Comic for Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

Posted: 7:14 am, Tuesday, September 12th

New York Democrats, rejoice! No more getting ten pieces of mail today asking you to vote for David Yassky! Fuck, guy, save a tree and get a MySpace page or something. Oh, man, I totally forgot to do the MySpace thing yesterday. Meh, the joke was getting old anyway. Maybe I'll make it MySpace Mondays from now on. Yeah, I think I will.

Why I decided to wax poetic about magazines and not, say, the Internet, I can't really say. I suppose the presence of editorial controls still prejudices me towards print matter when it comes to authoritativeness, although you can certainly find well-edited, knowlegeable articles spread all across this wonderful web of ours. Also, I was probably reading Harper's at the time - reading magazines and writing this comic is how I pass most of my morning commutes. (The evening commutes are spent napping, usually.) Also in magazines, the New Yorker had a Comment by Hendrik Hertzberg called Lost Love this week that is a very nice summation of America's journey from sympathetic figure to a bully that's hated all the way down in Bolivia.

Sorry that I got all serious yesterday, gang. Although, I would like to point out that I wrote about 9/11 in the most apolitical way possible (for me), and even tried to be as non-NY-centric as I could (which was hard, given that I experienced it in NYC). I hope everyone remembered and honored those lost in whatever fashion they felt most comfortable with.

More 9/11 stuff, briefly... The Morning News compresses the day five years ago into sound bytes. My two contributions would be:

TV REPORTER: At the moment, we have one confirmed death.
COWORKER: ... the total is expected to rise.

TREE, as I signed off on e-mail: Be safe, man. Be fucking safe.

I don't know if you have nine hours handy, but the Times had an astoundingly comprehensive piece on the battle over Ground Zero. Boy, Pataki comes off as a toolbag. I've never really understood how that guy kept winning elections - no one I know particularly likes him, the budget hasn't been on-time in my lifetime, I don't think, and taxes are sky high across the state. I read something recently that his term as governor has been remarkable only in its longevity, and that about sums it up. If he pursues this run for president that he's currently mulling, I doubt he will take New York state. That concludes this aside into the career of George Pataki.

I felt the Daily News won the tabloid cover war yesterday. The Post had Shitwit laying flowers at Ground Zero, and the Daily News had this nice cover:

Speaking of Shitwit, Moby didn't like that he felt the need to come by. While I'm sure no one cares particularly what Moby thinks, and while I think it would be a million times more galling than if he actually avoided Ground Zero, I agree that I would like Shitwit to stay away from my city as much as possible, and stop using it as a photo op.

Nice shot from the Times yesterday that I couldn't figure out how to link to, so I had to steal it.

Giving credit and trying to avoid any anger from the Gray Lady, the photo was taken by Fred R. Conrad for the Times, using a tilt-shift lens on a Speed Graphic large format film camera, narrowing the field of focus. I can't believe that's reality and not a set of miniatures. How awesome.

OK, and now onto other, less depressing stuff. Namely, Notre Dame's pantsing of Penn State. Hot damn! Don't know if everyone saw it, but there was a great article on Brady in the Times, that Classic Ground has rather nicely posted in its entirety (so much for me worrying about ganking a picture). It ran Saturday, so the contingent of my readers that were at the game probably missed it. I think my favorite picture would be this one, where Penn State's too-little-way-too-late trickery met with the Duke and Leitko crushing Derrick Williams. The runner-up would be any of the millions of shots with Tom Zbikowski looking incredibly mean with his mohawk. Seriously, that guy terrifies me.

Also over the weekend, 2.0 and I saw Little Miss Sunshine, which I can't recommend highly enough. Our friend Crownover thought it dragged in parts, but the pacing didn't feel off at all to me. A tremendous job of casting all the way around, and Steve Carrell looked like my uncle Mark in it. I thought, anyway. Anyway, the whole thing felt like a Wes Anderson movie on wheels. A high compliment.

I think I mentioned lonelygirl15 once here - I've only seen a few of her YouTube vlogs (blech, I feel dirty using that word), but 2.0 finds the entire thing pretty fascinating. The LA Times dedicated some ink to the whole thing last Friday, and I've got to say, that would be awesome grass-roots marketing for a horror flick.

Found yet another indie-rock blog that I like. I swear, I listen to some mainstream music! Reggie Ho gave me four CDs of live Pearl Jam over the summer! Bob Dylan topped the charts last week! Honest! Anyway, the Rich Girls Are Weeping has been posting some good stuff lately. I especially liked the list of Mountain Goats covers they put up a while back. The Boys Are Back in Town with the R. Kelly Ignition breakdown is hilarious, as is the singalong Ace of Bass career retrospective. I like the President's Dead song they put up a day or two ago - and it's not like NOFX's The Man I Killed, it's not a fantasy about Shitwit cashing in the chips, it's just really a nice and good song.

bullfrog

I'm interested in lonelygirl15 too, although it skeeves me out that so many people are buying into this probable marketing tool. I haven't seen the videos - are they actually worth watching?

Meh. I've only seen three of them or so - I find it weird that they're a huge cult thing. I don't think I've seen any of the "plot" ones, where she alludes to whatever danger she may be in, but I didn't see anything that would make me keep viewing. Oh, and I certainly didn't see anything that would lead me to believe they're actually a sixteen-year old girl locked in her room. The production value is about a billion times better than anything else on YouTube.

Whooo! Go Sox! We're number - 28! Whoo! (No, not in the AL East standings... It just seems that way.)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/09/11/fvi.redsox/index.html

I dunno about those rankings... It has New Busch ranked higher than Fenway, which just seems odd to me. I mean, new Busch is nice and all, but, erm, it's not exactly Fenway park. (THIS DOESN'T MEAN I LIKE THE CARDINALS ANY LESS!)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/09/11/fvi.cardinals/index.html

The ratings seem to be driven by economics, in which case, Fenway is just about where it deserves to be. I defy anyone to make a compelling case for the California Angels to provide the best ballpark experience, though.

Proving, yet again, that a trend is basically over if I blog on it, Lonelygirl15 has been outed:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/8665552.html#cutid1