The Golden Age Itchy & Scratchy

Tom And Jerry Online. Impressive (if insufficiently violent) fansite.
[Via]

Revenge Of The Sith

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) — Newt Gingrich is taking steps toward a potential presidential bid in 2008 with a book criticizing President Bush’s policies on Iraq and a tour of early campaign states.

The former House speaker who led Republicans to power a decade ago said he soon will visit Iowa and New Hampshire to promote his book, try to influence public policy and keep his political options alive.

“Anything seems possible,” including a White House race, Gingrich told The Associated Press.

[Story]

Last Day To Vote

Unless A.H.O.Y. officials change their minds again.

Aargh! I'm Changing!

We just watched Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1931), directed by Robert Mamoulian and starring Frederic March, who won an Oscar for playing the outlaw chemist who shouldn't have tasted his own junk. I had no idea it was this good. Convincingly imagined, ambitiously shot, well acted, and dirty as anything.

Jekyll knocks back the monster juice out of sheer sexual frustration, because his fiancee's bloodless old dad won't let the wedding happen for another eight months. How do we know why the good doctor is in such a hurry to get married? We start to figure it out when a naked prostitute practically begs him for a physical and he comes this close to giving her one. I had no idea stuff like this went on in 1931, let alone in movies made in 1931. But it wasn't just a sweatfest; long first-person shots, populous and troublesome set-ups, split-screens, and dancy camera movement add up to a piece of storytelling that might well have enthralled a young Will Eisner. Before the weekend is out, we'll watch the 1942 Spencer Tracy version. I expect something tamer, and it certainly couldn't have been conceived, staged and photographed better.

Update: Couldn't finish the Tracy version. Script too close to its predecessor's, but slow and dull.

Woggon Train

Left: Katy Keene abducted by robot, October 1961, by Bill Woggon. Right: Robot Running, by his grandson, Jerico Woggon, from the upcoming gallery show, "my ROBOT ran away with my CHERRY in San Francisco".

The press release says in part:

On January 20, 2005, join the younger Woggon at the Art Celebration with Jerico, to discover Katy Keene, and to check out her influence on Jerico’s latest exhibition of work, “My Robot Ran Away with My Cherry in San Francisco.” “It’s an honor to celebrate Katy’s 60th birthday with my first fine art solo exhibition,” said Woggon [...]

Event: Art Celebration with Jerico
What: Artist Reception and Party. Fabulous Food and Open Bar
Who: Jerico Woggon
Time: Thursday, January 20, 2005, 5pm-7pm
Location: 2223 Restaurant and Bar, 2223 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94414

If you're going to be anywhere near San Francisco on January 20, remember: it says open bar.

[Katy cover found at GCBD. The scoop on Katy, and more covers, here.]

Bits Of SUPERFRANKENSTEIN Business

WASHINGTON - Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth has written a letter of protest to the Mexican government urging a halt to its distribution of a new how-to comic book providing safety information for border crossers, calling it "state-sponsored illegal immigration." Arizona Republic. (Wee-haw, J.D.! Don't you put up with them Mexican safety tips!)

Jason of Name That Superhero pays tribute to... why, to me, at right! Name that superhero!

Champ Ryan Estrada is posting his record-setting 72-hour, 72-page comic a buttload at a time, here. He plans to go 96/96 in February, in full color, with a web cam. I'll let you know.

Losthawk sends the best smoking-cessation advice I ever got: those heavily-shrink-wrapped bricks of cheese are GREAT for throwing at the walls -- they don't damage the walls and it doesn't actually hurt the cheese either. Thank you, Losthawk. In that spirit, Meg refers me to this, saying I thought you might need something to do with your hands. Thank you, Meg.

Finally, here's another objectionable nugget from God's List Of The Underlined Parts, the Virginia web ministry that publishes the steamy passages and only the steamy passages, so you never have to read the whole book. They put a lot of stock in urine, if you go by yesterday's Angelou excerpt and today's dribble from Love In The Time Of Cholera, by the pornographer Gabriel Garcia Marquez:

"He was the 1st man that [she] heard urinate... the sound of his stallion’s stream seemed so potent, so replete with authority... years weakened the stream.. wetting the rim of the toilet bowl each time... as a young man his stream was so defined and so direct.. he won contests for marksmanship in filling bottles.. with ravages of age oblique and scattered.. a fantastic fountain, impossible to control... humiliating... he wiped the toilet bowl each time..”

I'm Paul Harvey. Gooood day!

New York Times To Batman: SORRY!

Imagine the phone calls, e-mails and newsroom dressings-down that preceded the greatest newspaper correction in history:

• An obituary of the innovative comic-page illustrator Will Eisner yesterday included an imprecise comparison in some copies between his character the Spirit and others, including Batman. Unlike Superman and some other heroes of the comics, Batman relied on intelligence and skill, not supernatural powers.

From today's Times [Thanks to El Duque].

Time Enough At Last

God's Guide To The Hot Parts--the provocative Christian movie review ministry that explicitly catalogs the dirty stuff--is on strike until the faithful come across with some jack, some scratch, some lettuce, some cabbage, some dough. "No new releases playing locally. Inadequate funds to send me to neighboring towns," so no spicy reviews for at least two weeks, warns The Hot Parts Guy (of course, he's lied to us before). But he does hip us to this amazing I guess literary ministry; ladies and gentlemen, it is my singular honor to present to you...

GOD'S LIST OF THE UNDERLINED PARTS!

It is a website. It is a calling. It posts the smutty passages and the smutty passages only, so you don't have to waste time reading entire books. Here's a sweaty fragment from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by pornographer Maya Angelou:

“..white men wore shorts.. that.. had an opening for taking out their ‘things’ and peeing..”

Go. Celebrate the written word. Thanks to these good missionaries, you have no more excuses... and time enough at last.

As Others See Us

New York Times TV critic Virginia Heffernan gets all comics-hatey in today's review of Alias (registration required):

In the second view, 'Alias,' whose fourth season has its two-hour premiere on ABC tonight, is nothing more than a pretentious comic strip: static, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize in these times when American comics have become, through male nostalgia and the canonization of the graphic novel, sacrosanct.

Let's be honest. Many of us don't like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys. And now we can admit that while the redemption dynamic - little X-Men boys finding in their eccentricity and loneliness a superpower - is touching, there's nothing duller than listening to someone explain, in all seriousness, the Syndicate and the Shadow Force and the Hard Drive and the Plutonium Lance. And the characters: lame. One is good and the other is evil, and then one is evil pretending to be good, and then one is good pretending to be evil.

Can't argue with her about the Shadow Force and the Hard Drive, but I think she'd like the Plutonium Lance better if she read the 500-page gaming guide.

Which of course she won't.

Now They're After Gays' Kids.

ProudParenting.com:

(Costa Mesa, CA) — The Orange County diocese of the Roman Catholic Church is under attack by a group of parents and parishioners upset with the church’s decision to allow a gay couple to enroll their children in a church school.

The group has demanded that St. John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa accept only families that pledge to abide by Catholic teachings, The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.