Leslie Nielsen

And to the best of my knowledge, none of these guys ever did set foot in America.

Okay, maybe a couple of them did. But not for anything terror-related. This was probably why.

Black Friday Part 5

Worst Black Friday ever.

My total haul for the day was one Xbox game: SmackDown Vs. Raw for $30. I guess I could have gotten some of my Christmas shopping done, but I tend to put that off until Christmas Eve. Black Friday has traditionally been an excuse for me to spend money on me, and there was just nothing this year. Even the selection of cheap DVDs was a disappointment. Sure, the first season of Mad Men for $10 is a great value. But how often would I watch it? I'd probably have it up on Goozex within six months.

Best Buy

I once again started off at the Potomac Yard Best Buy. By the time I got there around 4am, the line was considerably longer than it was when I got there around the same time last year. I'm not sure if this is a sign of increased economic recovery (more people spending!) or a sign of increased economic distress (more people desperate for low prices!).

One of the reasons I like Black Friday so much is that I never arrive with the intention of buying any of the doorbuster items. Given a choice between spending a late November evening camped out in front of Best Buy to get a $150 laptop or spending the night in my bed and paying full price, I'll always go with the latter. Other people, of course, felt differently. So when the Best Buy employees came around to let everyone know that tickets for all the good items had been distributed, there was a lot of grumbling. Sorry, folks, but if there are only 25-50 cheap plasma TVs available and 500 people in front of you...well, do the fucking math.

The Best Buy employees going up and down the line seemed surlier than usual. One guy in particular who was evidently on a huge Black Friday power trip as the distributor of doorbuster tickets, kept screaming at people to get back on the sidewalk if they would so much as step onto the street to get his attention.

They were also really pushing the Best Buy credit card as people waited in line. To make it more enticing to sign up, they had a wheel of fortune you could spin to win prizes. Awesome prizes! Like a water bottle! Or a Geek Squad t-shirt! Or a gift card! One person asked how much the gift cards were for, and she wouldn't say. Which presumably means $10 or so. You rock, Best Buy!

Once the doors opened, it was predictably a madhouse, but a manageable one. Unfortunately, I didn't see any fights over stuff. I got my game and left.


Target

Target was dead. Like, ten-cash-registers-open-and-only-three-being-used, dead. Granted, they'd been open since 4, so I guess the rampaging horde had already come and gone, but it was weird how quiet the place was. I found nothing.


Pentagon City

I wasn't expecting much here, so I wasn't disappointed. The Gap was having a 50% off everything sale until 10 am, but it was The Gap, so I didn't give a crap. Besides, given how overpriced The Gap, 50% off just brings its prices down to what they probably should be in the first place.

The Apple Store sort of made an effort this year, I guess. $100 off most MacBooks is, I think, a lot better than they've done on past Black Fridays. Fortunately, the new 11" MacBook Air wasn't on sale, or else I think I might have bought one. That thing really is beautiful, and $800 might have been too good to pass up.

There was a display in the food court selling something called an AR Drone, which was some sort of remote control flying hovercraft thing.

The company selling it had models throughout the mall handing out fliers. They were dressed in quasi-futuristic aviator uniforms. Kind of like how, back in the '90s, we figured cops would be dressing by now. It was very Demolition Man.

Tysons Corner

Well after it had opened, there was a line to get inside Urban Outfitters.

Two employees were stationed outside, acting like bouncers. The first would stop anyone who tried to enter. The second one was manning the line and would periodically let people in. And this would be understandable if the store was packed, but it wasn't. Far from it. This just seemed to be a deliberately douchey move. I know, it's hard to associate Urban Outfitters with "douchey," but there you are.

After a bit of walking around, trying not to be too annoyed by the obviously rich McLean teenagers who were there in force (I saw a group of 13 or 14 year-old girls with no parents around, gorging themselves at Wasabi as if they were eating Chicken McNuggets instead of sushi), I went to see Faster at 9:45. There is something indescribably awesome about being able to go to a movie at 9:45 in the morning. (Great movie, too. Dwayne Johnson needs to do more movies where he walks up and shoots people in the head, as opposed to playing the tooth fairy or racing to Witch Mountain or whatever.)


Walmart

It was like a bomb had gone off. Crap was on the floors. People were still freaking out being there, despite it being well past noon. One woman cornered an employee and demanded to know where all the $1.99 DVDs were.

Just like last year, I quickly realized there was nothing worth standing in those lines for, and left. On my way out, I saw a Walmart employee angrily telling a customer that she'd be happy to help him if he would stop screaming at her for five seconds. Given my past retail experience and that the guy looked exactly like the sort of Black Friday shopper who would scream at an employee about something, I immediately sided with her, even though I missed what he was being upset about.

And...that's it. I went home, played a little SmackDown vs. Raw (it'll take a while before kicking John Cena's ass while playing as The Miz, gets old), and took a nap.

Yay, commerce.

Panel of the Week

From Batman: Odyssey #5:

Week Twelve NFL Picks

11-5 last week; 79-81 for the season

New England at Detroit (+6.5): Detroit

New Orleans at Dallas (+4): Dallas

Cincinatti at New York Jets (-9.5): New York

Minnesota at Washington (-1): Washington

Pittsburgh at Buffalo (+9.5): Pittsburgh

Tennessee at Houston (-6.5): Houston

Jacksonville at New York Giants (-7): Jacksonville

Carolina at Cleveland (-10): Cleveland

Tampa Bay at Baltimore (-7.5): Baltimore

Philadelphia at Chicago (+3.5): Philadelphia

Green Bay at Atlanta (-2): Green Bay

Miami at Oakland (-3): Oakland

Kansas City at Seattle (+2): Seattle

St. Louis at Denver (-4): Denver

San Diego at Indianapolis (-3): San Diego

San Francisco at Arizona (+1): Arizona

Rebooting Buffy

When I read that Warner Brothers was rebooting Buffy The Vampire Slayer yesterday, I thought about the first three nearly-perfect seasons of the show, and was absolutely outraged. Then I thought about the last three seasons of the show, and I found it didn't really bother me all that much.

I'm kidding. About being outraged at all, I mean. Don't get me wrong, I like Buffy. Even the last three seasons weren't bad, if you take out about half of the episodes. And Dawn. And evil Willow. And Spike, once he stopped being evil. But to be fair, there was some good stuff. I dug the musical episode. Andrew was great. And I am reading the "eighth season" comics. But it was interesting to see the reaction on Twitter and various geek-ish websites when the news broke, where everyone basically acted like WB had announced its intentions to purchase and paint over the Mona Lisa. Really, the only one who should be pissed off is Sarah Michelle Gellar, whose plan to distance herself from the character once the show ended worked so well, she managed to distance herself from any character of note. Raise your hand if you saw any of her recent films like Possession, Suburban Girl or Veronika Decides to Die or even knew these were actual movies. You think she wouldn't kill to star in a Buffy film now?

Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. The franchise, such as it is, is pretty much dead. I guess in theory, they could do a movie with the TV cast, and it would probably do okay. But by the time it would come out, it would be almost ten years since the show went off the air. I'm not sure a 35 year-old Slayer and her pushing-40 sidekicks can pull off a whimsical vampire epic. Time's finally even caught up with James Marsters. I don't care how much bleach they put in his hair.

So why not relaunch it? I guess it would be nice if Joss Whedon was involved, but doesn't it sort of defeat the purpose of starting over if you're just going to hire the guy who did it the first time around? There's a school of thought that the creator always knows best, but one can only imagine how terrible a Stan Lee-written Spider-Man film would be, or what would have happened if Syfy had relaunched Battlestar Galactica as a light space opera like the original, instead of a gritty political drama.

And at the end of the day...it's freaking Buffy The Vampire Slayer. If they can reboot James Bond and Captain Kirk--both of which worked out pretty well--it seems weird that Buffy Summers is somehow sacrosanct.

¡Vampiros En La Habana!

File this under Cool Shit From The Georgetown Flea Market. If it wasn't for the price, this would be hanging on my wall right now.

Luckily, we don't care about Cuban intellectual property in this country--which I guess is okay, since, being communists and all, the Cubans probably don't care either--so the whole film is up on YouTube.

Here's the trailer. At least, I think it's a trailer.

So...yeah. I guess it's possible that if I spoke Spanish, at least part of that would make sense. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

The poster still kicks ass.

Panel of the Week

From Batman Incorporated #1:

I never thought this day would come, but someone needs to explain Batman to me

Grant Morrison is probably the best writer working in comics. He is, without a doubt, the smartest writer working in comics. Imagine if Stephen Hawking was a comic book writer instead of...well, I don't know what Stephen Hawking actually does, other than just be smart. But I imagine it pays well.

There is, though, perhaps something to be said for a comic book writer being too smart.

For the past couple of years, Morrison has taken Batman on an incredible journey, even by Batman standards. First, in a storyline called Batman R.I.P., he introduced some interesting new adversaries in the form of Dr. Hurt, The Black Glove, and The Club of Villains. You might think from the title, Morrison also killed Batman off. But no! That was done in Final Crisis, where Darkseid's Omega beams reduced him to a charred corpse. But wait! The corpse wasn't actually Batman! It was a clone. In actuality, as told in the pages of the sensibly-named mini-series The Return of Bruce Wayne, Batman was sent back in time to the prehistoric era, and then proceeds to bounce around the time stream on his way back to the present (becoming a puritan, a pirate, a cowboy, and a private detective, along the way). But wait! This was all a plot of Darkseid's to turn Batman into a weapon that would destroy the world upon returning to the present! Which he does, as a sort of amnesiac half-Batman, half-cyborg type thing who was at the end of time where he dicked over Superman and Green Lantern and a couple of other people, leaving them stranded by stealing their time machine and...

Fuck it, I have no idea what happened. All I know is that Batman's alive and back in the present, only now there are going to be lots of Batmen operating around the world and...I'm still not sure.

When I was kid, you know what a Batman story was? Two Face would steal two rare diamonds from a museum on Second Street at 2 o'clock, and Batman would track him down. Or someone named KGBeast would try to kill President Reagan when he was visiting Gotham City. And I'm not saying that Batman stories shouldn't aspire to be more sophisticated than that, but at the same time I'm not sure they should be quite this dense.

What makes all this especially annoying is that as tempting as it is to just dismiss all this as Morrison being weird just for the sake of being weird, that's not what's going on. There's an obvious brilliance to Morrison's writing. It's just over my head. And because it's a Batman comic and not A Brief History of Time, I'm not really wild about that.

The past couple of weeks have seen the release of four Morrison-written comics that wrapped up the previous storyline and launched a new one: Batman and Robin #16, Return of Bruce Wayne #6, Batman: The Return #1 and Batman Incorporated #1. And only that last one gave me no headaches whatsoever.

Rather than continue to get frustrated over all this, I'm just going to do what will hopefully be a cathartic release by posting the panels that especially drove me nuts.

And now I just kind of want a story where all that happens is that the Penguin does something and Batman beats him up.

Week Eleven NFL Picks

4-10 last week; 68-76 for the season

Chicago at Miami (-2.5): Miami

Oakland at Pittsburgh (-7): Pittsburgh

Houston at New York Jets (-7): New York Jets

Baltimore at Carolina (+10.5): Baltimore

Washington at Tennessee (-7): Washington

Detroit at Dallas (-6.5): Dallas

Green Bay at Minnesota (+3.5): Green Bay

Buffalo at Cincinnati (-6): Buffalo

Cleveland at Jacksonville (+1.5): Cleveland

Arizona at Kansas City (-8): Arizona

Seattle at New Orleans (-11.5): New Orleans

Atlanta at St. Louis (+3): Atlanta

Tampa Bay at San Francisco (-3.5): Tampa Bay

Indianapolis at New England (-3.5): Indianapolis

New York Giants at Philadelphia (-3): New York Giants

Denver at San Diego (-10): San Diego

Panel of the Week

From Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6:

Week Ten NFL Picks

6-7 last week; 64-66 for the season

Baltimore at Atlanta (-1): Baltimore

Cincinnati at Indianapolis (-7): Indianapolis

Houston at Jacksonville (+1.5): Houston

Tennessee at Miami (+2): Tennessee

Minnesota at Chicago (+1): Chicago

Detroit at Buffalo (-2.5): Detroit

New York Jets at Cleveland (+3): Cleveland

Carolina at Tampa Bay (-6.5): Tampa Bay

Kansas City at Denver (+1): Kansas City

St. Louis at San Francisco (+6): St. Louis

Seattle at Arizona (-3): Arizona

Dallas at New York Giants (-13.5): Dallas

Philadelphia at Washington (+3): Washington

Washington Post Theatre

This week, the Washington Post announced the release of its new iPad app. As part of the roll-out, the Post created this video where Bob Woodward, perplexed by this amazing new technology, wanders through the Post newsroom full of iPad-obsessed colleagues, to Ben Bradlee's office in order to find out more about it. By the end, Woodward seems to accept that iPads are just as good, if not better than typewriters, and you get to see Bradlee feign enthusiasm for both Twitter and "juicy gossip."

I think it's great. If there's a director's cut with additional footage, I'd love to see it. This is the sort of thing the Post should do more often. Not necessarily use the newsroom as the setting for wacky web videos (although, I wouldn't mind it), but it seems like a good way to get people interested in and excited about the Washington Post is to let them see more of its inner workings. After all, for anyone who's lived here for any considerable period of time, the Post isn't just a newspaper, it's a D.C. institution, just like Saturday Night Live is to New York or Wrigley Field is to Chicago. And who isn't fascinated by what goes on in an institution?

Anyway, here are my five favorite parts of the video:

1) Bob Woodward's Mystery Box

I doubt Woodward actually keeps a box labeled "Watergate" by his desk. (Actually, I doubt Woodward has a desk in the bullpen. Or a typewriter. But it's clearly all part of the bit, so never mind.) It'd be awesome if he did, though. A box that no one was ever allowed to open or even touch. Just sitting there. Tempting people with its deep, dark secrets.

Granted, the contents would be a lot less mysterious now that we know who Deep Throat was, but I'm sure Woodward still has all kinds of great Watergate and Nixon administration souvenirs that he could keep in there. Old notes and photos. A never-seen copy of Haldeman's pardon request. Checkers. That kind of stuff.


2) Dana Milbank Strikes Out

Like lots of people who read Dana Milbank's column, I constantly go back and forth on whether or not I actually like Dana Milbank. Some days, he comes off as witty and insightful. Other days, he just comes off as a jackass. And there are days where there's overlap between wittiness and jackassiness, and which side you come down on depends on who you like more, Milbank or whoever he's being a jackass towards.

I'm currently in a pro-Milbank period, but I still got a laugh out of Milbank's hurt look after asking his attractive coworker whether or not she's read his latest column, and getting a less than enthusiastic response. But what do you expect when you use a line like, "It's generating a lot of Facebook chatter"?


3) Bacon Wig = Bacon Win

I don't know if this is a photo with an actual story behind it, or if the people behind the video simply threw it because they thought bacon is inherently funny (it is!) and a wig made out of bacon makes a good sight gag (it does!). Either way, it comes up big. Incidentally, if you do a Google Image search for "bacon wig," you get all kinds of interesting hits, including more bacon wigs, lots of Elvis-related stuff, and most interestingly, a bacon bra and a bacon merkin.

Don't Google "bacon merkin" at work. In fact, if you don't want to get fired, I suppose you shouldn't Google any sort of merkin. Another way The Man is keeping us down.


4) "Hey, was that Robert Redford?"

In junior high, we watched All The President's Men in civics class. I remember my teacher, who I guess was a big Nixon fan and still held a grudge 20 years later, going off on a mini-rant about how Woodward looked considerably better in the movie than he did in real life, and that he owed Robert Redford big time for making him look good.

Arguably true, but maybe not a sentiment you need to share with a bunch of 13 year-olds. It wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as the time my earth science teacher announced to the whole class that she was a virgin, but thoughts on Bob Woodward's level of hotness vis-à-vis Robert Redford, wasn't something I needed to hear, either.


5) It's Like You're Watching All The President's Men 2

You don't have to be a huge journalism or political geek to get a thrill out of seeing Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee together. Even if it's just to hawk an iPad app, as opposed to unmasking a sinister White House conspiracy.

When they inevitably remake All The President's Men (I'm sure my former teacher will again be outraged when it's announced that Matthew McConaughey or Shia LaBeouf or whoever is playing Woodward), I hope the new version ends with a foreshadowing scene--needless to say, an entirely fictional one--in which Bradlee, Woodward and Carl Bernstein are having a drink together, celebrating the publication of the Watergate story, and Bradlee muses that 40 years in the future, maybe he and Woodward will star in a humorous website video together. Bernstein starts to ask what a website is, then stops and instead says, "Wait, what about me? Won't I still at the Post?" And then there's just awkward silence. Roll credits.

Week Nine NFL Picks

7-6 last week; 58-59 for the season

Chicago at Buffalo (+3): Chicago

San Diego at Houston (+3): San Diego

New Orleans at Carolina (+6.5): Carolina

Arizona at Minnesota (-7.5): Minnesota

Tampa Bay at Atlanta (-10): Tampa Bay

New York Jets at Detroit (+6): New York Jets

Miami at Baltimore (-5.5): Miami

New England at Cleveland (+4): New England

New York Giants at Seattle (+7.5): New York Giants

Kansas City at Oakland (+1): Oakland

Indianapolis at Philadelphia (-3): Indianapolis

Dallas at Green Bay (-7): Green Bay

Pittsburgh at Cincinnati (+5): Cincinnati

Panel of the Week

From Batman and Robin #16:

Saw 3D

If this really was the last Saw film (and honestly, after this one, I'm kind of hoping it is), they didn't go out on a high note, but at least they managed to stay consistent. You know how for 20 years, it was all but a scientifically proven fact that the even numbered Star Trek films were good, and the odd numbered ones were bad? Then came Star Trek: Nemesis, the tenth film, and it was terrible, thus ruining one of the few dependable truisms in the world.

With the Saw series, the odd numbered films were also bad, and the even numbered ones were also good. The good news is, Saw 3D keeps the streak going. The bad news is, Saw 3D is an odd numbered entry.

Spoilers follow...

Saw VI wasn't just good, it was arguably the best film in the whole series. So when the writers sat down to do the script for Saw 3D, you can't blame them for thinking, "Hey, let's pretty much just do the same story we did last time.": A guy who unknowingly crossed Jigsaw in the past wakes up in a maze and encounters people he knows, who have also been captured and put into death traps.

Last time, this worked on several levels. First and foremost, it was fun (and more than a little cathartic) to see William, the sleazy insurance executive, get what was coming to him just as this country was right in the middle of the health care debate. The fact that you still sort of felt for him is a great testament to Peter Outerbridge's acting. Second, the traps were entertaining. Especially the carousel of death. Finally, it had a great twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

It also felt like the game with William was what the whole series had been leading up to, as John Kramer finally got revenge on the guy who had cost him his life. As a result, this thing with Bobby and his fake book, almost seemed like a pointless epilogue. And even though it's gotten more and more absurd that Jigsaw continued being a presence in the series despite having been dead since the third film, it would have been nice if they'd figured out how to do more with Tobin Bell than just one really brief flashback.

The traps were okay, but given that this was the final film, mostly a letdown. I liked the opening trap with the saws, and having to pull the key out of his publicist's stomach by a string was nice. But seven films in, it feels like we should be well beyond a simple hanging or having to pull out of couple of your own teeth.

Here was my biggest problem, though: In the beginning, we discover that Cary Elwes's character from the very first Saw actually survived. And then he shows up at the Jigsaw survivors' meeting. Then totally disappears. Throughout the film, I was wondering, "Hey, where did Cary Elwes go?" So when he pulls off the mask at the end, there was no surprise whatsoever. Which is a shame, because if it had been done better--especially if the studio had kept it under wraps that Elwes was even returning-- it would have been a great twist. The revelation that it had been Dr. Gordon who had been supplying Jigsaw with his surgical skills this whole time, was fantastic. But the whole thing was telegraphed horribly.

The less said about the 3-D, the better. I actually can't even recall a moment in the film where it was even utilized. I mean, I'm sure there were a couple of scenes where stuff flew off the screen, but nothing springs to mind. I had the option of seeing this in either 2-D or 3-D, but felt obligated to see the 3-D version to find out if it delivered everything that was promised. Yeah, I'm a rube.

Given that Saw 3D doubled its budget in its first weekend, I doubt that this really is the last film in the series. It'd be nice if they took a couple of years off, and approached it with a totally new direction. No more Kramer. No more Hoffman. Maybe bring Cary Elwes back. But it definitely needs a new angle than just a series of traps and an increasingly convoluted backstory.

Script: D
Acting: D+
Gore: A+
Overall: D+

Vote Santos!

On Election Day, 2010, President Matt Santos
converses with obscure Illinois senator

Today, Americans all around the country will, if the conventional wisdom proves correct, vote out Democrats en masse. Most will do this because they legitimately--if not misguidedly--believe that Republicans will do a better job. But far too many will do this because they're idiots (sorry, Jon Stewart, I tried) who, for whatever reason, don't think that advocating armed insurrection against the federal government shouldn't automatically be grounds for not holding office.

But that's in the real world. In The West Wing universe, things are probably going much, much better, which bodes well for President Santos to get reelected today, four years after he kicked Alan Alda's ass. After all, in the West Wing universe, there is no Iraq War. The economy is probably doing pretty good, since there was no George W. Bush to help fuck it up in the first place. The only thing people associate the phrase "tea party" with is a small, friendly gathering where tea is served. Or maybe that thing in Boston in 1773. But certainly not crazy people talking about dismantling Social Security and accusing politicians of being Hitler.

After The Simpsons, The West Wing is probably my favorite TV show of all time. And even though it would have been interesting to see the show continue with the Santos administration, it's probably best that it ended when it did. A reunion movie might be kind of cool, though. It'd give Aaron Sorkin one more shot at the characters, and other than Dule Hill, it's not like most of the actors have anything else going on. Jimmy Smits just had another TV show cancelled, Bradley Whitford's show is probably next, and poor Richard Schiff went from being on one of the most critically acclaimed TV series of all time, to one where he helped solve crimes committed by reincarnated souls. Or something. (Also cancelled.) And frankly, I'm guessing Martin Sheen could really use the distraction right now.

So it would be nice to see those characters again, and relatively speaking, probably wouldn't be too difficult to pull off.

Then I remembered that we already sort of know what happens to them after the series ends, because of that flash-forward scene in one of the episodes that's set in the future at the opening of Bartlet's presidential library. Most of the characters are present, and we find out that CJ and Danny got married, Will's a congressman, Toby's a professor, and so on. Then the current president shows up for the dedication ceremony, and we see only his feet as he gets out of the limo, and...cut to the opening credits.

Conspicuously absent in that scene is Leo, because by that point in the series, he was Santos's running mate, and I guess the writers didn't want to tip their hand as to whether Santos won or not by having the other characters awkwardly avoid referring to Leo by either his first name or "Mr. Vice President." Then, not long afterwards, John Spencer passed away and the writers had Leo die from a heart attack. (To make it even more tragic, it seemed like Leo was right on the verge of hooking up with Kristin Chenoweth. Which...you know. Way to go, Leo.)

But ever since The West Wing ended, I've always wondered: What would have happened if Leo had been in that scene? What if he'd just popped up at the end with Josh, or was standing off quietly to the side, thus not requiring any of the other characters to address him one way or the other?

Think about it. This would have resulted in probably the biggest headache in the history of television. If the show wasn't able to give John Spencer the respectable send-off he deserved because they were already locked into Leo still being alive a few years in the future, the writers would have been completely and totally screwed, and left with a very limited number of ways they could have proceeded.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of three options:

1) Retcon the scene

It's not like continuity was ever The West Wing's strong suit. Characters would disappear without any explanation. Certain details would change, depending on the needs of any given script. "Isaac and Ishmael," the episode where Sorkin took it upon himself to explain 9/11 to everyone, may not have even been canon. So it probably would have been really tempting for the producers to still go ahead and kill Leo off and simply tell the audience, "Yeah, that flash-foward we did a few weeks ago? In light of John Spencer's death, just ignore it, huh?"

This sort of thing happens in comic books all the time. If there's an old story that's inconvenient and conflicts with something an editor wants to do, all he has to do is declare that story never happened, and readers usually just accept it. (In a truly unnecessary step, DC even went so far as to codify this sort of thing in the context of its fictional universe.) But television viewers obviously don't give TV shows the same sort of latitude. They can't just un-remember something they saw happen. So in all likelihood, all this would have done is cause a lot of confusion and annoyed reactions.

2) Always have Leo be off-screen

This probably would have been the easiest to do: "Where's Leo?" "Oh, you just missed him." And for the shots where Leo and Santos absolutely had to be together, like during the victory celebration, they could have used a double and just filmed them from behind.

But obviously, that would have cheapened Spencer's death. And at a certain point, it would have just become awkward and uncomfortable for both the cast and the viewers.

3) Recast the role

This seems like it would have been both the most and least satisfying solution. On one hand, bringing in someone else would have allowed Leo to fully participate in the last few episodes of the season/series, and kept the flash-forward scene intact. On the other hand, I'm guessing no one would have really wanted to see this, and again, while the integrity of the story would have been maintained, it would have been Spencer who got the short end of the stick.

So there you have it. A huge clusterfuck avoided simply because someone on the show had the foresight to say, "You know, Leo probably shouldn't be in this scene."

Like everyone else in D.C., I'll be watching the returns tonight. If the Democrats somehow hold onto the House, I'll have it on Fox News so I can see lots of sputtering and unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud. (Drinking game suggestion: Have a shot every time someone uses the phrase "stole this election.") If the Republicans have a great night, I'll have it on Comedy Central, given that I'll need a good laugh. Regardless, though, I suspect I'll really be longing for The West Wing's version of America. If for no other reason than that Al Bundy is the vice president. How can you not want to live in that America?

Sanity? Sort of restored. Fear? Honestly, teabaggers still freak me out.

I wasn't planning on going to the rally on Saturday. I knew plenty of people who were, but I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm to go with them. Politics, these past few years, and especially these past few months, has become depressing as hell. Especially to someone who really drank the Obama Kool-Aid about hope, change, unicorns, etc. And while a natural counterbalance to that would seemingly be a rally held by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that would give everyone the chance to decompress and have a good laugh, it still seemed like it would also be a reminder of just how fucked up this country has gotten, thanks to one political party that doesn't have any guts, another party that's not only essentially become evil incarnate, but actually seems proud of it, and a media that doesn't seem to give a shit about any of it.

There was also a practical reason I didn't want to go: I knew there were going to be a lot of people, and that if you didn't get there really early, it would be impossible to get a good view. And at that point, if you're too far away to see anything and are just watching the rally on the big monitors set up along the Mall, why not just stay home and watch it on TV?

(It also didn't help that standing on the Mall for hours for Obama's inauguration last year is maybe the singular worst experience of my entire life.)

Then I woke up around five on Saturday morning, couldn't get back to sleep, and decided, what the hell? Let's do this thing. And you know what? I'm really glad I did.

The differences between this crowd and the ones at the Tea Party rallies I've been to, were striking. This crowd was younger. This crowd was multi-cultural. But more importantly, this crowd was happy. You could actually talk to people without getting sucked into a conversation about how [fill in the blank] was destroying America. The only mentions of Hitler were ironic. No one was making not-so-vague threats to kill people or overthrow the government if they didn't get their way. It was refreshing to see so many people gathered together by something other than hatred.

This is what too fucking early looks like. On the other hand, getting there too fucking early resulted in a pretty great view.

Even the most sane and reasonable of people go apeshit wild for free swag, so when hand towels were distributed early in the morning, everyone predictably went apeshit wild. The poor volunteer who probably thought he'd been assigned an easy gig handing these out, seemed totally unprepared for the onslaught of people rushing him, asking, "Can I have five?" The next volunteer was smart enough to just drop a large box of them on the ground and let people have at it. And we did! I got about seven of them. Christmas shopping done!

Whoever came up with the idea of showing Daily Show and Colbert Report episodes before the rally started should get one of those medals for reasonableness Stewart was handing out. The time spent waiting for the rally to start practically flew by. It sure as hell beat the interminable wait for Obama's inauguration to begin, where we were treated to Obama's victory speech on the monitors. Twice.

Some of the acts seemed like odd choices. One result of the crowd being so young was this conversation I overheard:

"Who's that guy?"
"Yusuf Islam."
"Who's Yusuf Islam?"
"A singer. He used to be Cat Stevens."
"Who's Cat Stevens?"

The closest area to the stage was reserved for VIPs (a term used quite loosely at this event). A lot of them seemed to be New Yorkers who came down on the Huffington Post buses, which was apparently a total clusterfuck.

For the first two hours of the rally, people would arrive, meet up with friends they'd been separated from in New York, and hug each other like they were 1930s immigrants reuniting on Ellis Island after weeks at sea. I amused myself by reading their annoyed tweets before the rally. I mean, it sucks, but you get what you pay for, you know? The people who really wanted to be there sprung for Amtrak or, like Peter David, were smart enough to hit the road super early.

As for the rally itself, I actually thought it got off to a lousy start. I mean, don't get me wrong, a Roots performance? Great! The Roots performing with John Legend? Awesome! But for half an hour? Before either Stewart or Colbert took the stage? I can't be the only person wondering if they'd overslept or something.

Then there were the MythBusters guys. I'm not going to lie. I absolutely despised this part, and began seriously questioning my decision to even come. I don't watch the show, so it's possible I just didn't get the bit, but asking the crowd to do a wave (several times), make various noises, and then jump up and down in unison to measure the resulting seismic activity, seemed stupid and pointless and totally unrelated to either sanity or fear. Maybe if they'd come out later on, it would have been more tolerable. But by this point, I was getting restless waiting for the rally to get started an hour after it technically began.

Everything else was gold, though. The whole thing probably could have been whittled down to two hours without losing too much, but a little filler wasn't a big deal. The comedy was great, the musical performances were great, and especially the music/comedy bit with Stewart, Colbert, Islam and Ozzy Osbourne, was the highlight of the whole thing.

As for the main message of the rally, in the form of Stewart's speech at the end...I don't know. I'm not sure it's going to have any appreciable effect. Not on Election Day tomorrow, and not going forward. The speech was certainly heartfelt and I agree with it 100% in theory. But I also think this is a really great point:

Can people who think Christine O'Donnell should be a senator, or that Sarah Palin would make a great president, or that Glenn Beck is the gold standard of journalism, be reasoned with? I don't think so. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.