EIGHT DAYS OLD: A while back, my pal Bryan told me that when his first kid was born, "we lost nearly all of our friends who didn't have children, and made friends with total strangers who did."
"So it's kinda like starting a blog, then?" I replied.
Eight days into parenthood, certain differences between babies and blogs have become clear. Babies do not talk incessantly about themselves. Blogs do not provoke your friends to send you items bearing the face of Elmo. Babies do not care what Maureen Dowd or David Brooks have to say about the world. Blogs do not poop constantly, except maybe Little Green Footballs. Both babies and blogs cut into the time I might otherwise spend watching TV, but only blogs believe that this represents a revolution.
Maya got a clean bill of health at the pediatrician's today, so we've made it through at least one week without completely fouling up our parental responsibilites and ruining our daughter for life. Now all we have to do is keep it up for 17 years, 50 weeks, and six days.
Liberals on the Internet took a quick trip to the gutter with regard to the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. On the left-wing Daily Kos web site, a participant suggested the behavior of the nominee's four-year-old son, Jack, warrants investigation while another speculated about the toddler's sexuality.
"Is nothing sacred anymore? Is no one exempt from insulting partisan attacks?" asked Project 21 member Michael King. "If someone mentions the relatives or personal lives of a liberal, there are wails and caterwauling from the left. But it seems that it's always open season on conservatives."
Just in case you didn't catch it: This "open season" consists of two pseudonymous comments on a liberal blog. Read in context, they're obviously dumb jokes, not serious suggestions -- but that's beside the point. A prominent conservative think tank is trying to gin up a controversy over comments in a blog thread. Just who exactly is being desperate here?
SELF-PROMOTION: Today's Reasoncolumn calls for repealing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act -- not because I have any sympathy for Karl Rove, but because it's a bad law that was passed for bad reasons.
Also, Reason published another article of mine on Monday, on why no sane city should want to host the Olympics. It was originally scheduled to appear last Thursday, but that didn't seem like a good day for tweaking London.
Finally: after two years of neglect, my article archive has finally been updated. Those last two pieces aren't in it yet, but all my other substantial Reason stories are, along with quite a few that aren't so substantial and several pieces that appeared in other outlets.
It is as if the comedian -- the disruptive element in the smooth functioning of the genre -- has been dropped into the fictional world by accident, and, like a playful child, proceeds to toy with its rules. The comedian refuses to act "straight" -- unlike the other characters in the film -- or is incapable of doing so....Thus two sets of expectations come into conflict: the comedian "interferes" with the ostensible fiction, the fiction "constrains" the comedian. It is the play between the two that is responsible for much of the comedy.
That's why I still think James Stockdale really won that debate.
Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005): If you're making a vigilante movie, it's a fair bet that some critic is going to describe it as "fascist." That's harder to do in the case of Batman Begins, since the villains here are fascists themselves -- or, more exactly, they espouse the fascist notion that societies must periodically be cleansed of decadence. (The actual operation of a totalitarian state is beyond their interests.) One thing I like about this movie is the way it puts its title character at an exact midpoint between the semi-fascist misanthropy of the League of Shadows and the liberal optimism of Bruce Wayne's father. A product of both and a duplicate of neither, Wayne's very existence suggests that two seemingly opposed worldviews might actually have something in common. The idea is symbolically reinforced at the end of the film: To kill the villain, the hero must also destroy the physical embodiment of his father's idealism.
It's not a perfect movie, and the plot has a hole or two (as one blogger pointed out, why would a Ninja school be in China?), but it's certainly the best of the live-action superhero flicks. The word "live-action" is there to exclude Pixar's The Incredibles, which towers above all these Marvel and DC adaptations.
Anchorman: The Legend of Rob Burgundy (Adam McKay, 2004): This is an uneven picture filled with jokes that just don't work. But there's one set piece near the end -- a frenzied gang fight between the city's rival news teams -- that's so good, it forces me to make an announcement.
For years I disliked Will Farrell because I associated him with Saturday Night Live's interminable cheerleader sketches, which were about as funny as lupus. But by now he's made me laugh in enough movies that I'm moved to declare a change of heart. Farrell is a funny man. I was wrong to dismiss him. I pledge to reform myself, and in the spirit of revolutionary self-criticism will crawl through the streets of Beijing wearing a dunce cap. Forward, comrades! The east is red!
In Reason, I interview David Garrow on Supreme Court senility, go hunting for natural-born cyborgs, mock the Democrats, and revel in the weirdness of Dubai.
If those Reason articles sound familiar, it's because they actually came out a month ago. But they didn't go online until this week.
ULTRA-INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING: Back in May, I posted some kind words for Nikc Miller's dada comedy Robot-ussin. Miller then sent me a DVD of some more films made by himself and his friends under the label Better Hollywood. There's a lot of good stuff here, and even the parts that don't quite work out still have an infectious energy to them: These guys are happy to try anything, from an abstract experimental short to a parody of dog-training videos. My favorite of the bunch is probably The Skitters: (causes and cures), an anything-goes comedy in the mold of Robot-ussin, but there's something to be said for A Special Message from C.C.A.Q.Z. -- part instructional film, part zombie movie, part gay sex comedy, and part deeply hilarious Wilfred Brimley impression.
Many of the films can be downloaded at the Better Hollywood website. If you'd like a copy of the DVD, drop them a line; last I heard, they'll send you one for free, though they'd appreciate it if you'd give them a few bucks for their trouble.