of inspiration simply dry up, was he destroyed by the studio system, or did critics not appreciate his savage wit? Probably a combination of all three, but when modern-day critics decry the treatment of Sturges, I think of the treatment contemporary critics gave Woody Allen's Scoop, which is also out today on DVD.

True, this is a minor effort from Allen, and he's largely just doing a riff on themes from his previous picture, Match Point. But when this came out, there was an amazingly level of hostility in many of the reviews, most of it directed at Allen's screen persona, basically angry that he's still doing the nebbishy neurotic Jew routine, or more accurately, angry at the persona itself, as if he should be something other than what he is. Get off the stage, old man, your act is tired.

To me, Scoop felt like the work of an old vaudevillian trying to show the kids how it's done. There's a lot in it that's genuinely funny. But even if there wasn't, hasn't Allen earned the right to do what he wants? Let me put it this way: Take The Money And Run, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Hannah And Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway--an astonishingly long run of some of the finest comedies commited to film. Sure, there are a lot of clunkers along the way--my least favorite would be Alice--but even when Allen makes a movie that doesn't quite work, like Everyone Says I Love You, it's marked by a level of intelligence and craftsmanship that's simply not present in even the best contemporary comedies.

So even though I wouldn't put Scoop up there with Zelig or Broadway Danny Rose, it's a perfectly enjoyable movie. Perhaps film historians of the future will observe the way the critical tide turned against Woody Allen, and it will seem every bit as inexplicable as the treatment Preston Sturges received in his lifetime.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

Now that they've been elected by promising sweeping changes to the congressional "culture of corruption", Democrats are apparently deciding that since they're in charge now, hey, maybe things aren't so bad.

Though some in the party are continuing to push for the new ethics rules that they had all promoted during the election season, many more are having second thoughts. "There is an understanding on our side that the Republicans paid a price for a lot of the abuses involved," Massachusetts representative Barney Frank told The New York Times, and Iowa senator Tom Harkin agreed: "That was incestuous from the beginning. We never had anything like that."

In other words, Republicans became corrupt simply because they were Republicans, not because of lax ethic rules and lobbyists with piles of cash, and certainly not because they became giddy and arrogant with power. Well, maybe it was those other things, too, but that can't happen to the Democrats because they're so much better than that.

Right.

Here's the thing, folks: You weren't elected because anyone gives a rat's ass about you. You were elected because the people of this country are sick of the war in Iraq, and because they're sick of Washington. You weren't elected to consolidate your (imagined) powers, you were elected to change things. And so far, things are looking pretty much the same as they did before, which means your honeymoon is going to be very short, and the Republicans are going to come roaring back into power. This could very well be what the Bush team was planning all along, and you're following the script to the letter. If you don't make some big changes soon, all is lost. It'll be just like it was, only worse.

DEWIRED

There I was, tapping out a post for today (The gist of which was, Holy crap, Casino Royale is unbelievably great, so for God's sake, go see it!), when a window abruptly popped up telling me that Firefox had detected a bug in the system, and was shutting down.

(By the way, although Firefox is my server of my choice, and I'm pretty happy with it, every time I see the name, I visualize Clint Eastwood stealing a Soviet plane. I'm not the only one that does this, am I?)

So they system shut down so fast, I didn't even have time to save my post as a draft. Perhaps this is a good thing. After all, I just went on and on at great length about James Bond movies yesterday, so perhaps it was fate saving all of you reading this from a second day of the same thing. Hey, at least it spares you two days of Star Wars references!

I was tempted to use this as an excuse to write another anti-technology screed, to point out that when the world is wired, we are all hanging by a wire, and that sort of thing. But I've sung that song before, and like poor Del Shannon being forced to sing Runaway for the umpteenth time, I'm frankly bored with it.

(Another totally off-topic parenthetical aside here: It's long been my opinion that Del Shannon possessed the greatest voice in rock and roll history, and knowing that his life would end with a never explained suicide makes much of his material unbelievably poignant. If you can find a copy of his Tom Petty-produced album Drop Down And Get Me, by all means buy it.)

Instead, I'll just observe how, in modern movies, technology is always benign. Computers never crash, cellphones never drop, everything always works perfectly. Presumably this is a combination of lazy screenwriting and the fact that product placement would never allow the sponsor's handiwork to be shown in a negative light.

(Oh look, more parentheses! Just thought now seemed like a good time to point out that, for a James Bond picture, Casino Royale remarkably light on product placement, and in at least one case, technology gets Bond in trouble. This almost seems progressive.)

By now, it's pretty obvious that this post is just a placeholder, a grab-bag of jumbled ideas that don't really add up to a lot, desperately spiced up with the gimmick of interrupting the main flow of the thing with whole paragraphs of random observations set off by parentheses. Seems kind of lazy, I know, but what do you want on a Saturday morning?

KISS KISS, BANG BANG

As thrilled as I am about the opening of the new James Bond picture, Casino Royale, today, I'm somewhat baffled by the reviews. Critics are effusive in their praise, but make clear that they think this Bond picture is so much better than its predecesors by clicking off a list of ways in which this one differs from the earlier Bonds.

Most often, this occurs in the praise of new series star Daniel Craig, who, unlike previous Bonds, is vulnerable, capable of being hurt both physically and emotionally. This is nonsense, of course--take a look at On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the high-water mark of the entire series, in which Bond completely loses his heart, and has it broken in a devastating final scene. Or see License To Kill--Bond resigns from MI6 in order to follow his own private vengeance trail. Or hell, take pretty much anything from the Pierce Brosnan era, when he was constantly confronted by demons from his past. (As Sean Bean's superbly played villain in Goldeneye put it, "I might as well ask if all those vodka martinis silence the screams of all the men you've killed, or if you've found forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women from the dead ones you failed to protect.")

The producers of the Bond series have always been willing to tinker with the formula, a fact that the reviews of Casino Royale don't acknowledge, as they praise its lack of gimmicks or a villain who wants to take over the world. For lack of gimmicks and human-scaled action, again see On Her Majesty's Secret Service (which, okay, does feature a villain who wants to take over the world), or For Your Eyes Only or either of Timothy Dalton's underrated efforts. Other reviews of Casino Royale praise Eva Green's performance, citing her as a Bond girl who's not an airhead. Not to sound like a broken record, but what about Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service? Or Famke Janssen in Goldeneye? Or Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough? (That last picture, incidentally, gets my vote as Brosnan's best Bond and as one of the best in the whole series. The critical praise for Daniel Craig has also included a lot of bashing of Brosnan's entire run, which admittedly closed on a dreadful note with Die Another Day, but which on the whole was quite good.)

I'm mentioning all this not to show off my knowledge of James Bond arcana, but to decry the current state of film criticism. While writing about the arts has become an increasingly lonely pursuit, it is generally expected that if you are writing about music, say, or literature or painting that you have some sort of knowledge of the subject. No critic would write about one of Philip Roth's Zuckerman novels without having read the previous books, or at the very least without acknowledging having not read the books. No critic would write about Edvard Munch without some knowledge of the artist's life and influences. What would be the point? The critic's job is to illuminate, to introduce the reader to a pont of view he or she may never have considered.

But film criticism--feh. Who cares? If most of the critics writing about Casino Royale had done a half hour's worth of research on the internet (or even--gasp--watched the previous Bonds on DVD), they would have discovered many of the things they're writing are flat-out factually inaccurate. (Don't even get me started on some of the reviews of Happy Feet, which show an appalling lack of familiarity with animation history and basic techniques.) I realize this isn't on a level with, say, The New York Times reporting as fact that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but it is still a case of people who are paid to do a job, and yet are unable to fulfill what would seem to be one of the basic demands of that job. If you're paid for having an opinion, shouldn't that opinion at least be well-informed?

AND SO IT GOES

For those of you wondering if the election results had any effect on The Decider, well, apparently not. The guy just renominated six previously rejected picks for the federal appeals court. One of them, William J. Haynes II, was one of the people responsible for establishing the administration's torture policy on detainees. Another, Michael Wallace, is so lame even the American Bar Association says he's not fit for the job. But extremism in the name of neo-conservative values is no vice, at least to the White House, and so he's offering these sacrificial lambs as an apparent Fuck You to the new Democratic majority.

Speaking of the Democrats, they haven't even taken charge yet and they're already squabbling and jockeying for position. The big battle now is who gets to be majority whip, number two in the House under leader Nancy Pelosi. In and of itself, these machinations are of zero interest to anybody outside Washington. But it doesn't portend well for the future: If these clowns can't even get their act together over crap like this, how will they offer a united front against the Bushinistas? This is going to be too easy for Cheney and Rove: All they'll have to do is plant seeds of distrust among Democratic leaders, and they'll vote against each other out of sheer spite.

Given these depressing developments, the return of noted racist Trent Lott to a position of power in the senate--he's now the Number Two guy for the Republicans--only ranks as an "Eh, what'r ya gonna do?" on my personal Despair Scale. Lott opposed the Martin Luther King holiday and the Voting rights Act, and famously declared that creepy segregationist Strom Thurmond should have been elected president. (He had to do the tour of shame for that last one, and while appearing on BET actually made the claim that he voted against the King holiday because, as a white man, he didn't really know how significant King was!)

Finally, mentioning Trent Lott allows me to mention that Lott Dod, a scummy but minor functionairy in The Phantom Menace was named for him, and thus I fulfill my obligatory Star Wars reference.

MONSTERS FROM THE ID

There comes a point when even the most hardcore fan of pop culture must admit that perhaps the wonderful world of DVD is too much of a good thing. There's so much stuff coming out, much of it indispensible, and yet most people (certainly including myself) simply don't have the financial resources to get everything we want, much less time to watch it all.

Today's new releases are a prime example. We could start off with the final season of the original run of Columbo, one of the best (and most endlessly rewatchable) TV shows of all time. Guest stars include William Shatner and Ruth Gordon, directors include Jonathan Demme, and the writing remained first-rate. But as always, the real reason for watching is Peter Falk's career-defining performance. Even knowing the format, even knowing the episode, you can still be surprised by Falk's eccentric line readings. And even though reruns of this show play endlessly on cable, this is the best way to see these episodes uncut and non-time compressed.

Speaking of TV, we also get Volume Two of The Best Of The Electric Company. Like the first volume, this set is a collection of random episodes from this well-loved seventies PBS series. This show lodged in my subconscious when I was a kid and has never left, and I can remember pretty much all the songs, gags, recurring characters, animated bits, everything. As a kid, I didn't recognize the voices of Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder or Zero Mostel in the animated bits, or know that much of that animation was directed by the great John Hubley. And despite the fact that it was ostensibly educational, the only thing I really learned from the show was that Morgan Freeman was the coolest guy on earth. I have no idea how modern kids would react to this, but to the aging hipsters of Generation X, this is as essential as food and water.

But not as essential as Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume Four. Said it before, I'll say it again: Warner Bros. cartoons were as responsible as anything for making me the person I am. They formed my sense of humor, they developed my aesthetic sense, and probably even my moral sense. Collectively, they are one of the great achievments of the human race--believe me, I mean that--and yet, this set does represent a bit of a comedown. While one whole disc dedicated to the work of director Frank Tashlin is mightily appreciated, one whole disc dedicated to Speedy Gonzales cartoons is not. Aside from the questionable ethnic stereotypes, most of the Speedy cartoons are just plain bad, and the disc actually includes some of the worst of the bunch. On the other hand, we get a whole disc dedicated to cartoons about cats, including one of my favorites, Chuck Jones' Go Fly A Kit, so it's okay. Still as necessary to survival as breathing, but not quite at the level of the first three volumes of this wonderful series.

Still, despite my love for Warner Bros. cartoons, THE most important release today is the Collectors edition of Forbidden Planet, the quintessential fifties sci-fi film.

Everything good and bad about filmmaking (and society in general) in the Eisenhower era is represented by this picture. On one hand, it's disturbing that it can only imagine that the large crew of a spaceship in the far-flung future will be made up of people who are rather dull, frighteningly white and exclusively male. There's a lot of cornball comedy relief, and the attitude it displays toward lone female cast member Anne Francis is purely sexist.

On the other hand, it takes its storyline--a scientist and his daughter are the lone inhabitants of a planet whose previous occupants, a technologically advanced race known as the Krell, were mysteriously wiped out--seriously, the sscipt is intelligent, the visuals are amazing, and as far as Anne Francis--well, yes, the camera does leer at her at times, but Great Googly Moogly, can you blame it? Plus, this is the movie that introduced Robby the Robot, and it introduced me, as a kid, to Freudian psychology. And though Forbidden Planet has been available on DVD since the format was first introduced, this is the remastered version, with eye-popping color, that fans have always dreamed of. Oh, plus Anne Francis. Did I mention her?

A MUST TO AVOID

Usually I talk about new DVDs on Tuesdays, the day they're released. And, barring extraordinary circumstances, I'll be mentioning a lot of great stuff tomorrow. But today I felt the need to tell you something that must be discouraged.

I'm talking about King Kong: The Extended Edition. That would be Peter Jackson's three-hour ass-killer from last year, which was already pathetically overlong and overindulgent. But now Jackson has engaged in a fanboy's wet dream and included...MORE FUCKING DINOSAURS.

This is a movie full of sound and fury that truly signifies nothing. Clearly Jackson was so in love with all his digital toys, he just couldn't stop playing with them. As a result, what few but genuine virtues the film does possess are lost in all the noise and activity. The tragedy of the title character's downfall is lost, because we spend too much time away from him.

I've been a big fan of Jackson's past work, and I felt his Lord Of The Rings trilogy worked because the filmmaker had a distinct take on his material that made it so much more than just another spectacle. But with King Kong, Jackson fell into the trap of meaningless sensation, trying to overwhelm an audience with an overabundance of overabundance--stuff just keeps happening, long past the point of caring. If Jackson had any sense, he would have trimmed the film down and tried to find its heart. But no, instead he offers more flashy emptiness, and, oh yeah, also generates more income for a movie in which he has major profit points.

Apparently, when an artist dies, a capitalist is born.

GONNA KNOCK YOU OFF YOUR FEET

Hey, I hate to harsh anyone's buzz, but Mr. President, Democrats--35 people killed today in Iraq by suicide bombers at police recruting stations. 11 people killed in seperate bombings. Five people killed in drive-by shootings, 10 people killed as a bus was seized, the rest taken hostage. This all in the span of two days.

And that whole cease-fire thing between Israel and Palestine? Not working.

And with Daniel Ortega firmly in place in Nicaragua, we have a growing coaltion of governments in Central America that hate the United States, and that hatred, as it turns out, is entirely justified.

And Iran and North Korea, needlessly antagonized by Bush? They still hate us, too.

So yeah, sure, make your little talk about working together and doing things for the good of the nation. Mr. President, stop being such a dick. Democrats, make good on promises like raising the minimun wage, things you could have accomplished a long time ago if you'd actually tried. Do what you have to do to make this country's citizens feel better about things.

But remember, in the bigger world, this election has changed nothing.

ALWAYS IN MOTION IS FUTURE

This was the big Star Wars day, when Tabbatha's son Paul and I had our first together time without his mom (or my girlfriend, depending on how you view it...and as Obi-Wan says, many of the truths we cling to depend on our own point of view). Paul is seven, and really too young to have had a prime Star Wars experience. He's too young even to know the prequels. But he knows the basics because everyone knows the basics, and after hearing me repeatedly quote from the damn things (which I apparently do even more often than I realize), he wanted to know more, and has been peppering me with questions for quite some time.

So today we got down to it. Tabbatha and I agreed three movies might be a bit much, so we settled for the '77 original (which I will continue to call Star Wars, thank you very much; yeah, I know, Episode IV: A New Hope and all that, but the movie I fell in love with back then was called Star Wars, and always will be in my world) and its follow-up, The Empire Strikes Back.

Paul seemed distracted and frankly bored during Star Wars. I was heartbroken, but not surprised. It's a product of the seventies, when even flashy, fast-paced entertainment was slower-paced and more cerebral, and at seven, he might be too young anyway. I was twelve when it came out, and that might be the perfect age: Old enough to appreciate its roundabout way of telling the story (it really does take forever before we even meet Luke), but too young to realize how simplistic the story really is. Still, Paul had lots of questions ("Why does Obi-Wan tell Luke that Darth Vader murdered his dad? Darth Vader is his dad!") that I tried to answer vaguely, to see if he could make connections later on.

Moving on to Empire, I had a bit of trepidation: It's easily the best movie of the bunch, but aside from a handful of killer action sequences, it is extremely talky. How interesting would Yoda's Zen koans be to a seven year old?

As it turns out, very. From the very start, he was clearly more interested in this than the previous film, and laughed out loud several times at Han's mock-tough dialogue. He needed clarification on a few plot points, but what he really loved was Yoda.

At first he was confused--"Everyone knows what Yoda looks like, so why doesn't Luke recognize him when they first meet?" Oh, I pointed out, but when this movie came out, we didn't know Yoda. Nobody'd seen him before. And besides, in the story, Luke's never seen him.

He thought about that. "Is that why Yoda doesn't tell him who he is? He keeps saying he'll take him to meet Yoda." Sure, but why would he say that? "Well, he's just messing with Luke." But why? "Well...Oh! Like Obi-Wan telling Luke that Darth Vader killed his dad! Luke thinks he knows stuff that isn't true!" Which means--"Luke thinks he knows everything, and they want to show him he doesn't."

Ah! Congratulations, my young apprentice. Your training is complete.

From that point on, the scenes with Luke were what held Paul. He seemed restless during the action scenes, the stuff you'd expect a kid his age to respond to the most, and he kept screaming at Luke not to do stupid things, to listen to Yoda and the glowing spirit of Obi-Wan. ("Wait, isn't Obi-Wan dead?" he asked, and I lamely responded that it had something to do with The Force.) The words "Luke's kind of dumb" were uttered a lot, by both of us.

When Tabbatha showed up to take him home, she asked how things went. I told her he might have been disappointed, he might have been expecting more light saber battles, but he seemed to like them okay. Oh, she said, but this is the first time he's seen them. It always takes him awhile to put things together. He'll get home and think about it and call you with a bunch of questions.

They left a few hours ago. So far, no phone calls, although I know they had plans for the evening. So maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm wondering if seven is too young to start enjoying James Bond...

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID...

Been gone for the last three days (work related) and haven't really had time to post anything, and am frankly too tired to do much right now, but I did want to add a belated comment about Donald Rumsfeld's final bow.

It just seems...off. Bush waiting until after the election to can the douchebag, instead of before, when it might have staved off some anti-Republican votes? No, there's no way Rove and Cheney could be that far off. Dumping Rummy at that stage has a stink of desperation, and that's one thing you wouldn't expect from these guys.

So are they that desperate? Or do they just want people to think that?

I can't help but believe that these guys have something up their sleeves. The absolute certainty with which they proclaimed the Democrats wouldn't take over congress...they had to know. So maybe their arrogance was just a prelude to feigned surprise, to draw the perpetually clueless Democrats in, and then...

Yeah, there's a certain sense of conspiracy to this line of thinking, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. And in any event, please appreciate that I got through this whole thing without a single Star Wars reference.

DON'T GET COCKY

As I write this, the outcome of the Senate race is too close to call, but the Democrats have, at the very least, picked up seats there, and in the House, Democrats have definitely taken control. So the Death Star has been destroyed. Big deal.

That means yet to come we still have Lando selling out his friends, Han frozen in carbonite and Luke losing hand. (You know, metaphorically speaking.) The Republican Empire suffered a minor defeat, but this means Bush's end runs around the constitution will become less blatant and more devious. If I felt the Democrats had the slightest bit of competence in their new role, hey, I'd break out the hats and hooters like Josie's come home. (Wow--I just went from a shameless Star Wars analogy to a pointless Steely Dan reference. Thanks, pop culture, from sparing me some of the pain of the real world.)

After all, what will Democrats actually do? They might be able to put the brakes out some of the Bushinista's more outrageous schemes--and I stress the word "might"--but even if they somehow take the Senate, the White House and Supreme Court are still firmly in the death grip of Cheney and Rove, and power will be more difficult to pry from their hands than a rifle from a dead NRA member. You think they didn't see this coming? You think they weren't prepared?

We can only hope that Democrats find their own band of Ewoks, and somehow bring the whole thing down.

YESTERDAY'S TOMORROW, HERE TODAY

It's Election Day, so for God's sake, get out there and vote. If we don't take charge of the future, it could turn out to be as bleak as depicted in Ark II, the cheeseball mid-seventies kiddie sci-fi show that's out today on DVD.

Yes, if we don't act now, the world will be devastated by pollution and nuclear war, and by the twenty-fifth century, the entire landscape of the continental U.S. will look suspiciously like Bronson Canyon, and the same rocks and bedraggled trees will reappear no matter where you go.

There'll be bands of survivors, sure--and people will be so desperate for a leader they might actually fall under the Fagin-like spell of Jonathan Harris, who essentially recreates his mincing Dr. Smith character from Lost In Space (another futuristic vision that we can't afford to come true--Vote, People!) in two episodes. Plus Robby The Robot might show up, acting confused, probably because he's stuck with a different head than he had in Forbidden Planet.

If--God forbid--these shadows come to pass, can anyone save us? But of course--the plucky denizens of the titular Ark II are there, and in typical mellow seventies style, they care. There's Jonah, our leader, who has a beard and flies around in a goofy-looking jet pack and, um...well, that's about it for distinctive personality traits. And there's Ruth, who's Asian and sort of hot, in a seventies way. And Adam, a Latino kid, who's job is to provide youthful ethnicity. Plus, of course, Adam, a talking chimp. Oh, and there's the Ark II itself, which is a big RV (but, you know, futuristic) that's stuffed full of the twinkling lights and clunky keyboards that in bad seventies sci-fi shows were used to represent computers.

Things happen on this show, though I watched it every week as a kid, and I can't remember a single storyline. Mostly I just remember watching it hoping that maybe someting would blow up, maybe there'd be monsters, maybe something at least resembling an action sequence would erupt, or somebody'd do something, anything, interesting. But no, it was always just vague conflict easily resolved with a few homilies and good vibes of our heroes.

Again, I can't stress enough, that this could be the future--blandly shot, overly familiar SoCal settings, and the most benevolent presence will be a flying surfer dude. Save us from this horrible fate--Vote!

A CONCEPT BY WHICH WE MEASURE OUR PAIN

The movie Jesus Camp finally opened in Des Moines this weekend, and I saw it on the same Sunday that Ted Haggard, who briefly appears in the film, was officially kicked out of the mega-church he ran in Colorado. His appearance is predictably hilarious, smug, condescending, and it makes you wonder how anybody could have fallen under this goofball's power.

Yet if Haggard is clearly a charlatan, the lines aren't quite so clear when it comes to Becky Fischer, the youth minister who is the center of the film. She's dumpy, prim but charismatic, and the Bible camp she runs for kids in a desolate patch of North Dakota is clearly wildly popular. The film explores why.

Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady subtly mock Fischer on occasion--she looks downright foolish and she prays over every part of the bunker in which she stages her sermons, offering the deathless line, "Lord, bless our Power Point presentation"--but she's given plenty of time to talk, to state clearly her beliefs. The fact that these beliefs should terrify anyone with a brain and a soul--her peculiar fundamentalist Christianity will triumph over Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and even mainstream Christianity because, "Excuse me, but what we say is true"--is beside the point, and Fischer likely doesn't care what anyone else thinks. She is clearly sincere in her beliefs, but her methods are unsound.

We see her whipping a crowd of kids, most of them under twelve, into such a quivering mass of fervid belief that you can easily imagine her offering up poisoned Kool-Aid to test their faith, and these followers would down it with pleasure. (Well, no, not pleasure, since pleasure is a feeling of the flesh. I should have said joy, the good feeling that Jesus is okay with.) This is a disturbing spectacle, no doubt, yet the triumph of Jesus Camp is that it clearly shows that the kids could get something out of this, an irrational but still understandable response to a world that seemingly presents them with no other options.

THIS-ISM, THAT-ISM

Hey, here's a surprise: Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death.

You'll hear this story repeated a lot today, though you'll hear the whole story less often: How the U.S. intervened to make sure the verdict was announced two days before the U.S. mid-term elections. And you'll hear about how joyous Iraqis are so excited they are literally dancing in the streets, but you won't hear as much about the bitter resentment in the Sunni strongholds of Iraq, or that even Iraqis who lived infear of Saddam recognize Saddam's trial as a cynical U.S. publicity ploy, or that anger towards the Yankee invaders still grows stronger every day.

Why would you even want to hear any of that, when it's so much easier to shout, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"

More interesting is that today is Election Day in Nicaragua, and the front-runner is ex-Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. He's talked a lot about trying to forge a good relationship with the U.S., but that hasn't kept the Bushinistas from sending covert operatives down to try to throw the elections. (Our country has a long history of trying to manipulate Central America politics, usually by deliberately usurping democratic processes. This happens under both Republican and Democratic administrations.) The upshot of this meddling is, if he wins, there will probably be anti-U.S. sentiment, and if he loses, there will be the same.

One of Ortega's biggest boosters is Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, himself the survivor of a Bush-sanctioned attempted coup. Why Our Beloved President is so focused on his so-called Axis Of Evil half a world away, while ignoring the seething hatred he's fostering among people loiving just south of us is mystifying. True, these nations are not nuclear powers, but they have the power of truth on their side, and no matter what Bush may think, that is ultimately the greatest weapon of all.

THAT DARN CHILDHOOD!

Forgive me if this post is even more disorganized than usual, as I feel a bit like I'm unstuck in time, floating back to my actual youth while at the same time imagining an alternate childhood, trying to determine if the person I've become was somehow inevitable, or if a whole other set of circumstances might have changed my life.

The impetus for all this was, of all things, a story on NPR interviewing average folks in Minnesota about their feelings about the upcoming elections. They mostly spoke with hilariously typical upper midwestern reserve, particularly the lady who caught my attention when she spoke of her ambvilanence about the war: "I just wish they could do something about those darn insurgents."

After laughing uproariously, my mind started riffing on the phrase "Those darn insurgents." It sounds like a really bad early seventies Disney movie. "When Dean Jones and Bob Crane lead the kookiest corps in Kabul, they encounter an uprising of laughter that will declare a fatwa on your funnybone!"

Which got me to thinking about several things, including how all those lame Disney movies of that era held absolutely no interest for me, even though they were among few movies back then that were actually marketed to people in my age group. But I didn't want stuff made for kids, or at least stuff that announced that it was made for kids. I wanted giant monsters, or Clint Eastwood in a poncho shooting guys, or anything that involved blowing up Nazis. But That Darn Cat! or Superdad or Herbie Rides Again? Forget it.

I also started remembering how I'd inexplicably launched into a similar riff back in the early eighties, when I was in high school, drawing a comic strip strictly for my own amusement called Darn That Jack The Ripper! The conceit here was an imagined co-production between Disney and Hammer Films, co-starring Dean Jones and Peter Cushing as wacky, mis-matched investigators wandering through dull static scenes (if Dean Jones was involved) or incredibly lurid, oversexed ones (if Cushing was showcased). This sort of high-concept, low-payoff material is now the stuff of off-Broadway shows (Evil Dead: The Musical just opened this week, and Lord, I wish I was kidding), but if you were a kid in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the late seventies and early eighties, and your heroes were writers and filmmakers not pro athletes, you were isolated by your very nature, and that isolation could start to seem like your defining trait. There was, after all, no internet, and living on a farm, there was no thought of cable TV. There was no way to know I wasn't, in fact, alone.

Which led to try to imagine what it must be like to be a kid now. There are so many more entertainment options, and it's easier to access the wider world, and the things that I loved so much as a kid--Warner Bros. cartoons, monster movies--are both easier and harder than ever to see. Easier, because you can get them on DVD and watch them anytime, anywhere. Harder, because they're just another product now, and the very ease whit which they can be accessed takes something away, since the beauty of a precious jewel glows all the more brightly when viewed only in glimpses.

In other words, sitting down to watch The Floppy Show, the local puppet and cartoon show in central Iowa, was a crap shoot. You knew you'd get three Warner Bros. cartoons, but you might get Speedy Gonzales and a late period Tweety and Sylvester and a middling Bugs Bunny. But you might get a rarely screened Chuck Jones or Bob Clampett masterpiece, and if you did, you watched it like your life depended on it, because who knew if you'd see it again? And that attentiveness paid off with an appreciation for its virtues, and a sense that, in six minute increments, the world could be a perfect place.

But if I didn't have those ritualistic viewings, would the warner Bros. carttons have meant anything to me? In this day and age, irony is the coin of the realm, and even things targeted at the youngest kids are full of "attitude". But there was a time when the entertainment deemed acceptable to youth really was impossibly square and boring, and yet so many of us watched it anyway, because there was nothing else to do. And to say no, there must be something better than this, well, that's when I rebelled and became what I am. But when that very rebellious nature is marketed to kids, what is there to rebel against? How can anyone assert their individuality?

And why will the phrase "those darn insurgents" make me laugh until I die?

I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS

This is basically a follow-up to yesterday's post about how incredibly stupid the Democrats are. Proof arrives in the form of John "I have nothing to apologize for" Kerry's apology for his lame, badly-delivered joke. Yeah, it's totally disingenuous of the Bushinistas to run with this, to accuse him of slandering the soldiers on the front lines in Iraq, since they damn well knew what Kerry was trying to say.

But the fact is, he blew the joke, and what he said did make him sound like a smug, elitist prick. And even if he'd delivered the joke as written, it was just another "Bush is stupid" gag. Clearly, whatever else he is, Bush isn't stupid, and the Sith Lords surrounding him know exactly what they're doing. The fact that the Democrats aren't even trying to build a scrappy Rebel Alliance to take on the Republican Death Star, that they prefer to trot out John Kerry--who, by the way, LOST THE FUCKING ELECTION--to make snide remarks instead of offering even a shred of substance, shows how utterly clueless they are.

I was about to promise to never use any more Star Wars analogies when discussing real-world politics, but I realized that, just like John Kerry, I'd be eating my words in a day or two. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go figure out which contemporary political figures I can compare to Lando Calrissian.

ARE YOU TAKING OVER OR ARE YOU TAKING ORDERS?

I listen to the phone message from a local Democratic party functionary two or three times, wondering how to respond. They want me to volunteer to help out, working the phones, getting out the message.

My brother Keith was very active in the Democratic party, canvassing, polling, attending all the meetings. At his funeral, a local party rep--a man I'd never met before--told me his memory of Keith as a Democrat was his passionate support for the rights of the working class, that he worked as a sort of conscience for his fellow volunteers.

Keith was pragmatic; he knew the Democrats weren't going to save the world, but he genuinely believed they would at least try to do what was right, and he thought his participation would, on some level, make the country better. He thought it was his duty as a citizen, an act of patriotism.

So when I found this message on my answering machine, I was tempted to volunteer, as a way of honoring my brother's legacy, and to help defeat the Republican machine.

No. I can't do it. Sure, I desperately want the Republicans to go down, but the state of the Democratic party is such that I can't offer them any kind of support. Yes, I'll hold my nose and vote a straight Democratic ticket, because there really is no other choice, but they have offered no reason to believe that they are anything other than the lesser of two evils.

Actually, that may be giving them too much credit. They are offering nothing, absolutely no reason why we should vote for them, other than the fact that, hey, we're not Republicans. Many of them have tried to run on an anti-Iraq war ticket, but that only serves to remind us that the Democrats offered no meaningful opposition to the damned thing in the first place. On issue after issue, as the Bushinistas systematically dismantled the constitution, the Democrats stood by and let it happen. Crocodile tears were shed, but the balls to act on their so-called convictions were in short supply.

A week from today, if the Democrats have won, I'll probably feel a sense of relief, though I know nothing will be fundamentally different. And if they've lost, well, let's just say I won't be surprised. It's the destiny they've made for themselves.

MELTDOWN

All you need to know about 1975's The Devil's Rain, out today on DVD, is that it has Ernie Borgnine, Bill Shatner, Ida Lupino and Keenan Wynn, which means you've got some heavy-duty overacting, and it has a climax during which lots of people melt. That's giving away the ending, but back when this opened, that was the whole selling point: MELTING PEOPLE!! AAIIEE!! (This was before Raiders Of the Lost Ark definitively prooved that melting Nazis are cooler than melting Satanists, a fact which seems self-evident.)

The chief interest in seeing The Devil's Rain today is as a pleasant reminder of the anything-goes state of the horror film back in the seventies. Then as now, the primary audience for horror tended to be young, but back then, the films didn't pander to them. Yeah, there were dead teenager movies back then (like Black Christmas and of course Halloween), but there were also serious big-budget items like The Exorcist, the twisted mindfucks of David Cronenberg, enjoyable PG-rated schlock like Grizzly, regional oddities like The Legend Of Boggy Creek, and...well, whatever target audience wanted to see a melting Ernie Borgnine, they were served as well.

I've said it before, I'll no doubt say it again, but horror movies were one of my first passions, and the current state of the art is depressing to me. A case could be made that Hostel and the Saw series offer mirrors of our bleak, hopeless national spirit, but when I see big-budget, entirely soulless remakes of seventies indie classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the upcoming "reimagining" of Brian DePalma's Sisters, I just don't see the point. The originals had a true outsider quality. The remakes are about as scary as weekend warriors gathering in Sturgis and pretending they're outlaws.

But at least we have the DVDs. Even if you weren't there, The Devil's Rain has the ability to take you back to the mid-seventies, and nothing is scarier than that.

THE VICTORY POLKA

Let me be clear: Clint Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers is an honest-to-God masterpiece, emotionally devastating and technically dazzling. It may be Eastwood's life's work, the summation of everything he's learned about filmmaking in a thirty-five year directing career, and everything he's seen his country go through in seventy-six years of life. This former hardcore Republican clearly still loves his country, but the love is now conditional.

Yet Eastwood has no intention of drawing easy parallels between World War II and the Iraq mess. Clearly, Iwo Jima was a necessary battle. When the government plucked three soldiers off the island to send on a fundraising tour, it was also necessary: The U.S. was broke. There's no suggestion that there was anything sinister, or even dishonest, about the government's motives. But the result was, these guys were scared for life, proclaimed as heroes, yet abandoned when they were no longer needed. Still, that's what happens when you send people to fight: Whether the cause is worthwhile or merely an act of caprice, lives will be destroyed just the same.

One of Eastwood's strengths as a director has always been his use of actors, his preference for character actors over big-name stars. That pays off here, as the biggest name in the cast, Ryan Phillippe, is well past his A-list days, which somehow democratizes the cast: No actor is clearly The Star, no actor is more important than any other. Every actor here, every face, every voice makes an impact, no matter how small the part. (Particular mention should be made of Harve Presnell and George Hearn as elderly Iwo Jima vets, and Judith Ivey as a grieving mother, three superb cameo portraits.)

However large the scale becomes--and let's tale a moment to salute Eastwood's long time production crew, cinematographer Tom Stern, editor Joel Cox and production designer Henry Bumstead, who died during production--this is always a story about people, and the people we meet here will break your heart.

THE THINGS WE DO

Sometimes you do things you just don't expect. Yesterday I saw Everyone's Hero.

Yes, Everyone's Hero. Bad computer animation. Stupid plotting. Whoopi Goldberg as the voice of a talking baseball bat. Rob Reiner as a talking baseball. A talking baseball, for God's sake. Named Screwy, no less.

Tabbatha's son Paul had been wanting to see this thing, and it had vanished rather quickly from theaters. But it was playing at the cheapo theater up in Ames, so okay, fine.

And well, obviously, not my cup of tea. In fact, at times it was so stupid, it was hard to know how sentient beings could have cobbled together such a script, with its clumsy balancing of "cartoonish" behavior (characters being dragged by trains but walking away uninjured, as opposed to dead, like they'd be in the real world) and sledgehammer sentiment (complete with trite "everyone's a winner if they try" messages). Admittedly, its strongly pro-Yankee, anti-Cubs attitude was kind of heartwarming, and whenever it stopped being about the plot and started being about baseball, it was okay. But, well, still...Screwy the Ball?

That's my take on it, though. I wasn't there for me. I was there for Paul. It was aimed at seven year olds, and to him it was all good. He'd lean forward when our protagonist seemed to be in trouble, and cheer when things went well, and just had a good time watching a movie that seemed to be meant just for him.

So in that sense, I enjoyed it, too.

On the way home, Paul used the various action figures he happened to have with him to recreate scenes from the movie. Somehow the characters from Everyone's Hero started acting out scenes from Star Wars, and everything ended up with a light saber free-for-all (which would have greatly improved the actual movie, come to think of it), and a good time was had by all.

Next weekend Paul and I are going to hole up and watch Star Wars. Real Star Wars, the sacred original trilogy. The kid only knows the prequels. He doesn't even know who han Solo is, for God's sake. So this should be quite an education.

For both of us.

I'M JUST SITTING HERE DOING TIME

Time was, if there was a new Clint Eastwood movie, by God I was right there. I saw The Rookie on opening night, for God's sake. (In fact, I actually paid to see it again, because I assumed the whole thing was some kind of joke that I just wasn't getting. I'm still open to that idea, but I think it's more likely that it just sucks.)

I'd been looking forward to seeing Flags Of Our Fathers because, well, it's a new Clint Eastwood picture. And when it opened last weekend, I...didn't go. Not because I didn't want to--I hope to catch up with it this weekend--but because there were other things to do.

It used to be so simple. I lived for movies, for music, for all things I deemed artistic. It was easy, too, because there was nothing else going on in my life. Even when I was married, my ex and I lived in a kind of bubble, with no kids, relatively few friends and a whole lot of leisure time. We were, in fact, prone to doing artsy crap, between my writing and her singing. (She found more success than me.) Briefly there was even an involvement in the nightmarish, backstabbing, depressingly insular world of community theater. This is the type of thing we did, the type of thing, it seemed, that I lived for.

But then, divorce. And debt. And other things, what I guess would be called real life, got in the way. Suddenly there were more pressing concerns than seeing a movie as soon as it opened...or even seeing it at all. There was more to life than I had realized, and other things to do. Not always good things, but necessary, and things I'd never dealt with before.

So I'll get around to Clint, and Nellie McKay's new album finally gets released next week, so I'll pick that up. It just may take longer than it used to, is all. To paraphrase the ad copy for Once Upon A Time In The West, it isn't good and it isn't bad. It simply is.

MAYBE I'M TO BLAME FOR ALL I'VE HEARD

A few things bumming me out:

1) According to Forbes, Kurt Cobain is America's richest dead celebrity, beating out perenial champ Elvis Presley. Sure, Nirvana's back catalogue continues to sell, but how did his estate get so rich? Courtney Love sold the rights to some of his songs, meaning that Cobain's works can now be used in ways he never would have intended, as background noise for TV shows, or commercial jingles. Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl are understanably pissed about this development, but the songs are owned by The Widder Cobain, and she's allowed to do whatever she wants with them. Christ, if I'd been married to her, I'd have killed myself, too.

I hadn't heard it in a long time, but I happened to hear Hole's Doll Parts on the radio the other day, and it reminded me how great Love briefly was before she began her twelve year slide to total irrelevance. In all that time, I'd never quite been able to hate her; by selling out her late husband's legacy, she finally allowed me to turn the corner.

2) As somewhat snidely reported by NPR, far-right Republicans are expected to cruise to easy victory in all the "Old Confederate" states this election day save one, and that would be George Allen in Virginia. It's a depressing reminder of how, in some extremely conservative parts of the country, politicians barely have to code their racism. And in a way, you have to wonder why all the fuss about Allen. After all, as Virginia's governor, he fought the Martin Luther King holiday, reached out to white supremacist groups and flew the confederate flag anywhere he could. So why punish him for calling a dark-skinned guy "macaca"? Why now do we pretend to be surprised that our leaders are straight-up racists?

3) On the other hand, for a glimpse of just how condescending the other side can be, look no further than Aaron Sorkin, the king of feel-smug-about-yourself liberalism. On the most recent episode of his increasingly dreadful Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, one of the stars of the show's fictional SNL knock-off (played amusingly by Nate Corddry) was expecting a visit from his parents. Since they were from Columbus, Ohio, Sorkin naturally depicted them as not only rock-ribbed conservatives but culturally vacant--when Corddry mentions Abbott and Costello to these two, who are apparently in their mid-to-late fifties, they've never even heard of them. I'm sorry, that's just not possible. But to Sorkin, and to far too many of his elitist brethren, the Great Unwashed have no appreciation for anything remotely "cultural", even if that culture comes in the form of a wildly popular comedy team. I'm sure Sorkin is pro-civil rights and believes in raising the minimum wage and thinks all Americans deserve decent health care, but if he was ever locked in a room with one of the people who's rights he claims to support, he'd have no clue what to say. After all, what do you say to someone who is--let's face it--not as good as you?

4) Fox's coverage of the World Series--are they trying to turn viewers away? Ramp up the testosterone, pad time with fake music videos, showcase actively irritating announcers(Tim McCarver looks like Jackie Cooper on a bender, and Joe Buck's scary whiteness makes the Pillsbury Doughboy look like Bootsy Collins)--hey guys, this is baseball, not football. We don't go for that crap around here.

(By the way, I'm rooting for the Cardinals, not because I'm such a fan, but because the Tigers deserve to lose for taking out the Yankees. Actually, the Yankees did a pretty good job of taking themselves out, but hey...)

5) Ah, why the hell not--George Bush. He's a bummer for all seasons.

SIGH...

Yeah, well, I was going to write about...something...Sorry, I'm still scraping bits of this off the wall...Um, where was I? Anyway, I was going to write about, like, cool new DVDs and stuff. I was going to--Ow! This is really painful!--tell you to run out and buy Volume Two of the Astaire-Rogers Collection, and Season Two of Batman Beyond and for crying out loud be sure to get The Sesame Street Nostalgia Collection and SNL: The Best Of TV Funhouse.

I would have said all that, but then this happened. It wasn't Tony Snow announcing that the White House will officially no longer use the phrase "Stay the course" regarding Iraq, or Karl Rove smugly telling NPR's Robert Siegel that he is "certain" the Republicans will take the mid-term elections.

But when I heard Bush stumping on the campaign trail, saying that the Democrat's idea of defense against terror is to wait until we're attacked...Well, my head exploded. No, literally. There's gray matter everywhere.

I mean, we were attacked, right? And Bush was president, right? I mean, are they trying to pretend that didn't happen? Are we supposed to have forgotten? Do they think we're stupid?

Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

Sigh...

TELL ME LIES

I didn't want to do this, but I'm afraid I must: Time to break out my Star Trek IV rant.

My girlfriend accuses me of being a snob. When it comes to music, movies, TV shows and anything "artistic" (her quote marks, not mine), she says I flaunt my knowledge a little too much, that I'm condescending when I explain things, that I favor the obscure for its own sake, and disdain the popular because I assume the masses have deplorable tastes.

Let's take that last one first: Given that my all-time favorite band is a not-exactly obscure foursome called The Beatles, I just don't think that's true. Yeah, I probably know more about the band than the average person--my friend Howard and I spent at least fifteen minutes the other night riffing on John and Paul's well-known fondness for jam butties--but come on. They're the most famous band in history. There's a lot of information out there about the lads, and if you're a fan, it just makes sense that you'd want to know more. And the knowledge enhances the music: On the surface, Help is an upbeat, catchy song, but if you read it as another song John wrote to try to come to terms with the loss of his mother ("now these days are gone and I'm not so self-assured"), it becomes poignant...and meaningful.

As for the rest of her charges, I plead not guilty. I like what I like, and if that's obscure, hey, so be it. (Though again, given my obsessions with Star Wars and James Bond...obscure?) And if there are a lot of popular things that I hate, well, that's because I think we as audiences deserve better. There's nothing I hate more in popular art than cheap, easy writing.

Which brings me to Star Trek IV.

That would be the one in which the crew of the Enterprise travels back to modern-day San Francisco to save the whales because...Never mind, it's not important. The point is, in order to get our futuristic space folk to the late twentieth century, the film offers up a typical bullshit sci fi explanation. ("If we engage the whatchamacallit drive to maximum as we bank off the sun at a certain angle, we can bend the fabric of time and space and travel backwards...") Okay, fine. The premise of the movie demands this, and at least they made the effort to explain it.

But then the problem arises, once our plucky crew arrives here, how do they stay inconspicuous? Specifically, where do they park this spaceship? Well, they flip on the ship's Cloak Of Invisibilty and set it down in a heavily-used park.

Wha---? I used to complain about the whole Cloak Of Invisibility thing, arguing that asking us to accept another Idiot Premise after that whole banking off the sun bit was too much, but then I had people explain that said cloak is actually a given in the Star Trek universe, a premise that had long ago been established. (Those were the people who actually listened to this rant. Most people smile politely, pat me on the head and walk away as quickly as possible. And Tabbatha thinks I'm condescending...)

Okay, but just because a thing is invsible doesn't mean it ceases to exist. There's a spaceship in the middle of the park! Maybe you can't see it, but it still has mass. Joggers will smack into it, frisbees will bounce off it, birds will crap on it. People will figure out it's there. Yet the filmmakers ignore this, because it's easier for them. This isn't a part of the immediate story they're telling, so they neglect to construct a plausible backstory.

But backstory is everything. I have to believe that the story I'm being told is taking place in a plausible world. This is true whether the story is science fiction or a police procedural. (Don't get me started on C.S.I.) There are rules to storytelling, and if you violate the rules, you'd better have a reason. TV, movies, popular fiction...Storytelling is basically lying. The person telling us the story is basically telling us a series of whoppers. And even a seven-year-old knows that if you're going to tell a lie, it had better be believable.

CAN YOU TELL A GREEN FIELD FROM A COLD STEEL RAIN?

It's another gray day, foggy, rainy, dreary. Typical October, in other words, the time of year when thoughts can't help turning wistful.

I'm in a relationship now, and it's serious, and that's good. It's gives me something to focus on, something bigger to be a part of, a place to be that isn't inside my own head. When Mom died in February, this is the time of year I most dreaded facing without her, the dying leaves and overcast skies, autumn turning to winter, and the whole holiday season.

Grateful as I am for having Tabbatha in my life, part of me wishes that I was going through this time of year alone, that I could wallow in my sadness and despair. Maybe I need to feel it as fully as possible to purge it. I feel that there are reservoirs of overwhelming sadness somewhere inside, and I want them to burst forth, to have an overwhelming crying jag, to somehow come to terms with everything I've lost.

Because I feel...I'm not in denial, exactly, but I don't feel my reaction--or more accurately, non-reaction--to Mom's loss is in any way equal to the calamity of the event. Shouldn't I be sad all the time? Nobody ever understood me the way she did, nobody was a better listener, nobody could give better advice. And she's gone. That's the end of the world, right?

My sister Ann thinks that, in a way, Mom's death was her final gift to me: Without her, I was finally forced to take the final steps into adulthood. In a way that's true for my brothers and sisters as well. Mom was the connective tissue that somehow kept us together, that kept this organism called a family functioning. Without her--what?

Without her, seasons change, accidents happen, relationships begin and end and begin again. There are jobs and friendships, music and laughter and sorrow, and at least one good thing for every bad thing. There's a whole life to be lived, and even a chilly fall and dreadful winter can't take away the promise of spring's renewal.

Mom herself said it best: Life will find a way.

STAND BESIDE HER AND GUIDE HER...AH, FORGET IT

Quick! Do something! The approval ratings are in the toilet!

Our Beloved President is finally realizing that the American public does NOT support his little endeavor in Iraq. He's so concerned about blowback from the war having an effect on November's election that he's starting to talk about options other than staying the course. Included among those options? Just getting the hell out.

Wait. Wouldn't that make him a quitter, an appeaser, one of those cut-and-run weenie boys that he was demonizing just a month ago?

Well, yes it would, which is why this new plan of action is a bit baffling. It would make it clear that everything Bush has been saying all this time has been bullshit, that he didn't really care about bringing democracy to the Middle East, and worst of all, that all those thousands of American soldiers died for absolutely no reason. That last part will be a particularly tough sell, I should think.

But you know, I have faith in The Decider's squad of hit men. They'll find some outrageous charge to fling against Democrats at the last minute, and whether it's true or not, it'll work. The Imperial Presidency will continue as it always has, and the citizens of this nation will go on about their business as if nothing has happened.

God bless America.

I GROW OLD, I GROW OLD

I have no idea why the programming geniuses at NBC decided now was the time to air two prime time TV shows about the behind-the-scenes turmoil of fictional shows clearly patterned after Saturday Night Live. After all, NBC insisted SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels slash his budget or face cancellation this season. Is that the kind of exciting backstage drama NBC wants to showcase?

In any event, of these two shows, 30 Rock, exec-produced by Michaels and created by and starring SNL's former head writer, Tina Fey, is so awful it's a wonder it ever got on the air. The premise: Fey plays the producer of a female-centric late night comedy show who is forced by a ruthless network exec to hire a volatile, possibly crazy, black comedian as the new star of her show. The conception of the comedian's character is seemingly based on Martin Lawrence's well-documented crackup of...what? Six, seven years ago? Pretty cutting edge stuff.

NBC's other SNL-based show is, of course, the heavily hyped new Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. I have been watching this one--the pilot was terrific, and it has a great cast. But each subsequent episode has been less interesting than the previous one, and some serious problems are arising.

For instance, we're told repeatedly that the character played by Sarah Paulson, as a cast member of the show-within-a show, is some sort of comic genius, that even with lame material, she can "make it work." But the glimpses we've seen of her performances reveal community theater-level comic chops. It makes you wonder if all the characters on the show are deluded, or just really stupid.

Similarly, the whole premise of the show seems phony to anyone with any knowledge of real-world TV production: Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford play two former scribes for the show who have since gone on to greater things, but circumstances pull them back in, and they're given free reign to do whatever they want. In the space of one week (!), they completely turn the show around, and it's a smash hit both commercially and critically.

Right.

First of all, anyone with knowledge of SNL history will remember the dreadful 1980 season, the first season after Lorne Michaels' initial departure. The show was nerly cancelled, but NBC (somewhat inexplicably) brought in certified comedy genius Michael O'Donoghue to run the thing. He was given carte blanche, at least initially, and his writing staff included the likes of Mitch Glazer and Terry Southern. But he was still saddled with a cast that was already in place, and still had to deal with network execs.

And the show still sucked.

In TV, noting gets turned around that fast. Yeah, I know Studio 60 is fiction, but it's fiction based, rather transparently, on a known entity, and I can't imagine why anybody would watch it unless they had some interest in, and knowledge of, the subject matter. Every episode seems to depart farther from any kind of reality, and rather than deepening, the characters seem to become less interesting as we go along. For now, I'm still watching, but I suspect that soon I'll "forget" an episode, and then another, and then...

As for the show that inspired all this, Saturday Night Live is in possibly the worst shape it's ever been in, a guest that refuses to leave, a festering sore, a vague annoyance. Simply put, there's no reason for it to exist anymore; with cable and the internet, there's a world of comedy out there, highbrow, lowbrow and in-between. Back in the seventies, SNL was a revelation to many of us, dispatches from another world, a glimpse at everything TV comedy could be. But it has become the mainstream, an embarrassing collection of stock characters that nobody cares about, and talented cast members who are only allowed to bloom once they leave the show. It's time has long ago passed, and it's impossible to care anymore, about the show or its fictional incarnations. Let it go, NBC.

WHETHER YOU ARE HERE OR YONDER

Peter Bogdanovich's 1981 film They All Laughed comes out on DVD today, a worthy attempt at a modern-day screwball romance, a comedy with more charm than laughs, but a movie you could almost fall in love with, except...

This is a movie with some creepy subtext, all of it inadvertant. It stars Ben Gazzara and John Ritter as private detectives following--and falling for--women played by Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Stratten. There's a feeling of sadness knowing that, except for Gazzara, the leads are no longer with us. Ritter's loss seems particularly sad here, a gifted farceur who should have gone on to great things, but found himself stranded forever doing mostly awful sitcoms.

But the real downer is Stratten. She's achingly lovely here, if not a particularly adept actress, but her character in the film has a husband obsessed with following her every move. In real life, Stratten had a husband so obsessed with her every move that he couldn't stand it when she left him, and he blew her brains out.

It gets worse. The man Stratten left her husband for was...Peter Bogdanovich. And in the wake of her death, he turned his attention to her (much) younger sister, grooming her to be as much like Dorothy as possible. He wrote a rambling, unreadable book about Stratten, The Killing Of The Unicorn, which probably did much to knock Bogdanovich off of Hollywood's A list.

A shame, really. Bogdanovich came to prominence at the same time as such seventies filmmaking superstars as Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola and Steven Spielberg, and in some ways, he was the most talented of the bunch. He seemed to be more willing to let the story's content dictate the style, instead of trying to insert his personal obsessions into material unsuited to it. Much of his work--Targets, The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon--is great, and though he stumbled badly in the mid-seventies, he made a terrific adaptation of Paul Theroux's novel Saint Jack (also with Ben Gazzara) in 1978, and They All Laughed was supposed to be his comeback.

Too bad it didn't work. If you can put all that aside, though, it is a very enjoyable picture, with a promise of greater things that has yet to be fulfilled. Maybe someday...

SOMEHOW, BABY, THEY NEVER REALLY DO

I suppose it's appropriate that the fabled New York City club CBGB ended its existence last night with a performance by Patti Smith. She was, of course, one of the performers who flourished at that site, part of an amazing explosion of talent in the mid-to-late seventies who would find their voice at CBGB, a group that included some of the greatest bands of all time, including The Ramones, Suicide, Blondie, Richard Hell And the Voidoids and Television.

A great legacy, undeniably. Suicide's first album officially ranks as one of The Greatest Things In The History Of The World, and The Ramones and Blondie would remain great bands even after punk's heyday had ended. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal gave disaffected (and sometimes only marginally talented) white kids a place where they could discover themselves, and it was happening at pretty much the same time that disaffected black kids first started to set up turntables and create a hip-hop culture of their own.

The punk ethos born at CBGB was a culture, undeniably. The rgulars at that era also included Mink DeVille and Talking Heads, bands that sounded nothing like each other, and absolutely nothing like The Ramones. What they had in common was the fact that they sounded nothing like any music being made then, and these bands made music as a way of life, not as a career optionEven now, hearing The Ramones' first album is like hearing something brand new, the first shot in a revolution that so many others have been reluctant to join.

Still, it's telling that the club closed with a celebration of past glories. CBGB had continued to flourish in the eighties as home to New York's burgeoning hardcore scene, but it had long since ceased being relevant, and existed mostly as a landmark, a place where old vets tried to relive the good old days and young wannabes would come to pay hommage. A past is a good thing to have, but a future would be even better, and that was no longer in the cards for CBGB.

I FEEL YOU SLIPPING AWAY

Tower Records will soon be no more.

The entire chain has been sold to a liquidation company. Remaining stock will be burned off cheap, then all the stores will be nothing but a memory.

There were no Tower Records stores in most of the places I've lived. Then in 2002 I began my brief period living in suburban D.C. Tower had several outlets in the metro area, but the only store I consistently visited was located in a nondescript strip mall in Rockville. On my first visit, I immediately fell in love with the place. Yeah, it was a chain store, but amazingly well-stocked: Every kind of magazine, incredibly obscure books, and the main reason I was there, the awesome music and video selection.

You could spend hours browsing through this place, finding treasures you didn't even know existed: It was the only place I ever found that carried copies of the oddball documentary Hands On A Hardbody or had an extensive collection of non-Japanese animation. And the staff was amazingly laid-back for a chain store; there was no "May I help you?", it was perfectly okay if you wanted to hang out for an hour or two and not buy anything.

Tower is disappearing for the same reason Peeple's Records here in Des Moines recently closed, the reason all the music stores in which I spent some of the happiest times of my life are no longer here: People don't buy music in stores anymore. If they do actually buy albums, they're doing it online, at Amazon. Or they're just downloading albums, or more likely just the individual tracks they want.

There are advantages to that, I guess, although none are leaping to my mind at the moment. True, everything I used to do at Tower, the browsing as well as the purchasing, I can do online. But it's not the same. One is a social experience, the other is...well, sitting in front of a screen. It's like watching large groups of people gathered together in bars and restaurants. Yeah, they're all together, but at least half of them will be on cellphones, unable to appreciate the moment, tied forever to their technology, unaware that they are allowing microchips to replace the very things that once made them human.

HIS SOUL SWOONED SLOWLY

Sgt. Ricky Clousing is going away for awhile. A judge yesterday sentenced him to eleven months in confinement, although he won't serve the whole term. Clousing's crime? He went AWOL--he ran away from a military that he was convinced was doing more harm than good.

Clousing saw his fellow soldiers smash their Humvees into the vehicles of Iraqi civilians just for shits and grins, saw a teenage boy murdered and looked into his eyes as he died. He interrogated prisoners who had committed no crimes, but who, by their very detainment, Clousing believed would actively support any insurgency against U.S. forces. He became convinced that as long as the U.S. was in Iraq, the world was a more dangerous place.

His story is particularly interesting in the wake of a study from Johns Hopkins University estimating the number of Iraqi casualties to be 655,ooo. Right-wingers, of course, immediately disputed this, claiming these numbers were inflated.

Somehow, that just makes it more terrifying. I know war is terrible and all, but leaving aside the lack of justification for this whole mess, the idea of killing so many people in such a short amount of time that, hey, you just can't keep track of 'em all--Well, the people who started this claim to be hard-core Christians, but I can't think of anything more morally repugnant than this.

And me, I just sit here, and you, whoever you are, do as well. We're not taking to the barricades, we're not making any meaningful change. We're allowing our souls and our flesh and everything we are to be co-opted, to say it's okay, because really, what else can we do?

Ricky Clousing tried to make a change. He did what his conscience told him to do, and he's going to prison for it.

I TURNED TO LOOK BUT IT WAS GONE

Three additional thoughts about The Departed that I failed to mention previously:

1) The music: Remember when Martin Scorsese's ability to pick just the right set of songs to convey the spirit of his films was justly celebrated? Things started to slip in Casino with some way too obvious choices, and his caving in to Harvey Weinstein's demands that Elmer Bernstein's score for Gangs Of New York be replaced by Bono's annoying wails was unfortunate, but Scorsese's instincts totally fail him here. The film opens with the Stones' Gimme Shelter, and it's apparently being used to convey a sense of menace. Uh, Mr. Scorsese, sir, the Stones haven't seemed cutting-edge since...well, maybe since you used them in Mean Streets. Yeah, Wes Anderson has made good use of Brian Jones-era songs in his films, but that's to convey a sense of wistful nostalgia, not to seem edgy. And Comfortably Numb? Pathetic.

2) Bad rear projection: Okay, it's probably inserted digitally, rather than an old-fashioned backdrop, but there are numerous scenes in the movie of characters standing in front of windows (Martin Sheen's office, Matt Damon's apartment) with a view outside that looks about as convincing as the view outside Mary's second apartment on The Mary Tyler Moore Show--which is to say, not very convincing at all. I was spending way too much time during these scenes being distracted by the cheesy, unconvincing visuals, and noticing how the light in the rooms didn't match the light outside. Scorsese would probably argue that this was intentional, that it was some sort of hommage to the cheesy backdrops in Anthony Mann's Eagle-Lion releases or something, but it just looked bad.

3) The final shot: Really? A rat? Did we need the prompting?

MAD LOVE

Among the wealth of good stuff coming out on DVD today--let me make particular mention of Season Two of Wonder Showzen, Robert Altman's elegiac Prarie Home Companion and the mostly forgotten, somewhat underrated early Eighties Disney feature The Fox And The Hound--by far the most important release is Warner Home Video's Hollywood's Legends Of Horror boxed set.

These are horror movies (or more accurately, thrillers) from the thirties, the golden age of the genre. But these pictures were produced by MGM and Warner Bros., studios that really didn't do this kind of thing. MGM in the thirties mostly stuck to Oscar-baiting prestige pictures, and Warners did brassy musicals and gangster epics. When these studios stepped outside of their comfort zones, things could get...weird.

The two efforts from Warner Bros. included here, Doctor X and the imaginitively titled Return Of Dr. X, at least play to the studio's strengths: Plenty of snappy dialogue, breakneck pacing and great supporting turns by contract players. Doctor X is by far the better picture, shot in two-strip Technicolor and featuring expressionistic sets by Anton Grot, but Return Of... has one great asset: Humphrey Bogart as a skulking henchman, complete with mood hair!

The other pictures in this set come from MGM, a studio that had no concept of how to do this. That inexperience was probably a good thing, since none of these are mired in any kind of formula. Mark Of The Vampire and The Devil Doll unfortunately show the continued decline of the studio's resident weirdo visionairy, Tod Browning: they're well-shot and competently made, but awfully uninspired.

The final two movies in this set are great treats, though. The Mask Of Fu Manchu represents typical thirties "yellow peril" nonsense, and its portrayal of an Asian supervillain with a pathological hatred for white people would be incredibly offensive if the movie wasn't so deliriously entertaining, and if Boris Karloff's performance in the title role wasn't so damn cool.

Finally, the last movie in the set, Mad Love, is frustratingly uneven, with some deeply unnecessary comedy relief, but director Karl Freund creates such a strange, dreamlike atmosphere--even the opening credits are strange--and Peter Lorre is so deeply creepy yet utterly heartbreaking as a scientist who thinks he can force a woman to love him, that it easily ranks as one of the best horror movies of the thirties.

Or any era, come to think of it.

JUST A SHOT AWAY

To some extent, the rapturous reviews greeting Martin Scorsese's new picture The Departed are understandable. Like Spike Lee's Inside Man from earlier in the year, it's the work of a filmmaker who usually traffics in grander themes going through the motions with a star-studded crime melodrama. But because Scorsese and Lee are both so talented, they work the materials like the pros they are, and the results are something that is so rare in Hollywood movies these days: They're actually entertaining.

But come on. I've read reviews of The Departed--actual reviews by actual critics who should know better, not the online ramblings of infatuated fanboys--that speak of its "Shakepearian drama" and "Mametesque dialogue." Shakepearean? Well, lots of people die. David Mamet? They say "fuck" a lot. Otherwise, no.

Given Scorsese's participation, it seems a lot of critics are trying to make this be something it's not. It's not deep, emotionally or intellectually. It's a pretty good time-killer, made with an unusually high level of craftsmanship. TV series like The Sopranos or The Wire do crime drama with a far higher level of nuance, and far less contrivance. But The Departed is all artifice--not only are the above-the-title actors--Jack Nicholson (relentlessly hammy), Leonardo DiCaprio (okay but uninteresting) and Matt Damon (terrific)--all Movie Stars, but even the supporting actors, like Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin, are all Familiar Faces. There's no chance to forget that you're watching a movie, and thanks to plot devices that wouldn't pass muster in an old Jimmy Cagney-Pat O'Brien melodrama--would you believe that DiCaprio and Damon, both cops working at cross purposes, would fall for the same girl?--it's not even a movie that tries to hide its theatricality.

Still, if you go in with lowered expectations, it works. It's not deep, it's not profound, it's barely even that interesting. But it's a pretty good time at the movies, and that's not bad.

SO MUCH HAS TURNED TO DUST

Our property wasn't vast, but it was substantial: bean fields and corn fields at the bottom of the hill, the hill itself part of a pasture that had long since stopped serving any purpose, as my family no longer raised cattle. The barn with its stocks and milking machine, the chicken coop, so many things that were still there but no longer used, all part of my private playground. I didn't even know what these buildings were for, but they served my shifting purposes when I was five years old, or six or seven. They could be Nazi hideouts or Old West towns or Al Capone's Chicago. The only limits were my imagination.

Most of my surroundings I could bend to my will, but my favorite place on the farm was a row of evergreen trees that stretched in a perfect straight line west from the back of the barn. Beneath their branches, emerald-dappled sunlight softly touched the ground, and the grass was soft and matted, covered in needles. The branches, delicate but unyielding, also muffled sounds, even the familiar birdcalls and roar of passing autos were faint here, as if the rest of the world could be shut out, as if all the things I thought I knew didn't matter.

This was a place of absolute stillness and calm, a place for meditation and awareness of things more important than myself. Being there was almost like coming face to face with God, an experience both joyous and terrifying, and the feelings it evoked in me were almost more than I could handle. I would only go to this spot when I needed the quiet, but as a little kid, I tended to prefer the noise of the rest of my life.

Well, you can probably guess how the rest of the story goes: We sold off the farm piece by piece. The evergreens were torn down by our neighbor after he bought the adjoining pasture, which my dad okayed, so I'll never again see sunlight slanting through branches in shimmering shades of green. Things change, and good things disappear.

But sometimes, on the rare occasions when I find myself driving in the country, I'll stop at the top of a hill and watch the clouds dart across the sky, their shadows racing across the fields and fences and ditches and streams in the valley below, a reminder of how beautiful the world is, regardless of the people who inhabit it, regardless of whether anyone notices or cares.

TAKE ME OUT

Okay, I don't write about sports, because I really don't know jack about sports, for the most part. But I will admit to being a Yankees fan--a rare thing here in the Heartland--and the fact that they're one game away from being eliminated in the play-offs, failing once again to even make it to The Series, is a bit of a bummer.

They're losing to Detroit, for crying out loud. That's like losing to...to...I dunno, Detroit. The Tigers suck, that's their job, and yet they're this close to handing the mighty Yankees another embarrassing defeat...The Four Horsemen are getting ready to ride, people. We're this close to Apocalypse.

Hopefully, George Steinbrenner won't take this as an excuse to throw out manager Joe Torre, who was pretty much responsible for the team's awesome winning streak in the nineties and early aughts, but it's Steinbrenner, so you never really know. He seems to think every problem can be solved by throwing huge amounts of money at free agents, although this is itself the problem, as even the most casual baseball fan knows. But telling that to Steinbrenner is like telling Bush it was a bad idea to invade Iraq: He just isn't capable of understanding.

Hey, did you notice that? How I suddenly used a seemingly innocuous post about a wholesome topic to take a cheap shot at Our Beloved President? Pretty impressive, eh? But remember kids, don't try this at home. Only trained professionals should attempt such hairpin curves.

JOY IN THE MORNING

Tabbatha unexpectedly pulled a midweek allnighter, so I've very reluctantly crawled out of bed to write this.

She had Paul in tow, so nothing rude or immoral transpired, but still we held each other all night, and that's a very calming feeling. As I snuggle up to her, bad thoughts melt away. Suddenly I am unaware of George Bush's insane imperial presidency, or the fact that he has been using Henry Fucking Kissinger as a consultant. Kissinger, man! Look, forget Vietnam or Cambodia or any of his genocidal tendencies there, I just want to say Chile, taking out Salvadore Allende--democratically elected, mind you--for puppet facist Pinochet, which only means that every citizen of the world with two brain cells to rub together must surely realize that everything Hugo Chavez said about this guy is absolutely right. And Rumsfeld, is there anything this guy could do that would cause Bush to unload this psycho? And...and...and...

...and anyway, all such thoughts melt away.

So I asked Tabbatha to kick in a few thoughts here--mainly to get me off the Bush rant--and so far she's offered, "Hi." Anything else, honey? "Well, I'm really great. Apparently. According to you." Uh-huh. What else? Um, are you sure you want me to write about your boobs and underwear? No? Okay, then, I won't even mention them.

"You're the writer, honey," she said finally. "Write something beautiful."

So I'll just write Tabbatha.

PART OF YOUR WORLD

Lots of great stuff new on DVD today, including three must-haves:

1) The Maltese Falcon: John Huston's first film as director, Humphrey Bogart's first lead as a morally ambiguous antihero, the first real film noir, a definitive adaptation of a great American novel, oh, and also one of the most entertaining movies ever made, 1941's Falcon finally gets the release it deserves. In addition to a restored print (which showcases Arthur Edeson's gleaming camerawork to its full advantage), you get the two previous versions of Dashiell Hammett's novel that Warner Bros. had knocked out in the thirties, radio versions (one with the great Laird Cregar), audio commentary and more. Essential in every way--now if someone would just issue Huston's late career masterworks Wise Blood and The Dead on DVD...

2) The Little Mermaid: This 1989 effort from the Disney Empire has been on DVD before, but this is the first time it's been released with all the bells and whistles we've come to expect from even the most routine animated features. Mermaid, however, is far from routine: with a terrific Howard Ashman-Alan Menken score and superb animation by artists eager to prove what they could do, this was largely responsible for the rebirth of the animated feature in the nineties, a trend that today unfortunately continues with stories about poorly-CGI-animated animals making fart noises. Even at Disney, the burst of creativity it started soon turned into formula. But Mermaid remains an effortlessly entertaining evergreen, and a bittersweet reminder of a time when great things seemed possible, even from soulless corporations.

3) Body Double: Brian DePalma's wildly entertaining, deliberately trashy melodrama seemed like a throwaway in 1984, DePalma doing familiar tropes because his bid to be taken seriously as an artist (That would be Scarface!) was a box-office underperformer. These days it's obvious that DePalma is at his best when working in the shadows, that his cheap thrillers (Raising Cain) are so much more interesting than his bids for the mainstream (Bonfire Of The Vanities, Mission To Mars). Body Double absolutely wallows in sleaze, and its backdrop of the early eighties porno industry makes it a fascinating co-feature for Boogie Nights. It has been on DVD before, but again, a spiffed-up transfer and some interesting exras make all the difference.

There are actually a ton of other good things on DVD today, including some more Bogart (your best bet would be They Drive By Night), yet another reissue of DePalma's Scarface and Ganja And Hess, a movie about class divisions in the African-American community disguised as a vampire melodrama. For movie fans, most weeks are famine, so lets be grateful for a feast.

IT MAY NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

I'm driving around the other day listening to the radio, and what unwanted memory should they play but Paul McCartney's extremely unwise 1979 capitulation to the disco craze, Goodnight Tonight.

Two things immediately struck me upon hearing this thing for the first time in years: 1) I hate it now as much as I did then, and 2) by far the worst thing in a song full of bad things is McCartney's bass work, which tries to sound funky but winds up resembling a bad reaction to Mexican food.

I could use this as a cheap excuse to start ripping McCartney's post-Beatles career, and he'd deserve it, but I should point out that, as a hard-core Beatles fan, I've got the utmost respect for the erstwhile Cute One. Sure, in the Beatle songwriting hierarchy, I'm a John Lennon guy all the way--I mean, check out the name of this site--but seriously, you've got to give it up for Paul.

I mean--I'm Looking Through You. If he'd only written that, his place in the pantheon would be secure. Toss in For No One, Drive My Car, Helter Skelter, Rocky Raccoon and way, way too many more to mention, and the case could be made that McCartney was every bit as stong a songwriter as Lennon. Okay, not that strong a case--if I listed only John's contribution to the White Album alone, I'd feel the need to wax rhapsodic over each and every one. (Particularly Julia, my favorite Lennon song and probably my favorite song of all time.) McCartney had the disadvantage of being a very good songwriter in a group blessed with a great songwriter.

Still, there's no shame in being very good, and post-Beatles, Paul should have thrived. Instead, he turned too often to the sappy ballads and novelty crap that made his contribution to Sgt Pepper so unlistenable. In a way, Goodnight Tonight was commendable on McCartney's part, an attempt to do something different instead of the same old thing. The problem is, it was a transparent attempt to sound current, and a half-hearted attempt at that. Even Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey was better than this crap.

These days, McCartney has no interest in trying to sound current. He releases a lazy album every couple of years and goes on tour, cranking out the old hits because who the hell wants to hear the new stuff, and he's okay with that. Maybe if he actually tried these days, the new stuff would be as worthwhile as the old, but he's a bazillionaire and doesn't need to try. Meanwhile, John Lennon has been dead for twenty-six years, and he's still cooler than Paul.

THOUGHTS MEANDER LIKE A RESTLESS WIND

Random thoughts:

1) Republican Representative Mark Foley resigns after being caught sending sexually suggestive emails to underage guys, and the GOP tries to pretend that well, it's not that big a deal. So let me get this straight: Gay marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God, but trolling for anonymous gay sex with minors, that's okay. Or at least, it's okay if the person doing the looking is a right-wing nutjob that can be counted on to vote the way he's told to vote.

Foley claims he's not gay, but his emails reveal a guy who is, shall we say, bi-curious. Yet he has never had any problem supporting vile legislation designed to keep gays second-class citizens. I've always known you had to be stupid to support the Republican's agenda, but I didn't know you had to be utterly self-loathing to set the agenda.

2) George Bush. Ahhh, no. I don't even want to get started.

3) After dating for, what, two months or so, and marvelling over the fact that we hadn't had a fight, Tabbatha and I finally had a fight. I'm not going to get into specifics--partly for personal reasons, partly because it's just not that interesting--but it did kind of throw both of us for a loop. Obviously, it's irrational to think you're never going to fight when you're in a relationship, but things had been going so well. Everything's fine now, of course, but still...bummer.

4) One area of concern that Tabbatha has--though oddly enough, this isn't what we fought about--is that I spend too much time talking to my ex, Sue Ellen. I only mention this because the last time she and I did talk, she mentioned that Richard Thomas was going to be in a play in D.C., which led to a mention of the obscure 1970 movie Red Sky At Morning, which led to me realizing that not only had I heard of this movie, I knew who directed it.

Which is kind of depressing, because, as my brain chooses to forget bits and pieces of things its aquired over the years, as I forget actual, precious memories of things that have happened to me, why oh why can I still recall James Goldstone's credits as a director? (He also did When Time Ran Out, Rollercoaster and the pilot movie for Ironside.) Why do I even know this stuff in the first place?

5) George Bush...Nah, still don't want to talk about it.