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Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:10 PM

Speaking of blog coverage of the convention, I'll recommend once again Reason's coverage at a slightly different address. This time they've got more posters and comments. That way when Julian Sanchez wonders here how somebody could be assaulted with a sheet of glass, I can suggest that perhaps it involved two guys carrying the sheet of glass and trying to cross the street.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:58 PM

Mark Follman wrote an article for Salon sneering at the bloggers covering the RNC. One of the posts he quotes is from Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom. Problem is that Goldstein isn't really at the convention and was himself making fun of convention bloggers.

In this post, Goldstein calls Follman on his gullibility. Follman replies in the comments. In his first comment, he clearly still thinks Goldstein is at the convention. After Goldtsein explains the joke, Follman's next few comments are of the "I meant to do that" variety.

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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:42 PM

"Jolly Jim" Treacher provides definitive proof that the Quentin Tarantino blog is a fraud.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:07 PM

I find myself more sympathetic with Peter Bagge's latest Reason cartoon than Marc Singer does. Perhaps it's because I and many of my friends have to take day jobs to support our endeavors in our "art" yet there's no National Endowment for Comedy to give us a helping hand or provide us with a venue where our jokes aren't interrupted by cappucino machines.

That's why Singer's quote of Johanna Draper Carlson that a cartoonist with failed projects (like this one) shouldn't be pointing to popularity as proof of quality is unfair. The difference between Bagge and the fine art establishment is that Bagge isn't asking for government support of his unpopular work. Bagge supports his (fairly or not) less popular stuff by doing work that perhaps wouldn't be his first choice (like his Batboy strip and his Spider-man comic book).

Also Bagge's referral to Mapplethorpe as "commercially successful" does not, contrary to Singer, link excellence with commercial successful; it illustrates an argument against government funding for the arts: Either the work is popular in which case it doesn't need government support or it's not in which case it's perhaps unfair to ask taxpayers to pay for art they don't like.

The comments on Singer's site contain an interesting discussion as to the causes of the art community's detachment from the public. Singer's complaint that "Bagge wants to turn this problematic inscrutability into an anti-government, pro-market diatribe" ignores the possibility that perhaps government funding is the cause of the problem. If funding to the art is independent of any appeal to the public, there's no incentive to bridge the gap between the public and the art community. Maybe the situation would improve if art was more dependent on paid admissions and/or private donations.

The status quo isn't great for the artistic community either. Their art isn't a pure expression of what Bagge calls "the genre" because what government pays for, the government controls. Thus the artist must self-censor for fear of providing fodder for demagoguing politicians. Or his funding has to be filtered through a few bureaucracies to give government deniability.

One final note: One of Shakespeare's plays has the same plot as a Three Stooges short**. Bagge's description of Shakespeare's works as 400-year-old situation comedies isn't entirely unfair.

**Also whereas Comedy of Errors features two sets of identical twins, "A Merry Mix-up" features three sets of identical triplets and is thus 2.25 times as funny. It's pure mathematical logic!

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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:15 AM

The Wayanses will be writing and producing a movie version of the Munsters. According to the Hollywood Reporter story), "[t]he Wayans version will stay true to the original characters, but will place them in a contemporary setting." In English, this means there will be fart and poo jokes.

(Via Defamer which also lists who will be offered and refuse a comedy pitch.)

UPDATE: I'm sure, by the way, that this announcement is in no way timed to coincide with the release of the Munsters 1st Season DVD set.

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Monday, August 23, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:13 PM

Baby Geniuses II is going to be released this Friday!! Our long wait really, really is over!!! (As opposed to the last time I thought our long wait was over when I thought the movie was going to open in mid-April.)

I have confirmation from the film's site and I saw ads in yesterday's paper. Now granted the latter could mean that it's just getting an LA and New York opening and then will be rolled out in other cities over the next month. I can't say for sure.

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Sunday, August 15, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:00 PM

Bushisms? Today's Doonesbury is Bushisms? I expect to see this crap in my email inbox with seven "Fwd:"'s, not on the front page of the funnies.

At least one of the Bushisms has been debunked (context is a harsh mistress). Of course, Trudeau has a history of being gullible when it comes to anti-Bush claims.

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Saturday, August 14, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:32 AM

You'll recollect a post of mine where I pointed to the story of a Palestinian lad who was killed trying to stop terrorists from installing a rocket launcher and that I predicted that the boy would be included in the "Palestinian deaths" count. Well, guess what? The Palestinians have included him in a list of people gunned down by Israeli military. Story here.

The story ends with your traditional comparison of deaths on each side. Here's another story of people who are included in the Palestinian ledger (login: cptspaulding/cptspaulding). Palestinians carrying explosives to be used in Jerusalem were stopped at a checkpoint. As Israeli forces approach to investigate, the payload is set off killing two Palestinians.

Note the article refers to two hundred attacks foiled. The relatively low death count of Israelis ain't from lack of trying.

UPDATE: The prematurely-exploded bomb was hidden in a baby carriage (Story here). Remember that the next time there's international outrage that Israeli soldiers are searching baby carriages.

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Thursday, August 12, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:58 PM

Just a quick note that tonight Conan is doing an "infomercial" for his DVDs. Featuring Triumph, Bernie Kopell, and Bruce Jenner.

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Friday, August 06, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:24 PM

Another Michael Moore thing: Tim Blair points to a letter in the Australian which points out that if you do the math that, contrary to Moore, children of Congresspeople are over-represented in Iraq.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:31 PM

Scott Calonico posted in Comments this link of a series of photos of Hosam Abdoh, the 14-year-old, would-be suicide bomber who was fortunately stopped before anyone was killed.

This is what I was talking about here when I mentioned the Palestinian skill of public relations. This lad was caught the day after Ahmed Yassin, the so-called spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed. While the world community is condemning Israel, Palestinians are literally sending children out to murder.

For the Palestinian people to take advantage of good publicity, they would have to not try to murder Jews for a day or two. Apparently too much to ask.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:57 PM

My brother who's had to deal with Bill Kirchenbauer aka Baldguy96's "I'm a big star dammit!" behavior on Usenet (in this thread which continued into this thread and this thread) was extremely amused by the Defamer post that Kirchenbauer has joined Ramsey-Schilling Real Estate.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:46 PM

Catching up on links folks sent me, reader Beau Bahan sent me this list of Don Martin onomatopoeia. One of the things that sold me on Conan O'Brien his first year on the air was his interview with Don Martin where O'Brien had Martin come up with sound effects for given situations.

And speaking of Conan's first year, comedy genius Robert Smigel discusses Conan's first year and other things in this Onion AV Club interview.

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