Month: September 2003

Here are a few interesting things I’ve found out and about Blogistan today, in a lefty-political vein:

:: Michael Moore answers some of his critics’ objections. (via Oliver Willis)

:: John Scalzi on dishonesty in the current administration. This sums up a great deal of how I feel about things right now.

:: Matthew Yglesias has some thoughts about Presidential succession. This one’s not particularly lefty, but still interesting in a wonky kind of way.

:: I was wondering how long it would take Gregg Easterbrook, who seems to increasingly blend good writing with a bizarro-world view of reality, to migrate his fixation on Hillary Clinton’s byline from his Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns on ESPN.com to his TNR weblog. And the answer is: today.

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Regular readers of this space will know that I make no apologies for my never-ending love of the show Friends, which begins its final season tonight. For those not keeping track (i.e., those poor deluded souls who think that Survivor is interesting), this year will be an abbreviated season for Friends: there will be only eighteen new episodes, with the balance consisting of classic episodes chosen by the fans. I don’t know about that particular aspect of this season, since the show’s been in syndication for several years now, which means that pretty much any episode can be guarateed to show up within a certain time frame, and since the show’s first four seasons are now on DVD. But yeah, I’ll end up watching those reruns anyway, because not only do most of the shows still make me laugh, there are some that even make me tear up.

How do I hope Friends goes out? Well, I hope they don’t lead up to some big “capstone” moment for the show, the way MASH kind of had to. For my money, the best finale episodes of long-running TV series were the ones for Cheers and Star Trek: The Next Generation, both of which managed to tell stories that delved deeply into the shows’ early, foundational years but also didn’t feel the need to draw some big conclusion to the proceedings. When both shows ended, you still got the feeling that the next day, Sam would show up to open the bar and that the Enterprise would go on exploring the galaxy.

I hope that Friends doesn’t do a MASH-like finale, with the characters each going off to some fate totally separated from the others. (Yes, we know that Joey will, since we know he’s moving on to a spin-off next season, but that’s it.) The MASH finale had to be that way, because it dealt with the war ending. Probably the most maligned finale episode ever is Seinfeld‘s, and with good reason: while I loved the idea of putting these incredibly shallow and narcississtic characters on trial for basically being themselves, the actual execution of the idea ended up not being very funny. And the finale of The X-Files was a really good episode, but it was handicapped by coming at least a year after it should have (and probably two years, really).

Unlike the writer of this MSN article, whose reading of psychological baggage into Friends is a lot creepier than anything in the show itself, I don’t really have much of an opinion on specific things that must happen in the final season. Generally, I think Ross and Rachel should end up together, but I don’t need a big wedding for the two of them in the finale. I don’t need to see the entire gang break up, with Chandler and Monica moving to Chicago or some such thing. Basically, the show’s writers have done exceedingly well for nine years now; I’m willing to go along for a tenth.

(But there must be a final cameo for Janice. Maybe she and Gunther can end up together?)

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Darth Swank nearly got himself purged from my blogroll yesterday, with this post of a Salma Hayek photo gallery. I mean, that’s bad enough in itself – – I have work to do, dammit! – – but he didn’t mention that the picture he shows on his blog links to a significantly larger version of the same picture, and when you scroll about halfway down…well, I just can’t have that. Good Lord!

(Oh, heavens…that gallery is just part of a vastly bigger site of such galleries…of other women…)

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Scott Secrest once again rips off an interesting blogging idea, this one ten things he loves and ten he hates about where he lives. (He lives in Dallas; that he was able to come up with nine – – I am granting food, on the basis of my one experience with Texas barbecue – – amazes me.) Ever one to swipe an idea for a post from some innocent bystanding blogger, here are ten things I love and ten things I hate about Buffalo.

Things I love:

:: Culture. For a city Buffalo’s size, the cultural opportunities here are great. There is a very lively theater scene, the Buffalo Philharmonic is an outstanding ensemble, there are a number of art museums and galleries. Buffalo is also home to the Goo Goo Dolls and Ani DiFranco.

:: Architecture. Yeah, I could probably list this under “Art”, but then again…Buffalo is a treasure house of fine architecture, much of it dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

:: Food. Buffalo is a great food city. Hell, we’d deserve a great food rep on the basis of Buffalo-style chicken wings alone, but there are a lot of fine restaurants here. You can pretty much find anything here (with the increasingly annoying exception of dim sum).

:: Weather. Yes, you read that right. Buffalo does get a ton of snow, but we know how to deal with it. (We’re not like those places that are completely shut down after an inch of snow, like, oh, Dallas.) In fall, we are treated to the best autumn leaves outside of Vermont. Our summers are wonderful – – we’ve never once hit a hundred degrees in all the years they’ve kept stats. The only downside is spring; it’s short, cold and rainy.

:: The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. I’ve sung the praises of this institution many times, but having access to a great metropolitan library system is amazing, truly amazing. Literacy is pretty high here.

:: The Bills. Need I say more? This is the best football town in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

:: Proximity to the Great Lakes. Actually, I love the entire Great Lakes Region, and I don’t think I ever want to live more than fifty miles or so from the Lakes.

:: Location, location, location. Buffalo is perfectly located for day-trips elsewhere. I know that sounds weird – – I love Buffalo because it’s easy to go someplace else – – but it’s true, really. Rochester, Syracuse, Erie, Toronto, Cleveland, Pittsburgh. Then Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, et cetera beyond that.

:: Canada. This could be filed under “Location”, I suppose, but the fact that an international border lies ten miles away rules.

:: Natural splendor. In addition to being right on Lake Erie, Buffalo is thirty miles away from Lake Ontario. Niagara Falls is twenty-five miles away. The Southern Tier region, with its hills and ski resort towns, is forty miles south. The great Finger Lakes region is two hours away.

OK, time for the flip side. Things I hate about Buffalo.

:: City politics. Buffalo has a lot of problems, and the political machinery almost seems purposely created to keep things from getting fixed. It astounds me how bad things are, and yet last year Buffalo re-elected the Mayor who has presided over the disastrous slide to a third term over no opposition, and this year we’re prepared to do the same with our County Executive.

:: Modern architecture. Buffalo’s old buildings are astounding; Buffalo’s new buildings are merely utilitarian and uninspiring.

:: Bad decisions. This could go under politics, but Buffalo has elevated bad decision making to an art form. A great natural waterfront? Naturally, we built a six-lane thruway right between downtown and the water. And so on. I could list these all day, but I won’t. You get the idea.

:: Sports lore: Boston complains about Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner. Buffalo, though, has Super Bowls XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII; Homerun Throwback, Wide right; No goal; and more.

:: Tim Russert. Yeah, he’s from Buffalo. Sorry, folks.

:: Chain bookstores. Not that they killed Buffalo’s indy bookstores, because they didn’t, not really. But I live in Orchard Park, one of Buffalo’s “Southtowns” – – the collective local term for the southern suburbs. All of Buffalo’s big bookstores – – including the indy’s who are left – – are in the Northtowns. So I gotta drive all the way across town for books. (Given my current financial situation, this may be a good thing.)

:: The job market. There isn’t one.

:: Being in a “Has-been” city. Buffalo is pretty much ignored by the national press, in terms of coverage of urban issues.

:: The local news stations. “If it bleeds it leads” is the rule here, and not a single story goes by without the anchor person reminding us that “You heard it here first”. And the race to find a local connection to every story of national import is really annoying.

:: Timothy McVeigh. Yeah, he was from here too. Ugh.

So, how about all of your cities?

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The Nigerian single mother, who had been sentenced to death by stoning for violating Islamic law, has been acquitted by an appeals court.

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OK, I’ve just finished watching the season premiere of The West Wing. I’ll wait a few weeks before I attempt to assess the new direction of the show, but just a couple of bullet thoughts on this one:

:: The direction was just fine. I loved the alternating between the hectic stuff of the West Wing and the quiet of the White House Residence. I liked some new camera work and new lighting effects.

:: I think the show’s core actors, the regulars who have been there since Day One (and I include guest stars like Timothy Busfield as Danny, NiCole Richardson as Margaret, and all the rest) now have so strong a feel for their characters that even if the dialogue as written isn’t quite what Aaron Sorkin might have done, they can still make it sound like it. I suspect that a Sorkin departure would have been far more harmful to the show after Season Two than after Season Four.

:: If they want to make an alternate-universe West Wing focusing on President Walken’s Republican administration, I just might watch it. I liked how he seemed a strong leader, gutsy and very quick to make a decision without being impulsive, and with a certain bit of wisdom.

:: The scene where drunk and grief-stricken Bartlet storms into the Oval Office and starts screaming incoherently at President Walken was really well played.

:: That was a joke for people who might have the show on tape and haven’t watched it yet. That didn’t happen.

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The spacecraft Galileo, and its demise this past Sunday, is the subject of what I consider to be Steven Den Beste‘s best post ever. Read it. It’s not just about Galileo, but also about why NASA has had mission failures. But it’s not gloom-and-doom, and I have to like any post about space exploration and space science that ends with the sentence “The best is yet to come.”

Yeah, Steven, I know you said a few days ago that putting together a book of your thoughts, of any sort, would be too much like work. But if you did put out a book of your science and engineering stuff, I’d read it. (Just leave out that post about Attack of the Clones, though. Not your finest hour. Heh.)

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Season Five of The West Wing kicks off this evening, and it begins the post-Aaron Sorkin era. The majority of the reviews I’ve seen of tonight’s episode online are positive, although the ones that are negative are really negative. As shocked as I was at Sorkin’s abrupt departure last year, I’m holding out hope that it will be fine. The show has four years behind it, and I did get the feeling that while Sorkin’s storytelling abilities were still as strong as ever, his dialogue for TWW was taking on a “sameness”. I’ll be glad, really, to see some other directions taken, and I’ll certainly be glad to see conversations where the most common words are not “the thing” and “yeah”. (Ever notice how TWW characters always respond affirmatively with “Yeah”?)

One scene that I’d like to see is Josh and Donna walk together from the White House front door all the way through the building to their offices, in one of those long tracking shots the show always does, and yet not say a word as they do so. I think that would be pretty funny.

And I am looking forward to a return to more “nuts and bolts of politics” type stuff going on. I just hope they don’t turn to Law and Order-style, “Ripped from the headlines!” stories. And I’d sort of like it if they’d back off the foreign policy stuff, not because I disagree with anything they’ve done or anything like that, but because it always throws me out of a story when they refer to countries that don’t really exist.

(Of course, it’s possible to go too far the other way. I caught the first couple of minutes of that NCIS show the other night, and it actually had a guy playing President Bush. And not just “Back of the head” or “Going around the corner” shots, mind you; this guy actually interacted with the show’s characters. The guy they cast did a pretty good Bush, but I just couldn’t take anything seriously after that. And now that I think of it, it seems that Presidents pose problems to filmmakers in general. I remember the horrible digital cut-outs of President Clinton that were injected into Contact, an otherwise terrific movie. It’s possible to go too far in the search for realism, because there is a certain amount of illusion that can never be totally disspelled.)

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Via Atrios, I see that the beef industry wants to come up with Cheeseburger French Fries, which would literally be a meat-and-cheese combo “molded” and processed to look like a French Fry. The hope is, of course, to get these into school cafeterias. More and more I’m thinking that whenever I get some extra money, I’m sinking it into stock in WeightWatchers.

But then, I think these might be just great as bar food, especially after a couple of beers. Pour some melted cheese over these…my God, I’m becoming Homer Simpson.

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(What on Earth?!)

:: JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL.

CHENEY ON CHICKENS: Vice

President Cheney talked to Tim Russert

about the persistent problem with Iraqi

chickens, and the way our troops keep

using them for target practice when they

cross the road. Of course, Cheney’s

explanation makes no sense, but you can’t

expect Russert to ask him any real questions,

such as why all those chickens are crossing

Iraqi roads in the first place. I’ll have more

to say about this later.

LAST WEEK, I had some thoughts

about General Wesley Clark and his deal

with chickens. I came to a startling new

idea about all this. More later.

OH, COME ON! Andrew Sullivan

won’t get off the subject of Carol Mosley

Braun’s recent announcement that she would

serve no chickens at her campaign stops.

He seems to literally think it’s because

Mosley Braun worships chickens, and she

always pulls to the side of the road when

a line of them cross the road. Andrew

doesn’t seem to be able to tell the difference

between a chicken and a duck. More later.

A PENTAGON INSIDER tells

me about Operation Chicken. More later.

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