I Only Learned One Thing From That Debate ...

... man, do I want to play poker against Senator McCain.

He's got a poker face like Mummenschanz.






(Mandatory bit credit: "Poker face like Mummenschanz" originated by DJ McCarthey, in reference to Ricky Bronson's gambling skills)

THIS is Why I'm Not Answering Your Goddam Phone Calls

The script for Episode #113 was completed this morning at roughly 8 am. Two episodes written in two weeks, without a staff.

And yes, that is Scotch. And no, I don't have a problem. I waited until 10 am.

Truth Invaders Web Game

A friend of mine, Jeremy Bernstein, is a writer/game designer living in LA; he's done some work in political games in the past with the aptly, if unimaginatively, named Redistricting Game (www.redistrictinggame.org). Now he's put together a game targeting all the dirty, dirty lies being spewed out of the presidential campaigns.

I'm fascinated by this stuff, because I'm always a little puzzled why we don't use the addictive nature of gaming more as part of an educational technique.

The game is called Truth Invaders, www.truthinvaders.com. If you enjoy it, let people know, 'cause this kind of thing is all the publicity it's gonna get.

And so we keep it participatory -- in the Comments, favorite computer/console game of the moment. Bonus points for obscurity or age.

QUARANTINE

Oh, so thaaaaat's what Cloverfield was trying to do.

It's been a damn long time since I've been in a packed theater where people screamed their asses off and cheered/fist-pumped/went NUTS when the survivors fought back. There was a moment, before the film began, when I dreaded the pack of teenage girls in front of me, and how they would destroy my moviegoing experience. The texting, the chatting ...

They maybe stopped crying in the parking lot. Maybe.

Pure pulp, and wonderfully made. You actually gave a damn what happened to these characters. Pipe was laid quite effectively, and there's a moment near the end where you think they're going to use the hoariest of movie tropes to get some information across, and they utterly subvert it.

Nice job, Dowdle Bothers.

Movie homepage here.

IP Piracy Economics

Via Ezra Klein, an interesting bit of research on the numbers behind the economic damage created by IP piracy. Or lack of same.

"The plural of anecdote is not ..."

Anime Bleg

A buddy's 15 year old niece has had her interest piqued by anime, and he's dinged me as a source. Although I have a few recommendations, I open the floor to recommendations of age-appropriate anime. Apparently, fantasy genre elements are a plus.

I am doing this on my blog, because walking into my local video store and saying "I'd like to buy some anime for a fifteen year old girl," is just not going to end well.

And A Magnum of Champagne for My New Friend Trixie

I'd been head down in the season finale script for the last few days, so I'd missed this. From Ezra Klein, noting National Review editor -- that's the editor -- Rich Lowry:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

Modern American Conservatives have sunk to the intellectual and emotional level of the guy who thinks the stripper really likes him.

Palin terrifies me. She is Warren Ellis' Smiler, in a way Bush never was. I cannot sense any core beliefs except ... well except nothing. All I can see is the winking, giggling folksy void. They tell her to spew some bullshit, and she salutes smartly and sells the hell out of it. Asked to go forth and spread old canards about Senator Obama being a "friend of terrorists", something she never seemed to show any interest in before, she does so not just efficiently but with a perky glee. The proper human response, when asked to say things like this about a political opponent and Senator of the United States is so fundamentally "fuck no" that it is the unheard test question immediately following "You're in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you're not helping -- why is that?"

There's no shame, no consideration, no apparent native curiousity ... but even more creepily no resentment at being treated like a prop, no chafing at her handlers assuming she'll say absolutely anything they put in front of her. How can a human exist so fueled by hubris but without an ego? My lizard brain is screaming.

I understand how people can differ on tax policy, the proper balance between military action and diplomacy in world affairs, national health care, regulation ... but we must draw the line somewhere. Without some basic, fundamental standard of reality, even arbitraily selected, a man cannot walk the earth.

Now those people who are voting against Obama, or even for McCain and pretend to themselves that Palin isn't relevant, I kind of get that, and can respect it. But entertaining the idea that Governor Palin is either remotely qualifed or intellectually suited to be President requires an indulgence that in this complicated and dangerous world, we cannot as a society allow. It has crossed to an active harm, like peeing in the village water supply.







(Note for the metaphor impaired: I am not being sexist and saying Plain is a stripper. I'm saying Lowry is the kind of idiot who believes the stripper really likes him. If you feel that reflects poorly on strippers, go ask one,)

Ninja Cat

Long day at work, plus the fact Sarah Palin is considered for any office higher than Applebees Evening Hostess is depressing the hell out of me. Here,go "awww" and pretend it'll all be okay.



And just because I admire their ninja capitalist moxie:

Q&A Explosion

The writer of this episode, Albert Kim, had his wife Jennie visiting that day, and she got some amazing shots of the explosion down on Long Beach. This is the second time we detonated a massive fireball in the nation's busiest port. That should not alarm you at all.

I'm going to play catchup on some Q&A on my 12-minute break from writing the season finale. Let's see what odds and ends we have ...

Mike Cane: Still patiently awaiting my fix of Parker pr0n. How many eps are in the can now, btw? And is the debut now DEC instead of OCT?!

You got Parker aplenty coming up, particularly in this episode. Parker fight scene! In the meantime, Parker's character profile is up on TNT. At some point I will bully them into putting these things on YouTube.

If we go by the normal numbering system with the pilot being #101, we are currently shooting #110. Funnily enough, Jonathan Frakes is directing, and Brent Spiner is our guest star. I'm hauling Wheaton down for lunch on set so we can have a mini-reunion. And then I will make them wear the uniforms. And call me "Captain."

#111 was co-written by Chris Downey and Amy Berg. I'm hacking out the two-part season finale now, with Chris probably coming back in in to split the last few scenes. There's only three of us now, so we're spread very ... efficiently over our time writing and being on set.

The December debut has been in the works for a while. When all your other TV shows are ontheir hiatus, there will be shiny new episodes of crime and heist action on TNT.

Stefan: How about a millionaire CEO on the run series? He has a grip with a change of clothes and a wallet full of ATM cards to accounts containing a total of fifty million dollars. In each episode he meets up with people in screwed-up circumstances, from whom he learns valuable life lessons and helps with a carefully applied pile of cash.

The timing of our "vengeance against fat cats" show does seem to be fortuitous. We joked the other day that our promos should just be 15 seconds of Chris Kane beating the shit out of the CEO of Lehman.

The downside, of course, is that many of our cons depend on financial institutions that only exist before an utter financi-pocalypse and societal meltdown. By the time we air in December, we may have to bang out some ADR dubbing.

"Okay, roll the scene."

"... we can transfer the stocks into the fake corporations's name, and then trade them back for title to the land."

"Good, let's redub."

"... we can transfer the [potable water] into the [tribe's compound] and then trade them back for [pointy sticks] to [fight the cannibal homeless]."

emong: Who's the DP on the show?

Dave Connell. Unflappable Aussie.

kevin: Hey Jon, KidCthulhu and I are cable-tv-free. You know if Leverage is going to be available on iTunes?

It will be downloadable, and we are cutting the deal right now. Considering you can now get your television from XBOX marketplace, Amazon unbox, Netflix streaming (which will itself soon be available through XBOX), streaming on the network website and Hulu, and iTunes -- the bosses are hacking out a lot of complicated numbers even as we speak.


richard Jensen: Say, John. Not to rush you or anything. I know you've got hours of TV to get finished but I was curious about your thoughts about the Large Hadron Collider that's suppose to go online this week. Considering that I've heard people screaming about the possibility of micro black holes crushing the world into the size of a proton, I kind of curious to see what your take is. My feeling is if there was any cause for alarm, you'd be the one blowing the horn.

Well, I look at it this way. If we're perceiving the Earth around us at this very moment, then we're looking at a couple options.

a.) Earth was not destroyed.
b.) Based on variations in the experiment, the Earth was destroyed in certain timelines, but we're living in one where it didn't happen -- or were living in one where it happened, but are now only perceiving the timeline where it didn't because when it did, those versions of us died.
c.) The Collider destroyed the Earth, the universe spun down Earthless, and then reformed to spawn our slightly variant Earth, where we then -- following the natural evolution of scientific inquiry -- rebuilt it, but this time it didn't destroy us. This may have already happened nigh-infinite times.


imjohngalt: Oh dear God, how can this disaster that is the Republican VP nomination not wrench you away from your writing table? I would've at least expected a short conversation you've recently had with Tyrone.

Tyrone just keeps pointing and laughing, occasionally choking out a strangled "Fucking white people". The thing I find fascinating is that Sarah Palin was originally popular because people could relate to her as someone they knew from their everyday lives: the bubbly, over-achiever hockey mom who really gets involved in the community. Why she's fallen, hard, is that people realized she was in fact another person they knew from their everyday lives: that crazy mom who turns even the PTA into an insane obsessive power-play and forms weird hostile rivalries she executes through byzantine yet childish plots, seasoned with a dash of Fear of Anything Different.

Back to writing. I'll backtrack through the posts for more questions, but toss up anything you find interesting in the Comments here.

LEVERAGE Ep 108: Why Yes, We Are Having Fun.

Some people think there's too much mindless explode-y eye candy on TV.



Those people would be wrong.