No content today, just links collected over the last month that I've been too lazy to blog.

Sara Tanaka: still cool in my book. (Lars: you should've gone to UChicago's Pritzger School of Medicine, then you could've lived the dream and tapped Margaret Yang.)

Typepad in the process of moving to new servers. Is slow. I hadn't noticed, actually.

One star reviews of great works of literature from Amazon.com. Some of them completely miss the point of the book. Some of them get it, exactly, a little too well. I link to them because this level of commentary is what you get all too much in undergraduate fiction workshops, which is dumb.

Jaegermonsters are delicious.

Something about religion being the opposite of what it promises. Or something.

Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

Because Jud Apatow is funny and slate.com is good to read...

Three Links to BoingBoing:
Evolution not believed in by people. What is wrong with America?
Shaft lyrics, in Chaucerian English. Booyah, Grandma!
"In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Repulicans."

Science/Math confirm what we already knew: Tom Cruise is tanking.

Whitehouse sues "The Onion." 'Cause they're, you know, jerks.

Do you manage your inbox like a genius?

Comprehensive Mitch Hedberg video gallery.

Arizona is dumm. Walking around the UofA, you can really tell...

In retrospect, OF COURSE Sulu is gay! How did we not see this coming?

Scrubs Video Blog. Bill Lawrence says they'll be back in early November. That's, like, now...

Even Spielberg bailing on Cruise.

Credit to Lars: he passed me this link to a music video animated completely on an Apple II a month ago before I saw it everywhere else on the internet. Well done, bro! Now see if you can't transfer to the Pritzker School of Medicine and hook me up with Sara Tanaka.

Now back to beating my head against grad aps.

I am getting DSL on Friday. Thank crap. I will be posting more when it doesn't take a week and a half to load any give webpage. For now, though, dig on these thoughts:

The Space Elevator is the greatest idea in the history of humanity. Read Red Mars if you don't believe me.

Steven Wright and Jerry Lewis worked together on an episode of "Mad About You" titled "The Billionaire." The are possibly the greatest comedy team of all time. Wright makes a perfect straight man. And a perfectly straight-straight man at that. And Jerry Lewis is, well, Jerry Lewis. Comedy gold.

While in Tucson, I saw "Serenity" and "The Aristocrats." Both excellent and both for very different reasons.
Serenity: Joss Whedon ("Buffy...," "Angel") has a knack for creating memorable, lovable, unique characters and giving them their own quirky, alternate-English dialouge. And he hit on all cylinders with this one.
The Aristocrats: Mindblowingly dirty. Which, if you know me, is exactly what I aspire to. If it's still playing where you are (I doubt it is) go see it. Drew Carey is priceless in it.

I bought "This Is Spinal Tap" because I saw it on sale for ten dollars, and for ten dollars, how could you not invest in the Tap? ("But this one goes to eleven...")
My most recent favorite "This Is Spinal Tap" bit has got to be the name and album cover for "Intravenus De Milo."

Also watched "Human Nature" by Charlie Kaufman while in Tucson. These just in:
1) Charlie Kaufman is a wierd and awesome guy and is possibly the best writer of fiction/science fiction of the twenty first century.
2) Patricia Arquette is hot. Really hot. She stars in "Medium." (Said in manner of Christina: Waaaaatch iit...)
3) Jonathan Rhys Ifans  ("Notting Hill") is one gangly, funny looking, Welsh motherfucker.
4) Tim Robbins will always be his chacter in "The Hudsucker Proxy" to me. That and Andy Dufresne. But mostly he's all about "You know, for kids!" (a phrase which awesomely always gets shouts-out on Gizmodo).
5) Yes, I used the more-formal, less colloquial "shouts-out" instead of the widely accepted "shout-outs." Reasoning: It's like attourneys-general and it feels wierd to say.

Why aren't more of you watching "How I Met Your Mother"? This week's featured a "Top Gun" related joke.

This week's "Gilmore Girls" was the funniest/most dramatic of any yet and has revived my faith in the show.

Seriously, though, watch "How I Met Your Mother" Mondays at 7,30 on CBS.

Larsitron: When are you going to weigh in on the supreme court nominee? I know I could point that same question at myself.

italisizy: I don't know. It's not something I, like most Democrats, seem to want to talk about. For two reasons, I think.
1) We just don't know anything about her other than that she's not as qualified as anyone would like, and that point is being harped on by the Right well enough.
And, 2), I think it's more useful to wait and see what the issues we're going to need to fight on are going to be, rather than try to go out and find them; consensus has already hardened--largely without our help, I might add, it seems the right-wing media-machine has finally gotten good enough to defeat itself--that she's by and large an unacceptable nominee and until we know better which people like and don't like her and for what, specific reasons, there's not a lot to say. Right now it's like arguing in a vacuum, there's no one to argue against that's not, from all evidence, startlingly wrong.
There're side issues that are important, like that people aren't going after her out of sexism but rather out of sheer crappiness, but those seem to be going along well enough on their own.
So, I suppose I'm saying it just isn't a terribly interesting thing to talk about right now, though I suspect that in the next few days it will be. The most interesting thing is that I think this vacuum is being artificially maintained by the White House.
Take, for example, the one-page questionnaire she filled out twenty-odd years ago--that only says that she, personally, would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion, should Congress pass it. Those are some important caveats because they provide no actual information as to her stance on the law and abortion, only that she is generally against the practice of it.
The court's got no right nor ability to strike down amendments to the constitution, only to interpret them, and if this amendment it written like I would imagine it would be written, then it would be very hard to interpret differently than intended anyway. So it's a moot question with respect to her and a berth on the court, so to speak.
And to get back to my original point about all of this, the information that's been released about her hasn't made the Right happy, but more importantly it hasn't made the Right or the Left any more unhappy, but rather steered it back to a place where she is just generally disliked by all rather than detested by some on either side.
In the absence of a good, concrete reason to vote against her--something entirely unlike a general aire of cronyism that's been the second biggest problem for this nomination--this Senate, which has taken its duty to 'advise and consent' somewhat lightly (not to be glib, but really, they have acted as many Senates have, pretty much as a rubber stamp for non-glaringly-retarded presidential appointments), will confirm her; again, not because of competence but because of a lack of a clear display of incompetence.

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All that said, a lot of what happens next depends on what Patrick Fitzgerald does in the next two weeks.

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Addendum:
And about why she was selected, just because I haven't seen it said here, she wasn't selected by the President because was a friend and despite that she had very little in the way of a paper trail, she was picked because she had nothing in the way of a papertrail.
That's come around to bite them, somewhat, as the far-Right wasn't comforted enough to stand by her at first, but their base will still be their base at the end of the day. If they buy off the right people in the right places on the Right, then they're'll soon be no serious opposition from them and the Left will still have no paper trail of contenteous rulings or memos to scream about.
From a purely politcal/gaming point of view, it's a brilliant nomination, as much as it pains me to give them credit. But, hey, credit where credit is due (Clerks).
It also, fundamentally, still makes them look bad, because viewed in that light, they are still playing governance like it's a game. It goes back to what Al Franken said in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, the Right doesn't seem to believe that government is capable of / supposed to actually help people. They're about power and they're about winning, it would seem. And to take into 1115.org territory, the longer they play it like a pickup game and we play it as fair and honest as we can because that's how we think people should play the game, the longer we'll keep getting our asses handed to us. And we can take some comfort in the fact that we're not the ones fucking up the country, sure, but it still hurts that it's being fucked up because we won't do anything about it. We've got to figure out how to play both smart and fair, ('cause, I would hope, we wouldn't be us if we didn't want to win fair) and then maybe we can get something done. 

Went to see "Proof" starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhall and Hope Davis. It's an opened up play, which I'm always hesitent about as oftentimes they turn out to be a bit too much of just two talking heads, which you could certainly see in the first ten minutes of 'Proof.' However: it was awesome. Terrifficly written, wonderfully acted--Anthony Hopkins called Gwyneth Paltrow the greatest talent he'd ever worked with, and then corrected to say both she and Jodi Foster were tops, which, I'll say it, is pretty good company to be in. And Paltrow's beautiful, but not in that fine-boned, flawless-porcelein-skin way that most actresses these days are. She's tall and commanding and her features are suprisingly strong and I think she played the bulk of the movie in no makeup whatsoever. And she rocked the house.

She plays a young mathematician who has been taking care of her math genius/professor/nutcase father for the previous five years, Hopkins, who sometimes talked so crazy-person fast I couldn't understand a word he said, which was awesome. Gyllenhall is one of her father's students and Hope Davis plays the successful-but-in-a-traditional-way sister. I treasure movies like this that don't get overburdened with excess characters. There are four major characters, a minor character, a character that's got about four lines and then some of extras. Brilliant.

So, yes, 'Proof' is a wonderful, catastrophic, sometimes sweet, claustrophobic and startlingly moving portrait of what it means to be both young, not young, crazy, sane, creative and a memeber of a family/community. Apologies if I've not given you a better idea as to the content of the film. It works like a play, telling you things when it wants you to know them and I refuse to undermine that, and you don't need to know anything going in other than that it's awesome and from the first moment I was immersed. Guys, I had a coke right before the move started and I didn't even get up once to go to the john, so that'll tell you something.

A must see, damnit.

New TV:

Hot Properties (ABC, Friday, 7,30)
Nicole Sullivan + hot, funny girl who looks a lot like Rachel McAdams + two other non-funny hot women + the bald guy who played Doug the campaign speechwriter on the fourth season of "The West Wing" = hilarity?
No, no it doesn't. Predictable. Tired. Boring. D. But, man, Christina Moore is a fox.

Freddie (CBS, Wednesday, 7,30)
This show airs right before "Lost"--the best show on TV--and it's not very funny. I watched for Madchen Amick, of "I was awesome on ER. Then I was OK on Joey. And now I'm crappy on 'Freddie.' Man, my career sucks. But I sure do have a cool name!" fame. She was not funny. Freddie was not funny. Brian Austin Greene (David from 90210) was funny, which I totally did not see coming. As was his subplot. But that was about it. We'll see how this goes, at least for another two weeks. But so far, it's precisely what I expected from a post-"Drew Carey Show" Bruce Helford and Freddie Prinze Jr.: Not funny. D.

Related (The WB, Wednesday, 8,00)
This show is up against "Lost," so, unless you don't like Lost because you're dumb or you're waiting for it to come out on DVD so you can see it in it's intended 1.85:1 aspect ration, don't watch this show. Watch "Lost" instead.
Also in this time slot is "Criminal Minds." Which is very good, too, but about psycho/socio-pathy, so not exactly pulling from this show's target audience. Also in this timeslot, Marth Stewart's Apprentice (which I refuse to watch).
So, lets break this down, if each of us could only watch one show at this time, this is how it would break down:
"Lost" would be watched by me.
"Criminal Minds" was MADE for Matt.
MStewart's Apprentice seems like Lars or Michelle-ish fare.
"Related" would be watched by Kathleen.
It's perfect for her. From a former executive producer of "Sex in the City" and with a little touch up work done by Marta Kaufmann, co-creator of "Friends," it's girly. And fun. And because I'm girly, I probably liked it much more than I should have. But I'll tell you this, the second episode was much better than the first. Lets hope it keeps improving. A, if you're Kathleen. B- if you're me. D if you're Matt.
PS: The entire pilot was shot with Laura San Giocomo in the role of Ann. Kaufmann didn't like the way she carried it, so she got shitcanned and replaced by a relative unknown. Ouch, Marta, that's harsh.

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Updates on already reviewed shows:
"My Name is Earl"
Is funnier than I gave it credit for being. Last weeks episode ("Faked his Own Death") was genuinely funny throughout. And it doesn't hurt that "The Office" airs right after, and it really is spinedestroyingly funny. And Jason Lee's getting more comfortable as Earl and not drawing such crappy plots as the first two episodes. "My Name is Earl," Matt was right about you, you're funny. Upgraded to B.

"Everybody Hates Chris"
Also funnier than I gave it credit for being. It's settled into a nice little groove, but I can't get over the feeling that it's 20 minutes worth of funny in a 30 minute show. Rock carries it, though, and the kid that plays him is hilarious, as are the mother and father. Upgraded to C.

"Invasion"/"Threshold"
Alright, it's time for me to fess up. I blew the call on this one. Threshold was wonderfully frontloaded with revelations and hard sci-fi. Invasion, however, is unfolding beautifully, terribly, wonderfully slowly, letting you make your own assumptions and then either ratifying them or forcing you to change them at its own deliberate pace.
"Threshold" is that girl that flashed you while you were driving down the interstate, and that's hot and all, but "Invasion" is the girl who whispers in your ear all sexy and eventually you put your hand on her hip and it just about drives you wild with lust even though you really haven't gotten anywhere with her. And if you do ever get anywhere, it'll be on her timetable.
And I'm a sucker for a tease.
Threshold: Dowgraded to C.
Invasion: Upgraded to A.

"How I Met Your Mother"
The episode "The Sweet Taste of Liberty" was, so far, the defining episode for this show. So much so that I transfered it off the ReplayTV to my computer and re-encoded it small enough to fit on a CD. So if you're curious what I'm talking about when I blow my load all over HIMYM, I'll burn it on a CD and send it to you. Seriously.
That said: HIMYM's not as funny as "The Office" is now. But it's far funnier than "The Office" was last season, so if we all get behind it, I'm confident it'll blossom into the best comedy on TV.

"Just Legal," "Head Cases," "Inconcievable"
I totally called it: these shows sucked and have already been canceled. Suck on that, TV executives. Maybe you'll let me preview your fall season next year before you pick up DON FUCKING JOHNSON as a LAWYER.

"Alias"
It's so sad to watch a terriffic show go down the crapper.

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So what does this all mean to you? I'm going to provide here a list of shows you should be watching and what channel and what time they're on. Shows in red are shows YOU CANNOT MISS.

Arrested Development
Monday, 7,00, Fox

How I Met Your Mother
Monday, 7,30, CBS
# Alternate: If HIMYM isn't your cuppa, try out Kitchen Confidential, Monday, 7,30, Fox.

Out of Practice
Monday, 8,30, CBS

Medium
Monday, 9,00, NBC

Bones
Tuesday, 7,00, Fox
(That is, if you're not already hung up on "Gilmore Girls.")

My Name is Earl
Tuesday, 8,00, NBC

The Office
Tuesday, 8,30, NBC
Winner: Funniest show on TV
# Alternate Picks: Commander in Chief (ABC) or Supernatural (WB) are good 8,00PM Tuesday picks.

Lost
Wednesday, 8,00, ABC
Winner: BEST show on TV
# Alternate Pick: There's no substituting for Lost, but if you've gotta watch something else, "Criminal Minds" is awesome, if you like creepy people murdering other people and other creepy but well groomed people tracking them down. "Related" is good if you like cute girls having cute girl-trouble.

Invasion
Wednesday, 9,00, ABC

Reunion
Thursday, 8,00, Fox
# I know, CSI should be the pick for this spot, but Reunion's the sleeper show of the fall. Check it out, if you can afford to put off your CSI fix until it comes on just a little later on Spike TV.

Threshold
Friday, 8,00, CBS
If you've come this far, might as well continue. If not, don't bother.

The West Wing
Sunday, 7,00, NBC
# C'mon, it's the West Wing. A shadow of its former self, sure, but watch it anyway.
Alternate pick: The War at Home, Sunday, 8,30, Fox. Funny enough.

American Dad
Sunday, Fox, 8,30
# Funnier than "Family Guy." I know, it's wierd.

Grey's Anatomy
Sunday, 9,00, ABC
# Soap opera done right.

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Breakdown of new fall TV grades, from first to worst (with graph!)

1     How I Met Your Mother    A
2     Invasion    A
3     Reuinion    B
4     Criminal Minds    B
5     My Name is Earl    B
6     Out of Practice    B
7     Kitchen Confidential    B-
8     Commander in Chief    B-
9     Related    B-
10    Threshold    C
11    Bones    C
12    The War at Home    C
13    Everybody Hates Chris    C
14    Surface    C
15    E-Ring    C
16    Supernatural    C-
17    Twins    C-
18    Close to Home    C-
19    Freddie    D
20    Hot Properties    D
21    Just Legal    D
22    Inconcievable    D
23    Night Stalker    F
24    Ghost Whisperer    F

Grade distribution chart:

A pretty good curve, if you ask me, and I swear to you, I didn't intend for it to turn out symmetrical.

I know I have gone a long time without updating. I apologize. But between being in Tucson and destressing from getting the first wave of my application shit together...

Not the point.

I will return in triumphant for later today with a roundup of tha last of new TV, a reevaluation of some shows that have gone before and about a dozen links that I've been saving up since well before I left for Tucson. So, we'll see how fresh they are after all this time.

Hockey highlights were just on TV... it's like some sort of wonderful dream... There was shootout, and Danny Heatly beat the Boolin Wall... and then they rode off together on a unicorn...

"Lost" is the best show on TV. No other show is half as good as "Lost."

"I Review Everything" this week: "Lord of War," "Commander in Chief"'s second episode, "Close to Home," "The Office," "Threshold" vs. "Invasion," the trailer for "Legend of Zorro," German Rap, and Bob Dylan. Welcome!

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"Lord of War" was long, and rambling, and by the structure alone you could tell long before the card flashed at the end that it was "based on real events." Duh. No movie not based on either a) a book, or b) "real events" features that much narration, and no movie that isn't based on real events or a crappy story moves that slowly. Therefore, by process of elimination...

So, basically, the first half hour was interesting, but ultimately pointless. And the next-to-last major event of the film: c'mon, who didn't see that coming. That's the problem here: as we become more sophisticated consumers of media, stories that have gotten made because they're well structured in an Aristotelian sense are ultimately not all that interesting. Add to the previous that people don't seem to think they need to ruthlessly control the shape of their material when it's based on real life and you get kind of a boring ride. But the setup alone was worth the 6$ matinee price and it was beautifully shot and throught provoking, in its own way.

The only scene of emotional weight comes at the very, very end and it's brilliant. But that's what the movie is supposed to be, it's supposed to be about an unlikable, dissaffected man and you're not really supposed to like him or want him to get saved, so you get what you pay for.

By the way, the difference between Jared Leto and Jake Gyllenhall? Leto's got a crappy band and Gyllenhall is a better actor (in a close race).

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I think someone made a serious tactical error positioning "Commander in Chief" as a family drama and not a political one. It seems the producers are (somehow) managing to split the difference, or, if you'd prefer, walk the line. The promo'd story line (The daughter looses her diary! Oh-no!) was a non-starter and was pretty-much nothing B-story. The A plot had to do with selecting a VP, something that's always interesting. MacKenzie's pick was interesting, as well as the politicing people wanted her to engage in to sway her choice. And the C-story, the one starring Ever Carradine, was political and pretty good. So, I conclude with a letter:

Dear ABC,
"Commander in Chief" will fail if you position it primarily as a family drama, quite simply because it's not. So don't fuck this up, 'cause I'm gonna need something to get me through once "The West Wing" finally gets euthenized.
Thanks,
Me

Grade raised to B-.

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"Close to Home"
If you'd watched as much TV as I have, this is what you would've thought as you watched CBS new "Close to Home."
"Hey, Marni Fliss in a dramatic role? I don't know. She sure is cute as a bug, though. I wonder if she can pull of hardboiled. Hey, look, her boss is Steve Carey! I wonder if he'll be a crossdresser on this show, too. And her husband is Lindsey from "Angel!" Man was that guy evil. But he got what was coming to him. And he's playing "Supportive Husband to Strong Wife," (c.f. "The Ghost Whisperer"). Hey this show isn't crappy. Wow, there she goes trying to be hardboiled. She just can't pull it off. This show is kind of crappy."
There was a pretty good moment when the son, on the witness stand, related what his father told him before abusing his mother, but other than that? Paint by numbers. Boo, CBS, boo. C-. (A D if not for Jennifer Finnegan's cuteness and my left-over good will to her from "Committed.")

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"The Office" continues to be the second most hilarious show on broadcast TV. Take that, other shows that aren't Arrested Development.

We can only wait for the day when somehting gets cancled on NBC (hopefully "My Name is Earl") and Scrubs gets to knock "The Office" down a peg with its triumphant return. Because Steve Carrell leading the second funniest comedy on TV? That just ain't right.

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"Threshold" gets more retarded by the week. "Invasion" gets better. I'm four hours into "Threshold" and I'm still not quite sure what their endgame is. "Invasion" has let me make a lot of assumptions that could prove to be true or not. It will be fun to find out. "Threshold" is getting a bit too 'problem of the week'-y, and "Invasion" has a throughstory that looks quite compelling. Am I switching horses? No. But I am now spreading my goodwill between the two shows. Watch them. Or else... the Aliens win.

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The trailer for "The Legend of Zorro" couldn't have been more terrible. If it had been, my heart would've imploded right there in my chest.

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You wanna know what I've been listening to lately? German rap, which proves that white people rapping can be just a ridiculous and interesting in German as in English. Look for "Nirvana" and "Dein Herz schlägt schneller" by Funf Sterne Deluxe, from their album "SiLLium." The flunecy with which they switch--midphrase, sometimes--between German and English, and once, even, Spanish, is astounding. And it's well produced. Also, "Jein" by Fettes Brot as well as "Komm schon," "Weit weg," and "Bon voyage" by Deichkind. Oh! And "Supermario" by Funf Sterne Deluxe is, as you might guess, about playing Super Mario Brothers. Ah, Nordic angst.

Also, one of the Funf Sterne is named "Marcnesium," 'cause his name is Marc, and when you combine it with 'nesium' it sounds like "Magnesium." Which is totally cool, in my book.

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Pound for pound, the best Dylan song is "Visions of Johanna."

Sure, "Tombstone Blues," "Desolation Row," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Blowing in the Wind," "Memphis Blues, Again," "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," "Obviously Five Believers," "Pledging my Time," and, particularly, "One of us Must Know" are all better than any song I've heard that's been written in the past ten years, but man, "Visions of Johanna" is seven and a half minutes of all killer, no filler with the best lyrics I've EVER HEARD. No bull. Shit, that's a good song.

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