(Via.)

Carla Hoffman was one of the first people to spread the word about my blog when I got kicked off of Livejournal in 2007, something I appreciated dearly. She is a semi-regular commenter here and she is good people.

I mention this because Carla and her husband Lance had the bad luck to get caught in the California wildfires, and who are currently still in very bad shape (with life-threatening burn damage) in the hospital, and who have not incidentally lost pretty much everything they own in said fire.

A Facebook group has been set up to keep people updated and to give information as to where people can pass along helpful moneys and gifts and so forth. If you don’t have Facebook, you can send a cheque, made out to “The Lance And Carla Burn Fund,” to:

Santa Barbara Bank & Trust
1483 East Valley Road
Montecito, CA 93108-1248

If you can afford to send a little money their way, they could really use it.

What the hell font did they use for the titles on the original Dragonriders of Pern books? The curvy italic one? I’ve used all the major font identification engines online and none of them has a clue.

For those who missed my most recent appearance on the CBC and want to hear it, you can download the podcast mp3 here.

EDIT: I note that they edited out “the lightning round” from the podcast, wherein I got to rag on Jerry O’Connell in Do Not Disturb, one of the most wretched shows I have ever seen in my entire life.

(this post by non-MGK author Dan Solomon)

Yesterday in Seattle, a man drove his pickup truck onto his friend’s roof because "he got a wild hair".

I know some of y’all might be quick to judge the man in question because, okay, that’s really stupid, but I want to hang out with him, like, twice a month. I want to go watch cover bands with him and drive thru Taco Cabana at 3am. He’s like a real-life Jim Anchower, and America needs more like him. I bet he’s the most fun uncle ever.

Also, it’s often said that the key to good journalism is detail. The fact that this guy was listening to the Spin Doctors as he drove onto the roof makes me love him entirely. Do you think he was air guitar-ing or playing the drums on the steering wheel as he went? Was it Pocketful of Kryptonite or is he the sort of fan who keeps a copy of 2005’s comeback album, Nice Talking To Me, in the cab at all times?

Also, how is none of this on YouTube? If he’s half as good on camera as he sounds on paper, we need to give him his own reality show.

That is all.

Well, not actually all – a few people have mailed me requesting the occasional open thread, so here you go. This is an open thread. I declare this thread open. The thread, she is not closed. And so forth.

I’m going to be on Q, CBC’s arts radio show, tomorrow (Thursday) in between 12:30 and 1, talking about the new TV season in my role as Important Critic Person ™. That’s CBC 1, or for those with satellite radio, Sirius 137.

EDIT: Or, duh, on the internets.

By now you are probably aware that Tina Fey showed up to play Sarah Palin on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. (You likely discovered this by reading that great newspaper, The Picayune-San Francisco Unsurprising News Digest Of The World.) And if you haven’t seen it yet, no doubt there is video of it somewhere for you to watch, and you will see Fey and Poehler just fucking ramming their knives into Palin’s back, portraying her as a brainless ditz with no business running for vice-president.

This is good news. It is not good news because they made fun of Sarah Palin. Lots of people can make fun of Sarah Palin, because it is so goddamned easy to make fun of her (without having to resort to sexist arguments like “can she do the job with five kids,” which would never be asked of a man). She is the political equivalent of a pinata. So that’s not why it’s good news.

It’s good news because SNL is the heart and soul of conventional wisdom. (It wasn’t always, but has been for well long enough now.) It survives almost entirely on predictability and repetition, and on safe, non-edgy comedy above all. If SNL has, as an entity, decided that Sarah Palin = Dan Quayle 2.0, that means that this is the narrative that pop culture as a whole has deemed appropriate for Palin, and that narrative will siwftly and surely take root throughout both pop culture and then the traditional news media, who love nothing better than a pre-delivered story so they don’t have to waste time with original thought or actual reporting.

And with that narrative, Sarah Palin steadily goes back to being what she always was: a motivator for her own political base and little more. Furthermore, it has the potential to shift the race away from Palin vs. Obama (which is where it is right now) back to McCain vs. Obama. That’s a fight the Republicans desperately do not want to have, because they’ve spent the past month campaigning so dirty that McCain’s “honorable soldier” shtick lies in tatters, even in the media.

Police in Minneapolis conducting raids on suspected protestors.

Again, for emphasis: not suspected criminals, not actual criminals, not even protestors with a history of criminal acts. Suspected protestors. People they anticipated would protest.

And remember – it’s the Republicans who are worried about this sort of thing.

Some talented artist out there needs to draw a picture of Cthulhu having a knock-down drag-out brawl with Voltron.

DO IT! DO IT NOOOOOOOOOW!

UPDATE: Also Rex the Wonder Dog is helping Voltron, as suggested by lance lunchmeat in comments.

Look. I know it’s not your fault that DC’s direct-to-DVD movies have been largely mediocre thus far, but come on:

Wonder Woman should not have a face that looks kind of like a horse.

I mean, it is Wonder Woman, she’s supposed to be an athletic paragon of female beauty and stuff. She should not look like a horse. Really, you could put together a list of what not to do when drawing Wonder Woman, and right at the top there would be “make her look like a horse.”

And if you have to make her look like a horse, couldn’t she at least look like a really nice horse, rather than… this?

I’m just saying. Nobody wants to buy Wonder Horseface.

Shocking story from this blog post:

Sunday, a Muslim woman scolded me for inappropriate behavior in her neighborhood. I was running up Bedford toward Williamsburg, following a part of the marathon course I often branch from to go over the bridge into Manhattan for a longer run. That day I elected to just do a fairly mindless 35 minutes out and back, a route I don’t have to think about…

…But then a bit of defensiveness kicked in. This is not Riyadh, it’s New York freakin’ City, and to the best of my knowledge I can “go like that” anywhere I damn well please. I’m not sure what’s on the books legally as far as lewdness and public attire, but I’m pretty sure a jog bra and baggy shorts are well within reason.

OMG THE MUSLIMS.

(Well, except that I changed the text in her original post: from “Hasidic” to “Muslim” and from “Jerusalem” to “Riyadh.” But it’s still valid, people! I mean, come on! Think how much we appeased the Jews! And now they are everywhere forcing their bagels and comedians and bar mitzvahs on us! THERE IS A LESSON HERE, PEOPLE!)

#2,491,017: Spaniards, when they are excitedly celebrating a football victory, will play impromptu games of “toreadoro” with oncoming bicyclists as the bull, themselves as the matador and the Spanish (or sometimes Canadian) flag as the cape.

#2,491,018: If by doing this, a Spaniard causes you to crash your bicycle into something hard and unpleasant when you swerve to avoid the sudden thing in your face you weren’t expecting, they will be very apologetic and immediately offer to buy you a beer or a coffee or a gelato. (I heartily recommend that if you are, by chance, near La Paloma on St. Clair, that you exercise the third option.)