Some movies would kill for a $45-50 million opening weekend. When the previous sequel took in $91.8 in its first Friday-Sunday, and boxofficeguru predicted $80 this time, studio execs have to be taking one hell of a crap.

It made $16.7M on Friday.  $45-50 million projected for the weekend.

Then look for a steep decline.

Dean comes up with the best gimmicks. He needs to to keep the die-hards interested.

Latest is a Drive for Democracy, riding across the country.

You can follow along on this map here. It changes as he proceeds.

Disturbing, but unclear. Too murky to write about, so I've left it alone the past 17 hours, but you know I can't keep my fingers off a scab for that long, so time to plunge in anyway.

Here are the facts:

Only one fact, really. I was away in Chicago nearly three weeks straight, working my ass off and physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. I burst through the door so thrilled to be home last night, flipped on the light switch and . . .

my stomach turned. And stayed that way. And stayed that way. It's still that way. I don't want to be in this place, this apartment I had grown so fond of. The walls feel lined with kroptonite--till now the substance had been limited to my parents house, where I grew up.

Why, exactly, I'm not entirely sure. A few theories:

• It smelled. Not too bad, but bad enough. I think it was a chemical I doused several of my plants with weeks ago. Nasty, chemical smell.
• The lights didn't go on when I flipped the switch. Two lights switches beside the door, both bulbs had burned out. The kitchen stays dark, the hall stays dark.
• The office was a freaking mess. Most of the apartment is clean, but the tiny little office near the entrace is piled high with papers, papers covering the whole floor.

Maybe all that reminded me of the depression and failures I fled when I flew off to Chicago. I had lost the emotional energy to open my mail, to replace the burned out bulbs, to pay my bills, to write my query letters . . . I was paralyzed by the piles, I was hopeless and sinking into what is for me a rare state of depression.

Maybe all those images slammed me back to how I felt when I left.

Or is it more. Is it the life I've been leading here in Denver that has come to feel so unfulfilling. Chicago offered a little excitement, some in the city, some just in the work I was doing there. It wasn't the work I would grag as my first choice because it isn't writing, but it was surprisingly rewarding. I really enjoyed it. I really started to get hooked again, on the rush of consulting, of jumping into a job and starting to make a difference there.

Denver had me feeling isolated and depressed. It isn't New York, and it doesn't have enough of the lively people I crave. I does have a lot of things, but it's not where I want to be, at least full time. Maybe the work in Chicago reminded me of the excitement I have felt from my work many times before, and my apartment here in Denver reminded me of the recent failures.

Failures is too strong. I really had a great year in some ways. I got my first story in Slate, and the real break, my first assignment in Radar. The fact that they haven't raised the money yet to keep going sucks the big one, but it doesn't reflect on me. I still sold the story to a hot NY magazine, I wrote a great story, and if they ever get the damned presses rolling again, I'll have a great story in a place where a lot of publishers will see it. So I haven't been failing, but I sure have been struggling. The writing thing is such a fucking struggle. God, it can wear the life right out of you.

The consulting thing I was succeeding at, the writing had begun to feel like failure. So I stepped back into the place I write, the place I have grown restless, the place I'm itching to get out of. What did I expect to feel?

I was actually excited to have the consulting success, I was going to split this week between remote followups for that job and writing. I had hoped to ride the momentum in one to renewed energy in the other. I felt it all week, couldn't wait to plunge in, but today I feel my surroundings dragging me down again. Hopefully it will pass. Or maybe I just need to get out of here for awhile. I'm back in Chicago late next weekend. Hopefully before that I'll turn it around. I'll keep you posted.

I have not forgotten you my little Clarkster friends.

From AP:

Clark expects to end year with $9.5 million
Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark is confident he can finish the year with about $9.5 million raised despite his campaign's late start, his campaign said Friday.

Clark expects to take in about $6 million from October through December, on top of about $3.5 million raised in the first two weeks of his campaign in September, spokeswoman Kym Spell said.

That would be a pretty solid accomplishment if he can pull it off. Not great, but good. Better than most of his rivals, but way behind Howard Dean.

I'm just watching the local PBS Friday night political chat show from last week, which is not bad for Denver. They're discussing how Howard Dean and John Kerry had just come to town.

Dean drew a crowd of 2000 in Boulder. Ten people showed up for Kerry.

And yet those beltway boys . . .

Those people. What the hell is wrong with them?

Zero Day. Go see it while you can.

When all the Columbine movies are in (two years from now? twenty?), I have a feeling the best of the lot will be Zero Day.

And the good part is, you don't have to wait two years to see it, nor twenty. It's in release now. Go find it.

More, much more on it later.

Why couldn't Gus Van Sant have made this movie? Why could it not have played Cannes? Why is so much attention getting paid to that silly trifle Elephant.

Zero Day, that one's the real deal.

The latest Newsweek poll shows more Americans opposing Bush's re-election than favoring it, 50 to 44 percent.

And it's all because of independents. Dems and Reps are for/against by the same extreme margins, but those indies are going to carry the day. Right now, they're against, 53 to 40, with momentum seriously against the goof.

The Dem race nationally was still tight at the top, with Howard Dean one point ahead of Wesley Clark, 16 to 15. Everyone else was way back. (Early national polls are pretty limited in what they show, but the fact that a former unknown is on top is huge for him, and Clark's ability to zip toward the top and stay there is also impressive.) I'd say there's a 95% chance one of those two will be nominated. And a big edge to Dean. Nice to see the polls indicating Bush will be very vulnerable when they get there.

Slowly, slowly, so painfully slowly, the New York Times' Adam Nagourney begins to get a clue. But he's a very slow learner.

He's still mired in the conventional wisdom with a paragraph like this in his big story for tomorrow's paper:

Given the size of the field, Dr. Dean's lack of experience in national politics and his tendency for intemperate remarks, his success at navigating the very early months of the Democratic nomination battle hardly means he is assured of being nominated in Boston next July. Dr. Dean, a former governor of Vermont, faces particularly tough going once the race turns South, given his views, like his support for domestic partnership for gays and his opposition to the war in Iraq.

But then he turns somewhat rosier. And it's true that Dean does not have it all sewn up, but Nagourney seems to remain clueless about his appeal. He's swayed, finally, that a couple big unions have endorsed him, and he gets a few good quotes like this in:

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, who has so far not endorsed a candidate in the race, said: "He's the only Democrat who can keep pace with Bush financially. And he wears well. He's not flashy or slick. He gives you direct answers to questions. He has the potential to be our strongest candidate."

Not a great story, not a horrible story, just kind of embarassing that our supposed best paper is still spinning out pretty bland dreck that captures so much less of the Dean phenom than you could get from ten minutes on the Dean blog.

Has Adam spent ten minutes on the Dean blog?

I just read a nice little entry on Howard Dean over at TalkLeft, one of my very favorite blogs, and they just about matched my thoughts exactly, so I'll let you enjoy some of them:

We're beginning to believe that Dean is unstoppable and will be the candidate. Of course, it's still a ways away, and anything can happen, but Clark doesn't seem to have gotten the traction he needs as yet.

We're still holding back on making a final choice, but it may not be long. . .

We think Wesley Clark would make a great VP candidate for Dean. We like John Edwards too, although his time may be coming in 2008 if Bush wins re-election in 2004.

Yup, yup and yup.

Dean is looking unstoppable.

I find it hard to imagine any of the seven dwarves coming close to catching him--Wesley Clark is the only one with a real shot. And she (Jeralyn at TalkLeft) is right on the mark: anything could happen by February, but we're seeing fewer and fewer indications that anything will. Wes Clark is just not turning enough heads. He has turned quite a few (check out one of those Clark meetups if you still think he's a media invention), but not enough. He still might, but he does not seem to have a whole lot of momentum yet.

If Dean does run it all the way, Wes Clark would make an incredible Veep choice: for Dean, for the country, and probably most of all for the party. I just can't understand how the stupid freaking media hasn't figured out the importance of branding in politics. It's the core concept at the helm of our consumer society--how the stupid beltway boys haven't figured out that politics is one big sales job, so politics follows the same rules as the rest of the sales world, so branding is everything is just beyond comprehension.

I don't see how they can miss the significance of Wesley Clark The General to the Democrats wimpy-little-wooses brand nightmare. Win or lose, Wes Clark could be the biggest thing to hit the Democratic party in decades, but only if he plays a role prominent enough, long enough for his existence to impact the brand. Vice Presidency would certainly be dramatic.

My early take on Clark's impact to the Democrats' branding here, in my Sept 5th post: Who really makes Karl Rove pull the covers up over his head?

(You can always find that post later on my Wes Clark Page--which you can find later by clicking on his picture in the left column of this page.)

Now where was I? John Edwards. He certainly fizzled, but he's starting to find his voice lately. And he's great in his TV commercials. He's got a ways to go for presidential timber, but Veep sounds quite reasonable, as does a potential 2008 or 2012 run. I think the Dean camp would be crazy to miss the Wes Clark opportunity, but if they just can't stomach him for some reason, Edwards sounds like a good alternative to me as well.

So my friend from Boston voicemailed the minute Survivor ended there Thursday night howling that it was "the best Survivor ever."

Well, I missed the damn thing, as I explained below--fucking Tivo, fucking user error--and the CBS recap sure doesn't make it sound so interesting. But they hire really shitty writers for their website.

Was it? Tell me why, tell me how. Take me there, help me relive it. Thanks.

(But preferably do it in the comment thread where we're all gathering to discuss this week's and last week's episode. Link below.)

Meanwhile, does anyone out there still have a tape or a tivo they could turn into a tape? I'd be forever grateful if you could send it to me.

Survivor Pearl Islands page here.

Head here all week for Survivor Episode 8 Comments

Salon has the shooting script, with a link to download it here.

It's their cover story right now and they're calling it an exclusive. Good for them.

(If you have been living under a rock, CBS cancelled the series that was to be the cornerstone of their sweeps stragegy, after heavy pressure from those loonies from The Right.)

Or should we say "the decision of Howard Dean's supporters."

Of course AP got a story on the wire within minutes, but the New York Times also posted its own piece within about 15 minutes of the announcement.

It was all dry twaddle that was all written ahead of time, except, probably the sentence below, but they got it up there. And they made it the lead story on their home page, where it sits right now. That's got to be sweet for the Dean campaign.

And how smart to make the announcement on a Saturday. Timed to insure all the coverage lands in all the Sunday papers and get featured on all the Sunday morning news-chat shows. And early enough Saturday to make the early editions of those papers that go on sale Saturday evening.

The Times' new sentence:

Early counts showed about 85 percent of the 105,000 who responded supported opting out, aides said.

CNN is carrying the announcement live right now (about 15 minutes late). They have been back and forth with it live for several minutes, and tons of ink has been spilled on it all week, so the Dean campaign has once again figured out how to grab lots and lots of valuable media coverage.

These people are geniuses. A few months ago, when the campaign first floated the possibility of opting out, there was lots of talk that the decision could really turn off a lot of liberals who cherish campaign finance reform (and/or who see this as an integrity issue--especially since he made an early pledge to play in the public-financing system).

Instead, he has not only neutralized the negatives completely--by handing responsibility to the voters--and what high-minded liberal is not going to love that?--he actually managed to reap considerable benefits:

• All that priceless coverage.
• He gives a thrill to his supporters and creates a new mystique about himself, as if: "I'm really into democracy -- look, I'll even let you vote on my key strategic decision"
• He finds yet another way to gin up the fundraising machine among his true believers. He's gone back to them and back to them and back to them, and if you follow the blog or subscribe to the emails like the true believers do, or get the regular phone calls like my one wealthy friend does, you know it's crucial for him to keep it fresh, keep coming up with new, exciting appeals to keep you opening that wallet, and hopefully urging friends to as well. And this has been a great one. Here's the gist of how they're pitching it on the Dean blog:
  • If we do opt out of the public system, we lose $18 million, and we're desperately going to need to make that up. The decision is up to you (you supporter), so if you make us turn down the money, please understand the consequences: we're going to count on you to make us whole again. -- What a great strategy. Put the moral imperative back on us: we made the decision, so we have an ethical obligation to collectively donate $18 million. Slick move. (In the best sense of that word.)
• This last one is kind of nebulous, but the truly important ones often are. I think this is going to win him a lot of courage points and just a lot of admiration among a lot of people. Sure looks like a gutsy move. Definitely casts him as a rebel, the anti business-as-ususal guy. Although the campaign surely figured out it was taking little risk (see below), they sure look like they're taking a huge leap. Dean looks like a guy who refuses to play by any of the old rules, a guy who's completely different than the old-school politicians . . . People eat that shit up. People hate politicians. They all try to tell you they're not like all the other assholes you hate, but when a guy does something that seems like a move none of the other assholes would ever make, that's powerful.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

______

Details of the vote now. (I'm writing as he speaks.)

Wow. Huge landslide: 85% to 15%. No wonder he was willing to risk it. His internal polling must have shown overwhelming support so that he could win big points for taking the risk, without real risk. Smart.

If you're not a rabid follower of the Howard Dean campaign, I imagine you were a bit confused by my post last night about his forthcoming announcement on the results of The Vote.

I posted about it here in the comments section of my last post before I left town for two weeks, but most of you probably never saw that.

If you're curious and just getting up to speed, here's the background, direct from Dean's email earlier in the week:

The Vote

This morning, in an email to supporters, Governor Dean announced a vote on whether the campaign would accept public matching funds:

"I am asking you to vote on what kind of a campaign we will conduct from this point forward. No matter how well intentioned both our options are – the choice is difficult: do we choose option (a) to fund our campaign ourselves and decline matching funds, or do we choose option (b) and accept federal matching funds and the spending limits?"

We wanted to give you a little more background on the vote and how it will work:

How We Got to This Decision

Your success has led to this decision. By the end of September, you and more than 200,000 Americans had raised a total of $25.1 million for our campaign, with an average contribution of $77.

Your continued fundraising success in the past six weeks has put us on course to collect approximately $18.6 million in matching funds, beginning the first week in January. By combining the money you have raised with the $18.6 million in matching funds, you have essentially reached the $44.6 million cap that can be raised for the primaries. Therefore, this campaign will have to stop fundraising almost immediately if we accept the matching funds.

Most likely we will spend the $45 million primary funds by March and we will then be vulnerable to the $200 million collected by George Bush. Your campaign will not be able to spend any more election money until the convention at the end of July.

How It Will Work

We will send a ballot to all 600,000 members who joined the campaign before Noon EST, Tuesday, November 4, 2003, through our website, through Meetup.com, through campaign mailings and through the campaign’s toll-free number. Each of you has the opportunity to vote on whether the campaign will decline or accept federal matching funds.

The 484,000 of you with email addresses will be able to vote online. 88,000 supporters who have registered a telephone number but no email address will receive a phone call and will be able to register your vote on the telephone. 26,000 of you who have not registered an email or a telephone number will be contacted via First Class Mail. You will be given a choice of voting either on the campaign website, www.deanforamerica.com, or by calling the campaign's toll-free number 1-866-DEAN-4-US.

Each person will be sent a unique randomly generated ballot code that will allow you to vote only once; you will not be allowed to change your vote once a decision has been made.

Tuesday, November 4, 2003

Letters sent to 26,000 supporters via U.S. mail; they will be asked to mail back ballots or vote online. Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Early morning -- 484,000 online supporters receive an email from Governor Dean explaining the vote. Noon -- Governor Dean speaks at Cooper Union. Thursday, November 6, 2003

6 a.m. -- 484,000 online supporters will begin to receive their ballot via email. All email ballots should be received by 10 p.m. ET Thursday. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time -- “Robo-calls” (automated telephone calls) begin to 88,000 supporters with no listed email address. Friday, November 7, 2003

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time -- "Robo-calls” recycle to supporters not reached Thursday night. Midnight -- Voting ends. Saturday, November 8, 2003

Noon -- Decision Announced.

That would be noon today, in one hour. You can see the results at the Dean blog. Or just come back here. I'll get a post up ASAP.

(And I voted to reject the public financing by the way, and lobbied for it here and elsewhere.)

Thanks so much to everyone who wrote such sweet messages in the comments about wanting me to get back. Nice feeling wanted. You know how I struggle with that.

. . . you'll loathe Matrix 3.

That seems to be the theme of the reviews.

And it opened well below expectations, and at just over half the first-day take of its predecessor.

Box Office Guru had been predicting about $45 million for Wed-Thurs, and instead it did $35.3.

Matrix 2 did $42.5M on opening day, this one did $24.3M.

Still, it was very strong by recent standards. From boxofficeguru:

Its Wednesday opening was the 3rd highest opening Wednesday in history behind Star Wars: Episode I from 1999 ($28.5M) and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers from 2002 ($26.1M). As far as overall opening days, Revolutions placed 11th, sandwiched in between Planet of the Apes from 2001 ($24.6M) and The Hulk from earlier this summer ($24.28M). Both of those movies opened on Fridays.

Hopefully you know to take all that "in history" stuff with a boulder of salt. It's a big scam. They pretend inflation doesn't exist, when in fact, it's monumental, over time. In effect "3rd highest opening Wednesday in history" means "3rd highest opening Wednesday in recent years."

Still, that's pretty good, though it will plummet fast. Matrix 2 took a stunning drop once word spread about all the disappointment. And this one is apparently a much bigger dog.

I'll still go see it, though. Loved the first one, enjoyed the second one despite massive dissappointment, and eager to see how it all wraps up. I've come this far.

The unprecedented web vote by a candidate is ending right about now.

I cast my vote for Dean to forgoe the public money and raise/spend past the limits.

Seems like a risky move, but they must have done enough polling to show it would win easily. But what if it didn't? He'd just be screwed?

Pretty cool to give that power to the voters, though. I guess that's the idea. To make us feel empowered.

So announcement in nine hours. From the Dean blog:

Join us at noon Eastern here on the blog. The result of your votes will be announced in a live webcast with Governor Dean from Burlington.