Saturday, 09/18/04

Coming soon on Fox: it's the Valerie Plame show.

Federal prosecutors are still trying to uncover who leaked Plame's identity to conservative columnist Robert Novak, which he published shortly after Wilson wrote an op-ed piece critical of the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq.

At least one person in Hollywood has been paying attention to the scandal as well. And, stripped of its nasty political implications, is pitching it as a lighthearted drama at FOX and its sister studio, 20th Century Fox TV.

Words fail. 09:21AM «

Tuesday, 09/14/04

It's primary day in Washington State. The damn political parties got together and mounted a successful first amendment challenge to the open primary Washington had enjoyed for seventy years, so there's no more multi-party voting in primary races. Bah. The gory details (MP3, realaudio) are available if you're curious; I was especially tickled by the Alaskan caller who said open primaries were a bad thing because cross-party voting tends to elect moderates.

The biggest surprise of the day for me is that The Stranger's election guide convinced me to vote for Mark Sidran over Deborah Senn for AG. The Stranger was Sidran's most implacable foe in his ten-year reign as Seattle City Attorney, when Sidran was the furthest-right Democrat west of Spokane. But that's not such a bad thing for an AG, especially one who'll be running against a credible Republican in the general.

The Stranger goes into a lot of detail on Sidran-Senn (end of the first page, into the second page), and the rest of their picks may be entertaining to the politically inclined even if you live out of state. If you're in-state, they're a useful guide to the judgeship races, which are always pretty opaque to me, especially at the primary level. 12:41PM «

Monday, 09/13/04

Two days ago, I learned via Daring Fireball's invaluable linked list that Netflix had rolled out an impressive battery of RSS feeds. This includes a rundown of their 200-odd weekly new releases.

Yesterday, in addition to learning that Netflix is a far more vigilant accumulator of B-movies about vampires than I might have presupposed, I noticed that the Ewan McGregor/Tilda Swinton movie "Young Adam" was out on video already.

Between the chance to hear those two speak with their own Scottish accents and their NC-17 sex scenes, Young Adam was one we meant to catch in theaters, but it slipped away before we got around to it. Now I discover that the weak bastards at Columbia/Tri-Star never released the theatrical cut on DVD in the United States, instead hacking out a sex scene and lord knows what else to qualify for an R rating. Access to Blockbuster and Wal-mart trumps other concerns. I gotta get me one of those region-free DVD players. 09:57AM «

Sunday, 09/12/04

The Magnetic Fields are touring. That's unusual. And exciting! They'll be in Seattle in mid-November. 03:05PM «

Saturday, 09/11/04

Today I learned that no women's singles US Open winner in the post-1968 modern era had ever been seeded lower than sixth. Svetlana Kuznetsova, who beat her villainously named countrywoman Elena Dementieva for the whole enchilada this evening, was seeded ninth, setting the new mark. I'm impressed that the WTA rankings are so accurate over the long term.

The final women's match, taking place in New York City on September 11th, was preceded by a big ceremony involving Marines, flags, a boy's choir, and soprano Jessye Norman. I was all set to fast-forward right on past yet another overwrought rendition of the national anthem when they surprised me, launching into Amazing Grace instead. That could hardly compare to the surprise in store after the first verse, when they segued hammily into America The Beautiful. It was such a bizarre artistic decision that I wondered briefly if they weren't all simultaneously spacing out.

The political advantage to cramming both songs into a medley is that it shortened America The Beautiful such that few would notice that they skipped the second verse, the one I tend to listen for in vain:

America, America
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law

They never get around to that part at ballgames.

It should be said that when I looked up those lyrics to make sure I was quoting them correctly, I was startled by the last verse:

God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

I think Ray Charles must have left that bit out for some reason. 09:36PM «

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