The Fourth Wall

Jane Espenson (writer for many things, including Buffy) posts about breaking the fourth wall:

You know what it is, I’m sure, to break the fourth wall. That’s any reference that calls attention to the fictional nature of our enterprise. (Or the fictional nature of The Enterprise if we’re still in Star Trek land.)

Even if the show you’re specing routinely flirts with the fourth wall (as Boston Legal has done throughout this season), I would warn you against it.

I’m concurring (but as a fan, not a writer), and somewhere in me I have a long, well thought-out post about television shows, the fourth wall, and self-referential suicide, but it’s not for today.

Slashdot Almost About To Not Look Not Good

Slashdot posted a preview of their redesign, and it looks nice. Very clean, retaining classic Slashdot elements, while rejecting the classic Slashdot ugly.

Mr. Rogers Is A Better Person Than You

Mr. Rogers before the 1969 Senate hearing for funding of the newly formed Corporation For Public Broadcasting.

Rick Santorum Don't Come Around Here No More

Editorial in 2006 May 26 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about Sen. Rick Santorum’s residency:

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as “Not Deliverable As Addressed — Unable To Forward.”

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn’t live here anymore.

Apple Doesn't Want To Make A Dirt Cheap Computer

Apple Matters conceptualizes a cheap Mac laptop, the MacBook Lame, and ends with:

There are a lot of reasons you won’t be seeing a MacBook Lame tomorrow, but no convincing reasons why you shouldn’t see one someday.

Sure there is: Apple doesn’t give a fuck about making cheap hardware to sell more computers. Market Share != Profit.

Besides, Apple’s current line of laptops are cheap.

I Disagree With Curt Weldon's Spokesman

From the 2006 May 24 edition of the Delaware County Daily Times:

Bush’s arrival comes as a poll— conducted earlier this month by the liberal-leaning Democracy Corps — shows 45 percent of 7th District voters supporting Sestak, a former Navy admiral, and 49 percent supporting Weldon, a 10-term incumbent and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

…

“This is the kind of stuff that is disgusting,” said Weldon spokesman John Tomaszewski. “I also find it hard to believe that those inflated numbers mean anything, considering the fact that good research shows that Mr. Sestak has very little name recognition in the district.”

Obviously any poll by an opaquely partisan organization should be taken with a grain of salt, but even so, Tomaszewski’s statement is dumb. A candidate with “little name recognition” trailing only by four-points (plus or minus the aforementioned grain of salt) before major campaigning begins indicates a big problem for a 10-term incumbent.

Supporting Superman Means You Support Illegal Aliens

Neil Gaiman & Adam Rogers have an editorial in Wired about “The Myth of Superman”. I mostly agree with it (mostly), but take issue with the conclusion:

Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t play Batman. Bruce Wayne is Batman, who’s forced to play Bruce Wayne. It’s a theme Batman Begins emphasizes (and one of my favorite aspects of the movie).

The semantics used for Superman bother me as well. The one thing Superman can’t do is be normal, but he doesn’t play Clark Kent, he is Clark Kent. He’s forced to put on the mask of Superman (or lack thereof) because destroying the line between super hero and ordinary guy would destroy Clark Kent, the man he can’t be.

And, for the record, Batman can kick Superman’s ass.

PETA Thinks You're An Idiot

Ad blather has images of new PETA ads:

I’m not quite sure what to make of this ad, other than cows somehow replenish themselves via asexual reproduction, in which case we should:

1. be fine, because clearly one cow turns into four cows and many, many other materials.

2. panic, because soon the cows will outnumber us and blow us up with TNT.

3. look suspiciously at our shirt buttons, as we had no idea they were cow-based.

Of course, being PETA, they manage to balance the crazy with abject assholery:

Over 50 million cows are slaughtered every year to feed your greed for burgers, bags and lipsticks. So who’s to blame if the cow goes extinct soon: the butcher or you?

Have they driven around lately? There’s no shortage of cows. I see them like everyday. And even if all the cows died, GOOD. Fuck cows.

If Jesus had the same self-righteousness PETA has, his message would’ve been more like this:

I have to die, because you’re all a bunch of assholes. When I die, who’s to blame: YOU, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

And instead of this reading nonsense like this we’d all be busy controlling Hollywood.

Pennsylvania Senators Love Lobbyist Money

Senators Santorum and Spector are currently ranked second and third (respectively) in total contributions from lobbyists, according to the Congress Watch of Public Citizen:

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) - $1,163,560
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) - $1,019,317

Number one is Ex-Senator (D-S.D.) Tom Daschle, so technically, Pennsylvania owns the top of list, making us finally good at something, even if it is political whorery.

Via Will Bunch.

Joe Sestak Supports Net Neutrality

Joe Sestak:

I’m not a career politician. I don’t need polls to tell me what to believe. I’ve looked at the facts, weighed the evidence, and I strongly believe that Net Neutrality is good for America.

Good for him. A position I agree with on an issue I care about from a politician I want to vote for. It’s like the trifecta of… something.

Scrubs Renewed For A Sixth (Mid)Season

'Scrubs' Gets Another Midseason Run

As for "Scrubs," which received a full-season order, it's the second year in a row the Emmy-nominated comedy has been held off the fall schedule. NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly says the decision was driven by the network's need to "bulk up" its schedule with one-hour shows and the somewhat fragile state of comedy on network TV -- NBC has just four on its fall schedule.

And don't forget, the third season is available on DVD.

Britain To Pay Off Last Of World War Two Debt

The UK is about to pay off the last of its World War II loans from the US. But it hasn’t always been so fastidious.

On 31 December, the UK will make a payment of about $83m (£45.5m) to the US and so discharge the last of its loans from World War II from its transatlantic ally.

It is hard from a modern viewpoint to appreciate the astronomical costs and economic damage caused by this conflict. In 1945, Britain badly needed money to pay for reconstruction and also to import food for a nation worn down after years of rationing.

“In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free,” says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University.

Also (regarding debt from the first world war):

During the crisis years of the 1930s, only one nation continued to pay in full - Finland. Perhaps a conscious effort to foster a good reputation with an increasingly influential power, Finland’s actions generated thousands of positive stories in the American media at the time. Nor has it been forgotten; the Finns celebrated this achievement in an exhibition last year.

Playing The Room

James Poniewozik, Time's TV crtitic, on Colbert's performance:

Colbert wasn't playing to the room, I suspect, but to the wide audience of people who would later watch on the Internet. If anything, he was playing against the room—part of the frisson of his performance was the discomfort he generated in the audience, akin to the cringe humor of Da Ali G Show. (Cringe humor, too, is something probably lost on much of the Washington crowd at the dinner, as their pop-culture tastes tend to be on the square side.) To the audience that would watch Colbert on Comedy Central, the pained, uncomfortable, perhaps-a-little-scared-to-laugh reaction shots were not signs of failure. They were the money shots. They were the whole point.

In other words, what anyone fails to get who said Colbert bombed because he didn't win over the room is: the room no longer matters. Not the way it used to. The room, which once would have received and filtered the ritual performance for the rest of us, is now just another subject to be dissected online. Colbert—as he might say on The Colbert Report—"gets it." So does his patron, Jon Stewart, who similarly was said to have bombed at the Oscars because he turned off the stars in the theater with a snide performance that was much funnier to the (much bigger and more relevant) audience at home.

Exactly.

Via Scott Rosenberg.

I don't necessarily buy all this new age crap. One time I saw my mom knock my father unconscious with a frying pan and do you know what I did? I kept right on going with my birthday party.