Category: Television

Space Cadet.

General Wesley Clark stumps for faster-than-light travel in New Hampshire. “I still believe in e=mc², but I can’t believe that in all of human history, we’ll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go. I happen to believe that mankind can do it…It’s my only faith-based initiative.” Well, I guess he’s up on Dubya, who’s still trying to work out evolution. At the same rally, Clark introduced Professor John Frink as his potential National Science Advisor. “Suppose we extend the square beyond the two dimensions of our universe… along the hypothetical Z axis, there…”

Powell Checked.

By a 55-to-40 vote, the Senate overturns Powell’s media ownership rules. Even if the Senate vote goes nowhere (and between the contentious House and a Dubya veto, that’s pretty likely), this should hopefully awaken Michael Powell to the fact that there is significant bipartisan resistance to his agenda of carte blanche deregulation. Instead of freeing the Big Boys from any entangling agreements, perhaps Powell should work on making them honor the agreements they’ve already made – namely, HDTV roll-out and public interest requirements. This isn’t about big government, it’s about getting our money’s worth. Since we’ve given the networks use of bandwidth valued at $70 billion, we have every right to expect something in return.

Alphabet City.

So the big TV story in Blog Nation and elsewhere today is K Street. With this and Carnivale, I now really wish I had HBO, but ah well. At any rate, I for one am rooting for K St., not only ’cause I’m big fans of all involved, but also because there’re many politicians out there (Orrin Hatch, for example) who only recognize the worth of a given position if they hear themselves saying it. (Take, for example, the debate wrought by Soderbergh’s own Traffic.) I do think, however, that the quick turnaround time between episodes will cause problems in the later going…not only is it often hard to get pols to commit their schedules so quickly, but the show is one controversial moment away from being on the butt-end of a freeze-out sponsored by some touchy soul like Tom DeLay. Nevertheless, it sounds like a fascinating show well worth watching, even if the life it depicts is considerably less glamorous and frenetic than it lets on.

Preseason Review.

In case you haven’t been following along up to this point, the NY Times summarizes the state of the 2004 Democratic field heading into Labor Day weekend (Gen. Wesley Clark excepted, for the time being.) On the other side of the aisle, Dubya’s 9/11 actions are given the rose-colored Showtime treatment (with Timothy Bottoms of That’s My Bush! playing Dubya again, no less.) Let’s see…Lying about witnessing the first attack, reading The Pet Goat for ten minutes while the WTC smoldered, disappearing from public view for the remainder of the day while jetting to Omaha, scampering about atop the ruins (and remains) a few days later while playing fratboy games with a megaphone…It should make for an interesting film, if they pause long enough to stop waving the bloody shirt.

Hawking v. Voltron in the Land of Chocolate.

I’m generally pretty quiet about my side hobby of Simpsons-collecting in this space, but, at the risk of coming off even more Comic Book Guy than usual, two points of interest: Season 3 – “best season ever” – is available on DVD today, and the 13th wave of figures includes this great sculpt of Stephen Hawking (per his request), which I expect will have more crossover appeal than most of the recent (obscure) characters.