Author: Glenn Hauman

About two years ago, my friend and SCE co-writer Aaron Rosenberg made the following suggestion for watching TV:

So, has anyone else tried watching the season’s new shows without the sound, and inventing their own dialogue? Jen and I did this last night, and discovered that Everwood is far more twisted–and more interesting–than we’d ever suspected.

For those of you who missed it, last night’s episode involved the Treat William doctor-character (we didn’t catch the names–the sound was off) and his son taking a wayward deer back to the mountains. The dad’s real motivation for this was that he planned on pushing his son off a cliff and then blaming it on wild animals because he was fed up with the boy’s constant moping. The boy, typically, was too self-absorbed in angst to notice.

Meanwhile, the doctor’s daughter was left with an older woman who turned out to be the town’s main dealer–did we mention that Everwood is the site of the country’s largest crystal meth plant? Well, now you know why everyone on the show is always walking around with dopey smiles on their faces. The woman answers the little girl’s suprisingly insightful questions about drug processing at first, but then she starts to get suspicious. Lo and behold! it turns out that the girl isn’t a girl at all–she’s a 47-year-old DEA agent with dwarfism who’s posing as a girl to infiltrate the community. Pretty clever, really.

While all this is going on, there’s a side-plot (yes, there’s more). The town’s other doctor discovers that his daughter is trying to kill him (lots of that going on in Everwood–must be all that crystal meth), after she hands him a revised copy of his will and orders him to sign it �just in case.� Then she gets him to help her pick out a photo for his obituary, and write all of the obit itself. But the girl planned to murder her father the next day, and apparently that isn’t convenient for him. Unfortunately, she’s already sent the obit into the local paper, and the guy there won’t pull it–it’s already been printed. So father and daughter confisicate all of the papers and toss them all, so that she can kill him at a more mutually convenient time.

Oh, and the doctor doesn’t manage to kill his son–every time he thinks they�ve found a cliff it’s a burnt-out forest or a wide plain, and he finally gives up. That night he confesses the plan to his son, who’s both shocked and amused–for a brief moment he leaves his angst behind. But it returns. They do, however, manage to trade the deer for two backpacks from the school bus driver–no doubt full of crystal meth.

And the girl/DEA agent fails in her mission. The other woman takes her for a ride on her motorcycle, drugs her, and forces her to join the Hell’s Angels. Now the girl can’t reveal what’s going on because it’s against the HA code, and they’d take back her tattoo. But at least she’s found some new friends.

Honestly, I’m amazed that WB can get away with showing something like this at prime time–think about all the kids who are watching it. We can’t wait to see what happens next week–meantime, I think we’ll try checking out the Guardian. I understand it’s actually about a family’s attempt to rule the spaghetti sauce market by lacing their own products with narcotics and forcing them on minors in the guise of a home-cooked meal.

Why do I bring this up?

Because he’s basically just described the world of VERONICA MARS (Tuesdays on UPN).

Brought to us by Rob Thomas, the guy behind the dearly missed CUPID, the show sets up a mystery venue that rivals some of the best around. Think Marlowe as a teenage girl, and you might have an idea of the gist. I’ve also described it to friends as SMALLVILLE without Clark, maybe with a bit of S.E. Hinton, or– just watch an episode. You’ve got nothing in that timeslot until 24 comes back in January, right?

You’ve just a debate on foriegn policy, and now you get people to spin your candidate’s performance and show how well he understands the world around him. On The Daily Show, the Democrats have a guy who was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. The Republicans put up a guy whose premier foriegn policy expereince is trying to get UN delegates to pay parking tickets in his city.

I guess we Republicans were underprepared across the board tonight.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107383/

In 1999, George W. Bush said we needed to cut taxes because the economy was doing so well that the U.S. Treasury was taking in too much money, and we could afford to give some back to the people who earned it. In 2001, Bush said we needed the same tax cuts because the economy was doing poorly, and we had to return the money so that people would spend and invest it.

Bush’s arguments made the wisdom of cutting taxes unfalsifiable. In good times, tax cuts were affordable. In bad times, they were necessary. Whatever happened proved that tax cuts were good policy. When Congress approved the tax cuts, Bush said they would revive the economy. You’d know that the tax cuts had worked, because more people would be working. Three years later, more people aren’t working. But in Bush’s view, that, too, proves he was right. If more people aren’t working, we just need more tax cuts.

Now Bush is playing the same game in postwar Iraq. When violence there was subsiding, he said it proved he was on the right track. Now violence is increasing, and Bush says this, too, proves he’s on the right track.

On July 23, 2003, three months into the occupation, Bush scoffed that Iraqi insurgents were confined to “a few areas of the country. And wherever they operate, they are being hunted, and they will be defeated. … Now, more than ever, all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back.” A week later, he assured reporters, “Conditions in most of Iraq are growing more peaceful. … As the blanket of fear is lifted, as Iraqis gain confidence that the former regime is gone forever, we will gain more cooperation.” Bush warned that failure to stick with his policies “would only invite further and bolder attacks.”

A year later, the insurgents are not defeated, conditions are not more peaceful, the blanket of fear is spreading, cooperation is fraying, and attacks on U.S. personnel are growing bolder. Does this prove Bush is failing? No. It proves he’s succeeding.

When the violence increased this spring, Bush, Vice President Cheney, and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said insurgents were growing “desperate” in their efforts to “derail the transition”�the handover of sovereignty scheduled for June 30. “This is precisely what our enemies want,” Bush argued. The violence proved Bush was on the right track, and the handover would soon be complete, demoralizing the enemy. The insurgents would be crushed. “In Fallujah, Marines of Operation Vigilant Resolve are taking control of the city, block by block,” Bush bragged.

Three months after the handover, the attacks continue to escalate. Fallujah is completely out of control. Is this failure? No, it’s success. Things are getting even worse because we’re doing even better. Now it’s the January 2005 Iraqi elections, not the June 2004 handover, that’s supposedly inspiring the enemy’s desperation. If we stay the course till January, we’ll turn that corner we thought we’d turned in June. “Yes, it’s getting worse, and the reason it’s getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election,” Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted Sunday on This Week. “And because it’s getting worse, we will have to increase our efforts to defeat it.” Bush understands that the resistance is evidence that history is on our side. As he explained Tuesday, the violence is growing “because people are trying to stop the march of freedom.”

If the situation in Iraq improves in the coming weeks, Bush will take credit. If it deteriorates, he’ll take credit for that, too. “Terrorist violence may well escalate as the January elections draw near,” he warned Thursday. “The terrorists know that events in Iraq are reaching a decisive moment. If elections go forward, democracy in Iraq will put down permanent roots, and terrorists will suffer a dramatic defeat.” So take heart. We’ve got ’em right where we want ’em.

For Auntie Esther comes MEng project: lil2

For a long time, I was of the belief that I missed out on being an Internet millionaire three times in the last decade or so.

Now, it’s been pointed out to me that it was probably four times.

Sigh…

Because they are ignorant fools.

It has been said that editors get a bad rap from authors, because they can’t see good stuff in front of them and they piss on talent.

They have nothing on venture capitalists.

In my day, I’ve gone to VCs with four major business proposals. Now, my track record is certainly not undistinguished– after all, my company conducted the first e-commerce transaction over the Internet. There are those who believe that me and mine may have also invented the internet shopping cart. We can also mention the first e-book publisher on the net, and I ran a heck of a lot longer than companies founded and funded by traditional publishers.

And what does this get me? Bupkis. Can’t even get my phone calls returned.

Register to vote. Heck, just go and check to see if you’re still on the registration rolls.

Hard drive receipts

56K line receipts

Internet commerce is just over a decade old.

So much to write about. Let’s do the quickie with CSI: Miami first. Spoilers after the break. Continue reading Sidekick Glenn’s TV Roundup

…post something, go away for a week, and watch how the world has changed.

So the documents ain’t real. And the blame, of course, is clearly on CBS.

STEPHEN COLBERT, Daily Show Senior Media Correspondent: Jon, there’s got to be some accountability. Dan Rather is the head, the commander in chief if you will of his organization. He’s someone in the ultimate position of power who made a harmful decision based upon questionable evidence. Then, to make things worse, he stubbornly refused to admit his mistake, choosing instead to stay the course and essentially occupy this story for too long. This man has got to go!

STEWART: Uh … we’re talking about Dan Rather…?

COLBERT: Yes Jon, Dan Rather. CBS is in chaos, it’s unsafe, riven by internal rivalries. If you ask me, respected, reputable outsiders need to be brought in to help the rebuilding effort.

STEWART: … at CBS News?

COLBERT: Yeah, at CBS news! What possible other unrelated situation could my words be equally applicable to?! Now people need to be held accountable. The commander in chief, the vice president, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser — everyone at CBS News needs to go!

Yet somehow, we still don’t know what Bush was doing during all that time. And it’s not like it would be hard for Bush to clear this up and say what he was doing during that time.

But, Glenn, I hear you cry, Bush’s service was 30 years ago. Why should we care if he showed up then?

Well, there’s this: 40 percent of Army reservists fail to report to Fort Jackson

And really, why should they? After all, if GWB can blow off his commitments to the armed forces when he’s not at risk of being sent overseas for a year and shot at, why shouldn’t these folks do it when they are at definite risk for that?

Bush has a hard time showing moral authority on this one. Why, it would be like GWB advocating tougher sentences for drug offenders after it was shown that he used drugs and his wife sold them. Or if you were revealed to be gay after advocating against gay marriages. Or… wait, you don’t think I’m implying anything there, do you?