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3/31/00 - Ventura goes postal on some NBA refs after a Timberwolves game. It's good to be the Governor.

The Worm in Suburbia. Anonymous protesters, please just give the poor guy a break. I mean, he's even part of the carpool these days.

It's worse than I feared. Despite her earlier protestations to the contrary (for the full story, read below), Sally now admits that, not only is the rumored cabal alive and well and prepping for April Fool's Day, but the candidates I long suspected as the group's diabolical masterminds may in fact only be shadows for a more perfidious set of characters working behind the scenes. Curiouser and curiouser...Could it be that the real genius behind this cabal is the one chain-smoking Morley's and watching the watchers? The truth is out there, folks.

On the eve of the well-reviewed (and/but Americanized) screen version of High Fidelity, Salon interviews author Nick Hornby on his reaction to the film version of his tome on modern masculinity.

Team Gore wants Gray Davis for the veep.

Twernt birddogs this story on lone Congressional voices combating the ways and means of our current War on Drugs. Salon also examines the quid pro quo between several major magazines and the White House drug czar.

Speaking of Congress, if you're unduly stressed by encroaching Tax Time, you'll probably enjoy this article on Congressional tax delinquency: IRS data released Thursday shows that the nonpayment rate as of October 1999 for the House was 8.4 percent, while that in the Senate was 7.5 percent. No wonder the Bush tax cut is so popular.

Jesus was here (through the blessing and prayers of Zannah). I never knew the big guy was into such funky organ pieces.

Random Walks points out this Scott McCloud comic on his obsession with chess. It reminded me of the year I spent as a Playsite Chess junkie, in which I logged about 1600 games on that site alone and devoured any chess book I could find (unfortunately, I seem to have put all this chess gaming skill in the short-term memory cache, since I've gotten so bad recently that even my twelve year-old sister nailed me with the Fool's Mate the other night.)

Cluttered, a wry and entertaining new basketball-mad Carolinian on the scene, notes that our galaxy is swallowing up its neighbors.

Wake Forest wins the NIT Tournament. That, coupled with UNC's surprise Final Four showing, should hopefully put to rest any rumors of the ACC's demise. In other basketball news, the Heat clinched a playoff spot tonight with a win over the Bulls. And, although the West has gotten all the press this year, the fact that seven Western teams already have playoff berths compared to the East's two should count for something, namely that the second tier of West Coast teams are pathetic.

Could a movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy be finally getting off the ground, with Austin Powers director Jay Roach at the helm? Corona purports to have designs for both Marvin the Paranoid Android and the Guide itself in their clutches.

The uncut scene from Eyes Wide Shut, about which a link to still frames was posted yesterday, is now available in its entirety in a downloadable mpg. Once again, over eighteen only, please (and if you're younger, I didn't send ya.)

From both Now This (who, by the way, I thank for his kind words the other day) and Medley, Scully on Mulder (or was that Mulder on Scully?)

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3/30/00 - My, I've been doing quite a few Harry Potter updates of late, haven't I? Anyway, Apropos of Nothing discovered this Sun story about J.K. Rowling's Dream Harry. I don't see any lightning-shaped scar...

Al Gore succumbs to the vicissitudes of Florida politics. Talk about pouring fuel on the fire.

Salon covers the fan fallout from the Harry Potter directorial decision.

Democratic Senate Candidate Jon Corzine of New Jersey gets into hot water for disparaging Italian-Americans (login required). Among his several gaffes was the following: According to Mr. Alfano, when someone in the group [of prominent Italian-Americans] introduced Mr. Corzine to a lawyer named David Stein, Mr. Corzine said: "He's not Italian, is he? Oh, I guess he's your Jewish lawyer who is here to get the rest of you out of jail." I think somebody needs to cut back on their Sopranos.

After strangely underachieving with the Celts these past three years, Coach Rick Pitino sets his own ultimatum.

Adult Kubrick fans - particularly fellow Americans - may find this interesting. It's a side by side comparison of the infamous(ly unerotic) orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, which was tampered with after Kubrick's death by adding digital cloaks over certain elements in the American release to get an R rating. Over 18 only please, although if you were underage and you managed to sit through one of Kubrick's most slow-moving and disappointing films, perhaps you deserve a little excitement.

Things you don't want to know about your childhood idols: Last night's A&E Biography (which I usually end up seeing every night because of Elaine's unnatural addiction to Law and Order reruns) covered Harrison Ford. Most of the hour was an uneventful recap of Ford's biggest action roles, but then in the last five they offer up this unnecessary bit of information: "In order for Indiana Jones to always keep his hat on, Ford used to STAPLE THE FAMOUS HAT TO HIS HEAD. (my emphasis)" Cut to: a shot of Harrison Ford wincing in pain as he puts a staple gun up to his brow and fires. I guess that's why they pay him the big bucks.

Sanity prevails (barely) on the Flag-burning amendment.

Fans of Wallace and Gromit will definitely want to check out the trailer for Chicken Run, the heartwarming claymation tale of a few chickens who figure out what their ultimate fate would be at the farm and make a break for it (out June 23).

The Knickerbockers rebound in Seattle 110-95.

So, while watching My Fair Lady this evening, I was struck by an acute and nagging sense of deja vu every time Colonel Pickering opened his mouth. For the entire film, I couldn't place the guy, so I did an IMDB search and discovered that actor Wilfrid Hyde-White went on to play Doctor Goodfellow on Buck Rogers, a show I watched faithfully when I was a wee little tyke. Now that's exactly the type of thing that would have rattled around my head and slowly driven me insane were it not for the Web. Phew!

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3/29/00 - Wow. To paraphrase Airplane!, "looks like I picked the wrong day to quit blogging!" I've spent much of the day running errands and playing basketball, so it was quite a surprise to find out that the shrapnel from the Bloat grenade I lobbed last night extended so far. When I first started the puppy a few months ago, one of the older hands suggested that the best way to drive up hits was to pick a fight with a more popular blogger. Looks like they were right.

As I said before, I thought Sally's fair and thorough response responded to the heart of my query, especially since she basically admitted that "you are pretty much on the money when you mention the staleness of this week's top ten." Obviously she can write her column any way she dang well pleases, but given the way she dishes out the criticism every week she should be able to take it. Which, I should mention, she did, with with intelligence and grace.

As for Adam at Webloglog, I should probably just invoke my employer's proverb about wrestling with a pig ("It just wastes your time, and the pig loves it.") In spite of myself, a few quick points:

1) If you have to look up what "Pravda" means, that's your own damn problem. Just trust me in the fact that I didn't choose the word to sound "intelligent" any more than you dogged Geocities to sound more websavvy. Quite the contrary - the e-mail was written in haste and was animated more by Knicks-game Guinness than any conscious attempt at vocabulary scrounging.

2)I'm surprised you find the term "burgeoning blognation" so funny. Particularly since the only reason a rinky-dink gimmick like your metablog works is because of the existence of said loose confederation of blogs.

But anyway, since I subscribe to the theory that there's really no such thing as bad press, I should thank Adam for placing himself in the middle of all this. It made all my asskissing that much more effective. ;)

Oh, and speaking of asskissing: Much thanks to Swirlee, Phish, and Dumbmonkey for having my back, and to Medley and Neale for perpetuating "cabal" as a catchphrase.

In other news, I picked up a fancy capo and the Abyss Special Edition DVD this afternoon and, after Elaine is finished with My Fair Lady (A Hepburn movie...the irony!), I'm looking forward to checking out the extra thirty minutes of footage.

Sally's response to yesterday's screed is posted. What she said was fine by me, until she finished up with the following: "I will continue to visit hundreds of weblogs because I enjoy it, but the ones I write about will always be those that take the risk of opening themselves up to criticism, and don't take the safe road." Somehow, except for the previously noted exceptions, I really don't see those same old blogs breaking any new ground, or even opening themselves up to criticism any more than all the other myriad posters around the web. Anyway, it's not worth continuing to type about, particularly on such a sunny day.

The Supreme Court on Nude Dancing: Looks like Dubya is gonna have to be more careful at frat parties from now on.

Two more planets are discovered in the far reaches of space, the smallest yet found.

As the early rumors suggested, recent Supporting Actor rivals Haley Jo Osment and Jude Law have signed on for Spielberg/Kubrick's A.I., due out next year.

Firda sent along the following poem about Ghost in the Machine: (Thanks, Firda!)

Ghost in the machine Brought to you by Kevin Whose code is pretty clean Even though he's just a geek wannabeen This ghost is not scary So please don't you worry It will keep you happy Unless your name's Sally Tenpenny Kevin updates manually Without Blogger, how fussy But he just blogs on endlessly Like the Energizer bunny I promised Kevin to write him this To write an ode to a weblog of his A few hours of sleep I've missed Now the mission's accomplished!

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3/28/00 - Knicks lost in Sacramento, but that potential nightkiller was redeemed by watching the Mighty Oak drain a gamewinner from behind the arc for the Raptors. Once a Knick, always a Knick.

After reading the latest Bloat, I was irritated enough to fire off the following e-mail:

Hello there, Sally,

While your column has always seemed to me like a Pravda for the blogger cabal, your most recent top ten confirms it. It's obvious you only visit about thirteen sites to determine your top ten. Mind you, I'm not writing this because you didn't pick my loathsomely designed site. It has much more to do with the fact that, while all the most interesting activity on the blog front (aside from the ever-unique Neale and the always consistent Brig) is coming from either the youngbloods - jish, phish, firda, ooine, dumbmonkey, and/or zannah, to name only a few - or the forgotten elders: lake, kingston, medley, kempa, and, naturally, tom/barbelith; nevertheless, you continue to hype the either the blogger cabal and their yesmen (ev, meg, and mark) or the rest of the decomposing old guard (Cam and Winer? CAM and WINER? Are you kidding me?)

Look, if you don't have time to surf all the blogs, then by all means give the column back to the Dutchman. The last thing the burgeoning blognation needs is another shrill and smarmy cheerleader for the status quo.

Audrey Hepburn? Please, more like Jennifer Love Hewitt.

-KcM

Who knows? Perhaps I'm out of bounds by leveling such criticism at Ms. Tenpenny. I'm just sick to death of reading the same handful of names on Bloat each week, especially when so many fresh new voices are emerging on the Blog scene.

Today was the most visited day in GitM's history! Thanks much to Phish, Dumbmonkey, Hit-or-Miss, and Weblog Wannabe for their kind links this past twenty-four hours.

Check out this telling stat from the most recent election poll:

Do you think the candidate says what he believes?

	Yes	No
Bush	32%	60%
Gore	29%	64%

That is just plain sad. Assuming that hardly anyone trusts 'em both, that means approximately 39% of Americans - a plurality - don't trust either of the major party candidates, which means low turnout, which means the power of special interests is exaggerated, etc. etc. As the vicious circle turns...

The Village Voice takes a Sims bender. They also delve into Discover Card's role in a potential ecological disaster in China.

Safire does Carville, and, let me tell you, he's got the voice all wrong.

Stuff and Rot is over in Richmond, VA, making the (extended) DC area tally now five blogs I'm aware of. Five, ah, ah, ah!

Bad news for Harry Potter fans. The official film website is now up, and Chris Columbus has been chosen to direct. Columbus was the directing wizard behind such compelling cinema as Home Alone, Home Alone 2, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bicentennial Man, and Stepmom. Pass the saccharine, please. If Professor Trelawney of Divination were here, I believe she'd have two words for us: "Schumacher Redux."

In happier Potter news, J.K. Rowling has released some intriguing details about the fourth volume, Harry Potter and the DoomSpell Tournament (due in stores July 8): "Last time you met [Harry], he was 13. He's 14 now, and he's started to realize girls are quite interesting." On a more somber note, Rowling declares, "I've said all along there will be death...And yes, you see a death in book four."

A Potentially Embarrassing Revelation: There was about 45 seconds there when I was really raving out to the all new Hampster Dance 2. Gotta love that techno beat. (From Hit or Miss and The Other Side.)

I composed Firda of Weblog Wannabe a little ditty on 'blogging in hopes she would regale me with one of her poems. I was happily surprised to see that she liked the aforementioned doggerel enough to post it, and she promises a verse of her own in the near future. Thanks, Firda! ;)

I just finished updating the Bill Bradley Political Cartoon Archive for the final time, and it just depresses me to think of what might've been...

Frank Serpico on the NYPD.

Neale mans the weblog ramparts against the encroaching journal invaders with some classic Wetlog prose.

Al Gore plumbs new depths of brazen hypocrisy on campaign finance reform. What on Earth did we Democrats do to deserve this guy? I can't believe I'm researching a book promoting this fool...the perils of ghostwriting, I guess. Well, buy a lunchbox, Al, cause hopefully Ralph Nader is going to take you to school. Our party needs a lefty/communitarian resurgence in the worst way.

David Edelstein on the Oscars: "No one could get a rhythm going except Michael Caine, who stopped the show to salute his fellow nominees in one of the best Oscar speeches ever. Best because of Caine's modesty? No. The key to the speech's charm—to the charm of all of Caine's performances, come to think of it—was how it fit the occasion....when Caine reached out to the pale preteen, the hulking African-American newcomer, the sleek English pretty-boy, and the superstar with the rictus grin, he seemed to be reaching out to the audience, too. He was absolving them of the guilt that invariably follows a tough choice by saying, "We all know why I'm here and they aren't, so let's put the most human face imaginable on this."

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