THE MOST POWERFUL MOVIE OF THE YEAR

Some say this film comes too soon. If you ask me, I say this movie couldn't come soon enough.

Without question and without irony, I say: This is a movie that everyone should see.

No matter your relationship to the subject matter, whatever it may be. No matter what your opinion. This is a film you will never forget, should never forget, and I dare say you will never forget.

Frankly, I'm at least somewhat surprised it was made in the first place. As implied in the first line of this post, this movie does arrive with built-in detractors. And while I will decline to question their patriotism, I do wonder where they're coming from. Because I sure don't understand it.

That said, it is indeed a difficult movie to watch. At times it is excruciating, and even when it's bearable, there are times you will wish you were somewhere else. And if I wasn't ready for it, neither will you be.

The verisimilitude, the restraint, and the care put into this project comes through loud and clear. Kudos to the director for pulling this off, to the actors for accomplishing nearly the impossible. There are no guidelines for making a movie such as this one (save a series of films starring Chevy Chase, of course). I mean, have you contemplated the expectations involved when making a movie about a family vacation?

But there are very good reasons why it should and will succeed. After all, it was made with the consent, not to mention script approval, of Winnebago Industries. Better yet, the movie studio is donating 10% of the profits from this weekend's box office to the RV Association of America.

That's right, I'm talking about:


For reals?

No, not for reals. You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. And for that, see the simultaneously-posted entry below.

P.S. — But seriously, I will Netflix that movie just so I can fast-forward to the scenes with Will Arnett.

Note — Special thanks to EDP for the concept and one or two of the lines above.

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posted by WWB at 12:01 AM |

 
UNITED 93

I didn't quite realize that United 93 was coming out until just a few weeks ago, when the trailer hit the web. I watched it alone at work, with the headphones on, and that by itself was difficult to watch. But I could tell that it looked like a straightforward, documentary-like telling of what probably happened aborard that fourth hijacked plane. It looked like the kind of movie that I hoped would be made about 9/11. And 9/11 being a formative event in my life, this looked like it could be (so to speak) my Passion of the Christ.

And so this morning I made sure to procure tickets for the 7:30 showing at Gallery Place/Chinatown. The theater wasn't jam-packed, but it was more full than not. Far be it from me to extrapolate about the weekend box office based on one of the 1,700 theaters it's showing in this weekend, but based on good word-of-mouth and others' educated guesses, I expect it to do something in the $20 million dollar range. And that's fine. Promotions for the movie have been realtively modest, with TV spots, print and Internet ads, but little fanfare (aside from earned media (such as this, I suppose) that such a movie as this will naturally accumulate).

So, the film itself: It works. It really works, and thank God it did, because if Paul Greengrass et. al. had turned in even a merely competent film, it would have been a disappointment. But this movie does not disappoint. My heart pounded from minute one. It's been said the movie takes place in real time, and while that isn't actually the case, the pacing and weaving together of scenes on the ground and in the air certainly makes it seem that way. And if it was an overtly politcal film, that would have been a disappointment, too. It's a conservative film not in the right-wing sense (though wingers are going to make this movie a solid hit) but in that it's very careful about what it shows. Documentary-like, it includes numerous small factual details that you won't notice unless you know about them going in. It follows the 9/11 Commission Report very carefully, with one exception and one extrapolation, which I'll gladly discuss later if others find them controversial. I didn't.

Ben Sliney, one of a surprising number of officials who play themselves in the film, is terrific. (I wonder if he doesn't pull an R. Lee Ermey and start getting more film roles (as former Marine drill instructor Ermey did — and still does — following Full Metal Jacket.) And speaking of actors, it was a wise decision to cast no-names, so as not to be distracting (not to mention, bringing in the respected but not-so-well-known Greengrass ensured that the director's star power didn't get in the way). Some of the key passengers seemed vaguely familiar, but that may just owe to the casting of charismatic actors.

Casting interesting actors was crucial, because there is virtually no character development, let alone plot. But it hardly needed either. And I submit that it was smart to exclude those traditional narrative elements. Tom Burnett, Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, these are people we already know about. As for the plot... well, if you don't already know what's going to happen, I believe you've just awoken from a coma of no less than five years (and somehow found yourself at this blog; how about this whole blogging thing, huh?). And if you don't find the very subject matter inherently gripping, then you are probably not a carbon-based life form.

While some reviews, including positive ones, have called the movie a "spectacle," I disagree. It certainly could have become one, but it really just focused on the people inside Flight 93 and various command and control centers around the country. The movie could have depicted Bush on that day, or the on-the-scene reactions of New Yorkers and Washingtonians, or the millions of us who saw it on TV, but instead it stayed small-scale. (It would have been easier to make it "epic" by showing national reactions, but there's nary a reaction shot (save for the Newark officials watching the tower (and then towers) burn) in the whole film. There are certainly times where the movie is visually arresting (I mean, the whole thing is arresting, but generally not because it "looks cool"), but there are several occasions where Greengrass declined to show something that would have earned an easy gasp (for example, it shows nothing of the crashes that you haven't already seen on TV (but it certainly does show the second plane hitting the tower (something you may never again see on network television))).

One thing that bothered me a bit is that people did talk through the movie, albeit primarily during the scenes in the aforementioned control centers, and I refer specifically to the couples on either side of me. My guess is they showed up for the drama and inspiring revolt onboard United 93 and not so much for the story about those dealing with the unfolding crisis. Too bad, if you ask me, but then those scenes also included background chatter that the audience murmur fortunately blended with. (And if you want to chalk this up to the stereotype that black audiences talk through movies, well, one couple was black and the other was white.)

When it was over, I did sit for a few minutes to watch the credits and collect myself. I almost never cry during films (unless I've been up for 24 hours and am drunk — then I can get emotional about almost anything) and I did not cry here, but it was only because I kept myself from doing so. Indeed, I was on the verge of breaking up all the way back to the Metro. I am somewhat grateful that nobody I invited could make the showing; I am certain I would not have been able to control myself if I was asked to talk about it in the minutes afterward. And when I finally got up to go, there a few rows back was a couple holding each other tight, the man comforting his crying girlfriend. As we filed out, others had their hands to their faces or at least marched somberly. I was among the somber, pulling at my face to keep a grim frown from taking over entirely. A TV crew was interviewing people as we emerged from the theater. I wasn't interviewed, and in fact I stepped a bit aide to make sure that I was not. But I tried to think what I would say if the correspondent asked me for my take, and all I know for sure is that it would have been unusable.

My own feeling then, as it was in the final minutes of the film, waqs a curious combination of grief and pride — for how sad and horrifying that day was and at least as much for being profoundly grateful for the brave actions of those who were actually there. It really cannot be underplayed how important that revolt was. (The movie does hint that, like everyone assumes, 93 was headed for the Capitol dome, and while the death toll would probably have been lower than in NYC, that building on the Hill is a centuries-old national landmark that would have been a greater symbolic loss than even the World Trade Center.) Would I have done the same thing in those circumstances? Well, I think I would, and so would you. But we've never been faced with anything in the ballpark (ain't even the same fucking sport) as they did on that morning, and because they rose to the challenge, they deserve all the tribute they get.

Okay, the above was told with as few spoilers as possible. The white space following includes observations that contain what I consider spoilers, so highlight the text and read on at your own peril or go see the movie and then come back. I'll pick up again briefly on the other side.

Update — Goddammit, Blogger. Why can't I change the color of my own text? Anyway, I'm temporarily keeping the spoilers here. And so, back to the original post:

With all that said, I don't really have a conclusion worked out. I'll just reiterate how grateful I am that this is a great film rather than just a good one, let alone a terrible one. I remember wondering sometime during that infamous day whether there would be a 9/11 movie, and even then I'm pretty sure I knew there would be one. Thankfully, this was it.

P.S. — I am aware of the made-for-TV version called Flight 93. Well, I have no interest in seeing it. I don't know if I'll ever watch United 93 again, either.

P.P.S. — So what of Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center"? We'll see. His track record on political films isn't good. JFK was a motion picture tour-de-force, but took enough liberties as to be credibly charged with recklessness. Nixon was an astounding film as well, and even though its impressionistic version of RMN's presidency was controversial at points (again with the JFK assassination) it didn't suffer much from Stone's conspiratorial bent. That said, he's also been stuck in a commercial and artistic slump for a few films. Perhaps he'll play this one straight. And from what I've heard so far — NYC firefighters are the heroes, for example — I think there's a good possibility he will. But we'll see.

Update — Boy, I hope nobody notices the mistake I made. It's fixed now. The only person I know for sure who read the version with the wrong name was Lance, so he's got a head start on that point. But in all seriousness, I am a moron.

Updated, several days later — Not a moron, just a victim of coincidence and mistaken snap judgment. It turns out that Jeremy Glick, whom I had initially listed as a leader of the United 93 passenger revolt, shares his name, i.e. Jeremy Glick, with the idiot son of a World Trade Center victim who had the misfortune to be memorably shoulted down by Bill O'Reilly.

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posted by WWB at 12:00 AM |

 
DISASTER!

No, no. I haven't managed to spill whiskey on my new laptop yet. I refer instead to the Chernobyl accident of this date in history, twenty years ago.

While I certainly remember how and when I heard about the Challenger disaster earlier that same year, I don't recall where I was when I heard about the Chernobyl disaster (no surprise, really (and for the record, I'm guessing it was from Newsweek magazine sometime during the first Bush administration)).

But I don't know of anybody who's managed to ride their motorcycle through the Challenger crash site, and I certainly do know of a website where someone has posted numerous pictures of their visits to the destroyed reactor and through the ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine.

Here's the reactor from the non-blowed-up side, as it looks today:


For pictures of the deserted town itself and a narrative telling what it's like to visit Chernobyl nowadays, click here.

P.S. — Already linked, but deserving of reproduction here, is Wikipedia's telling of Pripyat:

Before the disaster, Pripyat was a closed city, absent from [S]oviet maps and unavailable as a destination for westerners.

Until recently, the site was practically a museum documenting the late Soviet era. With entirely abandoned buildings, including abandoned apartment buildings (four of which were yet to be used), swimming pools and hospitals, everything inside remained, from records to papers to children's toys and clothing. Residents were only allowed to take away documents, books and clothes that were not contaminated.

However, the apartment buildings were looted completely several years ago. No article of value was left behind, even toilet seats were taken away. Because the buildings are not serviced, the roofs leak, and in spring the rooms are swamped in water. It is not unusual to find trees growing on the roofs and even inside buildings. This hastens the natural processes of deterioration, and it may be expected that in several decades most of the city will lie in ruins.

Prypiat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries. ... The city is entirely accessible and is relatively safe on the road, although it is unsafe to go around the city without a radiation detector. The doors of all the buildings are open to reduce the risk to visitors, although many have accumulated too much radioactive material to be safe to visit.

Tanks, helicopters, and all terrain vehicles from the Soviet Union's Red Army were left in dumps due to their high levels of radiation.

Aside from the oppression, dehumanization, probable starvation and eventual horrifying irradiation, that's pretty fucking/fracking/effing cool.

P.P.S. — Speaking of odd locales, if you're like me you've wondered: What's up with the name of "Newport News," VA? The answer is a familiar one to scholars of the origin of the word "Oregon": Nobody knows, but everyone's got a theory.

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posted by WWB at 8:56 PM |

 
MACBOOK PROCESSING

As expected, the machine arrived at work on Monday. As not expected, it failed to properly transfer all my settings from the iBook, so I'll have to go to the Apple store to get my Mail and Safari preferences updated, the Expose keys are set to a new default, and I had to restart after a kernel panic the first time I got it running (that's your cue, Mac haters).

But the MacBook Pro is nonetheless a thing of beauty. While only an inch wider than my iBook, the screen itself is almost two inches wider, and it feels like more. The screen is so bright it's almost too bright. It's very thin, but nevertheless strong (I can't make the screen go all screwy by pressing on the back of the monitor case). It does get pretty warm, but so did the iBook. The speakers are much louder (not coincidentally, they're also bigger), while the machine itself is almost silent. As if I even needed to say, it's really, really fast; I've seen the beach ball only twice, and even then, for less than a second. The magnetic power connecter is pretty sweet. So is the remote control and the Front Row program it calls up. If there was one word to describe the MacBook Pro, I could search high and low, but "sweet" is probably what I'd settle upon.

So, in another shocker, it's earned my cultlike unconditional love. Even if you want to do something stupid like wipe down the screen with an alcohol swab or put XP on it, you won't be disappointed (unless it all goes wrong, big time).

And now I'm just cooling my heels until 10.5/Leopard comes out later this year or early next (either way, surely before Vista becomes available).

° ° ° ° °
So thus ends my latest saga with Apple Corp of 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA.

Well, one last thing: Why is it that every time I buy an Apple product, they come out with a better version of what I just bought within a week or two? This time it was the 17" MBP (which I frankly wouldn't have bought anyway). Last time it was the video iPod, released just days after my Nano arrived (same, I wanted to go small). And back in early 2003, it was the then-amazing 3rd generation iPod mere weeks after I'd put down the same amount of money on the non-beveled 2nd generation brick (grumble grumble, argle-bargle).

The solution, I guess, is to plan my next purchase, then wait a week. But if my Mac-buying is as star-crossed as it seems to've been, Apple will still release something cool the week after that. You bastards!

P.S. — Know that song in the new Nano commercials that goes like, "You spent all your time... in a little cubicle... in a cubicle!"? Well, if you're so inclined, you can hear it again at the band's official site.

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posted by WWB at 7:27 PM |

 
TRACKS OF TIME

At the risk of becoming an unpaid shill* for yet another company that doesn't need my help and could just as easily irritate me the next time, check out the tracking info on FedEx's shipment of my MacBook Pro:


It doesn't say there, but Apple's initial target date for delivery was May 1 — a week from Monday. Instead, I might actually get it on Monday. Glad I didn't tack on the extra $15 to expedite shipping.

As for this computer, while it's functional and all, it's definitely time to switch up. I've been putting up with more and more of the beach ball, and apparently that infuriating cursor is rarely seen on the new Intel machines. But more than that, I ran out of hard drive space months ago, have gone on a deletion spree more than once, and have even turned my old 2nd gen. iPod into a permanent hard drive. Just today I downloaded a program with the unmemorable title of Disk Inventory X (indeed, I've forgotten what it's called several times since beginning this post). But here's what it does:


That there is the contents of my hard drive, all 54.6GB of 55.8GB worth. The big blue area? Those are MP3 audio files. The goldenrod boxes distributed throughout? They're audio files too, as are the turquoise rectangles on the right-hand side. The fuschia† sections are JPEGs and the red areas are applications. Run your mouse over one of the sections, and it'll tell you what on the hard drive you're looking at (so long as the blasted beach ball doesn't make an appearance). That tiny National Geographic cover outline is Ween's Quebec.

I suppose the massive amounts of storage given over to audio files is a banal obvservation in this second half of the still-unnamed 00s, but I still haven't gotten over the fact that I could start the first song in my iTunes playlist, fly back out of the country for a three weeks, return on the 21st day, and be there when the last song finally plays. I should totally do that.


_____
* I'm like the writers of The Sopranos — product placements on the Washington Canard are earned instead of bought.

† If you've never tried, Google's Image Search makes a handy back-of-the-envelope color checker.

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posted by WWB at 11:35 PM |

 
IT'S ALIVE!!!

So, the iBook is working again, albeit with some minor screen damage in the form of colorful vertical lines. The dizzifying screen-shaking has receded, at least for now. I tried to capture a screenshot for you, but of course OS X doesn't actually take a picture of what the desktop looks like outside the machine's innards. And I'd meant to take a video with my SD 450, but I didn't know this computer would even be available to import and upload that video. And now it's stopped doing that, so there's nothing really to show any longer.

In somewhat related news, the MacBook Pro might be here as soon as Tuesday.


And in the meantime, here's a rambling blog post culled from three days' worth of notes, otherwise to be understood as blogging sans laptop:

• Just bought the new Built to Spill album, You In Reverse, over iTunes. And doing so, I realize that I haven't downloaded much from LimeWire in awhile. BitTorrent is useful for TV, but most of my music comes over IM from friends, and now when I want to get an album new, iTunes beats whatever music store is closest to my current place of work. And for all the CDs I have bought since moving to Washington, the cases for them all are stored in a legal file box. Can't bear to throw them out, but I sure don't need them.


• You know that FedEx commercial from the Super Bowl? That's the other contemporary caveman commercials. Well, you just know there are schoolteachers and other assorted sticklers out there who tsk-tsk every time, because humans and dinosaurs never lived together at the same time. Me, I want someone to commission a poll to find out just how many adult Americans actually believe that they did. What do we think, how many people — leaving creationists out of it — actually think this?


• The local CBS affiliate uses a Chemical Bros. song, from Exit Planet Dust, I believe. Does that speak well of WUSA 9 or poorly of the Chemical Bros.? Probably a bit of both.


• Did you know that famed mobster Dutch Schultz "was reportedly killed by his peers out of fear that he would carry out a plan to kill New York City prosecutor Thomas Dewey," the eventual two-time GOP nominee for president? That's almost as whoa-really-ing as learning for the first time that Teddy Roosevelt was New York City's chief of police even though he'd never been an officer.


• More from tooling around Sopranos-related Wikipedia pages. Hesh Rabkin's sole listed quote on his Wikipedia page is: "You're talking to the wrong white man, my friend. My people were the white man's nigger when yours were still painting their faces and chasing zebras." Damn. It would probably not serve me well to note that Hesh is one of the show's most likable characters, given the current juxtaposition.


• Somewhat uncomfortably, let's go back to cavemen. How about them Geico cavemen? It works for me, better than 70% of Geico's ads. Including every atrocious gecko ad, and specifically excluding the "Tiny House" reality TV parody.


• Speaking of parody: Jon Stewart is going to miss Scott McClellan more than he knows. Time was I would find out Scott McClellan was a goner even before it was out on the AP wire. Instead I saw it on Drudge late in the day, whichever day that was. Stephen Colbert, or should I say "Stephen Colbert," argued that the White House press secretary position should have been retired years ago. After all, the job requires that the secretary leak information on a daily basis. What president wants this? Time was, once the White House spokesperson lost credibility with the press corps, that was it for them. Bush and Rove putting out McClellan every day for the past few months, it's like a once-a-day Zing! to the White House press corps. If you can appreciate the joke, you are not a journalist.


• It's a golden age of comedy, no? Between South Park, Colbert Report, Daily Show, The Office (both of them), even the now-critically-acclaimed Frat Pack line of films, and the Internet to keep all of these entertainments in play and in discussion, you know, there's plenty of good satire out there. I dare say, more than there used to be. Perhaps it bears mentioning that we also seem to be experiencing a glut of horror films, now inspired more by the Dawn of the Dead remake and Saw than Scream or another Wes Craven creation. And assuming this is all correct, does it have something to do with malaise about the war in Iraq or the current state of geopolitics otherwise?


• If and/or when my not-impossible fall from grace begins, I'm looking to Jacob Weisberg for guidance on which city will submit to be conquered next (I guess that would make me William the Conqueror). Weisberg isn't Kinsley's equal, but he can be a sharp columnist. But not sharp enough to make a "Lawyers, Guns & Money" reference toward the end.


• Britain's Q Magazine once named Radiohead’s OK Computer the Best Album Ever, or something to that effect, and now they’ve placed Beck's Midnite Vultures on a 50 Worst Albums list. Huh? The former pick was implausible at worst and premature at best, but the latter selection is just short of mind-boggling. And it looks like I'm far from the only one who's confused.


• It's a good thing the Blazers traded Rasheed Wallace when they did. Not just because his towel-throwing was uncalled for (other players have survived worse). Not just because his casual racism was starting to grate (this is the NBA, after all). And not just because he assumed his place in the long line of onetime Blazers to succeed elsewhere (Walton, Drexler, Robinson, O’Neal, etc.). No, it's really for the better because Sheed deserved a fanblog as un-self-consciously adulatory as Need4Sheed.com. For example:



• On a related note, I just registered on and posted a comment to Lance Uppercut's SB Nation-franchise Scoop blog (it's Kos-controlled, just FYI) named Blazers Edge. And he's right, the Jason Quick exit interview with Darius Miles is impressively candid.


• I'll never renounce the Blazers, but the truth is I don't follow them as much as I do the still-major Oregon Ducks football program or the almost-awesome Washington Redskins, or even the mostly-awful Washington Nationals. Plus I'm one of those reactionaries who thinks NBA went off the rails somewhere between Jordan's second-and-best retirement and Mr. Artest's Wild Ride. Or maybe between Jordan's first and last retirement.


• If you've read this far, you might actually appreciate a column given over to Wikipedia humor, at Wired. Too bad Wikipedia didn't come earlier, or too bad Suck.com isn't still around (during the period it started from the after-hours computers at Wired) so Terry Colon could illustrate.

Anyway, I'm just happy to have my old laptop back for a short period. I'd originally planned to capture a short video of the iBook screen going nutzoid on me, but it does seem that nearly two weeks past the inadvertant saturation of the video screen with storebought sanitary swabs, this machine is 98% functional.

Update — As of Saturday p.m., consider the current version of this post the Complete & Uncut edition.

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posted by WWB at 1:18 AM |

 
THANK YOU FOR PRAYING

Of course, just as I redoubled my efforts to update this site more than once-weekly, my computer goes kaput. Oh, the computing part of my 2-year-old iBook is just fine. It's the display that's the issue, and by "issue," I mean totally gone haywire.

Just like with my last computer, I'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue: on Saturday evening, I wiped down my laptop screen with a wet nap, headed downtown to finally catch a showing of Thank You For Smoking (which more than met my already inflated expectations), and upon return found my screen gone a bright gray with the stray colored perpendicular lines. I'd seen this before, and I pretty much instantly knew that the machine was toast.

Well, this one lasted me twice as long as my last one, and I had strongly considered upgrading to a MacBook Pro. And in the end, the wet nap decided for me. Now, don't get me wrong — I've got my iBook with me at work, and I am going to take it into the Apple store. Mostly just to argue that cleaning my computer in a reasonable fashion should not result in a $1000 repair charge (because my father persuaded me that warranty extensions are always a bad idea, I do not have Apple Care). Argue futilely, of course. And then order a MacBook.

So, blogging may well be light over the next week as I wait for a) approval of my bank loan, b) the computer itself to be shipped from Taiwan.

In the meantime, as I continue on this multi-post religion-tweaking jag, consider this map, which I found on one of the Internets:


See that? I come from one of the least religious states in the union! And the state where I work now sure is a lot less religious than you'd think.

I may spend eternity in a lake of fire for my well-meaning, open-minded agnosticism, but at least I'll have plenty of my fellow Oregonians and Virginians (!) there with me.

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posted by WWB at 3:41 PM |

 
MMMM... SACRILICIOUS


I may not be Jewish* but I did eat a matzo/matzoh/matza/[Hebrew text not rendering properly] for Passover today! It was, uh, crispy! And... consistent in taste! Truth be told, it could have really used some brie. As the hairshirt is to the Catholics, the matzo is to the Jews. Only the hairshirt isn't supposed to be edible.

_____
* I was actually raised Methodist, and yet the chances of me being at one of the many nearby churches this Sunday is basically nil, only further underscoring the twelfth sentence of two posts down.

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posted by WWB at 4:13 PM |

 
THE LONG WALK

Next time you're in the Beltway, why not take the Arlington-Georgetown-Foggy Bottom-Dupont-U Street-Columbia Heights walking tour?



That's what I did last night, leaving work (more on the new gig at another time) a little after 5:00 p.m. a few blocks southwest of that big number...

1) ...in the bottom corner. North I went, first across the Key Bridge, through winds and above a fleet of rowing crews, to M Street in Georgetown. Right near that

2) ...is where I met up with NFLL, who was getting off work about that time. NFLL, sometimes known as NeoConry, is moving out of the Brookland ghetto in Northeast and next month is relocating to another ghetto just a few blocks from me. We kept heading east, into Foggy Bottom and then up through the so-called Golden Triangle (more of a development ploy than a true neighborhood) and up to the Big Hunt, just south of Dupont Circle and right next to the...

3) ...toward the middle. We'd aimed to run into Conry's roommate Brandon along M, but just as we were getting to Big Hunt, he got a call from Brandon -- whom we'd somehow missed and had just arrived at 31st & M, somewhere near that 2). But we were at the bar. So we drank West Coast beers, Brandon and Rep. Jack Kingston's future biographer joined, and everyone ordered burgers. I also saw ninety seconds of "American Idol" with the sound off — heretofore my longest exposure to this wildly non-obscure broadcast. By about 9:00 p.m. Kingston's Boswell and I pushed off, heading northwest along New Hampshire, where at the...

4) ...we ran into a recent former boss of mine. He was on the way back from checking out the house he'd bought about three blocks from me (one reason I refuse to move to a nicer apartment is that while this area may be undergoing a hip transplant now, it's thisclose to be the only place to be), and as we approached each other on the nighttime sidewalk, it was clear we were both doing the standard Hey, isn't that... glance without trying to disturb the other person, just in case it isn't the person you think it is. Lucky for us, it was. By the time we parted ways, it was now about 9:45, and...

5) ...we picked up the reporter's car outside his place and drove up to...

6) ...my place just in time for the instantly legendary second installment of South Park's continuing war against its own television network.

About which, see below.

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posted by WWB at 9:27 PM |

 
NEXT WEEK'S TARGET: BILL DONOHUE?

As Memeorandum indicates, by late afternoon the so-called South Park "Cartoon Wars" overtook Iran's nuclear ambitions and Scooter Libby's pre-trial motions in terms of blogospheric attention. I don't have much to add, except that after last week's nearly perfect part one, I thought the to be continued was itself a joke. I was wrong, and the first half of the episode didn't work for me. The presidential press conference didn't work for multiple reasons. Repeated too many jokes from last week. And South Park has already paid homage to The Simpsons, so I'm not sure what the Bart character was doing there (except perhaps to separate that show from Family Guy, a show I never liked when it was first on, kinda grew to appreciate during its post-cancellation DVD golden age, but soon grew tired of when it returned).

That said, the second half — the imagined retaliatory al Qaeda cartoon making fun of the U.S. and Trey Parker and Matt Stone's exposing of Cartoon Network's/Paramount's/Viacom's free speech hipocrisy — more than made up for it.

Good show. While The Simpsons will always rank as the greatest show of all time (and have you noticed the current season is the strongest in a few years?) it's South Park that will prove the more serious work. They won a Peabody for the last season. Give them a Nobel next time.

Update — Underscoring how rarely I go to church anymore, or perhaps just my forgetfulness about that one aisle at the supermarket, it takes the AP's David Bauder to remind me:

The comedy -- in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians -- instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag.

This aspect of South Park's statement about the Inkifada reminds me of an old Bill Hicks joke where he suggested that, in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's foiled plot to assassinate Bush 41, we should kill him to just to show Saddam how it's done (I forget the context, but hey, it's Bill Hicks, come on). That's sorta what Parker and Stone did last night — minus the treason and, you know, actually in the service of a legitimate argument.

But even better, also via Bauder, is this:

A frequent "South Park" critic, William Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League, called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle for being censored.

If nothing else, Parker and Stone saved their honor by embarrassing the network. One could argue these two episodes were, in fact, all about doing so.

But anyway, let me get this right: Donohue likely would prefer that South Park not be on television, and so he appeals to Parker and Stone on principle in encouragement to leave the show, so eventually it wouldn't be on television. Not to mention, that's exactly what nearly happened to Family Guy in the "Cartoon Wars" episodes. That's actually pretty clever, even if prima facie disingenuous.

Or maybe I'm being too harsh? I wrote the foregoing before reading the next paragraph:

"The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central -- that's their decision not to show the image of Muhammad or not -- it's Parker and Stone," [Donohue] said. "Like little whores, they'll sit there and grab the bucks. They'll sit there and they'll whine and they'll take their shot at Jesus. That's their stock in trade."

No... if anything I gave him too much credit.

Bauder declines to clarify the Scientology analogy, but his description of last week's episode is worth concluding on:

Chef was seemingly killed and mourned as a jolly guy whose brains were scrambled by the "Super Adventure Club," which turns its members into pedophiles.

Update 2 — Tied to its daily deadline, the Blogometer couldn't catch up until this afternoon. No matter, they've got it covered now.

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posted by WWB at 7:41 PM |

 
C. PETEGOMERY ANGELOS

I'm sitting here on a Friday evening, watching the Washington Nationals try to stage a comeback in Houston. But just a few minutes ago, the audio went haywire — I could sort of hear the announcers beneath the din, but the racket is damned annoying. The picture was fine; the sound just went to "snow." Then it went dark. The other cable channels? Loud and clear. Now the Nats game is coming through fine again, but for how long?

If I was the conspiratorial type, I'd create a single-post blog to host my manifesto — more like a communique, actually &mdashl; positing that Orioles owner/cartoonish supervillain/current regional TV rights miser Peter Angelos is not content just to put more Baltimore games on the air in the District than Nationals games. One can watch more games if you subscribe to Angelos' MASN sports network, but it's only available on the RCN cable provider (a good second to Comcast in this market). I'd marshal whatever circumstantial evidence and spiteful insinuation I could muster to persuade readers that Angelos has his minions spread out around the country, sabotaging the broadcast facilities at games featuring the Washington Nationals.

It starts to make sense, if you want it to be true. If you believe Karl Rove was behind the unknown figures who gave that Bill Burkett guy those fake Texas Air National Guard documents, then you really have no grounds to argue with this.

Hat tip to BallWonk for the ehehehexcellent analogy.

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posted by WWB at 9:50 PM |

 
I'M ONLY SLEEPING (LATER THAN I USED TO)

Things have been even quieter around here as of late than I expected. I've got a lot on my plate at the moment, and a glutton though I may be, I've restricted my blog output-intake... well, that metaphor fell apart.

A brief update, though: The new job is great so far, and I'm not just saying that because I'm no longer having to wake up at 5 in the morning. If someone had told me two years ago that I'd be getting paid to think about blogs all day, I wouldn't have believed it. I still find the fact a little hard to swallow (there's that metaphor again). But I would like to add, I am sitting here with a cup of coffee and the morning news, leisurely working my way toward a shower and then a train to work. I should have done this sooner.

My next big blog-related project is nearing its launch; a number of factors have conspired to delay the roll out, mostly consisting of my own mistakes and second-guesses. An announcement remains forthcoming — but I promise you'll hear from me before you hear from Chuck Klosterman.

As you'll see, the sidebar has been updated to reflect the fact that I no longer edit the Blogometer, nor do I contribute to Hotline On Call, and this time I should maybe clarify that this blog has nothing to do with my employer. I'll miss the Hotline dearly (if not the associated hours) but I think the old adage, leave 'em wanting more, has application beyond stage and screen. I'm a risk-taker as well, and if I can't tell whether sticking with the old or going with the new is the better course, I'm liable to take the new. All else being equal, novelty can tip the scales — and besides, you can't get anywhere if you don't cross your fingers and take the plunge.

I'm still on my feet now, or should I say foot, since we all know that when you're running, only one foot at a time touches the ground. And I really gotta run. More from me before long.

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posted by WWB at 7:16 AM |