Archive for October, 2010

Watched the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear yesterday. And for most of it, I was amused but largely unimpressed.

The music was good but, speaking as someone watching the broadcast from my couch so I didn't have the "I was there" excitement to overcome the "hearing it through loudspeakers" problem, not great. The comedy bits were also good — loved Stephen's Chilean rescue, the two reporter perspective's from Wyatt Cenac and Jason Jones, and the Fear Award for the news agencies who cautioned their employees not to attend being accepted by a 7-year-old girl — but I was also made very aware of the value of a good line producer and video segment editor.

Still, it was live, so you had to expect a watered-down version of the show. Stephen and Jon's "I'm an American" duet was cute, Sam Watterson's poem delivery was good, all in all it was exactly what was promised: 3 hours of silly entertainment. While I was glad it hadn't turned out to be a political rally, as multiple pundits declared it would, I found myself kind of wishing there had been more satire of political rallies, particularly Glenn Beck's God Loves Us Best rally from a few months previous.

And then Stewart gave his sincere speech, and I got the distinct feeling that this speech was the reason he did the whole thing. He wanted a massive audience to give the quiet, calm, reasoned advice that underlies both the Daily Show and The Colbert Report: The media is shouting at you, but they don't have to do it, and you don't have to listen.

The video is embedded above. Today we'll have lots of commentators and pundits telling us why this was condescending hogwash or liberal hysteria or a comedian jumping the shark or whatever, but I'll bet that every one of those commentators who mock him are going to be the very same over-the-top, fear-based commentators he's talking about.

It has been a long time since I watched TV news (except for local affiliate news during the day, as part of my day job). I don't watch morning shows or nightly news, no FOX or MSNBC or CNN, I specifically avoid talk shows with screaming people. I read the news online or in the paper from a multitude of sources, and I end up reading as much commentary on how the news was presented (Howard Kurtz, et al) as I do the news itself. And yet I manage to stay well-informed on current news and politics, despite the lack of the constant 24/7 barrage of opinion thrown at me.

For one thing, I have to, because I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and if I don't pay attention to current events I can't keep up. I watch them because those shows do not have a political agenda. Instead they poke fun at the media and public figures from all sides who push fear and knee-jerk reactions and simplistic answers instead of actually informing viewers and voters. And that's the message of Stewart's speech: that makes the problem harder to handle.

"The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus," Stewart said, "illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

"If we amplify everything we hear nothing."

News commentators, radio personalities, pundits, talk shows, I have long been wary and dismissive of you. If you scream at me, I just assume you're lying and don't want me to think too much about what you're saying. I appreciate passion, and powerful arguments, and reasoned pleas, but far too many of you use scorn and derision and demonization to make your points for me to take you seriously. I just don't believe you're really trying to help. I think you're trying to improve your own bottom line. When witchfinders get paid by the witch, they're going to find witches everywhere whether they actually exist or not.

And there are an awful lot of people who think the same way. 250,000 or so were at the National Mall yesterday, and thousands more organized in cities across the country or tuned in from home, and more are catching up with online videos today. We're not mad as hell, but we are getting pretty tired of you.

3 hours of occasionally funny entertainment, no musical guests I'm really a fan of, what had to be hours of annoying traffic and crowds and cold and being unable to see or hear what's going on, and a 13-minute speech telling me why Americans are better than the media tells us we are. I wish I'd been there.

You can see more clips from the event here.

John Delancie and QMx bring us a creepy-as-hell renditon of Edgar Allen Poe's immortal classic, "The Raven." Happy Halloween!

(Psst, get Dollhouse: The Complete Second Season here.)

I've loved Spider-Man for over 40 years, but nothing in all that run entertained me as much as the "Ultimate Spider-Man" series by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley.

A reinvented Spider-Man, with all the humor and relationships and twisty plots that I loved from my childhood but with relevance to today, an incredible ear for teenage language, and a fresh new look at the same old characters. Through all of the occasionally questionable decisions Marvel has made with their major books the last few years, "Ultimate Spider-man" has remained my always-buy favorite. This is a great way to get started with this amazing series.

Here are the first 5 hardcover collections, pulling together issues #1 – 59, plus extras, interviews, sketches and more. All of them are first printing and in excellent condition. Bought, read once, shelved.

Vol. 1: Collects #1-13 and Amazing Fantasy #15. Out of print.
Vol. 2: Collects #14-27. Out of print.
Vol. 3: Collects #28-39, plus the hard-to-find Ultimate Spider-Man 1/2. Out of print.
Vol. 4: Collects #40-45, and 47-53.
Vol. 5: Collects Ultimate Spider-Man #46, Ultimate Six #1-7, and Ultimate Spider-Man #54-59.

Auction's over tomorrow night, so don't delay!