Hiatus.

I'm off to the woods of Maine for a week. Take care and have a good week and I'll be back on Monday, August 1.

Bye!

Ack Ack!

Christina Ricci has starved herself right into a gray alien.

Eat something, dear.

"A group of dogs is taken to a day camp near Bogota in a bus in this photo taken on June 30, 2005. The Transmiperro system (Tranport my Dog) is a day camp for dogs, where a colourful bus takes them to a camp in the village of Cajic, 30 km (19 miles) north of Bogota, where the animals are trained and enjoy games and activities. Each pet owner pays between $34 and $106 per month depending on the program the dog is enrolled in. The dogs are returned home, exhausted, at the end of the day."

Outrageous, considering how many Columbian children are probably starving on the streets of Bolivia, but God that's a cute picture.

Boom!

Sorry, but these sumo photos are cracking me up.

It was the super-wedgie in this photo that first caught my attention until I realized something even more worthy of noting: they are women.

OK, can someone explain to me why no one could get this kid to stop goofing around while the President of the United States was announcing the nomination of his father to the United States Supreme Court?

Scotty to The Bridge.

James Doohan has died. Rest in peace, Scotty.

Dealing with Deadwood: "Ride in a bus without bathrooms for an hour into the middle of Nowhere, California to sit in the 100-degree heat you thought you'd escaped when you put Phoenix in the rear-view mirror for a few weeks, just to kick around a dusty back lot and talk to actors and writers? When it's the set of Deadwood, absolutely."

Long, Strange Trip.

Ron Moore's Deep Space Journey: "As in the original show, the humans of the Galactica and its fleet are relentlessly pursued by evil robots called Cylons. But in the current version, conceived by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, most of the evil Cylons look like people and have found God. Ruthlessly principled and deeply religious, the Cylons have been compared by fans and critics both to Al Qaeda and to the evangelical right. And the humans they are relentlessly pursuing are fallible and complex. Their shirts are not clingy or color-coded; the men of space wear neckties. They are led by Edward James Olmos as the Galactica's commander and Mary McDonnell as the president of the humans, and their stories revolve as much around the tensions within -- between the military and civil leadership of the fleet -- as they do around the Cylon threat. As Eick described the show to me last month with evident, subversive pleasure, ''The bad guys are all beautiful and believe in God, and the good guys all [expletive] each other over.'' Moore, who is also the show's head writer, put it more simply: ''They are us.'' "

Yes, the horse is dead and I'm still beating it.

Date with the Half-Blood Prince.

Harry Potter will be coming with me on vacation next week! I'm having a hell of a time getting through "Shadowland", and I'm hoping to have it finished by the weekend. I've only got about 100 pages left, so I'm optimistic, but it's such a dense, weird book, filled with magic/fairy tale/horror mumbo jumbo (and some WWI stories thrown in) that frankly makes very little sense to me. If the author can tie it all together in the end, fine; if not, that's also fine. I just want it done. I need to read HP before I get spoiled!

Christ Almighty, it's hotter than Dick's hatband out there. On the bright side, we don't have it quite as bad as these guys. Stay cool, eip!

Drive-By Reviews

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb - A classic, well-acted black comedy, but not nearly as funny as I thought it would be. Peter Sellers was phenomenal, especially as Mandrake and the President. His portrayal, however, of the title character was, well, weird. Check that one off the list, but I don't know that I would watch it again.

Akira - Called the cornerstone, or foundation for all modern anime. Visually stunning but the plot (don't ask) was at points impenetrable. And that sort of sums up most of anime, doesn't it?

Princess Mononoke - I really enjoyed this. The animation, the music, the story - all beautiful. I highly recommend it.

In the mail from Netflix: "Team America", "Napolean Dynamite" and "MST3K: Manos, the Hands of Fate", and they're all coming with me on vacation.

So.

I think I'm finally getting used to the braces. A little. The teeth are still too sore for any serious chewing, but the inside of my mouth is feeling a little less shredded than yesterday. Ever have one of those taste buds that get all sore and hurt like a son of a bitch? Imagine having 3 or 4 of them at once on both sides of your tongue and that'll give you an idea of how much talking hurt yesterday. And I won't even go into the condition of the insides of my cheeks!

I have newfound respect for those little ten-year-olds with braces.

Cat Lovers Unite!

A manifesto for an official cat holiday: "Being a cat is cool. Apart from the fact that folks regard us merely as cuddly companions with virtually no feelings- except for catnip. So I figured I'll deal with these misconceptions in a book. Which puts me in a fix. Because a bunch of scairdy-cats said, People believe we're enigmatic, so they don't bug us to perform stupid pet tricks (Nothing personal, Dave). Your book will blow our cover."

Finally, at 41.

28 months and counting!

I got them put on this morning. They don't feel too bad right now - just tight and uncomfortable. What hurts is the inside of my left cheek. I can feel a little pointy end of wire, so I think I'll probably have to go back to him next week to get that fixed.

What I'm concentrating on right now, though, is not spitting in people's faces as I talk to them.

They're back.

K-Fug: "Yeah, anyway, I just ran out to get some water and some Cheetos and some beef jerky and some ice cream sandwiches and a couple of Twinkies and then I had to run by my dealer's house because B said she didn't want him to deliver my shit anymore because he was 'a bad influence on the baby,' or some shit, and then I was like, (a) the baby isn't even OUT yet, (2) it's not like he was a bad influence on all those other kids I have, I'm pretty sure, but then she said some BULLSHIT about not paying for it anymore and then, dude, I swear to God, she reached for my hand and TRIED TO PUT IT IN THE DEEP FRYER and, man, HORMONES, dude, dial it DOWN. So I ran out to give her some time to chill. She has been seriously so crabby ever since she caught me going through the safe."

The gofugyourself girls are back from vacation and kickin' ass.

No respect.

Sci-fi seeks critical mass: "Those in the genre say it encompasses more than space and special effects and deserves critics' respect and Emmy consideration...A vice president in the TV industry recently asked me what TV shows I watch for enjoyment. I mentioned my favorite is "Battlestar Galactica" on Sci Fi Channel. She laughed. I asked if she'd seen it. No, she said, and laughed again. Did she know, I asked, that it's a gritty adult drama of family members and colleagues in deep-rooted conflict not unlike that of "The Sopranos"? That they're part of a civilization struggling not only to survive but to define itself amid messy terrorist warfare? That it explores the values of competing societies that demonize each other's spiritual beliefs? That it's full of gutsy acting by the likes of Edward James Olmos and sophisticated allegory mirroring today's global politics?

She laughed again."

The second season of Battlestar Galactica premieres on Friday night at 10:00 P.M. Don't miss it.

I watched HBO's Autopsy special on demand last night and I'm sorry to say I was a little disappointed. The premise: HBO asked viewers to e-mail them with stories of mysterious deaths/disappearances and they would pick 2 that Dr. Michael Baden would investigate. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that the whole thing felt exploitive (exploitative?), especially the first story (the conclusion of which I saw coming early on). I think I prefer the detachment of the earlier shows - more documentary style reporting and less reality show drama, please. That said, I will admit that the best (or most touching) part of the hour came in the second story, when the grown son of a woman gone missing for 21 years asks Dr. Baden if he can touch her skeletal remains. The tenderness with which he cradled his mother's skull was heartbreaking.

Oh, and Dr. Baden is much taller than I thought he was.

Discovery set for Wednesday launch, the first shuttle launch since the Columbia disaster two and a half years ago. God, I can't believe it was that long ago.

I wish them well.

Very cool photo.