Because global warming has gotten totally out of hand.

//

Because, right now, as a nation, we're too damn safe.

//

At least we don't have to worry about this shit anymore.

They're making a movie of "Tristram Shandy." Well, not of, so much as about. About the making of a movie about Tristram Shandy. I think. It actually looks ... interesting. But that's probably because everyone in the trailer is English. If it was set in L.A. I'd probably want to stab it. Just watch the trailer. Thoughts, Noah?

Also:
Dude, they're making a Tristan & Isolde movie. And the tag line? "Before there was Romeo and Juliet, there was Tristan and Isolde." Man, too bad it's not a screen adaptation of the opera, that would be totally boss.

And that complete's our roundup of entertainment news featuring fictional men named Trist(r)an/m.

Also, the new [hopefully Afflekless] Jennifer Garner movie looks, actually, alright, depite the title ("Catch and Release") and the fact that, heretofore, co-star Kevin Smith has shown absolutely no acting talent. Unlike the extreme talent he has for being bearded.

The other day, Christen mentioned how she thought Natalie Portman and Laura Prepon were nice because they were on equivilent levels of subdued (or subtle or something like that) hotness.

At which, I, as a man, laughed. Because in no way is Laura Prepon's hotness in any way subdued. And definately not in the same way as Natalie Portman.

I mean, check it: Literally the FIRST result in google image search for Laura Prepon. Or the following screen grab from a totally random episode of "That 70's Show."

Compare with Natalie Portman's first google image search result. Totally, tremendously beautiful, sure, but definately not, as the boys of Point Place described Donna (Prepon) in the episode "Join Together," juicy.

Thoughts?

A terriffic (and succinct) piece (in Slate) on the overvaluing of the USC Trojans.

I don't know if Texas is better than USC, as he asserts at one point--I mean, I'm no SC fan, but Reggie Bush, in the one game I saw him in, was like a magician--but I do know that SC is not, as Matt might term it, Football Jesus. And it's nice to hear that said, for once, particularly in light of the apparent Barry-Melrose-on-Peter-Forsberg level of dick sucking action going on on ESPN.

Poor Mitchell.

He is still missed.

Today I learned to play both Semisonic's "Falling" and Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

//

Dude, the post office was closed today. This is dumb. I have to mail some stuff, damnit.

//

Buddhism is a religion, afterall.

//

The less-talked-about of the pre-filmed SNL musical sketches from this week. It's pretty damn hilarious, too.

//

NewsRadio, season 3.

//

Buddhism, Christmas, gifts and lists.

//

Children love fantasy, sure, but why? Because they're tiny scientists?

//

Christina Ricci Watch: She'll be on Grey's Anatomy after the Super Bowl.

//

Hey, Japanese men, how long into your marriage before your wife first farted?

//

Hey, Slate, how do you start a gang?

//

Embrace your free speech.

//

George Bush doesn't care about the US Constitution.

//

Robot plane flies itself, shoots others.

//

The govenor of Ohio wants to see your papers.

If only I was kidding.

Looks like it might be finally time to join the ACLU.

Oh, and they're already listening to you.

I know that I'm sure fucking tired of hearing about the (now over) transit strike, but Amy's Robot has one of the best breakdowns of what what going on and why it mattered. Now I feel a little bad for not giving a crap while it was going on.

Remember in "High Fidelity" when Rob starts wondering if he's depressed because of pop music, or listens to pop music because he's depressed? I don't have an answer, but I can tell you this, if you're not effected by Snow Patrol's "Run," then you really, truly don't have a human heart.

It's in the iTMS. Or your could just buy "Final Straw" from Amazon.

"Deal or No Deal" is fairly simple. There are 26 cases with different dollar amounts on them, from .01 to 1,000,000. You pick one of 26 cases to be "yours" and then you go about opening the other cases, in an effort to suss out what amount is in yours. After six tries, the bank makes you an offer to buy back your case, based on which numbers are left. All high numbers left, the bank makes a high(er) offer.

As the game goes along, you open sequentially fewer and fewer cases between offers, and the bank makes progressively more agressive offers, as long as you've got some high dollar amounts left. If your high dollar amounts get opened (i.e. they are not in the case the bank is trying to buy back), then the offer goes down. the first night's first contestant provided a fairly rich data set, as it turns out she had some brass ones.

The trick to deal or no deal is math. Simple math, at that. While they talk a good game of "there's an 80% chance the case she'll open won't have her highest dollar amount" and et cetera, the real meat of the game is in how the bank offers are made. I would like to note, this is the first time that I have ever used the mathematical "median" for anything outside of a math class. Turns out, it's useful.

Because the dollar amounts are discreet, there are two different types of averages at play, the mean and the median. (Because all the dollar amounts are different, our old friend the mode plays no role.) The mean is simply whichever discreet amount lies in the middle, when all amounts are arranged from top to bottom. Basically, it's the amount that, because the dollar amounts are discreet, rather than fluid, you might just as well get more than as less than. Until the end of the game, the mean doesn't fluctuate much, sitting somewhere between 500 and 10,000 dollars for most of the game. The average, however, shifts radically, depending on which dollar amounts are opened up. The bank, for the initial offer, sticks pretty close to home on the median, which is, mathematically, the most likely amount. Through the next few iterations, it seems, the bank gets progressively closer to the mean, because the odds of a higher number being in the case are greater, sure, but also because the mean is a pretty good indicator of what people play for.

So, the bank offers, even up to the sixth iteration or so (in this case) are kept to about 80-90% of the average, so even with crude math, the contestant can tell they're still getting jobbed because they believe their case has a big amount. So this causes them to play through, opening more cases, and hopefully (for the bank) exposing more high dollar amounts. It also raises the stakes a bit and makes for better television. "The Bank" wins all around. However, as the likelyhood of a large amount being in the case increased (say, when the median jumps above 20,000 dollars or so) the Bank's offer approaches the mean value of the remaining numbers.

This is the point of the show at which you take the deal. You get a large amount of money (for the two that I've seen, it's between 134,000 and 184,000 or so), and it's fair, as these amounts are near the arithmetic mean at the beginning of the game, and are far above the median (or number closest to what might actually be in your case), even for the point at the game at which you are.

But mostly, as Slate pointed out, the show is fun to watch because you get to yell at the TV. I recommend it this week while there's nothing else on, and after that? It'll depend on where it lands on the schedule.

Download deal_or_no_deal.xls and review my assertions.

What follows is a list of all the new shows that debuted this fall, along with the grade I originally gave them, a mid-season adjustment, if needed, and whether or not the show's been canceled. And then I'll tell you what's coming in the spring--or rather, in January, the dead of winter.

//

Show
Day, Time (Central), Network
(Original) Midseason
# Comments

How I Met Your Mother
Monday, 7,30, CBS
(A) A
# It's getting better, even.

Invasion
Wednesday, 8,00, ABC
(A) B
# Should be back for January.

Reunion (CANCELED)
Thursday, 8,00, FOX, until Feb 2
(B) B-
# FOX hates me.

Criminal Minds
Wednesday, 8,00, CBS
(B) B
# The show they were reading Matt's diary when they created.

My Name is Earl
NEW TIME: Thursday, 8,00, NBC
(B) B

Out of Practice (HIATUS)
Monday, 8,00, CBS (maybe)
(B) C

Kitchen Confidential (CANCELED)
(B-) B-
# It had so much potential. If only it could've been funny. Was worth the watch, though, just for John Cho ("Harold and Kumar go to White Castle")

Commander in Chief
Tuesday, 8,00, ABC
(B-) B-
# On the verge of C

Related
Monday, 8,00, The WB
(B-) B

Threshold (CANCELED)
(C) D
# Thank crap it was canceled before it got (too) bad.

Bones
Moves to Wednesdays at 8,00 in February, FOX
(C) C

The War at Home
Sunday, 7,30, FOX
(C) C-

Everybody Hates Chris
Thursday, 7,00, UPN
(C) B-

Surface
Monday?, 7,00?, NBC
(C) ?

E-Ring
Wednesday, 7,00, NBC
(C) D

Supernatural
Tuesday, 8,00, The WB
(C-) C

Twins
Friday, 8,30, The WB
(C-) C

Close to Home
Friday, 8,00, CBS
(C-) ?

Freddie
Wednesday, 7,30, ABC
(D) C

Hot Properties (CANCELED)
Friday, 8,30 ABC
(D) D

Just Legal (CANCELED)
(D)

Inconceivable (CANCELED)
(D)
# It was worse than this grade. Oh, man, was it worse.

Night Stalker (CANCELED)
(F)

Ghost Whisperer
Friday, 7,00, CBS
(F) ?
#SOMEHOW THIS SHOW IS NOT CANCELED. SOMEHOW!

//

New shows coming in January, many of which I'll try and review for you:

"Love Monkey"
CBS, Tuesday, 8,00 or 9,00
Tom Cavanaugh ("Ed," JD's brother on "Scrubs") might just make this work. Plus, Judy Greer is cute as a bug. My pick for good new show (probably).

Four Kings
Thursday, 7,30, NBC
Good news: It's got Seth Green, as well as Josh Cooke (from the too-short "Committed"). Bad news: It's from the creators of "Will & Grace."

"The Evidence"
ABC
Orlando Jones and Martin Landau together at last!

"In Justice"
Friday, 8,00, ABC
Forensics! The twist? They're trying to get people OUT of jail. Silly ABC, forensics shows put people IN jail. THAT'S justice.

"Jake in Progress"
Monday, ABC
STAMOS IS BACK. For some reason.

"Emily's Reasons Why Not"
Monday, 7,00, ABC
Heather Graham plays a flighty woman w/ a heart of gold. Hm. Seen it. It's called "Swingers." It was pretty good. Also, every other thing she's ever done (incl. her choice guest role on "Scrubs").

Courting Alex
Monday, 8,30, ABC
Formerly "The Jenna Elfman Show" and before that "Everything I Know About Men." Yeah, that's a good sign.

Crumbs
Thursday, 8,30, ABC
Fred Savage looks good in this. Jane Curtin looks the opposite of that.

Book of Daniel
Friday, 9,00, ABC
Pill popping priest with Jesus as his buddy? And it's funny, you say? And there are lesbians? Sounds like you can't lose, but we'll see.

"The New Adventures of the Old Christine."
Some network, at some time.
Starring Julia Louis Dreyfus. It's been being rescheduled since a year and a half ago. Good luck, all who try it, if it ever premiers.

//

Other shows of note in January:

Return of Scrubs, January 3rd at 8,00.
Return of 24 for another "Non-Stop Season." Don't start watching it because you won't be able to stop and it's really not that good. It's really not.
"Deal or No Deal" premiered tonight. We'll have a review tomorrow.

If I could have children with a television ad, it would be this Dr. Pepper ad.

With the exception of Ben, the rest of you have been awfully silent regarding my last long post. Through healthy debate, I think I've boiled by argument down to it's core principle, here quoted from my last response to Ben.

And yes, we were founded by Christians, sure. But if we accept that we were founded by Christians, and most of the country is Christian, and the government is fond of Christianity, we're giving Christian's something like a better claim on being "American"--something defined, in large part, by the government--and that puts pressure on people to meddle with their personal beliefs to better match the societal picture our public institutions are setting, where there shouldn't be any pressure at all.

And it's corollary:

Why not aspire to the government taking as neutral a view as possible with respect to any religious issue? Obviously it's impossible to divorce religion completely from government, as the people in goverment are religious. However, just because something isn't possible doesn't mean it isn't something we should strive for. And the only way to get any where close to an acceptable level of religious expression in government (i.e. as close to none as possible) is to try as hard as we can to get there.

Any thoughts from the rest of you? (And of course, Ben, still, too.)

Let's break this down for a second:

(Premise) Isabel: not a cool name.
(Premise) Isobel: a totally cool name.
----------
(Conclusion) I am odd. Totally odd.

A very funny Toothpaste for Dinner.

94% of Americans believe there is a God.
5% say there's probably not.
Exactly 1% are certain there is no God.
Perhaps the phraseology here, likely concocted by someone who believes in God (as American's overwhelmingly do, apparently), is somewhat misleading, as those who don't believe there's a God are, perhaps, less likely to concretely believe anything. Perhaps they are more likely than than those who believe to question everything, even their own conclusions.

It's hard to fight a maybe, and perhaps that's what accounts for the 5 out of 6 people who don't believe in God but aren't sure.

Oh, perhaps, digging deeper, people who don't believe in God, faced with the fact that people at large in this country overwhelmingly do (which you don't need a scientific survey to know. Though it's a bit more than I had figured. I would've pegged it somewhere between 85 and 90 percent.) might be less willing to admit to certainty that 90% of people are dead wrong. I think you'd see the percentage of believers who are certain (80%, as given by the survey) drop drastically were they in the tiny minority, like atheists currently are. It's hard to argue with a whole society, especially when you were raised by it, and like it, generally.

This is why separation of church and state is important. It's about tyranny of the majority, plain and simple, and sometimes representative government isn't good enough to protect a small group. So you have to build in protections for those things of yours you'd like to not be abridged, were situations reversed.

And when the government says that being a Christian (or any other religious group) is better--by supporting it, with public displays and so forth--it's saying that other groups are lesser, less full citizens, less important, less genuine members of the society that we've been given equality in, by way of the 1st and 14th amendments. And while I don't think there ought to be a ban on religious expression by individual members of the government, there's a need to understand that celebration of any religion is equivalent to endorsement of said same religion, and denigration of any other view.

And, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, by and large, but damnit, this is important.

We don't allow the government to say that being of one race is better than being of a another. We don't allow celebrations of whiteness (even though Americans are, by and large, white) and just the same we ought to keep an eye on celebrations of Jesusfulness, even if, again, the vast majority of people are.

It's hard enough to be an atheist in the face of just about everyone and thing around you telling you you're wierd without having the governement weigh in and kick you while your down by playing Christmas (not holiday) carols in the damn post office.

And I don't think that the substance of what I've said here is wrong (Religious celebration--displays, et al--is equivalent to denigration of other views; we ought to protect views that are of about the same kind of things we value our own views on, even if their substance is different.), so why is it that so many people don't agree about this? Is it just not their problem--is it a 'you can avoid the problem with race relations if you live in rural Wisconsin' kind of situation?--or what?

---

Or maybe some of you will disagree with me that celebration of one view is equivalent to denigration of others. But seriously, folks, it is. Every statement and every action is a piece of rhetoric that advances an argument. Some of them are just more polite than others, and there's no place of politeness in trying to get to the bottom of thorny issues.

This is an old saw horse of mine, so if you've heard it before and disagree, feel free to skip the next paragraph and we'll agree to disagree. Well, I'll say I agree to disagree, but I'll still think you're wrong and you'll still think I'm wrong, so why can't we just fess up to that? People hold the views they hold either a) for a reason or b) for no particular reason.

If it's a), for a reason, then we owe it to ourselves to challenge other people's beliefs by martialling the reasons for our contrary/complimentary/opposite views into a coherent argument and not shying away from the fact that we do, in fact, think differently than you do, and yes, we think we're right and are going to continue to think we're right and you're not right until you come up with a better set of reasons than we've got right now.

And if it's b), for no particular reason at all, then, well, we've got to fall back on the old "the unexamined life ... not worth living" business. So, it's something like a moral responsibility to at least see if the other person's at least got something that looks like reasons.

So it's basically something like Mill's marketplace of ideas I'm espousing here. And, hey, when did apathy and stupidity/irrationality get so popular, anyway?

My doctor doesn't "feel like" I have an inguinal hernia. He thinks it's probably just an inguinal strain. Which is good because the remedy for the former is surgery. The remedy for the latter is "don't lift heavy things and call me in a week if it's not better."

"And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free, because they're made of metal, and robots are strong."

(Thanks, TV Squad!)

Scrubs returns Tuesday, January 3rd with two episodes back to back at 8,00 Central. I promised to tell you when I found out, and I just did. Coming in the next few days, a midseason triage of broadcast programming, as well as previews of the new shows coming in January.

//

More links than you can shake an enormous wang at!

Feel free to wade through this at your own pace.

//

This just in: Jeremy Roenik is a dick!

There was a story about anger being good for you, but the link is broken. And that makes me angry, which is apparently good.

John Kerry serves on jury. Found to be likable.

College students don't like being treated like pirates? Act out inappropriately in response?

Mail cameras. Has the potential to my much, much cooler than it turned out.

Ever wanted to make your own Leia-like Gold Bikini?

The internet-control solution floated at the end of this article is pretty metal.

Remember the foxy engineer from "Serenity"? Turns out I've been hot for her since I saw that one episode of "Flash Forward" when I was twelve.

"Racy Bible Calendar." 'Nuff said.

Paris Hilton is creepy. This photomontage proves it.

Stilty WWII British Sea Forts? Awesome.

Congressman on the "Rubber Stamp" congress. Rock on, D-Ill congressman.

Limbo? Hell No.

Graphical representations of where suicides occur on the Golden Gate Bridge.

WWI "Razzle Dazzle" cubist-modernist-futurist Camoflauge. Truly the coolest fucking thing I've seen in a long time.

"It puts the lotion on it's skin / or else it gets the hose again," a (NSFW) music video. Seriously. (via television without pity)

Guilty pleasures, incl. "Cruel Intentions," as explained in Slate.

"Star Wars: The Greatest Postmodern Art Film Ever"

The Hazards at the Kenedy Center. Their performance was cut from the broadcast version of the Steve Martin Mark Twain Awards Presentation.

Plato's Republic meets Reservoir Dogs. (boing boing)

Toothpaste for Dinner Book

Former Apple Guy talks candidly about time spent with Jobs.

Drive Time with Ravi Jain is the best video podcast ever. In a walk. Fucking check it out. Also: his wife Sonia? A total fox.

52 Reasons ESPN sucks.

Timelapse video of the Miraflores Panama Canal Locks. Totally, totally awesome. The boats! They Dance!

Numbers up to a million on the internet. Which are more popular and why? I'll give you a hint: the most popular post 2000 number? The zip code for Phillidelphia. Not Chicago, New York or LA. Philly.

Biggest box-office movie ever (in terms of gross, non-inflation adjusted dollars) is wrong.

Rush? A total, uniformed super-prick? Nah...

"How Sarah Silverman is Raping American Comedy"

A photoessay on the rotting of man made structures. It is beautiful.

A digital music futures market? Shit, that sounds ... reasonable.

Apparently I am not a bum for wanting to recline all the time.

Pong Clock. Rock.

It's really when the pink dots dissapear that's the awesomest.

What's involved in different publishing jobs. (via boing boing)

Photo Tokyo.

//

The big bulk of these links came from boing boing, sploid, and slate, with help from digg, defamer, gizmodo, .:Data-What?:. and TV Squad.

Prelude
(Which you'd be just as well to skip if you don't care why I've not read the books.)
So, as many of you may know, I've taken a moral stand against reading the Harry Potter books. Here is my reasoning, Phil202 style. It comes in three parts,

1.)
P: One must read a good amount of a given genre and pay attention to it to understand its conventions.
P: I have read a shitload of SciFi/Fantasy. A SHITLOAD.
P: I have paid attention.
---------------
C: I don't need to read more SciFi/Fantasy to understand how it works.

2.)
P: Reading SciFi/Fantasy books takes away from my time to read other books.
P: I want to write literary fiction.
P: I have not read as much literary fiction as I should and, consequently, understand its conventions less well than SciFi/Fantasy.
P: One must understand a genre's conventions in order to successfully write in it.
-------------
C: I ought to spend my time reading literary fiction

3.)
P: The only reason, then, that I would read the books, is peer pressure.
P: Succumbing to peer pressure is bad.
P: One should not do things that are bad.
----------------------------
C: I should not read the books.

I.
(Wherein I explain the genesis and project of this review)
That said, of course I was curious as to what the whole thing was about, why people like it, et al. So, I thought, I was presented with a unique opportunity--as the fourth film was just released, and as I've not read the books--to experience all four films in quick succession, for the first time, starting from a clean slate, with a good general understand of how good fantasy works and what can be accomplished with the genre. In a fit of confluence, most of TV last week was repeats, so I quickly exhausted all the my tivoed programming and NOTHING NEW aired Friday or Saturday, and the Fox Sunday cartoon block was all repeats, hence, I had a lot of free time that needed to be filled in by some sort of media. So, Friday night I watched "...and the Sorcerer's Stone" (hence after "the first one") and on Saturday I watched "...and the Chamber of Secrets" ("the second one") and on Sunday "...and the Prisoner of Azkaban," then Monday I trekked out to the theater for "...and the Goblet of Fire" (forgoing Aeon Flux). I did this because I was interested in approaching the text solely as a film, i.e. to see if it had the same pull in purely filmic form. Here are my impressions:

About forty minutes into the first film, I felt my sense of wonder expand to three times it's normal size. Apparently I am not too cynical, as some of you claim.

II.
(Wherein I reference Ender's Game)
An adept kid who may or may not end up saving the world goes off to boarding school where he learns a trade that no one else from the world at large will understand, begins to have problems with entitled rival(s) on the train/shuttle ride to said school, has trouble fitting in at said school and has to operate outside of the rules a good amount of the time to accomplish what he needs to accomplish, all under the watchful eye of the headmaster who sagely understands the needs for these sorts of things? Is it just me, or does this have "Ender's Game" written all over it?
Sure, it's not SciFi--it's SciFi's dorky cousin, Fantasy--like Ender's Game is, but c'mon, people. Which brings me to my real point about all of this: there's a lot the first movie could learn from Ender's Game. There were a lot of things in Draco's relationship to Harry that could've been deepened through the application of some of the specific boarding-school frictions Ender underwent with the other cadets, without sacrificing the gradually-becoming-less-shadowed-in-mystery-other-reasons Draco (and Lucius) hate Harry. And it's not that I've a problem with the things that were there, it's just that, man, if you're going to lift half the premise of your first two movies from "Ender's Game" at least learn the lessons you ought to learn from it.
I'm not saying JK Rowling did this, specifically, I'm sure there's a whole SciFi/Fantasy subclass involving boarding schools, but Ender's Game is by far the best exemplar I've read, and the closest to the first Potter book, too. But, it's true, as I said in my preview, unlike in "Ender..." Draco Malfoy doesn't end up on the murdered end of naked-shower beat-down.
If you were ever the smartest kid in your grade school class, though, read "Ender's Game." Seriously. It's awesome.

III.
(Wherein I address my Problems with the first two film's narrative structure.)
To address my narrative concerns first:
It seemed nobody involved with the first film understood how to give it a compelling through-story and not just make it stuff that occurred on the way to the somewhat cheap and disappointing ending. However, I did enjoy it, generally, and reference my comment above about my damn sense of wonder.
The second film: the detective quality of the second one was dumb, overcomplicated and somewhat ridiculous.
This is where familiarity with the source material would be handy, as I don't know if it's a problem with the source or with the adaptation, and even if it was, perhaps, unadaptable, given the amount of setting up it needed to do.
You know who I blame? Chris Colombus. I mean, good for him to shepherd this stuff to the screen, but, seriously, like it wasn't going to happen anyway? But C.Columbus was the mastermind behind winners like "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Nine Months," and "Bicentennial Man," watchable films all, sure, but not what'd I'd call cinematic gold. Alright, I'll say it, the man make bloated films that get by on the strength of their source material and their actors or don't get by at all. "Mrs. Doubtfire" did what it set out to do because of 1) the screenplay and 2) Robin Williams. "Nine Months" got by on Hugh Grant and Julliane Moore. Bicentennial Man was not good. So maybe Chris Colombus doesn't get cushy material to adapt next time. 'Cause even though I could blame the source material, there's quite a shift in quality when you get to the third and fourth films.

IV.
(Wherein I talk about the third and fourth films.)
The third and forth films were awesome. The third's story was more interesting, perhaps, but the forth was far narratively tighter and, hence, more thrilling. Excellently assembled, both of them, though.

V.
(Wherein I discuss Alan Rickman as Snape)
Alan Rickman was born to play Snape. BORN, I say, BORN to play Snape. And as such, in the first four films where he has, total, about ten lines (he's the Boba Fett of these four pictures) he distracts me from the rest of the film, because every time he comes on screen I'm hoping he's going to step up and become the co-focus of the film--esp. given Snape's habit of showing up so he can have one line and then nothing else for the rest of the scene. I wish for a Snape takeover (a Snapeover, if you will), not because I'm particularly enchanted with his character and only partly because I have a secret man-crush on Alan Rickman, but because he is so perfectly, perfectly, perfectly cast. I've heard rumblings to the effect that Snape becomes more important (FAR more important) and I don't want to hear any more, though I've got quite a few ideas how/why/and about how I already had that figured out (see above where I read a shitload of SF/Fantasy and understand how it works. But basically what I'm telling you is this, sometimes something in a film is so perfect it distracts from the film as a whole (c.f. the cinematography in "Road to Perdition.")

VI.
(Wherein I reveal the one true reason you must see the films, no matter how good and touching the books were to you or how much you don't care.)
The films are worth the price of admission solely on the basis of the way that beast-master Hagrid pronounces the names of both Harry Potter and Hermione. That's the long and short of it. I haven't been able to stop trying to reproduce it from the very first moment I heard him utter it. Damn. That's some good shit.

I'm off to see "...and the Goblet of Fire," which will make all 4 "Harry Potter and the..."s in four days. I'll review them when I get back, but here's a preview: Harry Potter could not exist in a world without "Ender's Game," but fortunately Draco Malfoy doesn't end up on the murdered end of a naked-shower beat down.

//

TV Squad makes a good point about last night's West Wing: "I don't care what level of "quality" this show has (the acting, the dialogue, etc), it's a whole different show now." Which is exactly the best way to phrase it. He continues on to rip John Wells, which I've been doing from the moment I heard he was taking over. (And how could I not, after he wrecked ER?)
But the point of this post is that the best thing I've read about tWW, that mirrors my own opinion best, is the following comment, which is so good, at first I thought it might've been written by Matt:

I have so much trouble focusing on this show these days, in large part due to the fact that the solution for every issue on the campaign seems to be 'Santos gives a speech.'

So, what do you people think, true or false?

If your machine has got a G4 in it, this hotness is for you: the G4 optimized release of Firefox 1.5. Now, Firefox was speedy before, but now it's magical-fast. I demand you at least check it out (those of you with G4s. Lars and Michelle, I'm looking at you.). It'll wipe the floor with inexplicable slow and spinning-beach-ball-of-death-prone Safari. For realz. Also:, there's a G5 optomized version, too, for those of your with i/Power Macs.