6/18/01 - Time Magazine explains how the universe will end. Good to know.

At last, the philosophical treatises of Homer J. Simpson get the academic standing they so richly deserve. Doh!

Paging Savion Glover - Are Chris Rock and Chris Tucker heirs to minstrelsy?

In the case of the missing Intern, all signs are increasingly pointing at "Mr. Blow Dry."

American Sphinx? Questions surface about Pullitzer-prize winning historian Joseph J. Ellis's Vietnam experience.

Peter Buck gets his day in court.

The Post gives FCC Chairman Michael Powell the full rose-tinted puff piece bio treatment.

Van-Gundy to Portland? Aw, man, I hope not. That'll mean a Celtics-like decade of non-rebuilding for the Knickerbockers. Speaking of the men in green, Boston has picked up a 3rd first rounder. Not much in the way of talent in this pool, but, with Employee No. 8 and The Truth already signed, all they need is a solid big man and a distributor who cares (NOT Kenny A) to make it to the playoffs.

6/13/01 - The Times calls out the House for wavering on Shays-Meehan (a.k.a. McCain-Feingold.) Let's close the deal, people.

Hmmm...do the right thing, or do the political thing? Tommy Thompson and Karl Rove, among others, battle over stem cell research.

Ok, this will probably turn out to be visionary, but doesn't it sound like the early Basil Exposition part of a mediocre sci-fi novel? In their 21st-century hubris, a group of scientists argues for changing the Earth's orbit to mitigate global warming. Alas, due to human error, they sent their blue world spiralling irrevocably into the Sun...

Welcome to the Real World, George. The European Continent rubs in what most webloggers sadly already knew. Dubya is dumb as the day is long. Aznar, Anzar...same difference (Sigh.) But, what can you honestly expect from a country that refuses to go metric?

Not Slim Shady, just plain shady. James Fallows examines the implications of Michael Powell's (lack of) regulatory vision. In related news, the Dubya-era FCC gets back in the business of censorship. Sounds like the cultural conservatives needed a bone.

How bad has it gotten for the GOP in the post-Jeffords era? They're trying to bring back Ollie North, for goodness' sake. That's pretty sad.

The Celtics bone up and take a third first-round draft pick 'Bout time such a storied franchise tried to right the ship.

Thinking outside the box: Could extending Daylight Savings Time mitigate the California energy crunch?

Yes, I know. Missed another week. But I have in fact been very busy, although I did take time out last Friday to catch another DC weblogger affair at Mackie's, a local Irish watering hole. Great fun, and great also to meet many of the people I've been reading over the years. We should do it again sometime soon.

Also rented some flicks of late. Dungeons and Dragons is worse than you imagined - not even unintentional fun to be had here. On the flip side, the simultaneously daring and nuanced satire Bamboozled, I feel, is definitely worth a view, although you'll probably like it about as much as you like Spike Lee's joints in general. I like Spike's films despite the frequent Oliver Stone-like overkill in the second hour (and it's not just 'cause we're both Knicks fans), and Bamboozled is definitely food for thought. Check it out.

6/6/01 - "Ghost in the Machine is the best weblog out there! Puts all others to shame!" - David Manning, The Ridgefield Press (Via Now This.) They couldn't get Jeff Craig of Sixty Second Preview? That guy likes everything.

The off-year streak continues into its second decade. The 2001 Harvard Lights - like the crews of 99, 97, 95, 93, and 91 before them - are national champions. (Picture and link via Kibera.) Congrats, guys.

More troubles for the post-Gates, post-Rampart LAPD: A wrongful death suit is filed on behalf of the actor shot in the back last Halloween.

Sorry, Jar Jar. There's no room for you in the Phantom Edit.

Tom Oliphant calls out Scalia for his handling of the Casey Martin case.

No room for moderates? According to this TNR piece (which makes reference to a recent book by Matt Dallek, a friend and my predecessor at the FCC), the GOP have been a party of extremists for over a generation.

Dr. Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) returns to ER, meaning that - due to Goose (Anthony Edwards)'s recent marriage - the next season pretty much writes itself.

Slate offers one way to beat the Lakers, which is an increasingly rare thing nowadays. In a related story, Slate's David Plotz explains why the Lake Show will eventually fall apart. While I concur with his sentiment, I gotta say it's hard to take anybody seriously who calls Scottie Pippen a "wondrous talent."

Best get ready, Washington. The Senate's got a new majority and a new sheriff.

Returned from San Diego last night (my luggage arrived this morning), thus ending a very enjoyable Dish reunion week of basketball, beer, and the beach. A beautiful wedding too...the weather was perfect and the location - an historic hacienda in La Jolla - was very nice indeed. At right here is David and Jessica Demian, a few seconds after their union. Congratulations and best wishes on a wonderful life together, you two.

Salon gives J.R.R. Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings trilogy its much-deserved props. Alas, the Village Voice isn't so kind.

And, not content to puncture just one balloon of my youth, the Voice also derides the new R.E.M. and Depeche Mode albums: Still, these middle-aged guys seem fatigued; they've survived drug abuse and alcoholism and invasive surgery, they've lost core members, and they hobble along like three-legged dogs.

5/30/01 - Apparently, the solution to everything in the Bush administration is tax cuts. Including obesity. Sheah.

Christopher Reeve and seven others sue the Bush administration for withholding stem cell research. A word of advice, Dubya: Don't pick a fight with Superman.

On the day Traffic hits DVD, the Voice lists recent and prominent converts to drug decriminalization around the globe. Hey, Dan Quayle is on board...or at least he was in 1977.

Did I step into some kind of Voyager-esque wormhole? They've been showing videos on MTV for the past four hours or so. Actual, honest-to-goodness videos. It's bizarre.

Congrats to Mike of WOIFM for his recent decision to exercise free agency. Life's too short to keep a job you hate.

"You never figured out that McCain phenom, did ya? I tried to make the party hip, and you guys narrowed it back into the party of retreads and extra-chromosomes and guys with a third hand growin' outta the middle of their heads. " Lee Atwater counsels Karl Rove by way of Maureen Dowd and Sun-Tzu.

Saw Pearl Harbor over the weekend. Blah.

According to Harry, tough guy Vin Diesel will play Hellboy. Yeah, I can see it.

Ah. Is there anything as exhilarating as waking up to the distinctive aroma of human waste permeating your abode? Or to feel the soft telltale organic squish of wet hallway carpet between your toes?

Apparently, all the rain of late has played hell with the plumbing infrastructure of Alexandria. All the ground level apartments in my building were flooded yesterday with some nasty-ass groundwater. Thankfully, nothing was ruined (other than the carpet, of course, some t-shirts, a shower curtain, and a few bath mats), but it complicated an already busy 48 hours for me. Ugh.

So, I'm on my way to San Diego in four hours for a Dish re-u, the occasion being the wedding of my good friends Dave and Jess. Should be great fun, although - given that I haven't seen many of the attendees since my own wedding - I feel a bit like the harbinger of bad mojo. But oh well. Then again, since 50% of all marriages end in divorce, perhaps I'm the harbinger of good mojo. After all, Elaine and I bit the statistical bullet to improve the odds of Dave and Jess living happily ever after. How's that for a wedding present?

At any rate, updates will be probably be nonexistent until next week. So, until then, ta-da.

5/25/01 - Wow. Just to show how out of the weblog loop I've been of late, I just now heard about Kaycee being fake (Link via Jimformation via Following Eden, and it looks like Dan of Lake Effect has done a superlative job as usual of putting it all together here.)

I'm staggered by it, and I didn't even read her site. Talk about a real ghost in the machine. To be honest, I always felt like kind of a jerk for not following her grief-stricken tale when she seemed to mean so much to many of the bloggers I do read. I can only guess how shocked and angry (and relieved? Noone died, I suppose.) they feel about this whole setup. Just when you thought the Web was becoming less bizarre...

The Fellowship of the Ring trailer is now online, and man, it's a beaut. Very, very badass. I have little doubt this two minutes and thirty seconds will be the best thing about Pearl Harbor this weekend.

In a related story, find your Hobbit name. (Via the very nicely redesigned Lots of Co.) I'm Berilac Bulge of Hobbiton. Sounds like the undesirable side-effect of a prescription medication, but oh well.

Forget the Spy Kids. You'd best not be fronting on these Jedi kids of Episode II or you'll be going out like Kramer in the Karate episode.

Dylan's filmography, a recap by the (admittedly usually highly annoying) crew at Aint-it-Cool.

"Tolerance of dissent is the hallmark of a mature party, and it is well past time for the Republican Party to grow up." " Proving himself yet again, John McCain takes his party to task for their handling of Sen. Jeffords (I-VT). Now, if only someone as high-profile among the Dems would read them the same riot act for their attacks on Bradley/Nader.

Olsen gets through. The Arkansas Project came up a lot during my research on Horse, and sure enough Ted's in deep. At least it sort of got an airing.

What's that, you ask? Spiderman's webspinners, courtesy of Garth at Dark Horizons.

Another one bites the dust. Record companies go after Aimster next.

Woohoo! I was named the coxswain of the All-Ivy League Crew Team! Of course, this probably happened almost four years ago, but I just became aware of the fact about twenty minutes ago. Got an e-mail from Kevin H. Murphy '99, the guy whose e-mail I was receiving during half of my college tenure (and one of the main reasons I still flaunt the middle C in my name.) True to form, Harvard sent him the award by mistake. Well, that's pretty cool. Wish I'd known back in the day.

5/23/01 - So, how you like them apples? Senator James Jeffords, a moderate Republican increasingly at odds with his party and his President, apparently is going independent tomorrow, thus giving control of the Senate to Tom Daschle and the Dems. (Sorry, GOP readers, Zell isn't going to bail you out.) I wonder if this spells the end of the Lott regime and, if so, who might take his place.

And, if that wasn't bad enough news for the Republicans lately, it appears rabid anti-Clinton lawyer Larry Klayman was sincere when he said Judicial Watch was a non-partisan organization. He has indeed started to sic his organization on the Right. Sucks to be them.

Salon delves into the story behind the apparently hyperbolic vandalism tale of the Clinton-Bush White House handover. (To Dubya's credit, he always said the rumors were garbage.)

Picked up the Requiem for a Dream DVD yesterday, and one of the extra "deleted scenes" is Marlon Wayans doing a wicked, Bamboozled-style impression of Jar Jar Binks. Definitely some funny stuff.

Two astronauts are critically burned in a small plane crash in Houston. Thankfully for both the people involved and the space program as a whole, no fatalities. Best wishes to those involved.

A very Happy Number Sixty to the big D. Still got a lot of roads to walk down, I should hope.

Chess Hustling 101. I always get worked in Speed Chess, but that doesn't make it any less fun.

5/21/01 - By the way, I was remiss in not mentioning an anniversary of sorts in my last post. As of the 15th, Berkeley has now been my loyal and trusty sidekick for a full year. (Although he still hasn't gotten the secret identity thing down.) Go get 'em, li'l buddy.

McCain goes after the NRA. Man, I love that guy. He's got my vote over Al Sharpton in 2004, that's for sure.

Better schedule some time after that big flight, or else your brain will shrink.

By the way, Shrek is a lot of fun, if you enjoy Toy Story-like grown-up kid fare. I just wish they'd come out with a special DVD set (Garp, Cliffhanger, etc.) wherein Lord Farquod is reverse engineered into all of John Lithgow's parts. He was Lithgowosity distilled into its primal essence.

David Horowitz lambasts fringe Cornell lefties for their "physical attack" on Anne Coulter, smarmiest of the most recent batch of conservative blondes. Can't say I share his outrage. "Finally, an older black man got up and began a rant he refused to end," says Horowitz. "The campus police are not about to arrest older black men and risk being photographed, and then subsequently denounced as a 'racist Gestapo' (a practice common among campus radicals). So Coulter left." Um...what were the cops supposed to arrest the guy for? A rant that refused to end? They'd have to start locking up conservative telepundits and columnists by the bushel, Horowitz included, using that standard.

MJ and the Wizards get the top draft pick. If you ask me, the fix was in. Commish Stern knows what the ratings would do if MJ decided to come back, however out of shape. And this conspiracy theory isn't even Knicks-influenced...New York doesn't have a first round pick this season.

In related basketball news, Slate sizes up the influx of NBA players from Asia, including the much-hyped Yao Ming.

Ok, Ok, I know he went to Harvard Business School too, but at least we haven't invited him back.

No more pennies? As my sister-in-law Lotta noted, that's the first step in a Snow Crash-like megainflation.

Picked up another speechwriting gig, for former Secretary of Commerce Daley. Couple that with the book I'm researching, for Crossfire's Bill Press, and it seems I'm working for the entire Gore-industrial complex these days. Both seem like good people, though...hopefully the 2000 Democratic primaries won't come up in conversation anytime soon.

5/17/01 - Franklin Foer examines the new (and, IMHO, much improved) Bill Kristol. Any move away from the current liberal-conservative duopoly and toward progressivism, however flawed, is good in my book.

With Dave Checketts gone from the Garden, GM Scott Layden prepares for his turn to take the fall.

Columnist Paul O'Brien reflects on Cerebus's end run. (Via LinkMachineGo.)

The A.I. TV spot is up for your perusal. I sense imminent Spielbergian saccharine sweetness at a theater near you.

Blogging in the Post. (Heads up via Genehack, who with Lake Effect and several other of my favorites, have joined me in semi-hiatus mode. Darn.)

5/14/01 - Interesting...Will NY Knick President Dave Checketts take the fall for their first round falsification? He's definitely made some questionable personnel moves of late.

Thornton talks Jolie and the new Coen movie to the LA Times.

Aw, man. R.I.P. Douglas Adams 1952-2001 (and thanks for all the fish.)

Some legit Episode II pics hit the web, including stills of Ian "Chancellor Palpatine" McDiarmid and Christopher "Count Dooku" Lee. I have some faith that this one'll be better than the last.

My friend Seth stirs up a bee's nest of angry Stipeheads when he dogs the new R.E.M. album. Some (Most) of the talkbacks are ridiculously vehement. In related news, Time gives Reveal the more usual aging rocker accolades. My opinion - well, I'll tell you in a few days. I'm definitely enjoying playing the new songs on guitar.

Is Bush a liar? The editors of New Republic and the National Review square off.

Dubya got ya down? Fear not. The 2004 election begins in earnest with several prominent Democrats kissing the ring of John McCain.

The Supreme Court unanimously nixes medicinal marijuana. Strange how a court so reliably sympathetic to state's rights goes federal on this one. God forbid that the dying and ailing find remedy for egregious levels of pain. Lock 'em up with the rest of the criminals undermining the moral fabric of our nation.

Some pretty fun trailers up lately. In this corner, we have David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which looks as self-derivative as Lost Highway but still might be fun. And, speaking of self-derivative, Kevin Smith looks to be resurrecting all of his old characters in the trailer for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which doesn't have to be very good to be better than Dogma.

Sigh. Another big lay-off from the Ghost. But this time I have a pretty good excuse. Notwithstanding all the work I've been up to lately (several speeches, that researching gig I mentioned earlier), a power surge last Tuesday fried my old computer (I had hoped a new power supply would resolve the issue - it didn't.) So, much of the past week has been pretty hectic. That being said, I now have a new PC in the house that's veddy, veddy fast (PIII 833mhz, 191mgs RAM.) And after fiddling around with my old hard drive for a day, no data was lost. So, all's well that ends well.