Memo to House Republicans Re: Bailout Vote

Hey, guys - nice job today, sinking the vote. Honestly, I'm not sure if this is a good bill or not, as I'm not an economist, but it's clear something has to be done so credit in this country doesn't dry up, and it's certainly clear that your president, your presidential nominee, and your house leader really wanted you to vote for this thing. So, Nancy Pelosi was a little tone deaf today and took your party to task for being lax on regulation and playing a big role in allowing things to get where they are today - she probably shouldn't have done that - but blaming her for the failure of the passage of this legislation? This from the New York Times Caucus blog, quoting radio host Hugh Hewitt (never heard of him):

The GOP House leadership is now bluntly declaring what everyone who followed the story today knows: Nancy Pelosi killed the bailout bill with a blistering attack on Republicans just prior to the start of the vote. The Speaker cost millions of Americans hundreds of millions in retirement savings today because she could not resist using her position to slam her political opponents even after they had met her more than half way.

Really? The Speaker cost millions of Americans hundreds of millions in retirement savings today? I thought it was you guys, because you revolted against your party's leadership. I was watching Rachel Maddow tonight, and she brought up a very good point - you guys killed this bill because she couldn't talk nicely to you? What a bunch of pansies. To paraphrase Ms. Maddow, "Way to put your country first." I say, "Way to scapegoat!" Seriously. You all are going to have a lot of atoneing to do between now and Yom Kippur.

Best regards,

Elliot Blake

Memo to John McCain Re: Bailout Legislation

Way to go, Senator McCain. The leadership you showed in putting your country first, suspending your campaign, rushing to Washington, and bringing together Republicans and Democrats to forge a compromise bailout bill was truly stellar, and thanks to your efforts, we have... nothing. Bet you're glad you took that gamble, aren't you? Now that you're in a pickle, I suggest more lying and revising of recent history - you know, just lie about what you did last week, lie about what Obama did last week, and then send out your surrogates to perpetuate those untruths. That's the best way to get out from under this mess, because your big gamble to be the hero has made you the goat. I recommend putting your country first once more, this time by suspending your campaign again - for good.

Best regards,

Elliot Blake

The End of The Daily Beard

Well, I forgot to post Day 6 of The Daily Beard yesterday. Where was the public outcry? I guess people really are all-consumed by the election and this financial crisis we're dealing with. That said, here's Day 6:
I call this one The Poseidon, and it does not work on me at all. Just terrible, like the remake of The Poseidon Adventure. And let's consider for a moment the person who actually took the time to grow out, tease, and wax the above beard into that particular configuration...why? I don' t think we'll ever know. It's my hope that he won a prize, though, because that's the only reason I can think of to do something like that. Next, the final beard in this ridiculous exercise:

Yeah, just when you thought it couldn't get more ridiculous, more extravagant, more terrible... it does. Woof. I call this one The Hessian Dandy. I apologize if that offends any Hessians. Now, if you can, I suggest you purge The Daily Beard from your memory banks.

-EB

The Daily Beard - Day 5

I call this one The Gilbert & Sullivan. I don't think an explanation is required.

-EB

Adios, Butch Cassidy

I was saddened to learn that Paul Newman passed away last night. He was one of my favorite actors, and I also happened to enjoy many of his Newman's Own products. The other thing that I admired about Paul Newman was his take on life:

"“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”"

I think he achieved just that.

Adios, Butch-

-EB

Debate Wrap-Up

Just watched the first debate, and, being an Obama supporter, I thought he did just fine - but I wish he did better. I wanted to see Barack wipe the floor with McCain, and that just didn't happen - although it was easy to tell when Obama was getting under his skin - that brought out the pissy side of McCain, which is pretty unflattering.

What I really found interesting was the post-debate spin. I watched the debate on NBC and left it there to see what each candidate's surrogate had to say. For Obama, running mate Joe Biden appeared, and frankly, I wish Obama said a few of the things Biden said about Iraq and John McCain's judgement. For McCain, Rudy Giuliani appeared, rather than McCain's running mate Sarah Palin. Brian Williams issued a disclaimer before bringing on Giuliani, which was that NBC asked for Palin to comment post-debate, and that request was denied. I'm not sure if she's appearing on any other network - I highly doubt it - but to me, that's very telling, because bringing out Palin would have completely undermined every argument McCain made about Obama's experience and McCain's own judgment, because she has neither. Which makes her qualified to be president how, I wonder?

Tired now.

Going to sleep.

More beard tomorrow.

-EB

McCain Agrees to Debate

I think his decision to honor the debate commitment he made has a lot to do with my calling him out as a wuss in my previous post. I have more sway than I realized!

-EB
(drunk with power)

The Daily Beard - Day 4

Before I get I present Day 4 of The Daily Beard, I first want to make a short comment on the status of tonight's presidential debate: John McCain better show up and put his cards on the table. Obama is right - this is exactly the time we need to hear from our potential next presidents about how they'd deal with this crisis we're in. The biggest S&L in the country went under overnight, so clearly, this isn't a problem that's going away. I don't know if a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street is the right thing to do - I'm not an economist. But we need to hear what Obama and McCain have to say on this and a load of other issues, so if McCain doesn't show, in my opinion, it just exposes him as afraid to take on Obama. Don't be a wuss, Senator McCain - get your wrinkly behind on that private campaign jet of yours and let the people hear what you have to say.

And now, the beard:This is a special one, folks - a beard like this one doesn't just assume that shape on it's own, it needs wax and combing. It ages me a bit, I think, but also lends an air of distinction. I call this one The Bismarck, or The Too Much Time on My Hands 2.

-EB

The Daily Beard - Day 3

Let's be clear about one thing: I do not have the patience to grow a beard like the one poorly photoshopped onto my face above. How does one eat with a beard like that? It seems like you'd have to spend a disproportionate amount of time on facial grooming, and I'm not down with that. I call this one The Too Much Time on My Hands. Which could also be the subtitle to this ridiculous Daily Beard feature.

-EB

Patriotic Hats

This has been bugging me since the confluence of Hurricane Gustav and the Republican National Convention, when John McCain suspended the convention for one night so we could (and I'm paraphrasing) "take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats." And now he's suspending his campaign and trying to postpone the first presidential debate to "deal" with the financial crisis (never mind the fact the congressional leaders of both parties have been working on the administration's bailout proposal for five straight days, and according to this post on the noted political blog Talking Points Memo, are 98% there) and suggesting that we need to come together as Americans rather than Democrats or Republicans. Well, I'm a Democrat, but the last time I checked, I'm an American, too. Yes, I'm two things at once. I can even do two things at once - right now I'm watching TV and writing this blog post! Okay, I'm being sarcastic, obviously, but can't John McCain do his part to "deal" with the crisis and still prepare for the debate, like his opponent Barack Obama? Doesn't a president need to be able to multitask? Clearly McCain can't - and in my mind, this business about not being able to be Americans and members of our chosen political parties is just more evidence that McCain can't multitask at all. (Although, in McCain's defense, if we're talking about trying to wear two hats at once, y'know an American hat and a Republican hat, you are just going to wind up looking like a dork.)

Daily Beard #3 tomorrow.

-EB

The Daily Beard - Day 2

Well, the lighting on this beard clearly does not match the lighting in the photo onto which it was pasted. C'est la vie. I call this one The Spartan. If anyone can correctly guess the source of the beard, email me or leave a comment below, and I will send some kind of prize.

-EB

The Daily Beard!

I have been looking for a new job for some time now, as well as developing my own projects and looking for freelance writing/producing gigs, but between the seriousness of that, and my increasing frustration with the current presidential election and how it's playing out in the news media (how is it that McCain's involvement in the last major banking collapse in the 1980's has been so glossed over in the mainstream press?) I have decided that it's time for something completely frivolous. So I present to you, my loyal readership (do I have any readers?), The Daily Beard, wherein I, Elliot Blake, will photoshop a new and ridiculous beard onto my face for one week. I give you now... Beard #1 - behold!

I call this one The Lubavitcher.

(And no, just in case you're concerned, there's nothing wrong with me.)

-EB

The Great Scott McCloud

I had a really interesting two-week period, starting labor day weekend when I was featured as an "author" at the Decatur Book Festival ("author" in quotes because that was how I was designated, regardless of the fact that I'm not one; writer, yes, author, grand overstatement), and culminating last week in giving a guest lecture to a New/Emerging Media class at Georgia State, having dinner with comics genius Scott McCloud, and then appearing on a panel with him at Agnes Scott College last Wednesday morning to discuss the graphic novel and film Persepolis. Four public appearances, and no one threw anything at me, so I feel reasonably confident that I didn't suck too badly.

Anyway, the highlight for me was Scott McCloud. First, he's just a really nice guy. Second, he's really, really smart, and getting to talk to someone who has thought so deeply about his art form, comics, was a treat. Scott gave a public talk last Tuesday night at Agnes Scott, called Comics: A Medium in Transition, which was essentially a distillation of two of his three seminal non-fiction works, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. A "distillation" maybe doesn't sound so great, but he puts on a really brisk, interesting presentation, using Keynote (Apple's PowerPoint challenger) to present images that illustrate his points and supplement his talk. Great stuff - I'm going to have to learn how to use that. Scott's work, and his presentation of that work to a campus audience really did a lot for the acceptance of comics on the Agnes Scott campus, and it's really great to see this form that so many people love finally get a critical eye cast upon it (which has been slowly happening for about 15 years now) - because it's in looking at the medium seriously and critically that it can continue to grow and flourish, and in America anyway, move beyond the superhero comics that dominate the mainstream. (Full disclosure: I buy a ton of superhero comics, and I'm not ashamed to say it.)

Scott also illustrated the comic introducing Google's Chrome web browser, and it was interesting to hear him talk about what went into that, as well. A lot of secrecy for many months, and a great deal of research. Since the comic hit the web, there have been many hacks/remixes of it made, involving people writing new dialog for the characters, re-ordering the panels for different effect, and generally just messing around with it in photoshop (I've considered attempting a remix myself). I asked him if he had seen these appropriations of his work, and he said he had, and that furthermore, there were a lot of really great ones out there - he seemed tickled by the idea that his comic about an open-source browser was being used, in a sense, as an open source comic.

My one regret of my Scott McCloud experience was that I asked him to contribute a voice to a show I'm putting together, about comics, and he passed - mostly I think because I picked a poor time to ask him (at the end of a long day), and I didn't do a good job of explaining my show and how much time it would take to record the voiceover (about thirty seconds - it was just one line). Anyway, I certainly do not hold his passing against him, and I hope that if I can get the show off the ground that he will one day make an appearance, perhaps to plug his next work.

-EB

Farewell, Yankee Stadium

I'm a diehard Orioles fan, but as a baseball fan, I'm sad to see
Yankee Stadium go, and I'm sad I never got to see a game in a place
full of such rich baseball history.

That said, I hope the Orioles win tonight. Because I'm not just an
Orioles fan. I'm also a lifetime Yankee hater. (Other Yankee haters
around the world and in Boston will understand what I mean.)

-EB

update: The O's lost. This doesn't surprise me; they've been losing a lot this month, and there was really no way they were going to get to Mariano Rivera, just as there was really no way they Yankees were going to allow themselves to lose their final game at Yankee Stadium.

Sick of All the Republican Lying

I'm watching Sarah Palin on CNN, and to borrow a phrase from Minnesota Democratic Senate Candidate Al Franken, they're a bunch of lying liars. Don't believe their bullshit - the McCain campaign is employing the "lie long enough and lie hard enough, eventually the truth will be overwhelmed" strategy. Palin was just on talking about how Obama's going to raise taxes, but of course she's not going to point out that he's going to allow Bush's tax cuts for the top 1% to expire, and of course she's not going to point out that Obama's tax plan actually cuts taxes for more Americans in the middle-income brackets than McCain's plan does. It's all just a snowjob. If you've got nothing, if you've got no plan, just lie. I'm absolutely disgusted. And the network news is doing nothing more than picking off the low-hanging fruit, like Palin's bridge-to-nowhere bullshit. Check out Frank Rich's column in the NY Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21rich.html?em

Good stuff and full of reminders why John McCain is absolutely the wrong person to be in charge of our economy - as if all of last week's flip-flopping on the "fundamentals of the economy" and bailing out AIG, and on regulation vs. deregulation weren't enough of a clue that a clue on the economy is what he lacks.

-EB

It's Pronounced "Nu-Cle-ar"

I was just watching CNN, and they played a clip from the McCain/Palin rally being held today in Minnesota. Gov. Palin was speaking about Iran, and how (I'm paraphrasing here) "we must not let them acquire nuke-u-lar weapons." I don't disagree with that sentiment - which is probably one of the only things the hockey mom and I would agree on if we compared lists - but, my God, how hard is it to say "nuclear" correctly? It's pronounced "nu-cle-ar" - there's not an extra letter U in between the C and L.

Y'know, her inability to say "nuclear" correctly, her absolute certainty that she's right, her unwillingness to blink about anything, and her complete lack of experience on the world stage (apparently she didn't even have a passport until she became governor of Alaska) has made me realize that the only difference between Sarah Palin and George W. Bush is lipstick.

Lipstick. Frightening.

-EB

Hannah's First Joke

My daughter Hannah, who turns three next month, surprised me with her first joke the other day. And it wasn't a knock-knock joke that she heard in daycare - it was a one-liner. For your pleasure, I present Hannah's joke below:

I was trying to make lunch (or something along those lines) and Hannah was being kind of difficult about letting me do it, so I said to her, "Hannah, you're driving me nuts -would just let me finish, please?"

Her reply: "Daddy, I not driving you nuts - I'm driving you grapes!"

On the scale of Toddler Humor - which, if you've been around little kids, is not terribly sophisticated and rarely makes actual sense - that's equivalent to a John Stewart one-liner.

I'm so proud.

-EB

Dark Superman & Friends

Towards the end of August, the comics world was set ablaze with talk that Warner Brothers would once again reboot the Superman movie franchise, but, presumably owing to the phenomenal success of the latest Batman movie, Superman would be going dark. Now, I'm not making a value judgement here, but if the key to financial success is exploring the dark side of characters known for their sunny dispositions, maybe it's worth a try. With that in mind, I've come up with a few "dark" reboots of some traditionally kid-friendly properties:

Clifford, the Big Red Dog: Emily-Elizabeth's teen years are hard on Clifford; she has a boyfriend and isn't paying attention to the big red dog in the manner to which he has become accustomed. Clifford begins to act out against those around him, and his sense of right and wrong leads him to occasionally stomp on or eat those residents of Birdwell Island - dog and human alike - that violate "Clifford's Law." When Clifford pops Emily-Elizabeth's boyfriend's head in his teeth like a grape, it's time for action - but will Emily-Elizabeth have what it takes to put Clifford down?

Bob The Builder: After attending a rave thrown by Wendy’s party hearty sister Jenny, Scoop develops a substance abuse problem and crushes Bob's leg in a drug-induced rage. When the unrequited love of his life, Wendy, begins a torrid affair with Farmer Pickles, Bob tumbles down the rabbit hole of pain-killer addiction. Scarecrow Spud appears to have self-immolated while freebasing behind the barn, leaving behind only his charred turnip nose - but was his death just another in a string of drug-related accidents, or foul play? All of the evidence points to Travis the Tractor, but he’s not talking…

Thomas & Friends: For years, the good people of the Isle of Sodor have lived under the iron rule of Sir Topham Hatt and the unpredictable whims of his sentient trains. But now revolution has come to the island! Will kind-hearted Thomas, ridiculed for his fondness of the “talking meat creatures” help the resistance, or will he fully embrace his mechanical nature and become a blunt instrument of locomotive death, his bright blue paint stained human blood red?

Sesame Street: Economic hard times have pushed out the friendly citizens of Sesame Street. Now Oscar runs a crystal meth lab; Hooper's has become a strip club; and former best friends Telly and Baby Bear lead rival gangs looking to take control of the street...until Elmo comes back. Elmo's all grown-up. Elmo's got a two-by-four. And Elmo knows how to use it. It's time to take back the street... the Sesame Street.

Superfriends: B-list supervillain The Gentelman Ghost gets into the Hall of Justice after hours, violates Superfriend sidekicks Wendy and Marvin, and guts Wonder Dog. The Superfriends return just after the horrible incident, capture The Gentleman Ghost, and decide to wipe his mind - but Batman catches them in the act, and the Superfriends decide to wipe his mind, too! Years later, Wendy and Marvin are murdered, and in the investigation, the unethical actions of the Superfriends are revealed to Batman and the supervillain community, leading to attacks of escalating brutality between the heroes and villains, and causing Batman to spiral downard into paranoia. It's dark, it's brutal - no Superfriend will be unsullied, especially Apache Chief, Samurai, and Black Vulcan...you'll never again look at a token minority characters the same way. Based on the hit DC maxi-series Identity Crisis!

There you go - five surefire hits in the dark vein of "The Dark Knight." Because dark is what the kids want.

Book Festival Wrap-Up

Well, it's taken me nearly ten days to come down from the high that comes from 1) not having anyone throw anything at you while you're speaking publicly, and 2) having people actually turn out to hear what you have to say. Thanks to Amber Dermont of Agnes Scott College and Tom Bell, programming director for the Decatur Book Festival for inviting me to participate in the annual Writer's Conference, and to my amigo Chris Kelly for pitching in his extremely valuable two cents on the art of writing for animation. Thanks also to Terra McVoy of Decatur's excellent Little Shop of Stories for inviting me to be part of the panel for teen readers - it was a total blast. I got to talk a lot about comics - my favorite medium - and it's gratifying to see that people are really beginning to accept comics as a literary form.