Web humor always sucks. Almost. Hulk's Diary is the rare exception. (Thanks to the Rabbit Blog for turning me on to it.) 

Usually I have little use for those all-pics/few-words blogs. (Surprise!) But this is really working. My favorite post:

HULK IS NOW LINKED ON ABOUT.COM AND THEY SAY HIS DIARY IS FUNNY.

Hulk not sure what to think of this. Hulk doesn't think Hulk's diary is funny. How about Hulk reads about.com's diary and laughs at it?


Dear Diary:
Yahoo doesn't return about.com's phone calls and about.com is sad!!! BOOHOO!
Love, About.com


HA HA HA!! HULK LAUGHS AT YOUR PAIN!!!

Did that work out of context? Had me howling. Go read it yourself.

Forget the pres race, time to talk about the Amazing one, aka, The Reichen & Chip Show.

I predict tonight's loser will be . . .

No one. I'm betting on one of those incredibly annoying non-elimination rounds. They make my blood boil. Not just the annoyance to me, but how bad they are at their jobs not to have figured out how badly these episodes suck, how they in fact suck the life right out of the series as it's climaxing.

They're a fun wildcard to throw into the race, just not into the TV show. Go ahead, have a non-elim round, and sucker someone into wasting their fast forward (which I also predict will happen tonight). But don't climax an episode with it: do two legs in the hour. (And do not do two hours back to back like they tried once last season. It's a thrill show, it's not that deep, and it just can't sustain two hours at a time.) I know they want more episodes--fine, add more teams. Just don't climax an episode with a big letdown. You leave just feeling like nothing happened, you watched for nothing, you were suckered into thinking something was at stake . . .

But listen carefully to the opening of the show. When it's a non elim round, he doesn't end the VO intro with "Who will be eliminated tonight." He says something like "... next?" Though last week he did that and it was an elim round.

If it is an elim, I'm predicting the annoying virgins go, but maybe that's just desire talking. After that, I say the clowns. Clowns are bad. These two are bad. Not horrible, not one of the worst, but they try just a little hard, a lot too often.

Anyway, get to your TeeVee! If you're on the right coast, you're already missing it. We're still waiting for the start out here in the hinterland.

Watching the illegal film "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" on my PC last night, I was inspired to go to the freaking New York Times site and pay to download my own Barbie story. (The 45-minute filme is acted almost completely by Barbies.)

If you click on the NY Times link in the left column (or here), you can now read the full story, instead of just their teaser.

One more court-martial proceeding under way. I did not attend this hearing, but the case sounds like it could be sadly similar. Hard to tell from the really shitty AP account. Aside from calling it an attack and him an attacker, all it says about how the rape occurred is:

She said she drank at least three glasses of wine and doesn’t remember what happened after the two began kissing. She said she came to during the rape. Segal later took her back to her dorm room, she said.

God, could the reporter be any more vague? And then what? Did she say stop and he refused? Does she think he slipped her a drug? If not, how does she know there was a rape? I know lots of people who can't remember half the crap they do when they're drunk. But everybody else does. They're very conscious and in control when they're making jokes, whooping it up on the dancefloor . . . The next day, no memory. That doesn't mean they were unconscious or out of control at the time. From this story, it's completely unclear how she got there. Maybe she was lying unconscious and he raped her, maybe she suggested it herself, maybe anything in between. I realize it's just a prelim hearing, but couldn't the reporter have provided the absolute basics on what each side is contending?

Julie Jargon, one of a handful of outstanding Denver writers, has a big new feature story just out this morning. She's the investigative reporter who scooped the national press corp in January to break the whole Air Force Academy rape story in Denver's alt-weekly Westword.

The latest issue just hit the streets with a big new cover story she's apparently been at for weeks (I'll check with her and confirm the time later today):

Honor Rolled

These Air force cadets were ready to fly. Then the honor board crashed their careers.

BY JULIE JARGON

The cover headline makes a much stronger charge:

Code Red

The Air Force Academy doesn't tolerate lying -- except in its cadet-run honor system.

I'm on deadline, so I only have time to read the intro, but I've only seen good work from her in the past, and it looks really interesting. A brief excerpt:

As a result [of numerous charges, roughly 137 students per year], many cadets, such as Andrea Prasse (see sidebar), have lost faith in the honor system. They claim that it's a moribund tradition with unevenly applied sanctions -- a fact that academy officials and members of Congress have known for years. In response to critical task forces and studies, honor-system procedures have been tinkered with but never seriously overhauled. Now, in the aftermath of the rape scandal, critics worry that the honor code will be applied even more broadly. In his "Agenda for Change," a set of reforms intended to improve the climate for female cadets at the academy, Air Force Secretary James Roche stresses the importance of not tolerating criminal behavior. He emphasizes that it's not the letter of the code that matters, but the spirit.

That has some cadets wondering just what this new spirit might mean for them.

So, Gephardt, the completely hopeless candidate. In the last post, we got the early-polls issue out of the way. Now a few more words from fellow Salon blogger Robert--in response to my Speaking of Unelectable post, then on to the real story of Gephardt The Amazing Loser. (For context, I'm repeating Robert's first two lines, already quoted in the last post):

I am not a fan of Gephardt either, but it's too early to assign him to the dustbin of history.

He's still polling well, among the top four.

Still, you have a point. I also highly doubt that he'll get the nomination. People, I think, are sick of the same old names and faces, especially Gephardt's and Lieberman's and even to some extent, I suspect, Bob Graham's.

They want fresher candidates, which is why I think it's going to come down to Dean and Kerry. (Edwards is a fresher face, too, but he isn't polling well at all, and for all of the money he's raised, you never hear about his campaign. He's not getting the word out -- or at least it's not reaching us here on the Left Coast.) ...

[Robert continues about other candidates. Read the rest here if you like.]

Some interesting ideas there. I think Robert's onto something, but he's using that standard "fresher face" phrase which I think is getting very close to the core issue, but actually serves to obscure what's really going on.

In the last post, I pointed out problems particular to assessing the numbers of limited-appeal candidates like Gephardt. But that was the flaw in sizing up his chances the first time. This time it's much easier. We've seen him already. Rejected him bigtime in 1988. He's the same guy. We don't like him. What does it take for some people to get the message?

I think people do enjoy fresh faces, just as we enjoy fresh faces in Hollywood. Either way, though I think freshness generally pales in the face of established star power. Colin Farrell is up and coming and ten times hotter than Tom Cruise and generating all the buzz. Great, that's really something for Colin, and for pale, dejected, angry young Irishmen everywhere.  But there's no question of who's going to open the picture and who's going to take the supporting role.

Just another way Washington plays out just like Hollywood. (Doesn't everything in America play out just like Hollywood? That's why it Hollywood is not Paducah. One exists exclusively to reflect the culture, one exists to . . . raise hillbillys or prairiebillies, or whatever flavor of cornfeds they're producing down in Kentucky these days.)

It's easy to draw a freshness conclusion from the success of so many recent first-timers for president: George W, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter . . . George Senior almost pulled it off as a newbie the first time in 1980, and relative to a sitting pres, Ronald Reagan was pretty fresh to most of the public. But is freshness what's really going on?

I think it's less about fresh faces than good faces. Good in the eventual minds of the voters, of course. And it's impossible to tell at this point who the voters will rank as good, but we've got a damn good idea who they'll rank as bad! We, the voters have already rated Gephardt.  We hated him. He hasn't changed. We have, but in the opposite direction. We hate you Dick Gephardt and we always will! Stop calling us, you freaking stalker!

John Kerry, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and most of the rest this time, are guys we're still considering for the first date. Very few first dates lead to marriage, but the great thing about a first date--about the only thing going for a first date, the force that drives us singles back into that torture chamber again and again despite the obvious horrors of the experience--is that the one thing a first date offers is unlimited possibility. Could be love at first sight. Could be the start of something beautiful. At least there's always hope.

Dick Gephardt is the guy we dated for six months twelve years ago, and we didn't just reject him, we sneered at him, humiliated him, buried him deep in the back of the motley suitor pack. And here he comes again. Time to alert the authorities. Time to get a restraining order.

Seriously. Is that so hard for him to see? For the morons in the newsrooms to see?

I'm not saying no one should ever run again. We did not reject John McCain out of hand. We just went for the rich guy. Sorry John, Shrub already had ($70?) million in the bank before we ever met you. Our heart was with you, but we married for money. And regret it now. John could easily come back. There was real promise there. We know him now, and we've gotten closer than ever since we've dated. We're really hoping he asks us again. (I'm speaking for the public in general with all the we's. That's how I read us.)

Gary Hart had a chance for a second run too, though he blew that for completely different reasons. We didn't completely fall in love with Gary the first time, but he definitely established a connection. There was heavy flirting there, there was a real spark that might have erupted and still could. Gary wasn't quite ready though, called us up a little too early, a little too young, so it made sense to try again four years later. Plus, he in way over his head the first time, with another damn VP candidate with more money and more importantly, more muscle. We went for the muscle dude that time. (And we're talking Mondale now, if memory is failing you.) We, the Democrats, really regretted going for brawn, because he it did us no good, he never managed to muscle into the White House. Hart had two realistic reasons for trying a second time; either one would have warranted a another go. 

Losing an election campaign doesn't always mean the public will hate you forever. Just usually.

It's not that Dick Gephard's face isn't fresh. If he had stayed out in 1988, would he stand a better chance just because his allotment of freshness had not been entirely consumed? No way. He would fall just as flat on his face if we were seeing it for the first time. For the same reasons he tumbled the first time. This fresh-face analysis always suggests the prior runs as the cause of the freshness problem. It's not the cause, merely the indication.

The cause and effect thing, that's one of the easiest mistakes to make observing at human experience. So hard to tell the difference sometimes, and causality always looks to appealing. The data always seems to support it. Of course it does: you're running the same experiment over and over again, of course you're going to get the same result. That doesn't mean the first experiment caused the results of the second one, though it may look that way from the inside of the test tube.

One thing is pretty clear. We've dated Dick Gephardt already. Still coming after us 16 years later and you're nothing but a stalker.

This discussion began as a comment in my post on Gephardt's meager appeal yesterday, Speaking of Unelectable. But the comments are not so visible in this Radio system I'm using (sorry about that), and I thought this was worthy of a more visible discussion, so I'm bringing it up here, and expanding on it.

Robert writes:

I am not a fan of Gephardt either, but it's too early to assign him to the dustbin of history.

He's still polling well, among the top four.

Read the rest here if you like. More from Robert in the next post (above), but first let's address that slippery polling data:

Polls are very useful indicators as elections approach. (With several reservations--see the * at the bottom of this post.) But more than a year before an election (or even months before a primary), they're a whole different ballgame. And I think we can talk about them anyway we want in blogs, but the press has different responsibilities, and frankly, I think they're grossly irresponsible in how they report them. What a surprise.

At this point, polls mostly measure name recognition. A more revealing poll was the one a few weeks ago that said only (a third?) of voters could name ANY Dem candidate. It amazes me that the press can report with a straight face that hardly anyone in the country is paying attention yet, but here are the numbers on who's ahead anyway. What?

Still, with a good eye, you can learn a lot of things, many of which Robert pointed out, and does more thoroughly here. (He also provides much more polling data there, from multiple sources, across several months. Good summary of that data, Robert.) In general, changes in your numbers are much more important than the totals. (Of course the press reports them the other way around. Bozos.) If Edwards, Kucinich, Kerry and Dean were all nobodies to most of the public in January, and still are to most people now, but the last two have risen dramatically in the polls, while Edwards and Kucinich have not, that could be a big inidcation for all four. (Same for the clear also-rans.)

But you have to be fair to Edwards. He's been mostly raising money all year, not campaigning, so numbers alone are pretty misleading. Kucinich can't say the same.

And the fact that Kerry's recognition was considerably higher than Dean's in their relative proportions toward the zero end of the scale means that Dean's rise is a bit more impressive than Kerry's. But just a bit.

But it gets trickier. It's natural for Lieb to lose relative support as the name recognition of others rises somewhat toward him. But his drop is WAY more than the relative change in name recognition, and polls show him now well behind the others, despite much higher name recognition, so that really is a bad sign for him.

And the problem with all of this is that it's a very particular segment of the population where all this movement is occurring. It's only the political junkies like us who are paying attention, and we're not necessarily representative. Anyone who knows politics will tell you that Dean's relative surge in the numbers has been dramatic, and would clearly shoot him to the top if it continued indefinitely. But that's a huge if. We know Dean has electrified a certain subpopulation, the question is whether they're indicative of the country, or indicative only themselves, and they've already gathered most of the interested bodies they're ever going to get.

I'm betting against that scenario with Dean, but it's exactly what happens to lots of candidates, including Gephardt twice already. He had a core group of labor and hardcore old-school liberals who signed up to support him early, so he looked great in the beginning, but never built on it. He's a 5-15% man: he'll have 5-15% at the beginning, and 5-15 at the end, except that a lot of those who would be in the 5-15 will eventually go with their second choice as he loses viability, so he'll appear to have even less. Complicating his numbers even more is his regional appeal. He always does great in neighboring Iowa, the first state to go to the polls which influences everything. That one really fools the press. Every time.

I think the polls in Iowa and NH are much more reliable indicators, because the process begins MUCH earlier, it's much more retail level, the candidates have much more visibility, and the people there know they have a different role. There, people have increasingly met the candidates, and so it's a much better gauge--if you factor out the unique demos/characters of those places. For starters, Kerry and Dean have a big advantage in NH, being from neighboring states, and Gephardt in IA. Kerry most of all. He's been spending millions on Boston TV ads for years, that go into a lot of NH homes. But the fact that the New Englanders are challenging Gephardt in Iowa, and the reverse is not happening in NH tells you something.

So there's some useful information here, and any strategist would be a fool not to read them with a careful eye to what's going on. But this media reporting of who's ahead, is just retarded. And irresponsible. That's what keeps sticking us with losers like Al Gore. And presumably Hillary Clinton in four years. She's be way ahead of the pack at 20-30 percent while everyone else is in single digits, and that will be because even people in remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa have heard of her, and some naturally like her, while only one percent of the population of Chicago or LA will be able to distinguish that year's John Kerry or Howard Dean from the weatherman in Peoria. But they'll report that she's way out ahead, and tag her Frontrunner because of it, and give her all attention so awareness of her ideas grows even higher and . . .

Asswipes.

* Polls get much more reliable as an election approaches, and the guy who's 20 points behind a week before election day who swears polls mean nothing is just the big liar he looks like. But the press abuses them in another way then, making the campaign entirely into a horse race, and it all becomes "who's popular." That's a topic for its own day.

** Even late polls lost a lot of cred the last few electiong, apparently because with telemarketing overload, the percent of people willing to talk has plumeted, and therefore results are skewed toward more fervent supporters. It will be interesting to see how the new Do Not Call lists will affect that.

Not the real one, the aspiring one on Last Comic Standing. That show has its moments, but would have been much better with funny people. Aren't there a thousand standups who would have killed to get on that show? Maybe the good ones are just that rare.

Dat's act got old fast and petered out before the midpoint, but at least he had some genuinely inspired moves. The opening was wonderful, even the second time I've seen it. All the Buddy Hackett could do was 3 minutes of rim shots. So glad he's out of there.

I've been hearing about this phantom film for years now. In 1987, a decade and a half before Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes created "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," a 45-minute dramatization of her rise and fall, acted (almost) entirely by Barbies. Mattel was none to happy, but saved from filing the lawsuit by his failure to clear the music.

I had thought it was impossible for mortals in the hinterland to get a hold of, but an interesting new Salon story by Farhad Manjoo provides a link to see it online. I'm watching right now, and it's pretty interesting. Nice little documentary moment just played out, explaining anorexia, and illustrating with shots of Barbie torsos and appendages. But mostly the Barbies are just the actors. Cleverly conceived. Definitely unique. Here's a fuller description at the site providing the link:

With Barbie dolls as the principal actors, Superstar portrays the life of Karen Carpenter and her battle with anorexia. Haynes never secured the rights to the Carpenters' music he used in the movie, and Richard Carpenter filed an injunction that kept Superstar from public release. Even without Carpenter's court order, the film would probably have been stopped by the notoriously litigious Mattel, the makers of Barbie.

Used without permission.

Watch it now, before it gets yanked. Though maybe it's been online forever and I just didn't know. I'm sure Joe Blitman will let me know. Hopefully. (He's the world's most respected Barbie dealer, and he helped me greatly with my Barbie piece for the Times last year. He's been lurking around these parts lately.) Update from Joe: he predicts it won't be on the internet for long. And I doubt it's going to go unnoticed, with Salon citing it. Watch it while you can!

The Salon piece, which covers much more than Barbie is good too:

Barbie, Starbucks and freedom
Much of the "illegal art" in a major copyright-infringement exhibition is just plain silly. But the giant corporations that dominate our culture want to squash it anyway.

Farhad is right on the mark, for example, about how lame this Food Chain Barbie display is. Just dumb.

(Meanwhile, I'm 2/3 of the way through the film--giving it half my attention as I compose this. Initially I thought it was a worthy novelty, a nice little experiment to watch for ideas, but it's turned into much more than that. It's really drawing me in, I can't take my eyes off it. When I get done here I'm going to start over and watch the whole thing uninterrupted. I could see going out to a theatre to see this. Nice work, Todd. Now that he's a bigtime director maybe he'll go back and get the permissions and get it released, though it's probably better to leave one legendary cult classic on your resume. What was Prince thinking when he finally released The Black Album?)

I'm almost through now; I put off dinner, can't stop watching. Oh God, the music is even growing on me. I had refused, steadfastly refused to participate in the Carpenters rehabilitation, but I feel my grip loosening fast. Crap. Another gayboy into Karen Carpenter. I don't want to be a cliché.

The ads for that JoLo and Matt Damon's boyfriend movie are everywhere suddenly. Bad enough we have to watch him "act" in the clips, but there's actually a shot of him ripping his shirt off. Yuck. You'd think they would have tried to keep that quiet, but some joker at the ad agency apparently cut it into the TV commercial!