I’m glad that there are people like Jon Stewart out there to balance the world’s Hannitys and Limbaughs and Becks. And I will say that, in fairness, partisan politics is ridiculous on both sides — but the right wing faces tend to look just plain out nutty. Like, scary, unbalanced-in-the-head crazy. Teched, as they say. The left wing faces — Stewart, Al Franken (in his books, at least) — come across as educated, rational, and entertaining.I’m not so much a Democrat — or even left-wing, I think — as I am wandering my own road, by the way.

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From MSNBC, in an article about Joe Satriani’s lawsuit against Coldplay:

Satriani’s song “lacks originality,” Coldplay’s response claims, and shouldn’t receive copyright protection.

Musicians of the world: this officially frees you up to change the lyrics mildly (only because — who the fuck wants to be caught singing the original lyrics?) to any Coldplay song and make all the money you want with no fear of reprisal.

Dear Chris Martin:

People who live in bland, uninspired, utterly-lacking-in-originality houses should be very, very careful about throwing stones.

Sincerely,
People who like real music.

So. There’s a new movie coming out in a few weeks.  I’ve been a little skeptical of it, wary.  There’s far too much that can go wrong in the translation of comic to screen.

And now I’ve seen the movie.  And it’s got it’s problems, but nothing unforgivable.  In fact, it’s been pretty good, up until about 75 minutes in.  And then… ? Then it all goes to shit.

See, as I was telling my wife earlier, I’m okay with tweaking continuity up until a point.  There’s stuff that has to get compressed and changed so that 30+ years of comic history can be distilled down for an audience that only has 90 minutes.  The problems I have are the utterly unnecessary continuity changes.  Like taking a character played by, say, Ryan Reynolds, and totally fucking him up (I’m fairly certain that the planned spinoff that’s been rumored is either impossible or will completely jump the rails).  Like creating family relationships for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER.

Sigh.

So, yeah, I’ll still go see the movie, probably, but I’ll always wonder why a studio can’t treat it’s own property with more respect.