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THE DEATH OF GREATNESS IN OUR TIME.

Given how political conventions are completely devoid of actual news and about as relevant as a melon baller, my mind wandered last night during the Democratic convention. I started mentally comparing it to past conventions and looking at the lineup of speakers in objective terms. After hearing Clinton speak, I was absolutely floored by how terrific he was. It was one of the more amazing political performances in recent memory. Then it hit me.

This is not a good thing.

The idea of great men and women participating in politics is, with my reaction to Clinton, officially dead to me. When the current crop of party leaders, candidates, representatives, and sitting administration are so sub-moronic and coarse that Bill Clinton looks like Lord Palmerston in comparison, we've been witnesses to the death of the idea of the great orator and statesman.

Think about this. Jimmy Carter has been a Democratic pariah for over two decades. In the 1980s they wouldn't give him a damn bleacher seat to the convention......and now he was the lead-off speaker? Jimmy Carter??? In sports they say that a team is really headed for hard times when the rookies aren't good enough to replace the old, broken-down veterans who can't play anymore. The options offered by the current politicians are so bad that in comparison Carter - the least popular president since Hoover - suddenly looks great. Who knew that 20 years beyond Carter's failed administration we'd be looking back on his quivering passivity and lamenting "We had it so good back then."

Who qualifies as a statesman anymore? The regurgitation of insults in sound-bite form have completely replaced oratory and any sense of dignity. What communication does exist simply consists of telling the loyal troops what they already believe. The Republican Party has gone from the eloquent (Lincoln) to the silently dignified (Coolidge) to the vacuous but inspirational (Reagan) to the barely literate. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose mere diction and lunkheaded manner is enough to provoke laughter, is a keynote speaker for the GOP convention. Our current President, when not reading off a script, looks like a man who alternately needs a thesaurus and a clean pair of underpants.

Among the opposition, Jefferson's populism gave way to FDR's fatherly comforts, which in turn begat Kennedy's boy-wonder persona, and finally Bill Clinton's car-salesman charm. John Edwards is just any other lawyer - pointed, myopic, and vaguely threatening. John Kerry couldn't inspire a pack of starving dogs to run towards fresh meat.

Is this what it's come to? We are yielding too much with regards to our expectations. We want a Lincoln or Churchill, but if not we'll take an FDR. If we can't have an FDR then I guess Woodrow Wilson will do. Failing that, can we at least get a Henry Luce? No? Well, how about a Reagan? Oh, come on, you're killing us. Alright. Fine. We'll take Tip O'Neill. Aww, come on, this is bullshit. What do you have?

And that is how Bill Clinton became the greatest living statesman in American politics. No, Bill, that's not a compliment.

Daniel Webster is rolling over in his grave, no doubt. But that much we already knew. What is more troubling is the fact that our national political debate has become so asinine simply because the people conducting it can themselves no longer debate. Camus said "Men with greatness in their hearts do not go in for politics". With the continuous downward revision of the lowest common denominator at the hands of the current President, politicos are revealing a deeper connection to existentialism than I ever knew existed. Because this election is playing out as though everyone involved is on a myopic quest to prove Camus right once and for all.

IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN POLITICAL CONVENTION HISTORY

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The state of my fridge, saturday afternoon

Happy Birthday to me. Just so you kids know, at a Binny's Beverage Depot Sir Robert Burnett Gin sells for $12.95 for 1.75L.

Read that again. 1.75L. Most gins at 1.75L top the $30 mark - Sir Robert Burnett stays under the $13 mark. And it has a plastic bottle, so when the other creators of ginandtacos.com and I polish it for my b-day tonight and drop it on the floor, it will just bounce.

I'm not familiar with British customs, but if it is possible to knight a man twice it needs to be done to Sir Robert Burnett.

The Gay Gambit

Last weekend, I went and flyered for a Get out the Vote in Swing States group with strong anti-Bush leanings in the amazing Millenium Park during it's opening weekend celebration. During that time, I learned how much I absolutely hate flyering. I suppose I deserve bad luck, as I always turn away from people who are passing out flyers. Even if someone was to come up to me with a flyer for the "Gin-drinking-Buffy-fan-comic-books-and-tacos-club" I'd still not make eye contact and speed up my walking. I learned I'm not alone in this speeding up process.

It got to the point where I was really thinking that this election is going to be old overweight white men with bad mustaches versus everyone else. One particularly large man in ill-fitted shorts was holding six hotdogs, and gave me this look when I asked him if he wanted to help beat Bush in November that said "I'm an overweight middle aged white-man who is about to sit down and eat six hot dogs - I'm clearly ok with the direction this country is taking."

Every person over the age of 22 was avoiding us except one group: gay people. We eventually stopped counting the number of times two men holding hands came up to us and gave us encouraging words and listened to what we had to say. For those visiting our page from across the universe, Chicago has a very active gay community on the North Side called Boystown - it is relatively close to the Park (it shares a train line anyway) and thus a lot of gay couples were out for the day. And they all hate Bush. All of them. A lot. And who can blame them?

When this whole gay marriage thing came up from the administration, I thought Bush is just circling his wagons and energizing his base. He's not going to be losing votes. And then I learned I was wrong. According to a Jan 2001 post-election analysis by the Log Cabin Republicans: "Bush captured 25% of the gay vote [1.1 million votes] nationwide, a record number for a GOP presidential candidate." Can you believe 1 million gay people voted for Bush?!?! Remember back in those days? Bush didn't say a word about marriage or gay people - he was a "compassionate conservative" chock full of inclusion and bringing people together; Dick Cheney even had a gay daughter who campaigned for him! How progressive!

Mary Cheney, the only gay supporter of George Bush in 2004.

And they only had to pay her $100,000 to do it.

I'm not going to even bother to describe how Bush ditched those million voters. I think what's worse for him is that by not just slighting them, but instead refering to their existence as undermining the entirety of Western Civilization (an insult you can't help but imagine you wouldn't forget), he's gotten them energized to support Kerry, a candidate that one needs to be blamed for the decline of Western Civilization in order to get excited about.

And what did Bush gain? Did he rally his own base? This is the big question, and I honestly don't think he is earning any votes. People who are so opposed to gay people that they blame them as disrupting all of life and want to pass an Constitutional Amendment with the speed and lack of debate as if it was a Highway Bill Amendment almost certainly were going to vote for Bush on election day anyway. I can't imagine someone who is so infuriated by gay people that they would let gay marriage decide their vote in an election in 2004 (with real problems like dirty bombs and occupations and half a trillion dollar deficits) not supporting Bush no matter what.

Kerry et. al get a lot of flak for not really standing strong on the gay marriage issue, but I think that it reflect a lot of popular thinking among adults - "I'm sorta ok with it - I'm not 'not ok' with it." I think a lot of people are generally uncomfortable with it, but don't want to immediately sic the federal government on any minority group. I don't pretend to know what the gay community was thinking about four more years of Bush pre-gay-marriage debate - I imagine they were split like the rest of the country. Well, we can almost be certain, with the notable exception of Mary Cheney in all her self-loathing 2004 campaigning glory, nobody there likes him now - and that's a million votes Bush had that he has now lost.

Perhaps Bush is acting on principle on this and not on electioneering: That's the thought that actually scares me more. But I just don't see it. If he was really serious about a defense of marriage he would be attacking the 50% of boomers who get divorces. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single word.

Governor Schwarzenegger Revisited

When Arnold followed Jesse Ventura in gaining a governorship, the rest of us were left only to wonder how long it would be until Carl Weathers decided to run. For those of us that don't live in California I don't think there is any possible way for us to figure out why exactly this happened. Complicated things like "car taxes" were in play.

To the casual observer, it seemed the Mr. Schwarzenegger was elected based on several principles.

• The people of California were paying too much money to drive their cars.

• Arnold's campaign was largely based around quoting lines he had once said in various movies.

• Californians found that his accent, and virtual inability to speak English inspired trust.

• The desire to not have to see previews for another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie for at least 4 years.

The only thing that I had really heard about his role as governor was that he did in fact give all residents of California a rebate on their car tax. The George W. Bush school of economic theory seemed firmly in place. Combat the fact that you are dealing with massive deficit spending and debt by telling your constituents that if you are elected you will cut them a check. Threaten that if anyone else is elected they will take your money away.

Today I saw something even more amusing. Arnold insinuated today that the democrats in the state were, in fact, "girlie-men". So apparently I am too believe that if I am a resident of California, what I really want to inspire confidence that the economic nightmare I am currently living in will soon be over is a leader quoting Saturday Night Live luminaries "Hanz and Franz."

Don't worry, all the state really needs is for democrats to get "pumped up".

Not to let their own personal brand of stupidity be relegated to second place, democrats promptly demanded an apology. No, they were not offended that Arnold had not noticed the time they had spent in the gym recently. They proclaimed that use of the term "girlie-man" is sexist and homophobic. Well yeah, I guess it is. If you were to assume that the use of the term connoted that legislators were either acting like women, or were effeminate men instead of invoking an image of Dana Carvey in a padded sweat suit.

So here is the question I pose, who is the real idiot here? Is it Schwarzenegger for continuing to pander to the lowest common denominator? Or are the state legislators the true political morons for taking his idiotic remarks so damned seriously?

THESE COLORS DON'T RUN. OR READ AT A 10th-GRADE LEVEL.

After the 2000 election, a hoax set of "facts" spread around the internet showing that states with a higher "average IQ" voted for Gore while states in which the comics are the most-read part of the newspaper voted for Bush. Of course, average IQ scores are not tested or recorded in this country.

However, I decided to have a look-see at the 2000 US Census and its measures of educational attainment. Specifically, they record the percentage of the adult population that has earned a high school diploma, bachelor's degree, and so on. And, while the "IQ data" was made up, it was also uncannily accurate. Let's look at the real data from Table 13 of US Census document P20-536, published December 19, 2000 along with for whom the state voted in the 2000 election.

Our president managed only four states among the 15 most educated, but in case you were doubting his resolve, fear not. As we can see, he makes up for it with a strong finish in the 15 least educated states.

Feel free to reproduce the above image on your page, blog, or just as an email attachment to all your friends and family.

And there you have it. Call me un-American, but it is a clear commentary on our leader's rhetorical methods, platform, and intelligence when the states in which fancy book learnin' is frowned upon and one's eulogy is likely to contain the phrase "Git'er done!" are voting for him in unflinching unison. And it also shows you what a bang-up job years of fantastic conservative policy have done for the bottom states' educational systems.

random wednesday updates

1) Anchorman review on the movie page.

2) For those of you who read the excellent New York Times magazine article on current comic books, I have written up my thoughts on it. They'll eventually also work their way over to the comics page once a get a free moment.

3) I know we need to comment on the possibility of Dikta running for the Senate, but writing about it has that same feeling of a middle-aged virgin hiring a prostitute or a hungry man eating raw garbage - we don't want to admit that "it's come to this." If this keeps going on we'll comment though. Don't worry.

LIKE JESUS JOINING FORCES WITH BUDDAH, ONLY BETTER.

Music-industry secrecy is pretty much completely co-opted when one sets up a live webcam to broadcast one's studio recording, as Trent Reznor found out yesterday. Sharp-eyed fans logged on recently to see a very incognito Dave Grohl in Reznor's studio, at which point Reznor admitted that Grohl will be playing live drums on 15 of the 20 tracks being recorded for NIN's forthcoming Bleed Through.

I know that's a lot to take in. It's OK. Just rest for a second and catch your breath. Dave Grohl is playing drums on the new NIN album. If they're not careful, this might even make up for the "Tapeworm" and "Probot" side projects.

I have always had a soft spot for shameless action movies.

I enjoy the occasional action movie. I am not ashamed of that. I think that it is perfectly natural. About a year ago I saw the movie "The Bourne Identity". All said, it was fairly decent. It contained all of the elements of an action movie that are required. That being of course...action and Franka Potente. I have to admit to then being a bit intellectually confused by the movie. I knew at the time that it was based on a book by Robert Ludlum, but was really unaware of anything else about Robert Ludlum or the book. What confused me was the fact that this fun 2 hour long action movie was ever actually a book.

This confusion turned to interest one evening when I was at my parents’ house and saw an old copy of the book. What the hell, I thought. Its summer, I can read some meaningless action book. Let me take a moment from this long (and no doubt uninteresting to most) tirade to point out that I am morally opposed to criticizing a movie for not remaining true to the book. However, the degree to which the movie The Bourne Identity strayed from the book was nearly laughable. I was surprised to find that Robert Ludlum was actually a very good mystery/suspense writer. The book was exceptionally dynamic with a quite intricate plot.

Okay, now I will very briefly describe what happens in the movie. Jason Bourne is pulled from the ocean unconscious and shot several times. He suffers from amnesia, has no clue who he is aside from a Swiss bank account number. A bit of a shady premise, I know. Anyway he then embarks on an action filled trip to Paris on the way coming across a bohemian (read unemployed and worthless) woman, Franka Potente, and numerous US government agents trying to kill him. It turns out that he was a government assassin that had a change of heart.

Yes, really I know. It sounds lame. It was lame, but it was amusing.

Now, on July 23rd, one of the most confusing action movie sequels is going to be released.

The Bourne Supremacy

I really know that I should not be at all shocked. All action movies that do moderately well get a sequel or two. This whole thing seems a bit off to me because the original book was actually a trilogy. There were two built in sequels. Yet for some odd reason the screenwriters removed every single bit of the plot that let there be a sequel. The series is supposed to be about Bourne's ongoing struggle with an international hitman named "Carlos." To the best of my knowledge "Carlos" does not actually appear in the movies at all. This is not the only major plot element that was changed for not perceivable reason.

• Franka Potente's character is supposed to be an intelligent internationally recognized Canadian economist- whose influence in the Canadian government is important to the story. For some reason this powerful female character was turned into a worthless idiot.
• Jason Bourne was never an assassin; he was just an undercover government agent trying to arrest an assassin.
• They killed off Bourne's best friend for the rest of the trilogy in the first movie.
• The government never actually tries to kill him but once. Most of the harms way he is in comes from Carlos.

This is of course not even mentioning that the movie did not come address any of the psychological issues that were in the books, and removed almost all of the mystery and suspense in favor of more action. I only mentioned things that really made no sense to be changed.

Oh well. I will probably see the movie when it comes out just out of curiosity. The sequel is supposed to be about how Jason Bourne goes to Asia after his wife is kidnapped. He has to find and kill an assassin posing as him in order for her to be released. We will see how this goes. Bare in mind, I actually thought that the first movie was all right until I realized how good of a story it could have been.

What the hell is wrong with Hollywood? Why do they seem categorically opposed to having both action and a good plot on the same screen? Why do they take a story that is good and remove all the interesting bits? These are questions for which there are no answers.

1 + 1 = ELECTORAL COLLEGE FUN

Here's a little mandatory reading for every resident of the state of Ohio before the next election. No pressure, but......the fate of the country and the free world for the next four years is in your hands.

No pressure. Take your time.

Here is a map representing current exit polling and the 2000 election results combined to yield a very accurate predictor for 2004, provided by the fantastic David Liep at The US Election Atlas. The only deviation from year 2000 results in this model is that New Hampshire goes to Kerry, which is a reasonable guess.

Now, this model gives 264 for John Kerry and 274 for Bush. All is lost, you say. Well, not quite. According to the polling (over 1000 different polls were used for each state), Ohio is a complete toss-up. No one really has any firm idea of which way it will go. The Kerry campaign needs to divert 90% of the resources they have on hand to making sure Kerry wins that state. How important is it?

If Kerry wins Ohio, its 20 electoral votes will mean that of the three states in which his winning margin is smallest in this model (Iowa, Oregon, and New Mexico), he can lose two and still win the election. And Florida will be completely irrelevant. Kerry is currently leading in Oregon (7) and Iowa (7), but even if he were to lose both, a win in Ohio would give him 270 electoral votes to Bush's 268.

So, in summary, if you live in Ohio or know anyone who does, take it upon yourself to beg, cajole, bribe, threaten, and beat them into voting for Kerry.

And just for electoral kicks, the states in which Bush's margin is smallest at the moment are West Virginia (5) and Nevada (5). If Bush wins one but loses the other while keeping all other states in this model constant, both candidates will have exactly 269 electoral votes, Congress will vote for Bush, and we will have a fucking national crisis on our hands.

The Electoral College: as fraught with dangers as it is archaic and stupid. I mean FOR CHRIST'S SAKE you'd think someone would have been smart enough to draw it up with an odd numbered total so there couldn't be a tie. The election of the leader of the free world should not be able to end like a soccer game.

eBay: FOR ALL YOUR PARTICLE ACCELERATING NEEDS

On the heels of their recent sale of the Chilean navy's HMS Vengance aircraft carrier, someone is now offering a linear particle accelerator on eBay.

Paypal not accepted. And am I the only one who thinks that the price is disturbingly low? I am far from an expert in the field of atom-smashing but it seems like this should cost a hell of a lot more.

I NEVER SAW SO MANY WHITE PEOPLES

AP, CHICAGO - The Chicago White Sox recent acquisition of veteran righty Mike Jackson ensured that the team's 9-man bullpen would have more African-Americans in it (one) than the entire 120,000-strong crowd at Wrigley Field for the Cubs-Sox series over the 4th of July weekend. Saturday's game was briefly delayed in the 7th inning when Jackson entered the game in relief but was detained by security and questioned as to how he managed to get north of Belmont.

Mike Jackson, the first black man to enter Wrigley Field without holding a rake in nearly a decade

So I'm often accused, and rightly so, of condemning things without personally experiencing them. But being a subscriber to the school of thought that one needn't jam a knife in one's abdomen to deduce that it would hurt, I'm pretty comfortable with it. Being raised in fine south side tradition, I spent the first 25 years of my life in Chicago without ever having set foot in Wrigley Field. But when my dad managed to score tickets for the more-than-sold-out Cubs-Sox city series this weekend, that changed for both of us.

It was, in short, everything I assumed it was except slightly worse. We entertained ourselves during the rain delays by trying to find an ethnic minority who was not serving food or holding a bat. The people next to us were "low carbing" so they ate their hot dogs without a bun. Everyone was on a cell phone. Backwards baseball caps abounded. It was, in essence, a giant open-air frat party full of the 32 year-old versions of the 24 year-old people you hate now. After several hours there I felt an overpowering urge to join the Nation of Islam.

Unless you're a big fan of hanging out at the Alumni Club or the Barleycorn, I'd recommend against the experience. Personally I don't think I'd return if I was dying of cancer and the cure flowed from one of Wrigley's water fountains.

a plea to Frederick Wiseman, asking him to cashout

After reading an excellent review of the history of the documentary, I decided to buckle down and figure out what is going on with the utter lack of Frederick Wiseman dvds. For those of you who don't know, Wiseman is of the most important figures in American film culture, a man who single-handedly redefined what we have come to consider a documentary to be, and none of his movies are available on dvd.

He is the master of the cinéma vérité style, bringing the style so strongly to documentaries that documentaries that are not in a vérité style seem somehow inauthentic - hence all the ruckus over the "objectivity" of Michael Moore's new movie. One only has to see about 10 minutes of Wiseman's early films to realize how bogus the "vérité form = objective" argument is - nobody is objective with editing a film. Wiseman, who deals with no narration, only natural sound and long takes of people interacting with their surroundings, considers his films to be "reality fictions" - which is accurate as he can take these natural settings and make the most persuasive arguments out of them. For instance, his documentary "High School" (1968) contains nothing but long, uninterrupted shots of people interacting in a high school. The final products leads you to believe that education functions only to push kids through a meat grinder to make them compatible with America's Cold War empire. At one point the principal reads a letter to the student body from an alumni fighting in Vietnam (off-quoted from memory here): "Without all the guidance and preparation [my high school] gave me, I don't know how I would have ever been able to serve the military in Vietnam." The pride on the principal's face makes us wonder if this is what education was all about in the first place.

The man is still at the top of his game. In fact, two of the best movies he has done have come out in the recent past: "Public Housing" (1997) and "Domestic Abuse" (2001), like all his movies, show people trying to survive within the complex mechanisms of organized beuracracies (chicago's public housing community and abuse shelters in florida in these cases). So where are his dvds?

As a self-proclaimed movie geek, I love that almost everything is available on dvd these days. With a region-free player, a shipping address and the internet, anybody anywhere can have access to some of the best cinema once reserved for film libraries in New York and Paris. It's possible to think of movies being in the hands of the people everywhere, instead of cloistered film circles in isolated locations.

They are also changing the way film is being approached by an audience. Nobody I know has mentioned "The Day After Tomorrow" or "The Steppord Wives" - films with advertising budgets in the multi-million dollar range, but everyone I know is discussing, or trying to discuss, Outfoxed, a movie whose advertising budget consists of a series of emails and that is being mailed out on dvd.

So it pains me to learn that the (a) there are no Wiseman dvds available and (b) it is entirely his own choice. It's not being held up in litigation, no giant company is sitting on the right, or anything else that falls in the shady realm. Wiseman, having paid for the production of the movies, retains full rights to them. He sells them on VHS or 16mm reels (no dvd) for $400 a pop, mostly to universities or libraries (a price I imagine absurd even for a library).

I'm drawing a line in the sand. It's weird to say this, but for christsakes, Mr. Wiseman take the money and run! Sell off the rights for Titicut Follies to Criterion, who would pick it up in a heartbeat, and let cheap dvds of your other great classic films flow free. I could not get a hold of Wiseman himself for an opinion, but Zipporah Films, the company he uses made it sound like the lack of mass availability was entirely his own choice ("this is how Mr. Wiseman has chosen to make his films available...there are no other factors outside of Mr. Wiseman compelling him in this direction").

Mr. Wiseman, your films should be standard issue for all people who want to find the best that American Cinema has to offer; even 35 years later they still evoke a very powerful statement of people trying to survive within America. They are mature works, demanding of an audience, and often produce profund emotional reactions in those who view them. So help out the American audience, who access to independent movie vendors who would show your films in increasingly limited, in finding your message.

If not, please consider leaving your estate to ginandtacos.com. We'll see that when the time comes, your film legacy will be carried out properly (ie used in gatorade and sedan commericals).

Not Funnies

New York Times Magazine: Not Funnies. Last weekend the New York Times magazine ran a cover story surveying the current state of comics. They mostly stuck to top-tier (Fantagraphics, Drawn/Quarterly) North American comics (with a brief stop to drop by Gaiman and Alan Moore).

The article is amazing. Whoever wrote it really did their research. I highly recommend it to both fans and to people who are looking to pick up something new. It also hammers out two very important points, which I'd like to comment on:

1) The Decline of Robert Crumb - For most of the 90s, you couldn't discuss comic books without trying to make them all seem like descendents of Robert Crumb, the misogynistic, disturbed 60s comic book artist portrayed in the excellent Terry Zwigoff movie. Everything followed from him; Clowes and Ware and everyone else couldn't talk about what they were doing without bringing him up.

The problem was that it didn't fit. If you actually read the output of Crumb it's very limited and not all together great. I'm going to break with a lot of people in that I consider it mostly crap. Sure it's misogynistic and self-loathing (and something the movie only hints at, but unbearably racist); what's worse is how repetitive it is. Once you've gotten though about 10 comics of his you know what you are in store for. So why are people like Clowes, who has had one of the most expansive careers in comics, with every project varied and rich, going to bat for this guy?

The magazine points out that all these people, even Sacco, go through an intense self-loathing period in their comic art. Their comics reflect their otherness, their sexual misadventures, and their problems with other people. Crumb gives them the ability to say "this is ok. Keep doing this." And these comic artists keep working at it and don't give up; they eventually get the rawer edges of it out of their system, and can go off in exciting new directions. It's a shame Crumb never was able.

2) The Rise of Art Spiegelman The real focus point for looking at these new artists is art Spiegelman. Like a lot of indie musicians of the time period, comic book artists aren't just comic book artists. They are salesmen, producers, advertisers, promoters and a hundred other things. As late as 6 years ago, there wasn't a real industry to nurture your talent - so you had to create one yourself. And nobody has done this quite like Spiegelman. "He's as important as he thinks he is" is an excellent quote, because it's true on both accounds.

3) Diversity in Comics I was a little worried when I first saw that picture. Sure they are some of my favorite comic book creators, but at the end of the day they are guys with poor eyesight complaining about how awkward they are. Then I noticed Joe Sacco was in it. Sacco has been doing amazing work with journalistic comics - it really blows away anything like it. And the writeup they do of him is the best I've seen.

They have so many comics covered than just the normal run-of-the-mill Crumb descendents - "Persepolis" and "Blankets" are by far the two best comics of the past year, and they both get writeups. People should be throwing copies of "Persepolis" from the rooftops; the memoir of an Iranian girl growing up during the revolution is about as far from a 'typical' comic book as you can get.

So read the article. And then read some comics. And then let's discuss.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy

I think it's official - Will Ferrell is here to stay. And against such odds. I never liked Saturday Night Live after the cast I grew up with (Carvey, Myers, Rock) took off to try their hand at movies. With some exceptions, notably the adorable Tina Fey during weekend updates, I find the show tired. Moreso than ever, the cast seems like they are just sitting out their time until they are semi-popular enough to try their hand at crappy mediocre movie stardom.

And how mediocre is it? Take a look at some of the movies that Lorne Michaels has produced over the years. Even though "A Night at the Roxbury", "Superstar", "The Ladies Man" and "Coneheads" would be an oeuvre capable of getting you beheaded in most Middle-Eastern countries, the success of "Wayne's World" and "Blues Brothers" keeps these people pumping at the same ol' dry well.

One movie you won't see Michaels' name attached to is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy. In fact, there isn't that rank smell of second rate Saturday Night Live actors hanging in the background. No evil-villian-Chris-Kattan, no pizza-delievering-Rob-Schneiders. Ferrell surrounds himself with the best. The Daily Show's Steve Carell plays a mentally challenged weatherman who made the audience I was with burst into laughter just by standing there. Paul Rudd is impressive as well, giving a little bit of acting to the group. The director, Adam McKay, was a founding member of The Upright Citizen's Brigade, and the humor has that same trajectory of "if it's not working, up the bizarre level." There are so many twists to the humor - a joke that is suddenly taken in the completely opposite direction for no other reason than to see if it works.

And man does it work. There's no point in talking too much about this movie: the joy is how completely immediate Ferrell can present his humor. It's overwhelming physical - his mere presence and the way he walks and talks conveys this man who is completely unaware of how much of a idiot jackass he is. But since he personifies everything that was throw away in our mass culture around 1977, we can laugh with him and not at all feel uncomfortable. I think Ferrell has a long career ahead of himself, playing that jackass who you should want to kick in the head but instead you end up giving him a giant hug. Keep it up.

RACISM IS IMAGINARY, LIKE UNICORNS AND ESKIMOS

Feeling a little too upbeat about the human condition? Then swing on by Ferris State University's Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, curated by Dr. David Pilgrim.

Take a browse around the collection of online images and artifacts and remember that America is not a racist place, because most of these images are part of ancient history. Such as the 1960s.