Whoo!

Veronica Mars has gotten a "full" season order. The ironic quotation marks because the CW has for inexplicable reasons chosen to order seven more episodes rather than the traditional nine.

This means that added to the initial tentative 13-episode order this year, Veronica will have a short, 20 episode third season, unless the CW decides to pony up for the last two at a later date. Still, this is good news, and kvetching too much about it feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Studio 60, Friday Night Lights, now Veronica Mars. It's a suspiciously good year for shows I like. Come on, ABC, make if a fab four with The Nine. The premiere of Daybreak, the second half of which was in its timeslot, was even more disappointing in the ratings than The Nine, admittedly, has been. And it didn't get The Nine's reviews.

Even weirder than shows I like getting full season orders, this year there's some kind of Lewis Carroll thing going on where the networks are showing more patience than the critics. I just did a little search of the TV weeklies and such online.

A couple of them are already giving up on new shows after only a few episodes because "they're not dotting the i's and crossing the t's." But then, the TV critics are required by their jobs to watch shows like Dancing with the flippin' Stars. To say nothing of the OJ Simpson Fox special that no one should watch on peril of their mortal soul.

I, having fewer hours of my TV-watching time spoken for, can afford to give shows time to grow. What's weird is that the networks seem to be doing that too.

I''ll never, ever live this down as long as I live.

You scored as The Pretty-Boi Dyke. You can be a bit cocky at times and ever the heartbreaker, but no one knows that you're really just looking for true love. The Pretty-Boi Dyke 55% The Bohemian Dyke 40% The Student Dyke 30% The Stud 25% The Quasi-Gothic Femme 25% The Femme Fatale 25% The Granola Dyke 20% The Sprightly Elfin Femme 10% The Surprise! Dyke 10% The Little-Boy Dyke 5% The Magic Earring Ken Dyke 5% The Vaginal-Reference-Making Dyke 5% The Hipster Dyke 0% What Type of Lesbian Are You? (Inspired by Curve Mag.) created with QuizFarm.com

No, I wouldn't say it was phallic

Source.

Where the right went wrong

One man's opinion from The Seattle Times, but it's an opinion I share.

The turning point, I believe, was a more emotional issue, that of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who brought Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to the barricades in 2005 to back legislation keeping her on life-support over the protests of her harassed husband. Autopsies showed the woman's brain was in a "vegetative state," and the cynical appeal to religious conservatives turned off huge numbers of voters. Polling at the time showed most Americans, of both parties, rejected the Bushes' campaign to "save" Schiavo, and were disgusted at the raw partisan appeal in a tragic case

If I could hold the future in my open hand

Source

I don't know what it is about those weird blogs written in a language I don't understand but with many cool pictures

...but here's another one.

Short TV ratings news

Via Marc Berman.

My luck.

Friday Night Lights, a show I liked at first but has been losing more and more of my attention each week, has been picked up for a full season.

Meanwhile, Veronica Mars, a show I was tentative about early this year due to having been disappointed in the second season, has been giving me one "wow" episode after another.

And, after gaining some ratings points while House was on hiatus, now that it's back Veronica has slipped back into the "losers" pile in the ratings.

Irony is, I believe Veronica and House shouldn't be in competition with one another. I believe most people who like one, like me, would like the other. In a perfect world I'd like to see Veronica at eight and House at nine, maybe even on the same network.

But as I'm reminded daily, it's not a perfect world.

PS: And just to add insult to injury, more people would still rather watch The Unremarkable Adventures of the Stupid Whore & Her Daughter (formerly Gilmore Girls) than Veronica.

Did Rob Thomas desecrate a shrine in his youth or something?

That's what I like about Fox Broadcasting (re-linked)

Sometimes they air great shows like House, Bones and 24. And then sometimes they air shows where you just know, with absolute moral certainty, that every single person involved is going to hell.

Everyone. Either behind or in front of the cameras; including anybody hateful enough to watch it .

Shows like Temptation Island.

Or this.

If you did it, turn yourself in, you evil, arrogant fuck.

And to you Studio 60 viewers out there: Is it just me, or is the idea of a network president with honor starting to seem like even more of a wish-fufilment dream than Martin Sheen's President Bartlet?

Bloody hell.

You scored as Dante Alighieri. According to you most of humanity will spend at least some of their afterlife in hell. You have a high likelihood of being exiled, but anyone as bloody fucking romantic as you deserves what they get. You have an exceptional moral code, overshadowed by the fact that you yourself cannot uphold it.

Your existence bears a definite irony, although of fairly Christian morality, many pagans, satanists, communists, and intellectuals admire you and your works for all the wrong reasons.

Also, the brighest star in your sky is never going to be your lover...

It takes a lot of grief to be the cartographer of hell.

Dante Alighieri		67%
Miyamoto Musashi		50%
C.G. Jung		50%
Friedrich Nietzsche		50%
Adolf Hitler		42%
Charles Manson		42%
Sigmund Freud		42%
Jesus Christ		33%
Steven Morrissey		33%
Elvis Presley		25%
Mother Teresa		25%
Stephen Hawking		8%
Hugh Hefner		0%
O.J. Simpson		0%

What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You?
created with QuizFarm.com
I suppose I should be pleased that there's a little Mother Teresa and Stephen Hawking in me and apparently I'm nothing like O.J. Simpson...

I never thought I'd say this, but he's actually keeping his eye on the ball

Justin Timberlake was spotted over the weekend at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood. While picking up his black BMW from the valet, a photog asked the pop star, "Do you have anything to say about the recent divorce of Britney and Kevin?"

JT shot back, "Yeah, there's a war going on in Iraq."

For what it's worth...

...I agree with virtually every word of this Michael Kinsley essay from Time. It's about how maybe, just maybe, the people whose half-brained idea the war in Iraq was ought to have to pay a little penance.

More than just saying "Whoops. My bad."

I wish I were creative

Good article here on Jimmy Stewart, arguing that his performances had a darker edge to them than we tend to remember.

On an only semi-related note, I caught the Michael J. Fox episode of "Inside the Actors Studio" a few weeks back. Fox came off as pretty smart, as he usually does. But James Lipton hit new depths of arrogant, oily idocy.

Speaking of "Back To The Future," he asserted that it was a film in the tradition of "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Wizard Of Oz." In which the initially-dissatisfied protaganist learns how good they have it at home by seeing what it would be like without it. About learning to accept how good things are rather than wishing for change or travel.

Well, that's patently not what "Back To The Future" is about. "Back To The Future" is about a guy who goes back in time and changes his parents so that they're cooler when he's a teenager. Does that sound like realizing and accepting how good things are to you?

Glad I got that off my chest.

Random Flickr-Blogging: IMG_6842: The Return Of Chris The Duck edition

"Men...going after little breadcrumbs is war...god help me, I do love it so."

Source



If only you could just go buy it in a store.

Source

That's the most creepy-ass thing I've ever seen in my life. Like Death decided to ditch the Grim Reaper drag and go for something with a bit more plumage.

Source

This almost, but not quite, justifies the entire existence of anime

Note: Despite the credit, the radio sketch is not By Dr. Demento, it's by the Frantics, a Canadian comedy troupe.

Easiest Joke In The World alert

Michael Jackson is planning a comeback performance at the World Music Awards in London this week. He plans on recreating the graveyard scene from his '80s video "Thriller."

--TMZ.com

Ladies and gentlemen, the above is a setup for the Easiest Joke In The World. I want to see your nominiations for a punchline in the comments thread below.

Poetry Corner

All that I have is
Silence and the world outside
And a place to hide

--Anon.

I always liked this song

R.I.P Gerald Levert 1966-2006.

Consider, if you will, this great big question...(UPDATED)

Update: As referenced semi-obliquely in my post below, when George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004 by a sliver of a margin, many Bushy republicans started bleating about how he had "a mandate."

Well, now that the silver shoe is on the other foot, it seems the definition of just what constitutes a mandate has changed, for some. Glenn Greenwald has the story. Hands up, anybody who's surprised.

Original post: How do you spell "relief?" Tom Tomorrow spells it this way, looking at this (newly) modern world...

It’s as if the biopsy results just came back and you don’t have cancer after all. You’re not giddy, exactly, but you can finally take a deep breath and maybe let some of the tension drain out of your shoulders. The future remains uncertain but you can begin to imagine it as something other than relentlessly bleak. As a general rule, I don’t have much faith in Democrats, having not fallen off any turnip trucks within recent memory, but I also think that we’re suddenly in an entirely new ball game. At the very least, I believe they will serve as a necessary bulwark against whatever residual craziness the Bushies may be harboring. They won’t be rubber stamping any plans to invade Iran this time around. And maybe they’ll even step up to the plate and hit one out of the park. They’re newly emboldened, and this is their moment.

It’s time to have grownup conversations now. It goes without saying that the Democrats will disappoint us, one way or another. So what? The test results came back, and it’s not terminal. We got a little breathing room, and isn’t that all you can really ever hope for in life?

ETA: You know what Mr. Tomorrow was saying about not having much faith in Democrats and it going without saying they would disappoint us? That was fast. Via Digby at Hullabaloo:

Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.

Yes, you read that right. With Dean as their chairman, the Democrats have just taken over the house and, defying conventional wisdom, the senate. He has helped lead them to victory. They won. I'm going to say that again. They won. It's being called a stunning blowout of a surprise. They have been unambiguously endorsed by America, they have what some might even call a mandate.

Well, clearly, Dean has to go.

You know how you can tell which one is the Democrat in the whorehouse? He's the one spread eagled on the floor, trying to say around the ball gag he stuffed in his own mouth, "Hit me again! Harder! Harder!"

Why yes, yes it is

Another one from the tree of thoughts, as always worth a good look.

CEL-e-brate good times, come on!

First, this post says the rumors regarding "Studio 60's" death are greatly exaggerated, with some quotes from producer/writer/my own personal Jesus, Aaron Sorkin:

Sorkin insisted that due to the last two weeks of ratings results "we're starting to feel optimistic around here" and reminds us that "The West Wing" also wasn't a hit in its first season. That didn't come until season two.

"But I'm much more comfortable with this feeling (of struggle)," Sorkin said. "It feels like it did when I did 'Sports Night.' 'West Wing' felt strange to me. This feels normal."

Then it gets confirmed by Yahoo! News:

"Studio 60" picked up for season.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...