Import Nights Are So Hot Right Now

Just got back from the Hot Import Nights automotive lifestyle show at the LA Convention Center. I was there for Mahalo Daily, mind you, not because I have any particular interest in cars. Although I do have a particular interest in scantily-clad models, so it wasn't a complete wash.

We had a really good time and captured some great footage that you'll all be seeing next week. But it did get me thinking about this whole notion of "subcultures" and how people define themselves. Several people whom I interviewed today explained to me that they "trick out" or modify their cars as a mode of self-expression.

It doesn't really make a car that much more useful to, say, lower it, or add a blacklight, or even put a Nintendo Wii in the trunk, they explained. (How often would you play a Trunk Wii? When is that going to be useful? When you're stuck in the parking lot after a Dodger game? When you want to keep the girl you've just kidnapped occupied while you plan your next move?) It's not about functionality - it's just a way to give other people a sense of who you are and what you're all about.

I gotta be honest here...I don't understand this. I mean, self-expression is great. I'm not trying to knock people who want to be individuals and put themselves out there for the world to see. I am, after all, writing a blog post this very moment, and I spent all day being filmed for a podcast. So it would be pretty hypocritical of me to turn around and belittle others for trying to do essentially the same thing.

But how is modifying your car saying anything to anyone about you personally? Doesn't it instead reflect on the individuals who designed the car or the customization? If you spend money to get people to pimp your ride, are you expressing yourself or are you paying them to express themselves?

I mean, even if you did all the work yourself, and designed all the parts yourself, it's still fairly inadequate as a format for expressing yourself. Writing, taking photographs, making art, performing, filming something...those are all cheaper and, it seems to me anyway, more vital and telling and informative. What's the most compelling insight into your nature that someone could glean from looking at your car?

(1) I like cars

(2) I like green cars

(3) I like fast cars

(4) I like decals

(5) I could kick your ass at Super Smash Bros. Brawl

(I'd like to point out that I'm not trying to be cynical or mean-spirited here. I'm genuinely interested in answers to this question. If you're a big fan of styling cars and feel it is a perfectly valid way to speak to others about who you are, please do leave a comment below. I'd love to start a discussion on this.)

The other weird thing about Hot Import Nights is the way these models were displayed. I mean, I like looking at a sexy girl in a skimpy outfit. Believe me, I do.

But there was such novelty attached to it at the show, like it was an exhibit designed for aliens who had never before seen an attractive human female. There was a line to get a photo taken in between a Pontiac Solstice and a girl who was half-naked and cute. (Of course I waited in it...The picture will be online within 72 hours, I'm told...You'll just have to wait until then to see it.)

A line! To get a picture taken with a cute girl and a car? What, am I going to be able to fool my friends with this later? "Hey, dude, check out this picture of me with my new car and girlfriend! No, you can't meet her, and I can't show you the car. They're in, um, Canada."

At a booth where they were giving away this energy drink called NOS, a bevy of buxom models were on-hand to chat up losers and drive sales, but none of them could even tell me anything about the drink, or seemed even vaguely interested in talking about it. The one girl I interviewed on camera told me she never drank energy drinks because caffeine makes her jittery. I mean, hey, boobs are neat, I think we can all agree on that point. But in this situation, I'm not sure they're actually going to move any NOS units. Someone who could actually endorse the product might have a bit more luck...

Around this point, I really needed the NOS boost, because I was utterly exhausted. I wound up ducking out of the show kind of early (I didn't even get to see The Game perform!), but I still think it will make an interesting podcast. Such a strange new kind of environment for me...It's cool that filming some of these Daily episodes is allowing me to experience all these events going on right under my nose that I would otherwise never get a chance to see.

YOU! SHALL NOT! PASS!

There is seriously something wrong with me, that I was willing to do this:



Not dress up like a wizard in public...I do that all the time. I mean, attend a comic book convention.

Race for the Prize

So, I guess I need to talk about the speech, as it's pretty much all anyone's talking about today. (Well, that and the fact that a hooker was once on a "Girls Gone Wild" video, surely the most shocking revelation imaginable.) Here it is in case you missed it:



It's pretty amazing stuff, and I'm a jaded guy. For obvious reasons, it's unlike any major political speech I've heard in my lifetime. But I think that might be understating the bravery of Barry going on television and basically calling out Americans of all races for seeing him only through the lens of skin color.

What the guy can do so well, what's so impressive about him that makes him such an effective communicator, is his utter and complete lack of defensiveness. Some politicians, after an entire week of media scrutiny on the potentially offensive statements of someone close to them, would be tempted to make excuses or even apologize. Obama doesn't condemn the nation for being angry with Wright, but he does imply that it's the incorrect reaction to the man. He doesn't defend himself at all; he defends his mentor. Which is brilliant. Because it subtly communicates that he doesn't need to defend himself, because he didn't do anything wrong.

He says his church represents the black community in its entirety. Obama can no more disown Wright than he can disown his own blackness. Think about that...if you condemn their church, you're condemning the black community itself. But he doesn't express this in harsh terms, calling the audience racist. He uses warm language about Wright and his church - "he has been like family to me," he treats everyone "with courtesy and respect." "These people are part of me." He invites you to get past the angry rhetoric, which is something almost every American who's not a Republican sociopath wants to do.

Then he fucking defends Geraldine Ferraro, the lady who said that he's only winning the Democratic nomination because he's a black man. Then he quotes Faulkner. While confronting the notion of racial anger in an honest and straight-forward manner, he quite legitimately depicts modern life in America as "a zero-sum game" in which citizens are made to feel directly competitive with one another. I mean, a black presidential candidate noting that black anger towards whites "is real...and it is powerful"? Holy shit...That's amazing.

Fantastic candidate though she may be in many ways, and I do think she's a pretty terrific politician, Hillary Clinton seems fundamentally incapable of displaying this level of class and panache.

And that's just the first half of the wide-ranging address. I'm not sure an American President in my lifetime has publicly discussed the nation's history with this level of passion, clarity and accuracy. Seriously, people, if we don't elect this guy in November, after having twice sent George Dubya to the White House, future generations are going to really wonder about our collective sanity. Perhaps their air pollution prevented their brains from getting enough oxygen, they'll wonder? Or LSD leaked into the water supply at a constant rate for 8 years, causing a kind of mass delusion?

Friday Night Music

I know, I know, I've barely posted this week. I'm distracted by other projects. But there will be more reasonably humorous ranting and videos in which I make an ass out of myself soon. (Perhaps a bit too soon).

Anyway, here's a video of a guy named Reggie Watts:


Reggie Watts: Out Of Control from Jakob Lodwick on Vimeo.

Too Amazing To Be Real

Anyone need a movie?

My Day in a Single Image

There are a lot of Mahalo pages about L'Affair Spitz. Check them out.

[Image found on August's site]

The Obligatory Post-Vegas Wrap-Up

So I decided not to drive to Vegas after all, but to take a relatively inexpensive Southwest flight leaving Friday afternoon.

LAX Security has become, at this point, a cruel and degrading experience. People are constantly barking orders at you which make little to no practical sense. "Empty your pockets! Don't touch the sides! Show me your boarding pass!" Everyone's shuffling around holding out their shoes and ID's. The interior contents of people's luggage are displayed prominently in 3D on oversized color monitors. It's like Terry Gilliam designed an airport.

Once you're through Security, though, it's alright, cause there's plenty of magazines, Cinnabon and overpriced fruity tequila drinks for everybody. I was there maybe 2.75 hours ahead of time because I'm an idiot and I thought there'd be traffic on the 405. So I drained 3/4 of my iPod battery listening to the Michael Ian Black and Paul F. Tompkins comedy albums.

(Quick reviews: I saw MIB do most of these jokes in person not long ago, and I think they work a lot better in person. His material's only so-so, and it's largely about the performance and semi-interaction with the crowd. Much of the first track is taken up with Black chanting "Yay!" I actually attended a show at the Largo that's used on the Paul F. Tompkins album. I thought at the time that it was one of the best sets of comedy I had ever seen, and I found it just as hilarious hearing it again recorded. Tompkins is a genius. The highlight: his extended deconstruction of the "snakes in a can of peanut brittle" novelty item. This must be heard to be believed. I was cackling in the middle of LAX.)

Okay, so the flight's completely uneventful, I land in Vegas and meet up with my friend Dave at the airport purely by coincidence. We wait in a 12-hour Disneyland-esque queue for a taxi to the Strip.

My friend Matt, you see, is a chef, and he used to work for a guy who's now the executive chef at David Burke, a very nice restaurant inside the Venetian. (Don't actually go to the David Burke site, because it automatically starts playing really loud, tinny, irritating rock and roll. It's hard for me to believe that such a classy establishment would have such a garish Web presence.) So we decided to stay there, albeit packing more dudes into a single $200/night suite than it was initially meant to hold. It turns out, by the way, that one of these five men, who I'd like to stress was not me, decided to sleep in the nude, which hardly strikes me as appropriate.

All together, there must have been a dozen old college friends meeting up for this weekend in Vegas. I was amazed that we were able to organize such a significant gathering of people so easily, which is kind of depressing when you think about it. It's not all that hard to arrange meetings with old friends or to do fun things you've always wanted to do; we're just usually too lazy to bother. It was really great to see everyone; some of these guys, I haven't seen in years.

So we all met up and went to the Imperial Palace to gamble. I can't gamble at the Venetian. They want you to play $50 minimum bet blackjack. Are you insane? Don't you people read TechCrunch? I work for Jacob Marley in a blazer. I got $50 to blow on a hand of blackjack like I got Elon Musk's home number.

So we go to the Imperial Palace, which is more expensive than I remember it being, but still reasonable enough to satisfy my gaming needs. I end up in a game of Texas Hold 'Em, 1-2-no -limit. I had started by playing 2-4-limit, but it's almost impossible to play that way, because you can't really scare anyone off. The most they stand to lose is, like, $12, so people stay in with total shit and then suck out on you all the time. It's lame.

In the no-limit game, you stand to lose all your chips on a single hand, but it's much more like real poker in that you're actually trying to fake out your opponent, not just take as many chips as the rules will allow. I was playing incredibly conservatively, as I always do in Vegas and usually do in Los Angeles. It's a psychological thing with me in Las Vegas - even though I never bring more money than I can afford to lose, I'm always paranoid about going bankrupt. I think it's the fact that you're always being hustled in that city - by advertising, by aggressive guys on the street with fliers, by cab drivers, by massive 50-ft pictures of Rita Rudner. I overcompensate by being excessively on-my-guard.

So I'm barely betting unless I have, like, one of Phil Helmuth's 10 hands worth actually keeping. I actually got a straight flush at one point, if you can believe it, and managed to take a pretty reasonably-sized pot. (As I'd been playing conservatively all night, everyone but one guy was on to me from the beginning, but he stayed in right until the end.) My brother told me today that most casinos have payouts if you get four of a kind or a straight flush, but I didn't see any additional action on that. Maybe the dealers just noticed that I didn't expect anything and saved their corporate masters the expense. It was still kind of exciting.

The next day, I didn't really do much. We watched the UCLA game in the Sports Book, where a lot of people were excited that the Bruins won and a lot of other people were dumbfounded the Bruins won. A few of us went to Caeser's Palace and ate at the Stage Deli. We couldn't help but notice that everywhere around the Strip, you see posters for this guy named Danny Gans, who performs at the Mirage. "Entertainer of the Year!" the signs advertise. "The Best Show in Vegas!"

But it's just some guy no one has ever heard of named Danny Gans. Based on the ads they run on a loop on the Mirage sign, it looks like he does impressions of celebrities from the '70s and '80s. There's George Burns and Michael Jackson...this is the greatest show in Vegas? I mean, I'm not the biggest Blue Man Group fan either, and I find it hard to believe Louie Anderson is still alive let alone headlining at casinos, but Danny Gans is the best entertainer these guys can come up with? All that money sunk into decorating these casinos...you can't convince Don Rickles to haul his ancient ass up on a stage to insult the people?

The Sahara's got goddamn Roseanne Barr headlining on their mainstage! Roseanne! You know what would be more entertaining than that? Spending an evening in the actual fucking Sahara. Say, Bedouins, you're not going to go on any extended rants about how Barack Obama's in league with the UFO's to make us forget our past lives, right? Just checking...

(More on the sad state of affairs at the Sahara later!)

While the rest of the gang then watched the UNC-Duke game, I wandered up the Strip and played some single-deck blackjack at the Casino Royale. At one table, my dealer was a rather intense Serbian guy named, I believe, Hladen. He would get very upset whenever anyone would pick up their face-down cards with both hands, which happened pretty often. I'm not sure I've ever seen a dealer just yell at players like this...Some of these guys are surly; it's part of the atmosphere. But this was just blatant hostility. "No! You do not pick up the cards! This is cheating! I show you one more time!" It was pretty awesome.

Saturday night, a bunch of the crew split off to go to Fremont Street in Downtown Vegas in search of more discount gambling. Matt, Dave and I stayed behind to grab dinner with Matt's chef friend, Todd. We met up at David Burke, a very interesting restaurant decorated with rock salt shaped to look like brick walls. Todd bought himself time to finish up in the kitchen by preparing us a two-course "snack": first, we had a scallop topped with foie gras, my first-ever taste of the stuff. It's pretty amazing...sorry you can't have any, people who live in Chicago! Nyah, nyah. We followed that up with some lamb.

I could pretty much have stopped right there and been satisfied, but we then ventured to Cut, the Wolfgang Puck-owned high-end steakhouse that just opened in the Palazzo, the new hotel/casino that's attached to the Venetian. What followed might be the most ludicrous, amazing orgy of food I have ever experienced. Finding out that one of our party was a chef at another Venetian restaurant was all these guys needed to hear; they began sending out wave after wave of delicious, intensely rich meats.

Seriously, little mini hamburger sliders followed by steak and tuna tartare followed by pork belly and veal tongue followed by a perfectly-cooked steak the size of pudgy housecat. "Excuse me, I believe I ordered the Rib-Eye, not the Entire-Back-End-Of-The-Steer-Eye." Chef Todd tried to talk me into trying bone marrow...but I'm sorry, that just sounds wrong to me. Oh, yeah, and then warm date cake. The one thing I ate that night that never had a soul.

Matt and Todd treated to the orgy meal, and for that I am eternally grateful. And also still somewhat bloated.

Sunday in Vegas is not really much of a day at all. Everyone's all panicked about getting out of town and avoiding the surging crowds, you're most likely hungover and broke, etc. But I'm pretty sure my Vegas Sunday was worse than most other people's.

We checked out of the Venetian at 11. Lots of people had made early flight arrangements, so we said some goodbyes. I was left essentially on my own at the Venetian by noon, about four hours before my flight and two hours before I needed to get to the airport. I decided to walk to the Sahara, which is where Nathan and Chris were staying, to get some lunch before I caught my plane. It's not a particularly long walk (I'd guess maybe 1.5 miles) from the Venetian to the Sahara, but it was hot and I was carrying a duffel bag, so I was pretty tired.

On the way, I stopped by this big mall on the Strip and bought a book for the airport/flight back. I had brought the book I've been working on, Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum," but to be honest, I think I'm giving up on it. I can't get through it. There are too many digressions and arcane Medieval references...The cover sells it as a sort of "Indiana Jones for Smart People," or "Da Vinci Code for Non-Morons" if you prefer, but I don't remember Indy doing quite this much contemplating and using this many Old English phrases. And if Dan Brown even considered writing something like this, they'd run him out of the publishing business so fast, it'd make James Frey's career look like Tom fucking Clancy's.

I'm so lost with this book, Dave Eggers should hold a fundraiser for me. It's just not enjoyable any more. And because I don't have to take a test on it, I think I'll skip the next 400 pages. This is my first attempt at Eco...maybe it's just not my thing.

So I bought this book called "Absurdistan," which I had read a review for a while back, and it's hilarious and awesome. It's about a morbidly obese, spoiled Russian Jew who wants to return to America but can't because of his gangster father. I can't remember the last novel I read that was this entertaining...perhaps "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates"?

At the Sahara, the three of us decided to just grab a quick bite at the coffee shop. So I'm drinking my coffee and waiting for my omelette when Chris sees a big cockroach skitter underneath our booth. We're, understandably, disgusted. We get up from the booth and another customer brushes a roach off his face. Then we see an ENORMOUS cockroach on one of the other tables. They were everywhere. It was revolting. I can't believe I even drank a half-cup of their coffee. NEVER EAT AT THE SAHARA COFFEE SHOP. Or pretty much anywhere in the Sahara.

I was off food pretty much the rest of the day.

Then, flight back to LA, cab ride home, sleep. The end.

You Build 16 Stubs, What Do You Get?

Ironically, while I was enjoying a lovely three-day weekend in Vegas, the Internet got angry with my boss for working me too hard.

Now, don't me wrong. I work hard for the money. So much so, in fact, that people occasionally treat me right.

It all started when Jason, the CEO of Mahalo, wrote this post discussing some of the principles he has employed in running the company. I would say this post very accurately reflects the culture at Mahalo.

Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year... which is at least $2,000 a year.... which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you're getting 10-20x return on your investment... and you've got a happy team member.

I have three monitors at work. It's like starring in my own Michael Bay film. "Abort! Abort! Get 'em outta there!"

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs.

We do have excellent chairs.

Here's the segment that got controversial:

Fire people who are not workaholics. don't love their work... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. don't work at a startup if you're not into it--go work at the post office or stabucks if you're not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

The strikethroughs are in the original. Jason changed the language after the strong Internet reaction. I'm really not clear as to why "it's not a game" is crossed out, though. Mahalo is no game - we're all busting our ass around there. There's no playtime on this guy's watch.

As for the stuff about "balance" in one's life, I have two responses:

(1) It's entirely possible to work at Mahalo and still have some kind of balance in your life. Many Mahalo guides and developers have strong passions outside of work - there are numerous authors, screenwriters, musicians, athletes, bloggers, podcasters, actors, even feature film directors. Numerous guides and developers are married; some have children. Sounds like balance to me. Oh, but they work hard for a guy with high expectations, so that doesn't count as having a life. Now, going to tech industry conferences every weekend...THAT'S LIVING! WOOOOO-EEEEEEE!

(2) Jason was right the first time. Balance is overrated. Obsessiveness is not rewarded nearly enough in this world. The only way to get truly amazingly good at something is to obsess over it. There are things in this world that rely heavily on natural ability and can't be achieved through extensive experience, practice or investigation...but not too many.

When I worked at Laser Blazer, I would estimate that I watched, on average, 1 movie I had never seen before each day. Some days, I would watch movies at work, then come home and watch 2 or 3 more movies. That's obsessive behavior. But I bet I know more about movies than you, unless you have also kept up a regimen like this for an extended period of time.

Not everyone's personality works this way. Some people need to focus for 6-8 hours and then get the hell away and focus elsewhere. I get that. They should just find a job that fits this lifestyle and rhythm. Mahalo is so not that job. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be able to work there. If my post-production job had required this level of dedication, I would have quit inside a week. (Wisely, they worked me just hard enough to dampen my spirits and keep me quiet for 3 years, but not so hard that I'd actually come to my senses and quit. My revenge was not really giving a shit and sometimes getting drunk at lunch.)

But these days, I care about what I'm doing and I enjoy my job, so I get obsessive about it, because that's just how I am. It's not really about the salary.

Some of the responses to Jason's post were, in my mind, ludicrously naive. Most ludicrous? This one from 37signals titled "Fire the Workaholics." Good luck with all that...

People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem. If you’re dealing with people working with anything creatively that’s a deadbeat way to get great work done.

Time and concentrated effort won't necessarily solve every problem alone...but you've got to admit that it really helps, right? Perhaps this is why, immediately after a homicide has happened, they start scouring the crime scene and questioning witnesses rather than, say, catching up on last week's "House." Building a company from scratch takes a lot of work, and that means a lot of hours. If you have someone who's passionate enough about the job to work long hours for you solving problems...you're gonna tell me that's a bad thing, because they're not being creative enough?

If all you do is work, your value judgements [sic] are unlikely to be sound. Making good calls on “is it worth it?” is absolutely critical to great work. Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams “misguided values”.

I fail to see how working hard and utilizing good judgment are mutually exclusive.

But still, just for the sake of argument, let's consider a scenario: Two employees both come up with the same idea and the boss hates it. "That's a terrible idea!" the hypothetical boss who is absolutely not based on any real boss says. So one employee goes, "Crap, he didn't like my idea, what a big meanie" and goes home while the other hangs out for 4 hours trying to improve his or her idea. You're telling me the latter employee has "misguided values"? Isn't this usually called "trying"? Or "giving a shit"?

Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.

You'd rather your employees talk about goddamn whittling than the vital task at hand? REALLY? I mean, there's no need to be a Nazi, and I think it's fine to allow people to be people and to gab occasionally during the day (and Mahalo, like all workplaces, has its share of socializing, and more of its fair share of Rick Rolling). But it's not a bad thing if a lot of people who work on a big project want to talk about the project. We can talk about what books we're enjoying on GoodReads and go see monster movies on opening night, but that's hardly the top priority.

I mean, regardless of what you personally think of Mahalo, the fact is that the people who work on it believe in what we're doing. So once you start from that assumption, not wanting to take 2 hour coffee breaks to discuss whittling makes more sense. (Not that it doesn't sound riveting.)

The Reason The Phrase WTF Was Invented

This is the reason Twitter exists, right here. So people can let their friends know about "Why Must I Cry":



Thanks to Sean P. for using Twitter the way it was meant to be used.

Not Sure About This One...

I like the idea of giving the writers behind The Onion a movie...but making a movie out of a parody newspaper? Is it really just going to be a film-length fake newscast with this old guy reading us old Onion articles? Cause, if so, I'm not shocked it's going straight to DVD:



It's eerily reminiscent of the Jerky Boys movie. The Onion is no flash-in-the-pan. Why not wait until a genuinely good idea for a way to extend the brand into films comes along?

Or maybe this is all a fakeout and there is no Onion Movie. Or maybe there is, but it's nothing like this. I'm not sure I still care.

[They're seriously excited about the trailer at Film Drunk. Tantalized, you might even say. "zOMG! They said cock! And I recognize that guy from my childhood in the '80s! Best Trailer Evah!"'

The Nines

I feel very conflicted about The Nines. As a screenwriter, John August has done Go and Charlie's Angels and several collaborations with Tim Burton (including Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but his directorial debut isn't really like any of those movies. Or any other movies, now that I think about it, save maybe Donnie Darko.

Here's the thing. August breaks tons of storytelling "rules" and conventions, and almost gets it to work for a while. I admire that. For example, the films opens with Ryan Reynolds lighting clothes on fire in a mansion, then leaving to go buy crack. We follow his character on a 10 minute crack binge without knowing anything about him. (A passing bus ad indicates that he's the star of a TV show called "Crime Lab," but that's about it for backstory).

It's an excellent way to introduce you to this guy's world, which is chaotic and confusing, like a crack bender without the brief euphoria. It's this first story, with TV star Gary is placed under house arrest in the unoccupied mansion of another one of his agency's clients, that works the best, with August falling easily into laid-back LA comedy mode. Gary begins a peculiar flirtation with the bored married woman living next door (Hope Davis) while being looked after and scrutinzed by a expert in crisis management PR (Melissa McCarthy).

This is where the Donnie Darko comparisons come into play. Before long, it becomes obvious to Gary that this house and his sentence in it is not entirely what it seems. He starts to notice the prevalence of the number 9, which starts showing up everywhere. And his attractive neighbor's visits start to develop an urgency, as if she's secretly trying to tell him something very important between all the banter.

Two more segments follow, with Reynolds, Davis and McCarthy assuming different (but not entirely dissimilar) roles. In Section 2, Reynolds is a TV writer working on a pilot starring his long-time best friend (McCarthy) and overseen by a demanding network executive (Davis). Again, conflicts develop in his personal life and reality begins to unravel. In Section 3, where everything is nominally "explained," Reynolds is a video game designer stranded with his wife (McCarthy) and young daughter (Elle Fanning) in the mountains without cell reception. Davis plays a stranger who tries to help him get to the nearest town.



It's weird and disorienting, but The Nines isn't ever boring, in part because August keeps his sense of humor amidst all the metaphysics and fantasy. Though some of the insider "Hollywood" material starts to get unnecessary and navel-gazing, particularly during the semi-autobiographical mid-section, this is probably a more insightful, humorous and on-target entertaining industry satire than most movies dedicated solely to that pursuit.

Elaborate puzzle movies, much like professional illusionists, tend to develop an air of self-importance, a constant and aggressive presence to distract you from discovering what's really going on. But The Nines doesn't really get so serious or heady until the last 10 minutes. Which is when everything falls apart.

It's not that August has thought up a stupid or poor ending, necessarily. As a short story, The Nines could work very well. But it doesn't work as a movie. You just can't do the things he wants to do with it. There's no way to speak some of this dialogue or play some of these scenes dramatically without sounding ridiculous.

I'm reminded (and this is never a good comparison) of the ending of Neil LaBute's laughably atrocious remake of The Wicker Man. At the end, you've got a scene of brutal torture. If you read about such a thing, particularly if it were vividly described, it would make you recoil in horror. But watching it happen to Nicolas Cage while he screams and flails about renders it hilarious. The Nines, on the page, would likely be the kind of trippy conversation-inspiring mindfuck that August was aiming for. But watching Reynolds act it out is just...entirely fraudulent and impossible. I'm not sure how you could make this work on screen.

Fetch Me My Fainting Couch!

This Washington Post editorial, nominally about swooning female Obama fans, has more lame gender stereotypes than I would have thought possible to cram into a single Op-Ed piece.

It's called "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get." As it's written by Charlotte Allen, the we means women in general. Well, I suppose women who like Obama, as opposed to all the other women who aren't really women, I suppose, who prefer McCain or Hillary or Alan Keyes. (Okay, I'm kidding...no one likes Alan Keyes.)

Allen opens by noting a recent trend among female Obama fans: fainting at one of the man's rallies. She then cites one woman yelling out "I love you" at another campaign event. From this, she draws a simple conclusion: Bitches ain't shit.

"Women 'Falling for Obama,' " the story's headline read. Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

Yeah, you thought right. But just because someone has still fainted without wearing a corset, it doesn't disprove the truth about Victorian women fainting because they were clamping shards of whalebone around their midsection to appear unnaturally hourglass-shaped. I mean, being fatigued and overheated in a large crowd at a big, exciting public event has been known to cause a few people to pass out as well.

I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

The most ludicrous thing about this article is how Allen pretends that these thoughts were inspired by women fainting at Obama rallies, as opposed to the other way around. What? A women fainted at a political event? I guess the Earl of Chesterfield, whose ludicrously misogynist and not particularly memorable quote I've long had memorized for no reason, was right all along!

I mean, clearly this is just a woman who loathes her own sex, for whatever reason (maybe she's religious!), and looks for any opportunity to "lash out" at her gender. This "some women are excited about Barack Obama" thing is a pretty poor excuse, though. I mean, women are actively engaged in politics and this is somehow a bad thing? I'd far prefer that the ladies be energized about Obama's campaign than any of the other pop culture ephemera that tends to occupy Americans of both sexes.

I'm not the only woman who's dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us. It's a frequent topic of lunch, phone and water-cooler conversations; even some feminists can't believe that there's this thing called "The Oprah Winfrey Show" or that Celine Dion actually sells CDs. A female friend of mine plans to write a horror novel titled "Office of Women," in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox.

Seriously, now, this is just stupid. Plenty of men buy Celine Dion CD's and guys don't necessarily get all that much done while working than women do. Guess who invented Minesweeper? A man! I mean, how desperate do you have to be to make this case in the Washington Post? "Ugh, chicks are so lame. I mean, who watches 'Oprah', am I right? Up high!"

We exaggerate, of course. And obviously men do dumb things, too, although my husband has perfectly good explanations for why he eats standing up at the stove (when I'm not around) or pulls down all the blinds so the house looks like a cave (also when I'm not around): It has to do with the aggressive male nature and an instinctive fear of danger from other aggressive men. When men do dumb things, though, they tend to be catastrophically dumb, such as blowing the paycheck on booze or much, much worse (think "postal"). Women's foolishness is usually harmless. But it can be so . . . embarrassing.

What...the...fuck...He eats over the stove because he fears other aggressive men? Maybe he's just lazy. That's why I do it. I mean, she's just rambling now. What's the point of this digression? This column so far has said:

(1) Women pass out/yell silly stuff at Barack Obama rallies

(2) Women are pathetic

(3) Men are kind of pathetic too, but it's a rugged, more attractive kind of pathetic

Also, the notion that only a man would blow a paycheck on booze is just weird. Aren't there plenty of female alcoholics? I'm pretty sure I've met at least a few.

Let's continue:

Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex.

Allen comes dangerously close here to admitting the truth, that she viewed Hillary's campaign almost entirely through gender stereotypes. Somehow, though, just like it's the fault of women that they have been pegged "the weaker sex," it's the fault of Hillary Clinton that everyone insist she stand in for all women and behave in a way that makes everyone maximally comfortable.

I mean, how did Hillary typify "every stereotypical flaw of the female sex"? How could anyone? Some of those stereotypes are contradictory!

Allen continues by saying Hillary's too dependent on her husband (whatever that means) and by calling her former campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, a "Latina queena." Seriously...is Charlotte Allen a nom de plume of Rush Limbaugh or what?

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental?

You don't. That's all in your head. I can honestly say that neither Barbara Bush or Margaret Thatcher fall for the gooily sentimental.

Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Here's the book's autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn't pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that's the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by -- get this -- picking up a Latin lover!

It's a tough job, psychoanalyzing an entire gender based on the most popular book on the paperback nonfiction chart. Hey, what's the #1 hardcover nonfiction bestseller this week? Why, it's Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism!" From this, I will conclude that the average American IQ hovers between 56 and 60 and that public outrage will cause the entire Whole Foods franchise to be legally outlawed by the end of the next week.

Then there's the chick doctor television show "Grey's Anatomy" (reportedly one of Hillary Clinton's favorites). Want to be a surgeon? Here's what your life will be like at the hospital, according to "Grey's": sex in the linen-supply room, catfights with your sister in front of the patients, sex in the on-call room, a "prom" in the recovery room so you can wear your strapless evening gown to work, and sex with the married attending physician in an office. Oh, and some surgery. When was the last time you were in a hospital and spotted two doctors going at it in an empty bed?

Lots and lots of guys watch "Grey's Anatomy." Several of its writers, directors and members of the shows creative team are men. How is its stupidity (and I'm not arguing with Char here) the fault of women again?

It just goes on and on like this. Allen identifies something she doesn't like and then says women are responsible for it because they are so stupid. Except her. She's one of the cool ones.

Women have lamer mental conditions than men. Women are worse drivers. She even says this! "The theory that women are the dumber sex -- or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents -- is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence." Is this kind of thing really still acceptable in mainstream discourse?

That paragraph, by the way, continues by presenting neurological evidence that comes nowhere near to proving that women are dumber than men. She closes with: "While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid." But that's not what she said! She said Women are the dumber sex!"

I honestly can't believe the Washington Post would print something so insipid. Presenting this as a worthwhile perspective on contemporary feminism is like asking Andrew Dice Clay to do the keynote at the 2008 National NOW Conference.

Writing About Las Vegas While Avoiding the Phrase "Vegas Baby"

After this sentence, I will attempt to keep the words "Vegas" and "baby" a minimum of four words apart...

So, I'm going to Vegas next weekend to meet up with a bunch of college friends, many of whom live in far-flung locations and whom I get to see rarely. It promises to be a lot of fun, and as if the reunion aspect weren't enough, I'm getting an excellent rate on a suite at the Venetian. So a good time will hopefully be had by all.

I always drive to Vegas. I hate everything about air travel, for starters, and would almost always prefer to just control my own itinerary by driving myself. Not having to subject myself to ritual humiliation at the hands of TSA employees (us Semitic bearded guys tend to get a bit of extra attention these days) is an added bonus. Also, it just seems silly to spend hundreds of dollars on a flight when it's only 4-5 hours away by car.

My only concern is this: several years ago, I drove back from Vegas on a Sunday night at it took forever. Granted, that was a holiday weekend (Thanksgiving), but still...I'd prefer to not have to inch through several hundred miles of desert for 8+ hours again if at all possible.

There is nothing in this world more frustrating and depressing than sitting in traffic in the middle of the desert. (It took us about an hour to get through Baker! Population: 12 if you include the Bun Boy!) It made me feel so predictable, like a robot. This massive expanse of land all around me, and I'm waiting in a workday-length line to follow the identical single path everyone else is following, towards our mutual destination. Plus, it's not like you can just pull off the road and wait it out, unless you'd enjoy the company of salamanders and meth labs for the evening. (I don't even want to know what's down Zzyzx Road).

So I'll either have to leave Vegas way way early on Sunday to beat the crowds (an unappealing option, as I'm only arriving late on Friday), or I'll have to wait until way way late on Sunday to avoid the crowds. I'll probably go for the latter and just show up late for work the next day, but then there's the question of how late I should wait? 8 p.m.? 10 p.m.? Midnight? It's just a shitty situation to be in, trying to outguess my fellow LA visitors to Vegas.

If only we could organize it somehow...Like, everyone who will be driving to Vegas this weekend signs up on a website and picks their three favored departure times, and then they get an e-mail telling them when they've been assigned to leave for LA to allow for maximum traffic dispersal. I guess it's unenforceable, but at least people would have some kind of clue. This way, I'll just end up falling asleep at the wheel before I can hit Barstow, or foregoing the return trip altogether in favor of a new life as a slot jockey. Anything's better than sitting in one of those Vegas-to-LA traffic jams.

Merde de Batte Aliénée

Is Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard a wacko conspiracy theorist? It kind of sounds like it if this Daily Mail article is to be believed.

The big "bombshell," I suppose, is that about a year ago, Cotillard gave an interview in which she expressed skepticism about the official account of 9/11 and suggested the government was behind it. I mean, I don't believe that, but many do...what makes it really funny is the motive she suggests might have been behind it:

"It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them."

Wow...That's weapons-grade stupid. We may have to upgrade the blog here to Defcon 3 in a moment...

It was cheaper to murder thousands of Americans and concoct a massive, intricately-plotted, international conspiracy than to bring the World Trade Center up to code? What le fuck?

Believe it or not, it gets better:

"Did a man really walk on the Moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don't believe all they tell me, that's for sure."

Why is it so hard for people to believe that a man walked on the moon? I mean, is it really so amazing? It's just a rock in space. If you believe that humans can send shit into space (and satellite TV makes this kind of difficult not to believe), why is it so difficult to take the extra leap that we could blast some poor suckers a bit further out to this one really big rock?

But bear in mind, she does believe the United States government could pull off 9/11 and keep it secret. Or maybe all of this makes more sense in French.

[Found via Dlisted]

Ad Nauseum

I've seen two interesting ads for Hillary Clinton in the past few days. Let's take a look:

The first ad comes from the Clinton campaign itself. It's one of those ludicrous "scare" ads that tells you, if you vote for the candidate's opponent, it's most likely your children will die, possibly with their insides on the outside. Or not. We're not sure exactly how your children will be brutally murdered should you vote for our opponent, we just know it is definitely going to happen.



This strikes me as a very Cold War kind of ad. Hillary's the only one we can trust to decide in the middle of the night if we should bomb the Russians. Seems like, in a modern context, most of these kind of emergency, middle-of-the-night decisions kind of decide themselves.

"We've got word terrorists are going to blow up New York!"

"Stop them!"

John Dickerson from Slate asked the obvious question to Hillary's campaign staff the next day: why, exactly, would Clinton be a better person to answer that 3 am phone call than Obama? (More precisely, he asks when Clinton was tested and had to make a major foreign policy decision.) They had no good answer.

I'm thinking, much like the Republicans in 2006 and Rudy Giuliani up until pretty recently, Clinton thinks she can scare people into voting for her. It hasn't really been working in a while. Mercifully, it seems like years of fearmongering by Bush et. al. (and, to be honest, a lot of Democrats, too) have resulted in a populace that's, for the moment, immune to such tactics. I certainly don't think this will last forever, and another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would most likely nip it in the bud, but it appears to be the state in which Obama and Clinton are presently campaigning.

Again, Clinton seems to feel that stressing the same point she's been making over and over again ("I'm more qualified and experienced than Obama on foreign policy") more forcefully will suddenly make voters agree with her, but it's just unrealistic. This ad reminds me of something ridiculous the Romney campaign would come up with. That's not a compliment.

The second ad, made by Jack Nicholson on Hillary's behalf, fares much better:



You've got to love that they went with that Few Good Men "woman you have to salute" quote. Jack rules.

Snow Angels

Somehow, I managed to get in, along with my brother and our fellow Mahooligan Raj, to the premiere of David Gorden Green's Snow Angels at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood the other night. Not sure how it happened...we only bought tickets two days in advance, and then got to watch the film with luminaries including Green, Kate Beckinsale, director Mark Freiburger and (I'm pretty sure) Ryan Gosling. They even had free booze and appetizers outside afterwards.

There was some question, after it debuted at last year's Sundance festival, about whether or not Snow Angels would ever merit a theatrical release. (It wasn't picked up immediately, as you'd expect for a film from a well-regarded director starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale.) I understand the reluctance on the part of the studios to take a gamble on this. In addition to being a somber story of failure, loss and regret, it's also probably Green's most underwhelming effort to date. (Warner Independent eventually jumped in and will release the film in major U.S. cities later this month).

That by no means makes it a bad movie. David Gordon Green has a ridiculous track record thus far. His debut, George Washington, may be one of the most audacious, accomplished first films I have ever seen. Since that, he's helmed the beautifully rendered, lyrical romance All the Real Girls and the idiosyncratic Night of the Hunter riff Undertow. (This last film is woefully underrated, available on DVD and features an AMAZING performance from Josh Lucas. Trust me...Netflix it...)

So it's not exactly comparing Snow Angels to Norbit or anything when I say it felt kind of uncharacteristic for Green. Where his films tend to be gracefully composed, Snow Angels is choppy. Where his films tend to have intricately layered narratives, revealing new textures and details on repeat viewings, Snow Angels feels sort of incomplete and half-formed. That doesn't mean it isn't still worth watching or well done. It's just not exactly George Washington. Few films are.



Based on a novel by Stewart O'Nan, the film follows the interlocking stories of three couples in a small, snowbound American town. High school band geek Arthur Parkinson (Michael Angarano) has caught the eye of the pretty, unconventional new girl at school (Olivia Thirlby, who played Juno's best friend) and together they embark on a sweetly uncertain first romance. Meanwhile, Arthur's father (Griffin Dunne) is leaving his mother (Jeanetta Arnette) for another woman.

Arthur works at a local Chinese restaurant with Annie (Kate Beckinsale), who used to babysit for him years ago. Annie's in the process of divorcing Glen (Sam Rockwell), who's desperate to get back into her life and to prove he can be a good father to their toddler, Tara.

Thematically, putting these stories together in one film makes some amount of sense. We're seeing three different periods in the life of a love affair collide in every sequence. Arthur and Lila experience the heady thrill of a first kiss in the same moment that Annie and Glen suffer through a marriage that has worn out its welcome, with Arthur's parents standing in for the uncertain present moment itself. They're asking out loud the questions that may only be vague thoughts in the back of their son's mind as he cavorts with his first girlfriend, the same questions Glen has asked Annie, only to refuse to hear her answers.

In practice, however, Green (who wrote the screenplay as well as directed) doesn't find a way to tie all of his threads together. In Crime and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen employs a somewhat similar structure, following the interlocking stories of a variety of acquaintances, all thematically but not narratively related. However, he has a real powerhouse final sequence that brings all the characters together (physically) and ties all of their stories together (emotionally and thematically).

Green desperately needs a scene like this, and doesn't have one. We're left with three conclusions, but no closure.



It's a shame that the film doesn't resonate more deeply, because it's impeccably put together, just as you'd expect from DGG.

The performances are across-the-board terrific, with all of the leads doing career-highlight-type work. I'm pretty much always a fan of Rockwell's performances, but he's particularly strong in Snow Angels. If it were going to open later in the year, I'd consider him a possible award contender. He tends to play a certain type of guy - eccentric, unpredictable, full of shit - and Glen fits that mold, but there's a rawness and a desperation to this character that's so realistic, it's almost painful to watch. (One scene that's sure to be a subject of post-film conversation and analysis finds Glen, in an alcoholic stupor, dancing with some old drunks in a dive bar. It's an unflinching look at a man hitting rock bottom.)

Beckinsale and Thirlby, and Amy Sedaris in a relatively small role as Annie and Arthur's chatty co-worker, are the other standouts, but the whole cast is pretty terrific. (Manhunter star Tom Noonan shows up in a brief, very funny role as the Marching Band instructor.)

Tim Orr's stark white cinematography is reminiscent of A Simple Plan and Fargo, using barren, blank landscapes to comment on the hopelessness and isolation of the characters. Several transitions cut directly from dark interior scenes to glaringly bright winter exteriors, as if to purposefully cause the viewer to blink, recoil and rub his or her eyes. This is the harsh choice presented to Glen: fester inside feeding off rage, depression and booze or face the unforgiving, demanding and judgmental world outside, where all his sins are exposed and scrutinized.

A lot of talented people did a lot of great work on Snow Angels, so it's a pretty good movie with some things to say and some genuinely compelling individual scenes. But it's various moments don't add up to an entirely coherent whole, and I doubt most audiences will care to invest the time and patience to appreciate such a dour experience.

You Start Thinking About Your Knife...

Throw Me That Statue covers Guided by Voices' "My Valuable Hunting Knife" while riding the ferry from Seattle across the Puget Sound. Like you do.



[More Throw Me That Statue ferry songs]

Bible Basher = Bible Thumper

The title of the BBC documentary "Baby Bible Bashers" is confusing for Americans. Over here, to "bash" the Bible would be to criticize it. I myself am a bit of a Bible Basher (though a bit hirsute for a baby). I'm pretty sure the American English equivalent title would be "Baby Bible Thumpers."

The film is about child evangelists, two of whom live deep in the heart of Dumbfuckistan, the American South. Aren't you proud, America? 2 out of 3 brainwashed zealots under 12 ain't bad!

The entire film is on YouTube, and I highly recommending it, if you have room in your calendar for a decade-long bout with clinical depression. Just as you'd expect, in each of the three cases, we're presented with a demanding stage-parent (altar-parent?) instructing their child to blather a lot of nonsense and generally humiliate themselves in front of strangers.

The delusions voiced by these "adults" and abuses visited on these kids are far too numerous to mention. The father of a 9-year-old Fort Lauderdale preacher Terry Durham could not be any more transparent about his crass desire to profit from his son's "preaching" (really just singing mixed with some of that ludicrous "laying on of hands" pretending to cure people stuff...I didn't hear him say a single coherent sentence about God, Jesus or anything else). It's actually kind of a shame the Dad is so hung up on making a living off of his child's preaching, when he could at least try to profit off of his child's singing. Or, you know, he could get a job that didn't depend on exploiting his 9-year-old.

But I'd take 20 greedy Todd Durham's over one Kendall Boutwell. This nutjob (a former "sinner" himself) is one of these guys who puts on signboards listing off all the various groups of people that are going to Hell and then walks around major cities getting into pointless, violent arguments with passersby. This guy takes his 7-year-old son on the streets of New York and demands that he begins preaching fire and brimstone to strangers.

The kid is clearly not particularly keen on the idea, but fears his father (who beats him regular, to keep him from "rebelling," naturally), so he forces himself to do it anyway. I'm embedding Part 1 to get you started below (the whole documentary can be seen here at Thought Theater), but in Part 5 you actually see this kid, Samuel Boutwell, snap on the streets of Manhattan. This is ugly stuff, a vivid portrayal of a pathetic character so insecure, he must rant at strangers and torment his young son in order to feel powerful.

Oh, and the Brazilian girl sleeps with her father and describes him as "her whole world." This movie makes Jesus Camp look like Wet Hot American Summer.

Yes

Indeed.



Quite.

I'm Not Wearing a Tie At All!

So, I liveblogged what could very well be the last Presidential Debate of the season. If Barack decimates HilRod in Ohio and Texas as he has been in...well, pretty much every state for the past month, you're looking at the End of the Clinton Era.

I think we can all agree on one thing...Tim Russert is very much like Lionel Hutz. A halfwit playing at being a fearsome interrogator.



The man you knew as Tim Russert is dead...Say hello to Miguel Sanchez!

Words cannot describe the abject stupidity of Russert's moderation of this debate. It's not just his performance either, although he talks too much and too fast and he actually cuts off and interrupts the candidates while they're in the middle of making a point to re-ask the question they're already answering. (As opposed to Brian Williams, who interrupts the candidates so that he can segue into SUV commercials.)

He's starting from the wrong place. Instead of choosing questions that will provide us with some insight into these people, their ideologies, their values and their intentions, he constantly tries to catch them in some kind of inconsistency. I'm not sure where this fascination with inconsistency comes from. I mean, sure, if someone is constantly taking contrary positions (like, oh, I don't know, JOHN MCCAIN), it's fair game to point this out and ask a question about it. But every single one of Russert's questions carried with it the sole intention to root out some sort of reversal. (Except when he condescended to Hillary by giving her a pop quiz).

On NAFTA: "You said it was good on balance for New York and America in 2004, and now you're in Ohio and your words are much different, Senator. The record is very clear."

On Hillary's plan to create jobs: "And I was reminded of your campaign in 2000 in Buffalo, my hometown, just three hours down Route 90, where you pledged 200,000 new jobs for upstate New York. There's been a net loss of 30,000 jobs. And when you were asked about your pledge, your commitment, you told The Buffalo News, 'I might have been a little exuberant.' Tonight will you say that the pledge of 5 million jobs might be a little exuberant?"

If we -- if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and al Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?

He's now asking if, at some point in the future, they might hypothetically hold one position on Iraq and then reverse it should the circumstances change. "Imagine how stupid you'd feel if you got our troops out of Iraq and then had to go back. Like if, say, you forgot your wallet in the Green Zone! Wouldn't that be stupid?"

Also, it's theoretical that maybe one day Iraq might "go to Hell" because al Qaeda "resurges." MY GOD THIS GUY'S AN ASSHOLE! Al Qaeda can't resurge there because they were never there in the beginning. He means "al Qaeda in Iraq," which is not the al Qaeda that blew up the World Trade Center, and is only one group responsible for insurgent violence in Iraq. Also, Iraq has already gone to Hell. Iraq went to hell in 2003, and it has been getting worse ever since. Having us there doesn't make it better. It just makes more Americans and Iraqis dead. And it makes us look greedy, bloodthirsty and insane to the rest of the world. And we are all of those things, I just don't know if we need to keep advertising it to the neighbors. Dexter doesn't go around blabbing to everyone in sight about cutting up criminals after hours.

Again, though, note that this whole Iraq question pivots on an inconsistent opinion the candidates might have at some point in the future. This is "gotcha" journalism of the silliest form, where the whole point is to make the subject look foolish, not to get any useful information out of them.

Senator Obama, let me ask you about motivating, inspiring, keeping your word. Nothing more important. Last year you said if you were the nominee you would opt for public financing in the general election of the campaign; try to get some of the money out. You checked "Yes" on a questionnaire. And now Senator McCain has said, calling your bluff, let's do it. You seem to be waffling, saying, well, if we can work on an arrangement here. Why won't you keep your word in writing that you made to abide by public financing of the fall election?

Motivating and inspiring don't have much to do with keeping your word, first of all. Russert just brings it up because he apparently thinks being consistent is the only thing that matters about a politician. (Notice how having good ideas and plans has nothing to do with anything.) Motivating, inspiring and keeping your word are all good things, but not necessarily connected. Someone could be motivating and inspiring and also totally full of shit. It's not mutually exclusive.

This is just so tiresome. Russert kept on repeating the same attack, as well, which only makes it seem more insipid. Russert has no real ability to devise provocative questions or to genuinely challenge his subjects, so he resorts to haranguing, badgering and these kinds of clumsy rhetorical traps. He's trying to bully them, not extract carefully-concealed truths.

There is so much going on that these candidates never talk about...Every debate is health care, Iraq, the economy (and always in the vaguest terms possible) and then these niggling little "can I catch you in some slip or misstatement or inconsistency." When it comes right down to it, who cares if these people used to say one thing and now say another? Seriously. Let's take them at their word and consider what they're actually saying now. We'll never know if they're planning to do the complete opposite once they're in office anyway, so we might as well evaluate their decision-making process, professed beliefs and general intelligence, right?

Okay, so that's my Tim Russert rant. As for the candidate's themselves, I think Hillary came off way way too mean-spirited and angry tonight. I feel bad saying that, because people often characterize Hillary this way and I tend to think they're overstating it, but it's genuinely how I reacted to her performance tonight. Her efforts to attack Obama, for whatever reason, just don't seem to work, ever, and she responds by making them more forcefully, which just makes her seem agitated and angry.

She strikes me as being far better at playing strong defense than offense. When attacked, Hillary can often come up with a reasonable explanation or a carefully-worded evasion. Often, they won't make any sense, but you'll only realize that later. Like her husband, she's hard to rhetorically pin down. But when she goes after Obama, the jabs just never seem to land. Sometimes, she misses the mark completely and winds up seeming desperate.

The most obvious example tonight was the exchange about noted anti-Semite and all-around piece of crap Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama. Russert asked: "Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?" (Another question not worth America's time! What a shocker!)

And Obama answered: "I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments." And also: "I obviously can't censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we're not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan."

Which sounds clear enough to me.

Then Russert asked: "Do you reject his support?"

Which sounds like the same question Obama just answered, repeated. To which Obama replied: "I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments."

Denunciation. Cut-and-dry. Obama denounces Louis Farrakhan and his past statements. Let's move on...Oh, no, wait:

MR. RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism "gutter religion."

OBAMA: Tim, I think -- I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That's why I have consistently denounced it.

Ugh. As if this all weren't painful and repetitive enough, Hillary had to jump in by bringing up an occasion when she, too, was endorsed by an anti-Semite:

And, you know, I was willing to take that stand, and, you know, fortunately the people of New York supported me and I won. But at the time, I thought it was more important to stand on principle and to reject the kind of conditions that went with support like that.

So, she's calling Obama unprincipled for not...what...super-double-plus denouncing Louis Farrakhan? What's he supposed to do, ding-dong-ditch him? Fart in his soup? Burn the guy in effigy?

It gets worse:

I'm just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory -- I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we've got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far reaching.

Wow. This is what you get when one candidate is losing by a bunch and your moderator is an idiot. Utter nonsense in place of actual political discourse.

There were other Hillary moments like this. She's essentially resorted to machine gun tactics: just fire everything you've got at the other side and hope something, anything, sticks. I'm really starting to doubt it will work (and I've been convinced Hillary would eventually be the 2008 Democratic nominee for years now).

My theory on both Hillary and Mitt Romney is this: they are too successful for their own good. They just win all the time, and they're so used to winning and succeeding, they are utterly incapable of processing failure. Romney obviously believed he could buy the Republican nomination, and when throwing millions of dollars at the polls didn't make them go up, he became frustrated and angry. He started lashing out (remember that tiff with the AP reporter in the hardware store?) and generally guaranteed his own political demise.

Ditto Hillary...In case you haven't noticed, the Clintons don't lose elections very much. I'm sure they're not used to it. And I think it's kind of freaking her out.