Quote of the Day

Romney senior adviser Russ Schriefer just said, "We feel we are in a very good place, that this race is exactly where we had hoped it would be a week out."

I am not discounting the possibility that Romney could still win. I am discounting the possibility that anyone in his campaign really said, "Hey, you know what would be great? If a week before the election, we were a couple of points behind in several key swing states!" Not just them but anyone involved in a presidential election hopes that a week before Election Day, they'll have an insurmountable lead and the other side will be working on concession speeches. Isn't that what you'd hope?

Recommended Reading

Does FEMA serve this country well? As Kevin Drum notes, it depends on which party has the control of the White House. There's no operation — be it Federal, State or Private Enterprise — that can't be inefficient with the wrong people in charge and not enough money to accomplish its goals.

Today's Video Link

The work of the devil…

Tomorrow Is a Latter Day

And it'll be at least tomorrow before I get around to writing at length about The Book of Mormon, which Carolyn and I saw this evening up at the Pantages in Hollywood. It was at least a third as good as everyone told me was, probably more than half. It couldn't possibly have lived up to its rep but I don't hold that against it. More when I don't have to stay up all night writing a script.

My Tweets from Yesterday

  • Someone please tell me that Peter Luger's Steak House in Brooklyn is unharmed. 04:08:35

Tuesday Evening

Going to see this tonight.  Hope it's even a third as good as everyone keeps telling me it is…

El Foldo

Hey, remember that Al Jaffee book that was briefly priced on Amazon for $14.24? The one that was originally $120 and was marked way, way, way down? I ordered two at that price and they came…and I'll write more about it tomorrow when I have time but I thought the book was a colossal disappointment, unworthy of the good name of Jaffee. It was worth what I paid but not a whole lot more.

Amazon is still changing its price every few days. It recently went from $78.75 to $57.35 and if it gets down below twenty bucks again, you might want to snag one. I'll tell you what I didn't like about it when I get a moment.

Today's Video Link

Last May, the TV Academy did an evening with folks they called "The Ladies Who Make Us Laugh." They were Bonnie Hunt, Margaret Cho, Caroline Rhea, Carole Leifer, Elayne Boosler, Lily Tomlin and Mary Lynn Rajskub. I wasn't there for it and truth to tell, I've only had time to watch a little of the festivities. But here's a video of that event in case you have an hour and 47 minutes to spare…

VIDEO MISSING

The Empire Strikes Gold

Disney is acquiring Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion. I don't really care that much about what it means for Star Wars or anything of the sort. I figure most of everything will eventually be acquired by Disney and if it isn't, it'll be acquired by Time-Warner. Then at some point, either Disney will acquire Time-Warner or Time-Warner will acquire Disney and we will effectively be living in a Communist world.

What intrigues me right now is that number: $4.05 billion. If the buyer pays $4.05 billion for something, that's because the seller turned down $4 billion, turned down $4.01 billion, turned down $4.02 billion, turned down $4.03 billion, turned down $4.04 billion and maybe then said, "Tell you what. Make it $4.05 billion and you've got a deal." And when they turned down the $4 billion, you just know they said, "What? You think we're crazy? You're trying to starve us."

My Annual "I Don't Like Halloween" Post

Here's a rerun of an item I posted here a few years ago and repeat every year about this time…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I really don't like Halloween and never have. Even as a kid, the idea of dressing up and going from house to house to collect candy struck me as enormously unpleasant. I did it a few times when I was young because it seemed to be expected of me…but I never enjoyed it. I felt stupid in the costume and when I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked.

And of course, absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

My trick-or-treating years were before there were a lot of scares about people putting razor blades or poison into Halloween candy. Even then, I wound up throwing out just about everything except those little Hershey bars. So it was wasteful, and I also didn't like the dress-up part of it with everyone trying to look maimed or bloody. I've never understood why anyone thinks that's fun to do or fun to see.

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple bags of leftover candy myself. The last few Halloweens, I've switched to little boxes of Sun-Maid Raisins, which are a lot healthier if I get stuck with them. Maybe I ought to switch to candy corn. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone eating it. And if no one comes, I could just keep it around and not give it out again next year.

The only thing that's changed since I first wrote that is that my sweet tooth has disappeared to the point where I don't even like Sun-Maid Raisins. I've stocked up on little packages of peanut butter crackers to give out if any kids show up…which is highly unlikely. And also I've received plenty of e-mails from liars who are trying to get me to believe they like candy corn.

The Morning Almost After

Despite a killer deadline yesterday, I found myself intermittently watching a real killer named Sandy. DirecTV set up a special channel that hopped around from local station to local station in the path of the event some called Frankenstorm. It was an interesting way to watch TV news with the finger of some stranger somewhere on my remote. Whenever it would get dull or repetitive on one channel, they'd just switch to another.

I tried watching that channel this morning because it's too sad — a lot of reporters out in the field showing us devastation and asking people, "How does it feel to lose everything?" I wish TV news wouldn't do that. I know it's part of the story but it's the part of the story we all know and understand and don't need to see played out over and over. There are no unique answers and I often feel that the news crews are there to exploit suffering and to maybe get in the way of things. Those people have enough to think about today without having microphones thrust at them.

Some of the news coverage yesterday seemed helpful and at times, heroic. A lot of it seemed needlessly dramatic — reporters standing in harm's way, telling us that if we had a lick o' sense, we wouldn't be where they are. Then they'd give us information that could more easily have been dispensed from inside any newsroom with a good roof. At some point, it stops being eyewitness news and becomes a stunt show. I sensed that the person at DirecTV changing channels for me sometimes felt that way and would opt to leave the channel risking its reporters' lives and go in search of one offering useful data.

But mostly, I turned it off myself and tried to get back to the script that had to be written before bedtime, the one that pushed that bedtime past 4 AM. It was tough because I found myself thinking over and over: This kind of thing happens and will happen again. There must be a way we can conserve more resources for these moments. And maybe since even the most extreme deniers of Climate Change did listen to the nation's most prominent meteorologists about what Hurricane Sandy would do, and since those meteorologists were dead-on right, maybe we should all be listening to what those meteorologists think about Climate Change.

My Tweets from Yesterday

  • Attention, TV newsfolks: It will help minimize the damage from Sandy if you put more reporters out in the wind and rain. 10:33:42
  • Okay, Obama and Romney: NOW will one of you mention Climate Change? 21:57:32

Today's Video Link

Here's an amazing nine-minute compilation of "100 Masters of Short Animation." It's probably most useful as a reminder of all the different things that animation can be in terms of technique and style and approach.

I won't pretend to understand the selections and exclusions. Willis O'Brien is in there but not Ray Harryhausen. Dave Fleischer and Walt Disney are in there but not Max Fleischer. Many Disney animators are in there but I think only one (Wolfgang Reitherman) of the legendary Nine Old Men…and so on. In some cases, the named person is the person who animated what you're watching. In some cases, it's the person who directed what you're watching. And in some cases, it's the person who hired the person or persons who directed and/or animated what you're watching.

But now that I've put those thoughts into your head, don't think of that. Just enjoy a reminder of the endless possibilities in animation…

From the E-Mailbag…

From Walter White came this rapid response to what I posted earlier…

Just wanted to say thank you for the kind and heartfelt posting on newsfromme.com regarding Sandy, safety, doing more, etc. Here in Connecticut, where the brunt of the wind impact is hitting and storm surge pushing up Long Island Sound is going to cause not only coastal flooding, but rivers running in reverse (cue brilliant Elvis Costello tune… poignant to me, as I live near the Housatonic River which feeds into the Sound)….

I did, though, want to give you some hope. Last year we got hit with Hurricane Irene, which packed a heck of a wallop at the end of August, only to be hit with Winter Storm Alfred on this very day last year (three feet of wet snow falling in one night while leaves were still on the trees People lost power for weeks, buildings collapsed…it was eerie, that morning after the storm, with clear, blue skies and a perfectly white landscape, perfectly still and silent except for, every twenty seconds or so, the sound of another branch, somewhere, snapping…)

At the time, the response of the government was slow, of the utilities was slow (turned out Connecticut Light and Power hadn't bothered paying its bills to other utilities it had borrowed help from in the past…so the nearest help that would bother was in Ohio, and took days to arrive.) It was a huge fiasco, and much political hay was made.

What at the time seemed to be the usual forming of committees and requesting of studies that lead nowhere and have no effect began. Those happen all the time.

Except this time, it didn't. What we've experienced in the last four days has been a revelation: Timely updates and information of substance and usefulness; Well controlled plans to prevent problems before they become an issue; Coordination of personnel along the coast to aid evacuation to a large list of shelters which have been opened, staffed, and supplied as of yesterday; The closing of restricted access highways (anything with on/off ramps) to emergency vehicles only this afternoon; The suspension of public transportation last night, including buses, and declaring a State of Emergency, which is keeping many workers off the roads and at home, rather than what happened last year with people being stranded, unable to return home; Coordinating with FEMA a pre-landfall declaration for a disaster area designation, making the month of pursuant debating with the Federal Government last year over that issue post-crisis an already done deal this year; Additional road crews already conscripted and on their way, coordinated not by the utility companies alone, but as a joint effort with the State government.

Really — sometimes I think about it too deeply and I start to get teary just thinking about how refreshing it is to have a government being sensible, logical, proactive, and caring. Haven't seen this kind of efficiency before in my lifetime here. That a government would even learn from its mistakes enough in one year to effect that much of a transformation is incredibly heartening.

So, have heart. While we can do more, and should do more, for the first time I'm beginning to think maybe we will do more.

That's so good to hear. You know, I have little problem with an honest assessment — if there is such a thing — that a given function of government can be done better at the state level. I have an immense problem with this kind of boilerplate assumption that the Federal Government screws everything up and that everything would be better if they'd just turn it over to the states or, better still, private enterprise. Hurricanes don't respect state borders. I don't know why the preparedness and clean-up operations should.

What oughta matter here is not proving someone's theory of government incompetence but helping people whose lives are devastated by the kind of thing that no private insurance was ever intended to address. My mind reels every time I hear someone suggest that fire departments be "privatized." Fire departments! No one has any real theory of how that might work. Apparently, if your home is ablaze, you go to the Yellow Pages and call around to see who's available to come over with hoses and axes. I'm surprised some people are even willing to let our Federal Government wage war. They'd like each state to send its own delegation to Afghanistan.

I hope Sandy doesn't do as much damage as they say she might. It's comforting to hear that already, preparedness has minimized some of it.

Later, I received this from Walter…

Right now we're experiencing the worst of the wind… the worst storm surge is coming later tonight (about two hours from now)…. the wind is the worst it has been all day. Indoors, it sounds like we're on a ship in a squall at sea. I think the speeding up of the storm means the worst of it will be done by morning, rather than dragging on through tomorrow as they originally expected.

Anywho, I'm not a possessive sort – mi palabras, su palabras.

Hopefully, the power doesn't flicker on me again. I'm tired of rebooting my router and modem…

And hopefully, that's the biggest problem you'll have. Good luck, Walter…and anyone in the path of Frankenstorm.