Vacation’s End: All Good Things...

Vacation Day 6:

Blur. Slept a lot. Didn’t even watch much TV. Stomach still jumpy; re-introducing my regular oddball diet gradually till things smooth out. Had one too many popsicles before bedtime.

The day’s big news: The Missus was offered and accepted a lucrative fall teaching gig at Prestigious Hippie U down the road. One day a week for 10 weeks = mucho dinero. And somebody else is even paying her to blog! Using myself as my test subject, I had always assumed blogs were something people wrote for free because they weren't good enough to get paid for it. Turns out I was wrong about that. The Missus is good enough to get paid to blog. Congrats, honey! (Due to anonymity issues stemming from the unseemly shit I regularly post here, I regret that I cannot provide a link to any of her excellent work.)

Speaking of authors that couldn’t get published till they wrote their dead celebrity ex-husband’s biography, I’m really caught up in the Zevon bio. He’s just finally gotten sober (where I'm at in the book), and he actually becomes more interesting as a character. Before he was sober, he had only one trick in his bag, admittedly with infinite variations: Watch Warren get drunk and act crazy and hurt the people who love him. But without the booze and dope putting on the predictable dog and pony show, a more interesting character emerges. More faceted. Uh, he’s still kind of a prick, but at least he’s not hitting his women anymore and he’s reaching out to his kids.

Vacation Day 7:

Because I work on the periphery of the mainstream media, I get email from all kinds of groups to my work account. The Left and Right assault me on an up-to-the-minute basis with countless breathless press releases about their particular issue.

That’s how I know Bush’s Immigration Bill just now suffered a “crushing defeat” in the Senate. I don’t have any strong feelings about the issue myself - I think it’s all sound and fury signifying something Bush thought he could actually get done on the domestic agenda front. Fences, new laws, old laws, more border security or less, poor Mexicans are still going to find a way over the border to do our shit-work. It would be like trying to shove a Weather Task Force down our throats - what the fuck are we going to do about the weather??

I’m watching the TV news while I wait for The Man Cub to wake from his morning nap, then a friend is coming over to hang with him while I go see the new summer blockbuster where Bruce Willis wisecracks and blows stuff up.

The Man Cub is almost 22 months old now, and developing quite the distinct little personality. Bit of a loner, but exudes star quality once comfort level is achieved in a given situation. Big infectious laugh, often at unexpected moments. Mastering language in his own way and at his own pace.

He loves to draw! The world is his canvas. The front room and my office are littered with papers with his artwork on them; my current favorite is above. A weird-sounding version of “thank you” has emerged over the last few days and in the appropriate context - yay! Good manners will take you farther than some people think. He just yesterday figured out how to open the front door deadbolt - gotta stop at Ace today and buy some chain locks we can put higher up on the door. Gonna get one for my office, too.

We don’t do traditional “Time-Outs.” Not yet, anyhow. I do a variation where, if he’s pitching a fit or giggling through repeated requests to immediately stop a particular misbehavior, I pick him up with a dispassionate look on my face, walk him a few feet away from wherever he’s misbehaving, and place him - usually writhing and howling in indignation - on his back on the carpet. He kicks and screams for a little longer, then gets up and comes running over to one of us for succor. And he usually doesn’t repeat the infraction. (Unless it involves food. If it involves food, all bets are off and at some point said food will get thrown. ... Do they make Toddler Tarps? Must ask The Missus to ask The Google...)

Ooh, more bad Supreme Court decisions coming in. Some civil rights things I don’t really understand, but all my people are pissed and all the other people are pleased… For instance, The Missus just wrote me this about it: Jesus H. Christ in a bucket.

It’s never a good thing when The Missus gets to talking about Jesus.

Wow, hey, the Court just stopped Texas from executing somebody. You read that right: stopped. That’s not gonna make Dumbleyou very happy. When he was governor of Texas, mental incapacity - neither the prisoners’ nor the governor’s - was ever a barrier to executing the condemned.

[Later] Well, the movie was swell. Stuff blowed up real good, Bruce Willis is still skillful with the snappy zingers, and it even kinda had a story. The kid from the Mac commercials co-starred as a tech whiz helping Bruce try to keep the bad guys from succeeding in their extra-legal shenanigans. A family member was imperiled, you know, all the usual elements were accounted for except the black cop from the first three, here replaced by some exotic-looking dude playing a no-nonsense but friendly Fed.

Anyhow, these things aren’t about the details, they’re about the action sequences, and “Live Free or Die Hard” delivers on the action sequences. Recommended.

And that’s about it for the annual wildly self-indulgent Vacation Blog. It’s been a lot of fun having plenty of time to write without actually having much to write about; my thanks to anyone who slogged through to the end. Tune in again next year, when... nothing will happen!*


*This last bit is an homage to an obscure Monty Python record skit. They did a lot of stuff specifically and only for their comedy albums - not on the show, not in the movies, but in the same class of work. They’re out on CD now and at amazon. Definitely recommended, but make sure you read the product descriptions to make sure you’re getting the proper comedy albums and not just collections of recycled bits you’ve heard before. My favorite is “Contractual Obligation Album,” unfortunately released without its original lead track, “A Farewell to John Denver,” which featured a Denveresque folkie singing a lewd variation of “Annie’s Song” and then being strangled at length. Apparently, the late Mr. Denver’s lawyers were as successful in having it removed from this digital release as they were subsequent vinyl releases back in the day, and we are the poorer for it.

In Praise of Dreamboat Annie

Annie Coulter, the Scarecrow of the Apocalypse, just can’t help helping the Democrats raise money. I turned on “Hardball” on MSNBC yesterday (as I confess is my custom) till I saw the host sitting down with Coulter when I couldn’t reach for the clicker fast enough. For all the good it did me...

News of her latest dust-up – this time (again!) with the wife of Dem candidate John Edwards – is all over the media this morning, and sure enough, video of the confrontation is already running on Edwards’ campaign website and is the focal point of what will probably be a very well-received campaign-contribution pitch from same.

[“Hardball” host] Chris Matthews then goes on the Today Show the next morning, looking all hang-dog and trying to project some vague form of stunned regret, an emotion too close to an actual human’s for him to pull off completely successfully. As I type this, he’s still essaying outrage about her remarks on his show, which is like booking a howler monkey for your kid’s birthday party and not expecting it to throw its own shit all over the front room.

“I am shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is going on here!” Disingenuous prick.

The theory that Coulter does this stuff to sell more books seems off-base to me, though. The group consisting of people who are going to buy her books is finite and well-established, I’d guess drawn from the same dwindling pool of Americans - currently hovering around 30% in most polls - who think we’re helping in Iraq and that W is doing a heckofajob as POTUS. People who buy her stuff are going to buy it whether or not she gets into a new pissing match with a high-profile liberal or two every publicity tour. She just pukes up her YouTube moments to alert her admiring fan-base that she has a new collection of hateful, malignant swill available for their dutiful consumption.

As for Elizabeth Edwards, who literally phoned in her part this time around, she had to know what she was doing. They were probably editing the campaign commercial during the course of the on-air altercation.

In the end, the whole predictable episode is good business for everyone involved. Coulter’s audience, probably not big book-readers as a general rule (ahem…), are alerted to the fact that bookstores everywhere have a new collection of twiggy blond hate-baiting available for purchase with a cover photo of the author they can masturbate to; the Edwards campaign gets to remind Democrats he’s still running for president and could use a few of our hard-earned dollars, by the way; and Chris Matthews gets clips of his show out there to every Tom, Dick and Mary Jane who formerly didn’t even know NBC had a cable news channel to begin with, nor that he (Matthews) even existed.

As an unrepentant capitalist, I pronounce Ann Coulter good for the economy; and as an equally unabashed left-wing liberal, I’m pleased as punch to have this dizzy dame as the voice of the Republican party.

Preach, sister, preach! We’ll take all the help we can get.

Vacation Blog, Day 5:

Back home, and man am I ever glad. I actually had a good time, except I can’t sleep except in my own bed or a motel bed. That’s why trips to the in-laws’ tend to get limited to a maximum of 3 nights, because by the time I get home – like now – I’m wrecked.

Visiting the old home town tends to do that to me, too, whichever old home town it is. The headline to the left was the big breaking news in my most recent old hometown’s newspaper the day I took a stroll down the main drag. Hard to believe I left all that for Christmas Island, but there you have it. Love does strange things to a man, even a bastard.

Speaking of love… The wedding we were there for went off without a hitch, by which I mean no one actually physically perished. There were the usual eleventh-hour stress-related internecine dramas and wounded feelings; we set out for the chapel with only the vaguest directions to another Southern California town, nobody was answering their cell phones and we only had two bars left on ours anyhow and we were running late; I was the official videographer and my camera battery died about half-way through the service; oh yeah, and I had a case of scorching indigestion all day long.

In spite of which all that (I managed to plug the video camera in juuust before the battery died and I destroyed the memories of their special day forever), it really was a beautiful, fun ceremony. On a hilltop, overlooking the sea — best yet, I judge the groom a keeper. Start to finish, as weddings go, it was a very satisfactory experience. And The Man Cub grabbed the first dance with the bride at the reception!

That was yesterday. Today was all travel, travel, travel, unpack, nap, try to get back into my own skin, no matter how ill-fitting and unseemly it is. Even now, all I can think about is how comfortable my own bed feels… and I am still on vacation…

More on the Bush Legacy

Sorry about the title of this post. Punctuation error. Should read as follows…

Moron: The Bush Legacy

The Government Accountability Office just released a report condemning the Bush administration for its failures in pursuing the ‘war on terrorism.’ Setting aside for a minute the fact that you really can’t make war against a tactic – terrorism – you may wonder “goodness golly, if the Feds’ priority isn’t their much ballyhooed WAR ON TERROR after all, what are they focusing on?”

According to the same GAO report, that would be (sigh) the ‘war on drugs.’ Apparently, we spend more money making sure it’s hard for me to score weed than we do making sure the country doesn’t suffer another 9/11.

To be fair, the Bush administration inherited the stupid ‘war on drugs.’ Consider that a disclaimer in an effort to be, well, fair and balanced.

But it seems to me to make perfect sense that the Bush administration would speak loudly while arming our fighting men and women in the field with tiny sticks in the ‘war on terror.’ 9/11 made the Bush presidency. Before 9/11, Bush’s claim to fame was that he lost the popular vote to Al Gore and was installed by Republicans on the Supreme Court. He was busy fellating his miniscule base of born-againers by threatening to cut off embryonic stem cell research.

September 10, 2001, Junior Bush was an asterisk in search of a paragraph. September 12, he was a War President!

My point, which I have admittedly made before, is that 9/11 (and the bin Laden family with whom the Bush family had been in business with for decades), has been very, very good to George Walker Bush. If he didn’t have that to hang his empty 10-gallon hat on, his presidency wouldn’t have had a pot to piss in.

Thus, he has no motivation to see this ‘war’ to any kind of conclusion, and every self-interest in riding it out through his last day in office. And under-funding anti-terrorism efforts is a great way to see to it that he achieves his despicable goal.

Rotting and burning in hell is too good a fate for this cheap prick.

Vacation Blog (Part I)

Day -1:

Just called to place a Vacation Hold on our paper delivery for while we’re gone, and was unable to reach a human being. I was going to be required to play thumbsies with my fucking telephone keypad for 15 minutes or that paper was going to keep on a-comin’.

The piece of paper with the Vacation Hold phone number on it on the fridge had our address from 3 moves ago scrawled in the margin – so I didn’t blank when the person on the phone asked me for my address – but the resource it directed me to no longer contained any actual human beings for me to embarrass myself in front of, just machines to waste my fucking time.

What this means is, this task will get contracted out to The Missus or it won’t happen. We’re only gonna be gone for a couple days.

Day 1:

Got lots of sleep and TV watching in. Good stuff. The ideal vacation day for a married-with-children character like myself. Watched what I thought was going to be the “Director’s Cut” of Peter Jackson’s “King Kong,” but it turns out the 40 minutes of extra scenes aren’t weaved into the film like they are on the director’s cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies. They’re loose, on disc three, which kinda pisses me off. I just re-watched the same goddamned movie I’d already seen, and I still haven’t seen the extra scenes.

[On a sidebar, however, I was finally able to make it through the true director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven,” which really kicks ass in the third act. Orlando Bloom is off-screen for like the first half-hour of the second disc, where things really begin to pick up. Lesson learned? A pretty face does not necessarily a convincing leading man make. They shouldn’t have killed off Liam Neeson’s character in the first act!]

No biggie though. The real challenge starts tomorrow when I begin 3 sleepless nights and uncomfortable days crashing at the in-laws’ pad for a family wedding. Stress-central, no place for me to get away to and be by myself and then there’s the sleep-deprivation that always accompanies trying to catch zzzzs in the in-laws’ alabaster monument to obsessive cleanliness.

The Man Cub elected to begin the sleep-deprivation process a day ahead of time by getting me up at 5 am this morning. It’s really a shame this had to happen. Today marks two weeks since my last melt-down, and I can already begin to feel it all slipping away.

Future posts may be filed by medical professionals specializing in mental disorders.

Day 3:

Yesterday was travel, travel, travel to SoCal to prep for my sister-in-law’s wedding. The Man Cub spent most of the short plane ride on my lap where we played games that involved eating food, spitting food, trying to put his whole hand down my mouth and many more such infantile diversions. We loved it, while I think The Missus was happy to be sitting across the aisle from us, where she could at least claim plausible deniability.

Met the future relations for a big dinner at the in-laws’, after which I felt like Mr. Creosote all night. Didn’t sleep well and woke up in a funk this morning, stomach still full and facing the prospect of a giant home-cooked breakfast. Got past that somehow without exploding my swollen gut all over the kitchen area, but man, I just can’t eat like I used to since I destroyed my metabolism with all that meth back in the ’80s. We’re having left-overs and no company for dinner tonight, so I think I can get away with passing on dinner. Let the chips fall where they may! After the wedding tomorrow, we’re going to the swankiest dump in town for the reception (the same place where I proposed to The Missus) so I’m sure tomorrow night will be another gastronomical abomination of shitty sleep followed directly by a mad dash to the airport the next morning to fly back to Christmas Island (where, after dropping the family off at home, I’ll have to race into town to arrange a new credit card, having misplaced mine for the second time this year yesterday).

Thank god I took the vacation days or I’d be fucked but good.

Anyhow, The Missus and I had a long talk this a.m. about what my head was doing buried so many miles up my ass, and we decided since there were no heavy wedding-related events to attend to, today would be an ideal ‘private-time’ day for me. (Why does she put up with me? Honestly, I have no clue.) Toward that end, I slipped out to catch a movie: “Mr. Brooks,” with Kevin Costner. This one had sneaked in under my radar somehow; all I knew going in was that Costner was playing a serial killer who was trying to quit killing people by going to AA meetings. Since my own experience with AA meetings had actually made me want to go out on a killing spree, I decided this would be a perfect spur-of-the-moment movie to go see by myself.

I can take or leave Costner. If he’s playing a baseball player, I’m there, man. I love his sports flicks. On the other hand, we have “The Postman,” one of the absolute worst major studio motion pictures ever to disgrace the silver screen. “The Postman” makes “Waterworld” look like Citizen Kane by comparison. So going to see “Mr. Brooks” (or any post-“Postman” Costner film) could definitely be considered a leap of faith.

In brief, I was wicked pleasantly surprised. Even Demi Moore’s appearance (me out loud in the almost-empty matinee screening: “Ugh!”) didn’t ruin it for me. Used to like her, as far back as her stint on General Hospital, but when she got her fake boobies for the stripper flick she did a decade or so back, she lost me. Thank god we’ll always have her perky topless scenes in “Blame It On Rio.”

But I digress…

William Hurt also has an excellent role, along the same lines as the one he played in the outstanding “A History of Violence” a couple years ago, playing Costner’s invisible id, egging him on to keep killing. Hurt’s performance is thing of malevolent, lip-smacking glee.

Since I never reveal plot points in my reviews, suffice it to say that “Mr. Brooks” was smart, funny and had some cool conceits and twists, and I hope they do make the trilogy out of it that one review suggested the filmmakers had in mind.

Of course, they said the same thing about M. Night Whateverthefuck’s “Unbreakable,” and I’m still blue in the face from holding my breath waiting for the second flick in that alleged series.

Finally, I’m actually reading a book, too! “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” the authorized story of the ‘dirty life and times’ of Warren Zevon, in the words of his family and closest friends including Jackson Browne, Billy Bob Thornton, Stephen King, Bruce Springsteen and others. This is a warts-and-all telling of the artist’s life that is creepily like reading portions of my own obituary, except for the passages that detail elements regarding fame, fortune and talent. What a magnificent bastard Warren was. This book, while celebrating his life and accomplishments, is still like peeling a not-quite-healed scab off my heart. I miss looking forward to the man’s next album.

Hopefully, nothing else will happen today. I don’t take vacation days lightly, and when I do, I damned sure don’t want to spend them doing anything other than doing nothing.

Day 4:

Today started out as bad as it gets. Checked my email and learned that a friend’s brother was killed in Iraq last Thursday. I’m tempted to take this opportunity to rant and rave some more about Bush’s bullshit faked-up war, etc., but this kid believed in what he was doing over there, and I don’t want to take anything away from his sacrifice by using his death as a platform for my well-worn prosthelitizing.

His name was Ray Spencer. He was only 23 years old, and my thoughts are with his sister Sarah, her family and their friends today.


Fuck it. As long as I’m depressed already, let’s run down some of today’s headlines, shall we? And seriously, these are only this morning's headlines:

Deadly blast hits Iraq peace talks

Accused terror leader: More blood will flow

Kidnapped BBC reporter wears suicide vest on video

Supreme Court ruling limits students’ free speech rights

Supreme Court permits White House outreach to religious charities

Supreme Court sweeps aside part of campaign finance law dealing with “issue ads”

…and Bush is reportedly worried about leaving a legacy? Pshaw. The man’s too modest. Mission accomplished, dude. You have indeed succeeded in bringing it on.

I don’t care about anything today.

I feel like posting something, just so people stopping by will say “Oh, I guess he’s started blogging again” and will be encouraged to stop by more frequently. Perhaps tell all their friends, get me quoted as a “source” by Wolf Blitzer in a ‘Blogwatch’ on The Situation Room, talk to Tim Russert on a Sunday morning in D.C. and retire to a villa on Maui to dispense occasional wisdom and expert commentary whenever the money’s right and the mood strikes me. For some reason, the picture in my head also includes a massive spike-topped fence and vicious, slavering guard dogs with spikey collars. But I’m definitely on Maui and we’re richer than God.

So this time expended gazing at my navel is in reality an investment in my imaginary future.

Problem is, nothing is pissing me off enough to make me jump over a rhetorical cliff and sail off on wings of righteous outrage. I’ve done Iraq and Bush to death, and frankly will probably return to them shortly (if not next), but the man and his war just make me tired tonight. 75 more people murdered and an ancient shrine destroyed in Baghdad in just one incident today and it’s already off the front page headlines. And all made possible by my tax dollars! As an outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars, the war in Iraq makes Mapplethorpe’s “Piss Christ” look like the Louisiana Purchase by comparison.

Oh but that’s right. I’m not trying to work myself into a lather.

We have hero firefighters in the news again. Unfortunately, in the post-9/11 world, damn it, you don’t usually get to be a hero unless you’ve been killed, and/or the feds have created a massive campaign of misinformation about your fate. These poor guys got killed.

Jesus, one story each on Anna Nicole’s weeping judge, the Duke rape case and Judge Judy’s thoughts on Paris Hilton (which I won’t dignify with links to them). The fucking media is sawin’ out “Sally Goodin’” for the rubes while America burns from within. To quote Roger Waters, “This is the crap our children are learning?”

Ahh, the political news... Oh, this is rich: Giuliani’s S. Carolina chairman held on cocaine charges. The ethically-challenged GOP candidate, still riding high on the wave of dead bodies from 9/11 is going to be on defensive for a few days. Exposed hypocrisy in public life always gives me a special glow. Cocaine, on the other hand, never really did much for me.

And New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has just bailed the Republican Party, setting himself up for a self-financed dark horse bid for the White House next year. I’ll vote for anybody who seems to have a head on his or her shoulders. Bring on all comers! (Apologies to Sen. Gravel.)

Here’s something. I’m listening to the new Arcade Fire album more than I am the new RUSH album. Although the new RUSH disc has a couple of crunchy instrumentals and a catchy hook now and again, it just doesn’t feel as urgent as the kids’ disc. And to compare apples and apples instead, the new RUSH disc isn’t as good as the last RUSH disc, from which several songs popped on the first listen.

I’m glad summer rerun season is here. I’m finally getting some work done.

Saw “Ocean’s 13” the other day with The Missus. Love those films. They transfer the easy cool of the stars’ personal friendships to the screen the same way the original Rat Pack’s film did. The plot is smart, the film cooks right along, and if you like the players it’s full of laughs too.

The Man Cub continues to impress. Words now, garbled sentences and a full-on glint-in-the-eye sense of humor. Up is literally down; any vertical movement is. The day care people tell me he is saying “thank you” too, but I have yet to earn his gratitude apparently. Note to self: Redouble parenting efforts.

Other than that shortcoming, my days with him in the middle of the week are the best days of the week on a regular basis. I’ve never watched a slug of an inert shrieking baby burrito metamorphosize into a functioning human being before. It’s been a fascinating experience and a pleasant one the more it goes on. The more his personality emerges, the better I like him, even though we’ve gotten to the stage where my firm “No.” is interpreted to mean “Let’s keep doing the same thing, only more vigorously and laugh while we do it!” I’m having to be a little more of a hard-ass with him, but he always comes right back to me with open arms when the squall has passed.

He’s cool that way.

The Missus just did a job interview for a lateral gig with her current employer that will (hopefully) provide her with a little more of the challenge she’s looking for if she gets it. Otherwise, it will just have pissed off her current boss, making an already less than ideal workplace situation one notch less comfortable.

I feel like I’ve blathered on pointlessly enough for tonight. It’s well past my bedtime, the RUSH album is growing on me as I write this and as god is my witness, I am ready for my close-up, Mr. Blitzer. Mister Russert, sir.

The compound in Hawaii waits.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

If I had any Deep Thoughts on fatherhood to impart this year, this space right here is where I woulda done it. Instead, I decided to go with a nice picture of my dad because he was a man who liked to golf.

He never said much, my dad. His people didn’t, there was nothing to say. They grew up during the Great Depression then WWII hit them right between the eyes. By the time they got around to having a family they’d pretty much seen all of the shit this world has to offer.

What part of that were they gonna tell their kids? Most of them didn’t say anything. My dad had one friend who loved to tell war stories. We have some faded, silent Super-8 footage of him in a barbeque apron in his suburban back yard, re-enacting some exciting battle or other using his meat tongs as a tommy gun. Rat-a-tat-tat!

Funny guy, but most of them weren’t like that. They also weren’t the navel-gazers and up-front head cases most of our country’s subsequent wars have produced, when we started to know enough to know better. My dad’s generation took their war-related mental illnesses and ate them in silence, then set about building the American Middle Class as we know it.

Were they the “greatest” generation as others have lucratively suggested? I dunno. The Founders were some pretty bad asses. And the Civil War guys killed each other and died in numbers that would make all following wars green with envy.

My dad’s people, I’d say they were the Silent Generation. If you didn’t ask, they usually didn’t tell. Given what they had to tell, in the end maybe that stoicism was their greatest gift to their kids. And thanks to the silent sacrifices of our parents’ youth, my generation has much more superficial anecdotes that we can’t share with our kids.

Here’s to the dads! God bless us, every one.

Movie Review In Brief: Fantastic Four, Rise of My Gorge

If you like your comic book movies to suck major ass but be safe enough to bring a gaggle of middle-schoolers to, you’re going to love “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Surfer.”

If, however, you find yourself wishing they had made a film that grown-ups could appreciate on its own merits, you’re in for a big disappointment.

This film actually took the first film, which was bad, and built on everything it got wrong, making this one a true craptacle. I had a bad feeling ahead of time when I saw it clocked in at a brisk hour twenty-nine. They’re telling one of the super-group’s most epic stories and they’re doing it quickly enough to squeeze in that extra screening per day, per theater, on the all-important opening weekend? Uh oh. This film was edited for speed.

Then they spend the whole first, say, 30 minutes beating into the ground the fact the FF have become media celebrities and woe betide them for that. They even make Johnny Storm, one of the only enjoyable performances in the first film, sad-eyed and mopey for most of this flick.

The only credit I give them is they were pretty true to the Silver Surfer. But that only made the crapfest they built around him that much more frustrating. I’m suppose I’m okay with the liberties taken with Galactus (renowned Devourer of Worlds), but more able filmmakers would have been able to get it right, purple armor and winged war helmet and all.

The story is forced and so is the “comedy” in the first half. Some of the effects work is cool, but again, it’s in the service of crap. Of nothing. Of less than a piffle.

In the end, even the half-a-roomful of middle-schoolers I saw it with only gave it tepid applause. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough – thank god it was edited for speed.

I’m waiting for “Transformers” to save the second half of the summer. The trailer is crazy! And the new “Die Hard” also looks like a must-see. They blow up everything in that one. God I hope it’s rated R.

“Yippie-kiyo-kayay, motherfucker!”

—John McClane, Die Hard

Man Cub (Photo) Update

The dude abides.

Give me a hard question next time

A: By sending other peoples’ kids off to fight and die in the wars of their making!

(A proud tradition since W’s “service” in the Texas National Air Guard during Vietnam and as luck would have it, his Daddy’s friends’ campaign seasons.)

Please send my first-place prize to Fang Bastardson, c/o Christmas Island.

I’d like to thank the Academy, and thank you, CNN, for sacrificing valuable free air time to the wife of arguably the most reviled man in America today (with apologies to close runner-up Dr. Phil.). Here’s hoping no sexy white coeds go missing today because I don’t think the Bushes would take Laura being bumped lightly. Dr. Gupta could find himself a translator in the Sunni Triangle of Death faster than you can say “Jack Kervorkian.”