24: 11:00 p.m.-12:00 a.m

Thoughts:

-- I wonder if Jack uses the line, "This is not a reaction. I've had these scars," the first time he gets naked with a chick. If not, he should. It would really help ease her initial shock.

-- Christina Chang, the actress playing the hot CDC doctor, gets the most thankless roles in all of Hollywood. I first saw her in Deadline, a really stupid show about journalism students starring Oliver Platt that I watched only because I like Oliver Platt. And I've seen her pop up here and there since then, including in Live Free and Die Hard, and one of the rare really good episodes from the latter seasons of The West Wing, but never in an especially good role. Unfortunately, "hot CDC doctor" doesn't seem like the sort of role that's going to end that streak.

-- Rick Berman? The guy who ruined Star Trek? That's who Olivia thinks should be the president's chief of staff? She really is evil.

-- Okay, this is bullshit. Obviously, 24 is not a show you look to for realism in any way, shape, or form. But the President of the United States appointing her daughter as chief of staff? The daughter who wasn't even speaking to her, like, five hours ago? Even on an interim basis, it's absurd. Speaking of The West Wing, remember how fucking retarded it was when the president named C.J. chief of staff? This is about a hundred times more fucking retarded.

-- Olivia's fixation on Aaron is a bit weird. There's really no reason why she'd need her own Secret Service agent. It seems like she has some sort of The Bodyguard-inspired fantasy. I'd still sort of like to see Aaron bang her, because, let's face it, he's earned it. But hopefully, he won't be anywhere nearby when she suffers her inevitable downfall.

-- Shooting someone in the head for Redskins tickets on the 50 yard-line doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me.

-- Is there a Cisco marketing guy on the 24 writing staff? Sometimes, it sure seems like it.

-- The good news is, Larry has obviously come around on Jack. The bad news is that when characters do this on 24, their life expectancy tends to get shorter, and it seems like a safe bet that there will be at least one more death of a supporting character this season. I think Larry just moved himself to the top of the list.

-- If I were to actually make such a list, it would look something like this:

Character/Odds of Survival

Larry - 35%
Aaron - 50%
Renee - 55%
Morris - 65%
Janis- 65%
Tony - 70%
Chloe- 85%

Jack's confirmed kills: 0 (25 for the season)

Jack's Words of Wisdom: "I'm still material evidence in an ongoing terrorist threat."

Overall grade: B+

Panel of the Week

From Crossed #4:

The NFL Draft(ing of survey questions)

This morning, I got an email from NFL.com asking me to take part in a survey. Usually, this sort of inquiry would be immediately deleted and I'd unsubscribe from whatever company thought it would be okay to bother me with this sort of crap. The only thing worse than emails asking me to take part in surveys for nothing in return, are emails asking me to take part in surveys by dangling the promise of some sort of great prize (which I know I'm not going to win, and strongly suspect no one else will, either), some sort of lame coupon (which I know I'm not going to use), or some sort of "special offer" (which I know will just end up costing me money in the long run, such as those supposedly "free" magazine subscriptions).

But this came from the NFL. And as an American and a football fan (not necessarily in that order of importance, either), I felt it was my solemn duty to respond. After all, football is--and I'm sorry to have to say this, baseball, but your glory days are fucking done--the great American past time. So when the NFL asks something of me, whether it's to fill out an online survey or (fingers crossed) to come into the Super Bowl as an emergency substitution at quarterback in the fourth quarter, with us down by six, ten seconds left, and no timeouts, I jump at the chance.

Unfortunately, the survey...how can I put this delicately...sucked.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that to the NFL marketing department, the answers will have great value. I'm sure knowing where I get the majority of my NFL news from, or whether I'll be watching the NFL draft on ESPN or The NFL Network, or who I think will be the first pick in the draft, helps them out immensely. (Well, maybe not that last one, unless they're trying to decide who to invite and who not to invite to Radio City Music Hall, so they don't end up with another Aaron Rodgers or Brady Quinn situation.) But the rest of the stuff, sure, fine, whatever.

But as a fan who likes to think I have valuable insight beyond what websites I visit or stations I watch, it'd be nice if the NFL asked me about some slightly more substantive stuff. I understand they're not going to care about my opinion about the "important stuff," like whether or not the season should be expanded to 18 regular season games (yes), or whether they should continue the trend of changing the rules to coddle quarterbacks so that they don't get seriously hurt or even a small bruise on their delicate bottoms (no), or where the Pro Bowl should be played (who cares?).

But I wouldn't mind if the NFL at least made an attempt to gauge my opinion as a fan on some matters that, frankly, the owners probably couldn't give a shit about. Here are a few suggestions:

1) Should elaborate touchdown celebrations be allowed?

2) In general, how do you feel about the cheerleaders' outfits?

A) Too slutty
B) Just slutty enough
C) Could maybe stand to be a little sluttier

3) Should the NFL get a restraining order barring Joe Buck from being within 500 yards of an NFL stadium on a Sunday?

4) This is the fifteenth year that Los Angeles, CA, the second largest city in America, has been without an NFL team. Which of these cities, which by all rights shouldn't have gotten a team in the first place, should lose their team to L.A.?

A) Jacksonville
B) Oakland
C) St. Louis
D) Screw Los Angeles. They don't need a team.

5) Should the NFL reverse its stance on banning custom jerseys with the name Ron Mexico on them?

Even if the NFL doesn't care what fans think, by creating the pretense that it does, think of how happy it would make fans. And hey, Roger Goodell, don't just think fans are the only ones who would come out ahead. Think about the millions of giddy football nerds who would be thrilled to get this sort of email, and then celebrate by going to NFL.com and buying some sort of expensive trinket.

So come on, NFL. Next time you send me a survey, think up more interesting questions, will you? (And for the record, the answer to my hypothetical ones are 1) Yes, 2) B, 3) Yes, 4) I guess B, although I'd be fine with any of them, and 5) Yes.)

24: 10:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m

Thoughts:

-- The show's really overplaying its hand with the whole Olivia subplot. I don't know if she's A) Part of the terrorist conspiracy, or B) Just a shrewd political opportunist, but regardless, whenever the big reveal happens, I don't see how it won't be met with a collective yawn from the audience. At this point, the most shocking thing the show could do is actually have her be innocent and end up banging Aaron.

-- A security guard with a pregnant wife (with twins, no less!) pulling an extra shift in order to make ends meet? He might as well go ahead and kill himself now and save the bad guys the trouble.

Oh, you know what? I just realized he's played by the guy who played Trip on Enterprise. That alone makes me hope he gets killed. Fucking Enterprise.

-- Jack totally lied when he promised Carl everything was going to be okay. If I'm Carl, I'm running the fuck away from both the small army of terrorists and the two crazy dudes in the office.

-- Not that I don't admire Jack and Tony for their willingness to sneak around in the shadows and keep an eye on the terrorists and the WMD, but wouldn't it have made sense for one of them to get out of the range of the jamming signal and call the FBI?

-- I was sort of hoping Jack's plan was to shoot each terrorist in the head as he came back to investigate what had happened to the previous terrorists who had gone missing.

-- It took Jack and Tony about five minutes to get from D.C. to Alexandria. What's taking the FBI so fucking long to get to the truck?

Jack's confirmed kills: 3 (25 for the season)

Jack's Words of Wisdom: "You're a part of this, Carl, whether you want to be or not. You became a part of this the second you said yes to these people."

Overall grade: B

Panel of the Week

From Night of the Living Dead: New York #1:

My Completely Self-Indulgent Third Anniversary Post

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of my starting this blog. Frankly, I'm surprised this thing is still going. When it first started, I figured I'd split posts evenly between the topics of comic books, horror films, D.C-related stuff, and the most fascinating person on the planet at the time, Mr. Kevin Federline. I also strongly suspected I'd get bored within three months and delete the whole thing.

Horror film and D.C. posts are still going strong, but I very quickly discovered I don't like writing about comics as much as I thought I would, and Kevin Federline, tragically, has pretty much faded out of the public eye. And since then, this blog has turned into a hodgepodge of things that fascinate me on any given day. Which probably works out better for me than those who like the rants about D.C. or whatever, but couldn't give a rat's ass about horror films, comic books, the Redskins, etc. But hey, you can't please everyone.

Now for the self-indulgent part.

A couple of months ago, I did some housecleaning, adding labels to posts, fixing formatting mistakes, and deleting more than a few posts. There's no more humbling thing in the world than going back over some of your writing you haven't looked at in months, and wondering whether someone had hacked into your account that day and posted the crap you're seeing. So those posts are no longer here. (No need to point out any you think I might have missed.)

But I was also surprised to find that there were a lot of posts I quite liked. So here are what I consider to be my top ten posts. Thanks for reading.

10. The Most Adorable Racist Ever

9. Pardons For the D.C. Sports Community

8. Pandering to lonely geeks for fun and profit

7. WJLA thwarts evildoers yet again

6. The Greatest Sports Movie You've Never Seen

5. Votin' Palin

4. Stupid Hippie College Kids

3. Dating For D.C. Dummies

2. The Top 10 Joker Stories of All Time

1. The Worst Thing D.C. Has Ever Done

It's not you, Jason. It's me. Well...it's sort of you.

This time two years ago, the Redskins were coming off a 5-11 season. People were starting to suspect that Joe Gibbs's return may not have quite been on the same level as the Second Coming of Christ, as we'd originally been led to believe. Brandon Lloyd and Adam Archuleta had turned out to be a bust and a huge, unbelievable, "What the hell were the Redskins thinking?!" bust, respectively. There was talk that Clinton Portis might be on the trading block. There was, as usual, no talk whatsoever that the team might finally hire a GM. Things looked bleak.

The one seemingly bright spot on the team was Jason Campbell, who had finally wrested away the starting quarterback job from Mark Brunell when even Joe "Screw Any Quarterback Under 30" Gibbs could no longer ignore the fact that Brunell ran about as well as Stephen Hawking. Campbell was no longer "quarterback of the future," he was "quarterback of now." And God forbid anyone criticize him, because if they did, it was immediately pointed out that Campbell was a "young quarterback." And "just learning the system." He'd get better! Honest!

Well, it's two years later, and in football terms, Campbell isn't quite so young anymore. And while, granted, he's had to pretty much learn a whole new system each season, I'm not seeing a lot of improvement there, either. The unfortunate fact is, Clinton Portis carried the team in the first half of last season. If he hadn't, those impressive stats Campbell was putting up wouldn't have been there.

Now, is it entirely his fault? No. He has a weak wide receiver corps, and an ineffective offensive line. Still. In the NFL, there are three types of quarterbacks: Bust, Serviceable, or Elite. Campbell's definitely not a Bust, but he's nowhere close to Elite, and likely never will be.

So I applaud this morning's rumors that the Redskins are trying to get Jay Cutler, and hope they turn out to be true. Cutler isn't Elite yet, either, but he has a hell of a lot better chance of getting there than Campbell does.

Of course, the one sticking point is, what else would the Broncos want beside Campbell? We don't really have draft picks to offer (and we can't spare the ones we do have, unless we want to go into the season with the most ineffectual offensive and defensive lines in the NFL), so that leaves players. There are four players who I would consider untradeable: Cooley, Portis, Landry, and Horton. Then, of course, you have guys like Hall and Haynesworth, who are untradeable because aside from the Redskins, no one would be stupid enough to take on those insane contracts. But everyone else? Fair game.

Here are two things the Redskins should keep in mind:

1) There's no reason to hang onto Campbell at this point. The moment the Redskins decided to let him go into the final year on his contract without an extension, they pretty much closed the door on the Campbell era. Either he does poorly and isn't re-signed, or else he does well and decides to test the free agent market, where he'll probably get a better deal than he would from the Redskins. The only way he's still wearing burgundy and gold at this point next year is if he has an Awesome-Terrific-Gets-The-Team-To-The-Super-Bowl season next year, and Snyder throws a pile of money at him to stay. And let's be honest, Jason Campbell isn't going to have an Awesome-Terrific-Gets-The-Team-To-The-Super-Bowl season.

2) The Broncos need to make this trade. They're the ones with their backs against the wall, not us. What other team out there is going to give them a quarterback of Campbell's caliber in return? The Jets? The Vikings? The Bears? The 49ers? Please. Of all the quarterbacks who might conceivably be traded to the Broncos, Campbell is by far the best. Sure, they could always just draft one next month, but that's always a crapshoot (see Carr, David and Young, Vince). So let's not go crazy trying to appease them.

In short, Cutler for Campbell and an expendable player to be named would be a great, great, great trade for the Redskins to make. And it's really too bad the team doesn't have a GM who could get the perfect deal made. Instead, either Danny and Vinny will be too cautious, and it won't happen, or else they'll wildly overpay, and it'll be Cutler for Campbell, Cooley, our first round draft pick, and maybe one of Vinny's kidneys. Because that's how the Redskins roll.

Guest Blogger Dan Snyder

As a Republican, I abhor any newspaper not owned by Rupert Murdoch, and consider them unfit for anything other than toilet paper. (Not my toilet paper, of course. Snyder men are genetically predisposed to sensitive anuses. I can't even use the store-bought stuff. My toilet paper is hand-stitched using the softest cotton and treated with fresh aloe by children in an Indonesian sweatshop.) Not surprisingly, whenever they publish a story about me, it's always something negative. If I could, I'd get an injunction to force them to stop, but my lawyer says that would violate something or other to do with the Constitution.

Oh, speaking of which, have you heard about that Eagles employee the team fired for calling the team "retarded" on his Facebook page? That's the greatest thing ever. I never thought I'd say this, but "Go Eagles!" I'd love to institute a similar policy with the Redskins, but an investigation revealed that if we were to fire any employee who had called the team retarded this past year, it'd just be me and Vinnie left.

Anyway, last week, the New York Times published a story claiming that Six Flags is over $2 billion in debt and nearing bankruptcy. And it's like...hey, whatever, you know? Who isn't over $2 billion in debt and nearing bankruptcy these days? No, far more damaging to my company's reputation is how the story plants the idea that people may not want to go on a roller coaster at a theme park that's going through bankruptcy proceedings.

Let me state emphatically that our parks are as safe as ever. And by "ever," I'm referring to just those times that people weren't stuck upside down, or having their feet sliced off, or being decapitated. By the way, that last one wasn't our fault. I mean, according to our lawyers, I'm supposed to say that none of them were our fault. But that last one really wasn't. The kid jumped over a security fence! What was I supposed to do? Build fences too tall to jump over? Come on.

But regardless, the safety issue is out there now, and we have to respond. So CEO Mark Shapiro and I have come up with the following new safeguards which we hope will reassure people that when they come to a Six Flags park, they can expect three things: Fun for the whole family, the chance to interact with exciting characters like Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird, and relatively small odds of being maimed or killed on one of our rides.

1) Prior to the park's opening each day, every ride will be thoroughly safety tested using actual riders. Said riders will be either homeless people or immigrant day laborers, whichever group comes cheaper and/or will be less likely to have people asking questions about them should they go missing.

2) For our more intense rides, such as Superman: Ride of Steel and Titan, all riders will now be required to be at least five feet tall. Originally, the requirement was going to be 5'5 tall, until it was pointed out that then I wouldn't be allowed on them.

3) Previously, when there has been a serious injury in one of our parks, precious minutes would be wasted before an ambulance was called, as we convinced the injured party or their legal guardian to sign a waiver of liability. Going forward, all guests will be required to sign such waivers before entering the park, indemnifying Six Flags Inc., RedZone Capital, and Daniel M. Snyder from any and all responsibility for any injury or fatality sustained on our premises. So on the off-chance something horrible should happen, you'll be able to bypass our legal team and go straight to the hospital/morgue.

I hope this convinces you, our valued guests, that Six Flags is more or less, has usually been, and will likely continue to be, a safe environment in which to bring your families.

If the current economic crisis continues, will there have to be cutbacks? Of course there will. But so long as the cost of potential lawsuits is more than the cost of diligently maintaining ride safety, I give you my word, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

But should something go horribly wrong, before you run out and get a lawyer, just remember: money won't bring back a loved one or make up for that body part(s) you lost. So really, what's the point?

24: 9:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m

Thoughts:

-- Wow, it didn't take Olivia long to turn into a raging, power hungry bitch. Sorry, Aaron. When it comes to meeting women who don't turn out to be head cases, you're 0-2.

-- Even though everything else is going to hell, this must be the greatest day ever for the security guards at the FBI field office. Earlier, they had Jack and Tony make a jailbreak, and now they've gotten to surround and detain not one, but two FBI employees. They're not going to see this much excitement ever again.

-- Ah. So Starkwood = Blackwater. Topical! And more evidence that Joel Surnow has definitely left the show.

-- The Verizon Hub looks awesome, but the commercial bugs me. If I'd told my mom I wasn't going to eat what she was making for dinner, she would have said, "Fine, fucking starve," not order me a pizza as a reward for being an ungrateful brat.

-- For a moment, I really thought that the show was, for once, not going to go down the predictable route by having Morris decide to not turn on Jack. So much for that. Also, can an FBI agent and an IT flunky unilaterally offer a suspect immunity?

-- They could not have telegraphed Senator Mayer's death more if they tried. And I don't ever, ever, ever want to hear Jack Bauer scream, "Nooooooooo!" again. This episode just lost an entire letter grade for that.

-- Okay, fine, it got half of it back with Jack adding a bulldozer to his arsenal of weapons.

-- Screwdriver to the heart! Hammered in with a 2x4! That gets it the other half back. It's a shame an otherwise shitty episode didn't get good until the last few minutes.

-- I can't wait to see how long it takes Tony to get to the "Port of Alexandria" from 3rd & B Street in D.C. (which, being in SW, is unlikely to offer the outdoor, candlelit dining experience Tony was enjoying). You know, the frustrating thing about the show's complete disregard for local geography is that they didn't need to be this careless. They didn't have a production assistant or an intern who could have pulled up Google Maps and figured out a few plausible locations for the characters to be in relation to one another in each episode? At this point, I'm fully expecting an episode where Jack's in Woodbridge and Tony's in Annapolis, and yet they manage to meet up within ten minutes.

Jack's confirmed kills: 1 (22 for the season)

Jack's Words of Wisdom: "Trust isn't my greatest asset."

Overall grade: C+

Panel of the Week

From Batman: Battle For the Cowl #1:

Woman Injured in Power Tool Sex Toy Encounter

To be totally honest, this post has absolutely nothing to do with power tools or sex toys or power tool sex toy encounters. But I saw this headline on nbcwashington.com a couple of days ago, and knew I had to steal it.

Anyway, I've always been the kind of guy who never really wanted to get married. And I don't mean that in the obnoxious, poseur, "Hey, man, marriage is for suckers! There's way too much sweet pussy out there to get tied down to one woman!" kind of way. I just mean it's always seemed like a really big hassle that's statistically proven to have more than a 50% chance of failing. So I always figured that if it happens, great. If not, whatever. I probably dodged a bullet.

But then I saw something last week that got me thinking.

I was in a newsstand getting a Red Bull and a pack of Skittles for my mid-morning caffeine and sugar rush. Like a lot of newsstands, this one had a fairly large porn section. And the man in front of me in line had about four magazines from this porn section.

At first, I felt bad for the guy. He was in his 60s and was clearly embarrassed to be buying porn at 11 in the morning. He tried to shuffle the magazines so that the covers were face down, but was thwarted by the fact that the backs of the magazines also had naked chicks on them. So he got to the counter, and the clerk started ringing him up. The guy's hand was shaking badly as he reached into his pocket for the money, and after he'd paid and gotten his magazines (thankfully, in a black, opaque plastic bag) he all but ran out of there. As he'd been fumbling for the money, I caught a glimpse of his left hand. No wedding ring.

Like I said, that got me thinking. What sort crappy existence must this guy lead? And is that I have to look forward to? Do I want to be 60 years old and all alone and buying porn as everyone around me uncomfortably pretends not to notice? Not especially. I mean, I'm sure plenty of 60 year-olds indulge in porn, but it'd be nice to have another option available.

So what the hell. I've decided to get married.

Here's the thing, though. I don't want to waste time with the whole "dating" and "getting to know each other" and "falling in love" stuff. I just want to get it over with. But at the same time, I don't want to make a mistake and end up getting divorced because I married the wrong woman.

So I've devised what I consider to be the ultimate personality test designed specifically for me. Supposedly, eHarmony's personality test consists of over 400 questions. 400! Mine? Just ten. Ten questions. Yet these seemingly innocuous questions are so in tune with my psyche...so brilliant in what they reveal about the person answering them...that the woman who gets the best score can't help but be my soul mate.

So I'm going to print off about a hundred fliers of the following questions over the weekend, and leave them randomly around town, along with a self-addressed envelope. Then it's just a matter of sitting back, waiting for the tests to roll back in, picking the winner, and it's goodbye, bachelorhood! Frankly, I don't see how this plan can fail.

The Test

1) Are the Washington Redskins the best team in the whole world, or merely just the best NFL team? If the latter, please justify your response.

2) Name ten Batman villains. (Extra credit: Name as many Batman villains as you can that haven't appeared in any of the movies.)

3) Do you watch The Hills? If the answer is yes, are you going to make me watch The Hills with you? If the answer is yes again, will you get upset if I make fun of both it and you while we're watching it? If the answer is yes, you can probably stop now, because there's no way I'm watching The Hills without making fun of you.

4) Hypothetical Situation #1: We have three kids. We decide that's enough, and in retrospect, probably should have stopped at two. Do you selfishly make me go through the pain and apprehension of getting a vasectomy, or agree that your taking a pill once a day for a few more years or getting one of those implant thingies is the considerably more reasonable way to go?

5) Which is the better horror movie franchise?

6) How do you envision our wedding? A nice, big, elaborate ceremony, where we invite all of our family and friends, and costs thousands upon thousands of dollars and puts us into debt for years? Or a quick flight to Vegas where we're married by the city's finest Elvis impersonator, which frees us up to instead blow our money on a kick-ass honeymoon?

7) Hypothetical Situation #2: I'm on a business trip in Los Angeles, and have taken off my wedding ring for some perfectly innocent reason we won't get into. While out one night, I meet my number one childhood celebrity crush--and indeed, number one current celebrity crush--Danica McKellar.

We really hit it off, and she invites me back to her place. I excuse myself, call you, and explain the situation. Knowing what this would mean to me, do you give me permission? (Yes, you would also get to bang a celebrity.)

8) It's your birthday. Would you rather I get you A) A tennis bracelet, or B) The new Madden game that we can play together?

9) Hypothetical Situation #3: We're in our late 40s. Our oldest kid is about to go off to college, and our youngest needs, like, glasses or braces or a wheelchair or whatever. So money's a little tight. All of a sudden, my midlife crisis hits, and I tell you I need to buy a Porsche or learn how to fly a plane or some other expensive thing. Are you going to be nice and supportive and tell me to go for it, or be a killjoy?

10) I don't cook. Do you?

24: 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m

Thoughts:

-- In the history of the world, has the old, "You have what you want, now release the hostages" bit ever worked?

-- Ha! I called it! Rest in peace, Bill. Or should I say...rest in pieces? See, because he got blown up and there are pieces of him all over the White House now, and...never mind.

-- Oh. Damn. Bill actually seems to be in one piece, which totally ruins my truly excellent "rest in pieces" joke. No, no. Don't worry. He's still dead. Just in one piece. I'm actually relieved. Based on the preview last week, it was fairly obvious it was either going to be Bill or Aaron who got killed, and I actually like Aaron.

-- And...Bill gets the silent clock, making it official. Of course, it would mean more if the show hadn't used it as a gimmick when Renee got buried alive earlier this season.

-- I feel bad for Larry. It's unclear if he and Renee are sleeping together or if he just has a crush on her, but regardless, when the woman he loves said that they should have just stayed out of Jack Bauer's way, it had to be like a dagger through the heart. Renee's already having sex with Jack. She just doesn't know it yet.

-- This is the second time this season where someone has broken into a secured area of a hospital with ease. That is a really cool phone he has, though. I need a phone like that, that I can use to hack into computers and stuff. The coolest thing I use my phone for these days is to play Tap Defense.

-- Aaron's totally getting laid once he gets out of the hospital.

-- Having said that, I can't shake this feeling that Olivia might somehow be involved in something shady. We now know that she lacks scruples, and putting her at odds with Ethan probably means that one of the two of them is dirty. And I doubt the show would be so predictable to have the president's chief of staff be part of the conspiracy.

-- I'm really not wild about the whole "frame Jack" plot twist. It seems like a cheap way to fill time, as the show often struggles to do at the halfway point. Hopefully, it'll turn out to be more than just Jack avoiding cops and knocking out innocent security guards.

Jack's confirmed kills: 6 (21 for the season)

Jack's Words of Wisdom: "I don't need to touch him, I just need him to think I'm there to finish what I started. And I promise you, he will tell us everything we need to know."

Overall grade: B-

Watchmen

Spoilers follow...

The Good

- The opening credits. Phenomenal. Hands down, the best part of the entire movie. Normally, when the best part of a film happens in the first ten minutes, there's a serious problem. But in this case, it's not that the rest of the film sucks, it's that the credits, which stylishly recap the events in America leading up to the film set to "The Times They Are A-Changin'," were perfectly done.

- Respect for the source material. They get all the major things right. They change a few elements here and there, which I'll nitpick to death below, but there wasn't anything fundamentally different from the comic. In fact, I really enjoyed how many little, seemingly insignificant beats, Zack Snyder made a point of including, like Rorschach eating beans at Daniel's place or the customers at the newsstand.

- The costumes. Finally, a film based on a comic book that isn't embarrassed to use the sort of costumes you actually see in comic books. Sure, the main characters' costumes were fancied up a bit, but they're pretty much the same as the comic, and the background heroes' costumes were allowed to be faithfully absurd. Other directors would have probably just put everyone in black leather.

- The casting. There wasn't a weak link in the bunch, but some worked better than others. Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, and Jeffery Dean Morgan were genius casting. Patrick Wilson wasn't bad, but he also didn't come off nearly flabby or pathetic as he should have. Matthew Goode and Malin Akerman were too young for their roles. But like I said, not a big deal.

- Superhero nudity. Blue or otherwise. Quite simply, an idea whose time has come.


The Bad

- The gore. When it comes to horror films, I'm a fan of gore. Here, a lot of it just felt gratuitous. Daniel and Laurie maiming and killing the thugs in the alley...the inmate getting his arms cut off...none of this was in the book or necessary additions to the film. And in regards to the former, it made Daniel and Laurie look less like heroes and more like complete psychopaths. On the other hand, Rorschach dumping the hot grease on the guy--which was in the comic--didn't seem gory enough.

- Rorschach's first killing. I'm utterly dumbfounded why Snyder felt the need to change this from the comic. Originally, Rorschach handcuffs the girl's murderer to his stove, sets the place on fire, and tosses him a hacksaw, telling him that he doesn't have enough time to cut through the chain, but could cut through his wrist. Then Rorschach leaves him there to die. Why make it so pedestrian as Rorschach just hacking the guy to death?

- Playing catch-up towards the end. There's a lot of superfluous stuff that was rightly left out of the film. Two things that weren't at all superfluous, though, yet were largely left out, were Bubastis and the New Frontier. As a result, when Bubastis appears near the end, I imagine it's sort of jarring to anyone who hadn't read the comic. "Oh, hey, Veidt has a giant cat thing. Where did that come from?"

Far worse is waiting until the very end to show the office of the New Frontier. Considering the end of the story hinges on it, would it have killed them to establish it--and Rorschach's obsession with it--earlier in the film so it didn't just appear out of nowhere?


The Ugly

- The ending. Just to warn you, this is going take a while, and is basically nothing more than a rant about how much better the ending of the comic was than the film.

I do have a fair amount of sympathy for the filmmakers here, because the ending from the comic is more or less unfilmable. I knew going in that it had been changed for the film, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't have been surprised. Even people who love the comic often admit that it's the one flaw in an otherwise excellent story. After all, a giant telepathic alien squid being transported into New York City doesn't exactly jibe with the tone of the story up until then.

But the film really screwed it up a few different ways.

1) Framing Dr. Manhattan as the thing that brings the various nations of the world together doesn't work nearly as well as some unknown alien threat. The reason Veidt's plan succeeds in the comic is that everyone suddenly believes there's this sudden external threat that's a bigger danger to them than their fellow human beings. Manhattan isn't an external threat, though. If anything, it seems like this would make the U.S. an even bigger target, since he's an American.

2) Veidt's revelation that he'd already set his plan into motion before Rorschach and Nite Owl arrived couldn't have been delivered more poorly. In the comic, it's one of the book's biggest "holy shit" moments. Here, it's almost mentioned as an afterthought. Also, Veidt's reaction to his plan's success is severely understated. Compare it to the comic:

That's how you react when you believe you've just saved the entire world from nuclear holocaust.

3) In the comic, Daniel and Laurie very quickly fall in line with Veidt's plan as they realize that even though he's insane, he's right. They all but beg Veidt for his forgiveness for trying to stop him. This makes Rorschach's refusal to go along with them even more striking.

But Hollywood has never been good at portraying moral ambiguities, hence Laurie and Daniel making a point to register their disgust and horror at Veidt's plan...yet inexplicably still going along with it.

4) In the comic, after Dr. Manhattan kills Rorschach, he and Veidt have one final conversation in which Veidt's belief that he'd done the right thing is shaken, however little. It's where Dr. Manhattan delivers both his "Nothing ever ends" and "I think I'll create [human life]" lines, which work a lot better in the context of a conversation with Veidt as opposed to Laurie.

Anyway. While Watchmen is a great movie, it would be a lot easier to love unconditionally if it hadn't come out in the same 12-month span as Iron Man and The Dark Knight, both of which have a legitimate claim to the title of Best Comic Book Film Ever Made. Now that we know it's possible for comic book movies to be done exceptionally well, it doesn't seem like quite such an impressive feat here. So while Watchmen deserves all the credit in the world, and it's hard to imagine anyone else doing a much better job than Snyder did, I can't help but feel that with just a bit more effort, it could have been a little better. And here, "a little" means the difference between merely being a great movie and being a masterpiece.

Panel of the Week

From Daredevil #116:

The Three Investigators

Every now and then when I'm bored, I'll go to Wikipedia and just type in random things that pop into my head. Nothing remotely useful or educational that I might somehow use to better myself, like "economics" or "rocket science." Things like...Green Arrow. Or Jenny McCarthy. Or, as was the case a couple of days ago, The Three Investigators.

For those of you who didn't read the Three Investigators books growing up and are too lazy to click on the above link, a little backstory: The group consisted of three boys, Jupiter, Pete, and Bob. They operated their own detective agency, had a cool headquarters in a salvage yard, cruised around in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, and--for a while, anyway--hung out with Alfred Hitchcock. Fuck you, Hardy Boys! Try and top that. They even had business cards.

Jupe was the brains of the group, Pete was the muscle (to the extent that a young kid can be muscle), and Bob was...actually, I think Bob was just there because The Two Investigators didn't have quite the same ring to it. Officially, he was in charge of research and records, but I don't remember him ever doing a damn thing that Jupe or Pete couldn't have done. (When the series was relaunched in the late 80s and the characters were aged a bit in an effort to make them hipper, Bob finally got something to do when he traded in his glasses for contacts and became a stud. So he often flirted with hot chicks to distract them while Jupe and Pete did the real investigating. This led a pre-teen Scotus to think that all he'd have to do is trade in his glasses for contacts, and he'd similarly become cool. This theory proved to be wrong.)

Anyway, as I was reading over the Wikipedia entry, I came across this, and my 11 year-old self promptly had an orgasm:

In 2003 a Three Investigators movie was announced. If it is successful, the producers have said they will make more, since they have projected a series. The first is The Secret of Skeleton Island,[1] which was released in Europe in 2007 and is scheduled for release in the U.S. in 2008.

Of course, I was a bit surprised to learn that it was a German-produced film. And the part that said it was scheduled for release in the U.S. in 2008 seemed odd, but then I figured that either it had been released straight to DVD and I'd somehow missed it, or else had its release date pushed back to this year.

So I checked Netflix and Amazon. Netflix and Amazon have never heard of it. Then I checked IMDB. It didn't have a U.S. release date, either, but it did have this poster:

This is where I started to get a bit worried.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with the poster, per se. Other than the fact that it's in German. But...it's not what I pictured a Three Investigators film looking like.

Then it hit me. YouTube! You can find anything on YouTube. Surely, it would have the trailer for this film.

And indeed it did. Unfortunately.

Oh, God. That's fucking awful. This is maybe the worst thing Germans have ever done.

Yeah, okay, fine. The second worst thing. But still. I mean, here's the plot of The Secret of Skeleton Island from Amazon, the book that the film blatantly stole the title from:

Jupe, Pete, and Bob's next case sends them to Skeleton Island, an eerie spot inhabited only by pirates' bones and a young girl's ghost. A movie company has chosen the island as the perfect place to make a scary film, but mysterious events are disrupting the crew. They call in the Three Investigators. But just as the boys arrive on the island, so does the ghost!

Now that's a great plot for a movie! Why then, in the trailer, are the Three Investigators crashing art auctions and running around South Africa and being chased by monsters in caves? (And before you point out that monsters aren't any more absurd than ghosts, it wasn't a real ghost in the book. In true Scooby Doo fashion--even though these books originally came out before Scooby Doo--any sort of supernatural threat was eventually revealed to be some guy trying to steal the gold buried underneath an amusement park or something.) Also, in the books, Jupe was a fat kid who, in spite of his genius, was insecure about his weight, which I thought gave the character some depth. So why did they cast this kid?

To be fair, the next film (yes, they've already made the sequel) looks marginally better. At least, I think it does. The only available trailer is in German. So for all I know, it could be far worse.

You know, I don't care that Transformers sucked. I'm over what Lucas and Spielberg did to Indiana Jones last year. I have high hopes for G.I. Joe, but ultimately, I won't really even care if that sucks. But The Three Investigators seems sacred, somehow. And I'm pissed that the Germans swept in and made a shitty film adaptation. You don't see us making crappy films based on German children's books, do you?

I don't know if or when President Obama is planning on meeting with Angela Merkel to discuss the economy, but when the subject of U.S. protectionism inevitably comes up, I hope he takes the stand that we will not idly stand by and let Germany or any foreign nation--aside from maybe Great Britain, because they know how to make good films--take our country's great literary works and bastardize them.

And if he needs to back this up with the threat of nuclear weapons, well so be it. It's that important.

24: 7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m

Thoughts:

-- I just realized that Sprague Grayden, the actress who plays Olivia, also played the scrawny, annoying, artist chick on John Doe, who actually proved to be so annoying, that she was brutally killed off halfway through the show's first and only season. She's, um...blossomed. I'm not going to lie. I'd love to see Aaron tap that. Seems like a fitting reward for all the crap he's had to deal with over the course of the series.

-- Okay, seriously, fuck Bill. After all he and Jack have been through, he turns his back on Jack? I'm telling you, this is the season where Bill finally goes off to that great CTU office in the sky.

-- The halls of the White House seem awfully empty for only 7:15 p.m. On The West Wing, the hallways were constantly crowded, even late at night. I don't like it when TV disagrees with itself.

-- Oh, Jack. No offense, dude, but jumping inside the safe room while the two Secret Service agents were firing at the terrorists, was kind of a pussy move.

-- I was wondering when Jon Voight was going to pop up again. I like his character so far--there's something endearing about a wealthy terrorist conspirator who enjoys Chinese takeout and darts--but I hope he actually has a decent motivation, and isn't just another in a long line of 24 villains who seem to help out the terrorists just because.

-- I don't want to second guess Aaron, especially after he's just been shot, but maybe following Olivia into the room and telling her what code to send would have been smarter than taking the time to write it down. And besides, it was just a shoulder wound. Everyone knows that on TV, a gunshot wound to the shoulder isn't much more serious than a scratch.

Jack's confirmed kills: 1 (15 for the season)

Jack's Words of Wisdom: "This is your house. I'll follow."

Overall grade: B

24: 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m

Thoughts:

-- I can't tell if Tony Todd is really standing on the edge of the Potomac across from D.C. in that scene, or if he's just in front of a green screen. I actually saw Kiefer Sutherland in when they were filming here prior to the writers' strike, and was mildly impressed. But if I'd seen Tony Todd? I would have geeked right the fuck out.

-- There's something oddly sweet about how Jack knocks his friends out with his sleeper hold. I especially like it when he advises them not to fight him. I mean, just think about all the movies where one good guy punches another good guy in the face to knock him out, or pistol whips him or something. Jack is so much more civilized in this regard.

-- At first, I was disappointed to see Jack carrying a taser gun. It seems like a horrible precedent to set; possibly the result of some hippie Fox executive saying, "Hey, guys, does Jack Bauer really have to kill so many people? Can't he just, like, incapacitate them? You know, my wife just bought one of those stun guns. Maybe Jack could carry one of those?" Of course, that was before Jack turned it into a torture device. Now I approve.

-- I dug Jack tasering the telephone, but I guarantee some retard is going to try it, get third degree burns when it blows up, and sue Fox for millions of dollars.

-- You know, normally, I can shut off the political part of my brain during 24, but when I hear Jack utter a clunky line like, "And you sir, are weak! Unwilling and unable to look evil in the eye and deal with it!" to an anti-torture Democratic senator, I can't help but be reminded of Joel Surnow's politics, and how people like Rush Limbaugh and all the pro-war Republican bloggers probably whack off while watching this show.

-- I guess I could complain about there being no underground warehouse or harbor on the Virginia side of the Potomac, but what's the point? I hope next season isn't set in D.C. All this...creativity with the local geography is driving me nuts.

-- Oh, come on. How the hell does an elaborate drawing of the front of the White House in any way help Juma's invasion plans? You could get the exact same image on any fifty cent postcard.

Jack's confirmed kills: 0 (14 for the season)

Jack's Words of Wisdom: "Mr. Burnett, I've been doing this a long time, and I can tell the difference, especially when a man is under duress, if he's got information that I need or if I'm just wasting my time. And I promise you, I am not wasting my time."

Overall grade: C+