NBC Cancels 'My Own Worst Enemy'

NBC has cancelled the new Christian Slater spy drama My Own Worst Enemy and the returning series Lipstick Jungle, according to Live Feed:

NBC's expectation for the return of Lipstick was modest, but Enemy was considered an important show. A spy thriller with a grown-up budget inspired by the Bourne movies, Enemy received NBC's coveted post-Heroes time period. That valuable Monday hour of scheduling real estate has become less worthwhile in recent weeks, however, as Heroes shed viewers -- weakening the lead-in for Enemy and hastening its decline.

I tried My Own Worst Enemy a few times and thought it was fun to see Slater argue with himself in video voicemail, but the series made some odd decisions, like casting pudgy comic Mike O'Malley as an international superspy. Television's Jonathan Bourne convinced me to put it on my TV Death Pool, where I ranked it the ninth-most likely cancellation.

I tried most of the new shows this TV season, giving up on everything but Fringe and Life on Mars. The latter series is a surreal cop show in which Jason O'Mara plays Sam Tyler, a modern New York police detective thrown back into the '70s, where he works cases old school with Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli and Gretchen Mol. (It appears that Tyler's in either a coma or purgatory -- there are occasional discontinuities, like when he spots a clubgoer wearing a Nirvana T-shirt at a time when Kurt Cobain would've been six years old.) The cast is unbelievably good, and the series keep finding great music in a decade where I thought none could be found.

Here's a sample episode's soundtrack, as described by Drake Lelane, who writes a regular music on TV feature for Film.Com:

1. "Wild in the Streets," Garland Jeffreys
2. "Ice Ice Baby," Vanilla Ice
3. "I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You," Cool Blues
4. "Come on and Gettit," Marion Black
5. "He Keeps You," Boscoe
6. "Anywhere in Glory," The Mighty Indiana Travelers
7. "Everybody is a Star," Sly & the Family Stone
8. "Black and White," Three Dog Night

"Ice Ice Baby" snuck into the episode when Det. Tyler used it to impress gun-toting black nationalists who kidnapped him. As Lelane observes, "only in 1973 would laying down the rhymes of Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby' be considered cool."

Television · 2008/11/13 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Mike Masnick: Newspapers Have Become Souvenirs

The morning after Election Day, I had to make four stops before I found a store that still had a copy of the New York Times, beating a spry older woman by seconds. She was not happy, but her plaintive "I was going to buy that" fell on deaf ears. The unifying spirit of the moment did not mean I was handing over the last copy of the paper of record. Hit the bricks, grandma!

Like some newspaper editors I saw quoted in the media, I took heart in the mad dash for papers taking place all over the nation. I thought it was a sign that even in these disintermediating times, people still need the paper. Mike Masnick of Techdirt posted a crushing takedown of this premise:

... it sounds as though many newspaper publishers got exactly the wrong lesson from this. Some publishers celebrated the rush to buy newspapers as evidence that newspapers were still relevant and that in "big events" people still turned to print papers. Except, that's not true. Publishers who believe that are deluding themselves. People got the actual news from the internet and TV. The newspapers just represent a souvenir of the event -- not the place to turn to for news about it.

The copy of the Times I bought Wednesday morning still sits on my desk unread. I got the news online.

Journalism · 2008/11/12 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Sarah Palin's Long Road to the White House

One night, Schmidt and Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said. Salter tried to strike up a conversation. He knew that Todd was half native Alaskan and a championship snow-machine racer.

"So what's the difference between a snowmobile and a snow machine, anyway?" Salter asked. "They're the same thing," Todd replied. "Right, so why not call it a snowmobile?" Salter joshed. "Because it's a snow machine," came the reply.

Later, Schmidt and Salter went outside so that Salter could have a cigarette. "So how about the Eskimo? Is he on the level?" Schmidt asked. Salter just shrugged and took another drag.

-- Newsweek, "Secrets of the 2008 Campaign"

There's a ferocious campaign being undertaken on right-wing blogs to blacklist campaign aides for John McCain who are trashing the reputation of Sarah Palin in media interviews. Erick Erickson, the founder of RedState.Com, calls this campaign Operation Leper:

We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you'll see us go to war against those candidates. ...

We are rooting for Sarah Palin. Don't make us add you to our list. Do you really want to be next to Kathleen Parker in the leper colony?

If this effort is motivated by a desire to see Palin in the White House in four or eight years, I think her supporters have a much larger task ahead of them than they realize. Even if she softens her reputation as a sharp-elbowed social conservative and establishes her credibility as a presidential aspirant, Palin finds herself in a country that has been brutal on politicians who lose a presidential race as the second banana.

In the history of the U.S., only one unsuccessful vice presidential candidate has gone on to become president. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, lost the 1920 election as the running mate of Democratic presidential candidate James Cox. Republican Warren Harding won the race in a Republican landslide. Twelve years later, Roosevelt was elected president.

In the intervening 12 years, Roosevelt practiced law and remained active in Democratic Party politics, giving nominating speeches for fellow New Yorker Alfred E. Smith at the 1924 and 1928 national conventions. He was elected New York's governor in 1928 and re-elected in 1930 before running for president. Palin and Roosevelt share a gubernatorial job from which to launch a presidential run, but New York was the largest state in the nation when he led the state. Alaska's smaller than 46 states and Puerto Rico.

Most losing vice presidential candidates couldn't even get their own party's nomination for president later. John Edwards and Joe Lieberman tried and failed, and I suspect that would be the outcome of a future Palin presidential run, no matter how well she masters the continents.

Politics · 2008/11/09 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

And Now for Something Completely Different

At 11 p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 4, 2008, a simple three-word news story moved on the Associated Press wire:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Obama wins presidency.

As much as I wanted this to happen, I refused to believe it actually could happen until the moment Barack Obama reached 270 electoral votes. I find myself wondering what else can happen, now that the impossible has become possible. For the first time in my adult life I live in a blue state. The 21st century has begun and the old rules no longer apply. Do we finally get hovercars and jet packs? Will college football adopt a playoff?

Politics · 2008/11/05 · 18 COMMENTS · Link

Florida Poll Worker Challenges My Right to Vote

When I voted at 7:10 a.m. this morning in St. Johns County, Florida, my right to vote was challenged because a poll worker decided my signature did not match my driver's license signature. I was given an "Affadavit of Elector When Signature is Different" form to sign and was going to be given a provisional ballot, but I objected to that decision, telling the worker that I've been voting at the same precinct with the same address for a decade and they were "abrogating my right to vote." (When negotiating a government bureaucracy, the most obscure verb wins.)

In Florida, provisional ballots aren't counted unless they are approved by a canvassing board. My wife has observed the work of these boards as a newspaper reporter, and it's an arbitrary and capricious process. I decided at that point I wasn't going to leave the polling place until I was able to cast a legitimate ballot or I was ordered to leave. I don't want to look back on this election, years later, as the one in which I might or might not have voted for Barack Obama.

I always bring my sons to vote, so my fourth grader was at my side, telling the worker that my signature was acceptable. My mother was visiting from Texas, and she also walked up and affirmed who I was, which demonstrates how thorough I am at providing proper forms of ID.

A supervisor at the precinct discussed the decision to make me vote provisionally with a poll observer, who I'm guessing is an attorney because he wore glasses on a chain perched on the end of his nose, like someone who might be called upon to inspect a hanging chad. He told her, "The issue here isn't whether the signature matches; it's whether he is the person he says he is." He then told me not to move, because he was going to go outside and make a call.

He didn't have to go outside. The decision was made that I could fill out a form that reflected my updated signature, and I was given a regular ballot.

Though my signature has grown progressively worse over time -- millions of mouse clicks have been hell on my mad cursive skills -- it's clear to me that poll workers in this county are being told to apply strong scrutiny to signatures. This seems excessive to me when the state requires a driver's license to vote, and I had my license and voter's registration card with me. Eight years ago a worker also challenged my signature, but another worker told him he was wrong. Individual votes in Florida were a pretty big deal that time around.

When I was leaving the building, a poll worker who was not a witness to the challenge told me unexpectedly that I should "put this on your blog." Apparently, he overheard my wife talking about the situation and mentioning that I'm one of those people.

As a general rule, I resist the temptation in commercial or governmental conflicts to play the blogger card, because I don't want to be the douchebag who doesn't get the banana peppers he ordered on his pizza, so he threatens Domino's with the dire consequences of a strongly worded blog entry on a site with Google page rank 6.

But this was so going on my blog.

Politics · Florida · 2008/11/04 · 45 COMMENTS · Link

CBS Takes 'Ex List' Off Schedule

CBS has pulled The Ex List off its schedule, which is good news for my TV Death Pool:

Eye has yanked the drama off the sked, effective this Friday. A repeat of NCIS will air in its place.

Decision comes after The Ex List averaged 5.3 million viewers and a 1.5 rating/5 share in its final airing, last Friday. The Ex List repped CBS' weak link on Friday nights, where Ghost Whisperer and Numbers both won their hours.

The Ex List had an idea that was better in concept than application. A single woman (Elizabeth Reaser) is told by a psychic that she has one year to find her true love or end up alone, and the guy's somebody she already dated.

Reaser's an appealing actress as the unlucky-in-love woman, but every week she chased after -- and usually bedded -- some old boyfriend who had become a stranger to her. So there was a new male guest star every week, like on Love Boat, but he wasn't just climbing aboard a boat.

Television · 2008/10/28 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Cyber-Cowboy Post-Apocalyptic Kung Fu

I found a great "cyber-cowboy post-apocalyptic fu" music video on another blog this morning. Watch for the appearance of Col. Wilma Deering, the Planet of the Apes Statue of Liberty and the film crew in a mirror:

This video for Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" is the work of Joseph Kahn, a prolific music video director whose next project is a film based on William Gibson's Neuromancer. (Via Stan!.)

Music · Books · 2008/10/28 · 1 COMMENT · Link

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