Thursday, September 25, 2008

Rumor Mill

Film director Rian Johnson, who was responsible for Brick and The Brothers Bloom, wouldn't mind if the rumor began circulating that he's directing a live-action movie of this comic book I do called Groo the Wanderer.

We're flattered he likes the comic and the rumor's fine with us. But we've already sold the rights to do an animated Groo movie, which is being worked on now, and that contract precludes a live-action film. Maybe someday...though I'm not sure I'd want to see the kind of actor who'd be "right" for the lead in a live-action Groo picture...

• Posted at 2:09 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Paul Krugman knows a lot more about economics than I do and probably more than you do, as well. So it's kinda nice to see that he suspects what I've been suspecting about the current financial crisis and bail-out.

• Posted at 10:30 AM · LINK

Go Read It!

Entertainment Weekly interviews Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and also gets them to pose for a great cover. And check out the list at the end of past EW articles on those two funny boys, too.

• Posted at 10:24 AM · LINK

The Milk of Human Kindness

You know, I'm all for animal rights. True, I haven't gone so far as to give up eating them but I've stopped eating the products of certain companies that treat them inordinately poorly and I've stopped buying things made out of them. I also feed (and neuter and take to the vet) stray cats and, going back a few years, I stopped a TV producer from booking a couple of animal acts that I thought were cruel to their performers. And a few years before that, I had a neighbor who was beating his dog. I called the police on him and it ended up with the dog going to another home. (The dog-beater was a prominent author and I used to hear him on talk shows lecturing people on how they should treat one another. I was always tempted to phone in and ask him about that poor Great Dane of his...)

Anyway, my point is that the lot of animals would be much better if everyone in the world was as considerate of them as I am. And I wish that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would stop making ethical treatment of animals into a joke with stupid crap like this.

• Posted at 10:12 AM · LINK

Thursday Morning

A quick jaunt around the news sites this morn tells me that no one knows what's up with the planned Presidential Debate tomorrow night. Will there be one? At the moment, it looks that way. Will McCain show up for it? No one seems to know. Might he send a surrogate? Or might it just wind up as Obama being interviewed for 90 minutes by Jim Lehrer? Good questions. Here's what might happen.

My favorite part of these debates is always the post-debate spin. That's the part where representatives of both candidates meet with reporters and maniacally insist that their guy "hit it out of the park" (they're required to use that phrase in one out of every five sentences they utter) and that every single thing he said was right and every single thing the other guy said was wrong, foolish, disingenuous and an act of desperation. They're required to argue that and also that "the American people see through" all the nonsense that the opposition candidate spewed.

I especially like the little token "just to be fair" remark that most of the spinners will make, never about anything that matters. It's usually something like, "I'll give him credit, though...he got his own wife's name right and he did have on a very nice tie." But then of course, even that is followed by, "But the American people can see right through that tired party line and collection of discredited talking points." Once in a while, a spinner will even declare that their boy did so well and the other guy did so poorly that the election is over and a concession speech is expected at any moment.

The great part of what goes on in the Spin Room — can you believe they actually call it that? — is that it never has anything to do with what was actually said in the debate. Zero. So I'm imagining that McCain pulls a No Show and Obama debates an empty podium...

Obama answers a question and then Lehrer says, "Senator McCain, you have 45 seconds for rebuttal," and we all stare at the podium for 45 seconds. In the meantime, McCain still dispatches his campaign officials to spin that he won. After the event, they're out there saying, "By not being there to answer that question, McCain hit it out of the park."

Regarding the part where Lehrer asks the candidates to explain their plans for Social Security and there's two minutes of silence from the McCain side, the spinners say, "Two minutes of nothing from McCain made more sense than two minutes of actual policies from Senator Obama." Extra points if they have the gonads to add, "The American people would rather have a president who does absolutely nothing and doesn't even show up than one who's there and who does the wrong thing."

It wouldn't surprise me if something like this actually happens tomorrow night. I'm also imagining that if McCain isn't there, every so often the news coverage cuts outside where we find Ralph Nader and Bob Barr pounding on the door, yelling, "Let us in! There's camera time that isn't being used!"

• Posted at 9:50 AM · LINK

More Recommended Reading

Elizabeth Drew authored Citizen McCain, a fawning biography of the Senator from Arizona that was widely criticized for fawning over its subject and whitewashing his negatives. She says he is no longer the principled "maverick" she wrote about.

• Posted at 2:06 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

One of the students in the Humor Writing class I teach brought this article in yesterday. It's a piece by Jack Handey on the shabby way that bookstores treat their Humor sections.

Also in the New York Times, Bill Carter writes about John McCain's decision to bail on his David Letterman booking, claim he had to rush back to Washington to save the economy...and then to go do an interview with Katie Couric at the precise time he would have been doing Dave's show. I have the feeling McCain is going to regret a lot of decisions he made yesterday but that one especially.

• Posted at 1:58 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Every so often here, I direct you to an example of someone doing something about as well as it could possibly be done. Here's a clip of Ricky Jay. Card manipulation doesn't get any better than this...

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK

Conventional Wisdom

We've been telling you here for some time to ignore rumors that the Comic-Con International would soon abandon San Diego for some other city that could offer more space. Here's some news that bolsters my belief that the con ain't likely to move.

As reported here, the operators of the convention center there are poised to increase their facility's size by up to 300,000 square feet of exhibit space by 2014 and would like to go beyond that. The existing structure offers 525,000 square feet.

Several conventions that are usually held in S.D. could be lost if the convention center doesn't expand so it probably will. It is worth noting that all the online news articles mention Comic-Con as the primary example. That's how important we are to that city.

Comic-Con International is currently signed to stay in San Diego through 2012. In this interview, David Glanzer, who's the Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the show, suggested that the con might consider moving if nothing is happening with the expansion plans by 2010. It looks to me like the new wing will be well underway by then.

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK