Annoying 2008 Election Update: One got all frizzled up...

...and then there was one. Kind of. Just about everybody has officially conceded that John McCain is going to be the Republican nominee and the most conservative candidate with even a slim hope of victory. Here's how it all happened, in a cascading series of events:

1. John McCain won a lot of winner-take-all states and did okay in the proportional representation states, building up a huge lead in delegates, so everybody else became a long shot.

2. Mitt Romney suspended his campaign but never released his nearly 300 delegates, and hasn't ruled out the possibility he would re-enter the race, like if McCain were to be abducted by ninjas before the convention. I know that sounds unlikely, but a guy who can spend $42.5m of his own money to come in a distant second probably has the money to run a secret dojo of secret assassins somewhere underneath the streets of Boston. (Every time part of the Big Dig has to be closed down for "flooding" it's just because somebody got too close to Romney's Bond villain lair, and his secret army of Teenage Mormon Ninja Turtles.)

3. Ron Paul decided to focus on his congressional race when Romney dropping out and McCain steamrolling everyone else meant there was no possibility of a brokered convention where Paul's delegates could swing the nomination.

4. McCain started ignoring Huckabee and campaigning against the Democrats, and Huckabee played nice because he still wants to be vice president.

5. The New York Times printed a story about McCain having an affair with a lobbyist that involved a lot of innuendo and not a lot of facts. Instead of doing a politician's denial and leaving himself room to weasel about the meaning of the word "the" like someone else we know, McCain unequivocally denied it, basically doing the Sam Jackson "Say 'what' again! I dare you!" scene from Pulp Fiction daring the NYT to contradict him and staking his political career and his legacy on it being a bullshit story. For conservatives, being attacked by the NYT is like an endorsement, so McCain picked up yardage as the conservative talk radio hosts (who were previously claiming their audience would desert the party if he were nominated) all circled the wagons around McCain.

6. With Romney and Paul hanging onto 302 delegates and McCain having another 1064, Mike Huckabee can win at most 1014 delegates, but he needs 1191 to win. Huckabee says he needs a miracle, and appeared on SNL in a sketch where he wouldn't leave the stage when his bit was over and it was time for him to go, sheepishly saying "Sorry, I usually pick up on these things."

So McCain can't be beaten, but nobody will drop out. This does seem mysterious, but there are some possibilities:

1. Conservative Republicans might stage a backlash to McCain he couldn't recover from. The NYT seems to have forestalled this possibility by giving him their endorsement.

2. McCain might die before the convention. The guy is in his 70's, and if he has a stroke in March that leaves half his face paralyzed, he's not going to be president.

3. McCain could suffer some other political embarrassment that makes him drop out, like if he adopts a wide stance at the Minneapolis airport and restlessly taps his foot waiting for his prune smoothie to kick in. (The Republican Convention is in Minnesota, so that's going to be one busy bathroom.)

4. McCain could get it over with and pick Huckabee or Romney as his running mate, so he can act presidential, shore up his base and woo independents while the Democrats are still squabbling. Either one would bring enough delegates to make the nomination official, and McCain needs somebody ready to take over the job since there is a serious risk he'll die in office.

5. The horse may learn to sing hymns, and Huckabee could run the table, or Romney who is still on the ballot could stage some resurgence, and they could convince caucus delegates to switch their votes, although given the giant lead McCain has in delegates they'd have an easier time trying to dub Nicholas Cage into Cantonese--

--Oh, holy shit! As I was writing that this asian woman came up behind me and scared the living daylights out of me. Fucking Republican ninjas.

Anyways, if something crazy happens, either Romney or Huckabee could be back in it as a candidate or a power broker if McCain should stumble. And McCain's vice president is likely to run in 2012 as the heir apparent, so forcing his hand on picking you isn't such a bad idea if you have enough delegates to clinch his nomination, but McCain is likely to be the nominee by next Tuesday and render all of this moot.

Cool things I saw this week

Miss Evers' Boys

Last week I went with the Guthrie to Hennepin County Medical Center for a dramatic reading of Miss Evers' Boys, a play about the Tuskegee Experiments written by former Guthrie actor David Feldshuh, who earned a PhD in Theater and an MD from the University of Minnesota. For anyone not familiar with the Tuskegee Experiments, black men from a rural area in Alabama who were infected with syphilis were enrolled in a study and told they were getting treatment for their disease, while the unchecked disease ate away at their brains for an astonishing forty year period.

The Guthrie has run a program for about nine years in which they read this play at the UofM medical school, and the day before they go to a different medical facility to perform for working doctors at places ranging from HCMC to the Mayo Clinic, and its just, well, really cool. The effect that play had on the doctors was remarkable, and it sparked a broad discussion between the actors and the doctors and nurses about issues of race in medical care, the legacy of Tuskegee, and generally how doctors interact with patients, and the generational differences so visible in patients and doctors. This play is apparently the highlight of training on medical ethics given to doctors and nurses at the UofM, and it was interesting to hear the discussion it sparked amongst nursing students talk about how different their relationship with doctors is today. All I did was a bit of unskilled labor and scraping the Guthrie van through the HCMC parking lot, but man was that a cool thing.

Third

Wendy Wasserstein's final play is fantastic, and I now know why everybody says Sally Wingert can do no wrong. I caught the dress rehearsal on Friday and the whole production was so intriguingly different from what I pictured when I read the script, it was an absolute delight to see what Casey Stangl did with it. The set and music were unique in their own right, a series of covers of songs from the 60's and 70's, including Cake's immortal cover of "I Will Survive" and a box onto which a series of projections of still images and video created the numerous scenes of Third, with furniture sliding out from the wings, Sally Wingert seductively draped across it, as necessary. Just a superb production, sharp and bright, and Third packs into two hours a story that can be explored from so many different angles it's one of the most stimulating plays I've seen in ages... much like The Home Place, the last play I saw on the McGuire stage. And it's nice to see Sally in a speaking role, since the last time I saw her was as the chain-smoking, scene stealing Parisian maid in Private Lives stomping across the stage and snarling in French at anyone who tried speak to her.

Peer Gynt

This is one of the hardest plays in the world to stage, and Henrik Ibsen himself suggested ditching act four altogether. The Guthrie's Minnesota-styled production stages the play as the fevered vision of a man having a heart-attack, full of dazzling dances and quirky humor (Help me, Omar Sharif!) and I figured when I walked in to the Pirandellian framing device of a birthday party with a band playing the Beer Barrel Polka, it was going to be a strange trip and it certainly was, complete with subterranean trolls singing the Vikings fight song. Mark Rylance is one of the world's most prestigious stage actors (when they rebuilt the Globe, as in Shakespeare's theater, Rylance was the first creative director) so I figure there aren't going to be too many opportunities in life to see him don a thick Minnesota accent in the all-singing, all-dancing, sometimes-rhyming, troll and belly-dancing infested bizarre voyage of Peer Gynt, and I'm glad I was there to see it. (And not just for the belly-dancing). It's hard to know what to think of Peer Gynt, it's so overwhelming, but Mark Rylance is a god.

Gerald Green's dunk

Gerald Green's signature dunk in the all-star weekend dunk competition was really cool, as he had teammate Rashad McCants place a birthday cupcake behind the rim, and then Green got enough air on his dunk to blow out the candle before dunking. He should have won and defended his title, because that was way cooler than Dwight Howard's Superman dunk. Gerald Green, #15 in your programs, #1 in your hearts... and about #12 off the bench for the Wolves right now.

Annoying 2008 Election Update: The W's

With a primary in Wisconsin and a caucus in Hawaii yesterday, Washington couldn't miss out on such a W heavy day and had a primary to complement their caucus (which was like a week ago), but Wyoming and West Virginia ain't got time for this nonsense. The results were as expected: Obama and McCain won everything handily.

Obama won the Hawaii caucus with 76% of the vote which is hardly surprising given his advantage with caucus voters and history with Hawaii (like Mitt Romney, part of Barack Obama's appeal is he's from everywhere), but that's still a hefty margin of victory, albeit in a small state. He also won the meaningless Washington primary by a slim margin (all Democratic party delegates were assigned at the caucus) which is still significant because it robs the Clinton campaign of a big PR victory if Obama supporters on caucus night all stayed home for the primary figuring there was nothing at stake and they'd already voted once.

The big prize is Wisconsin, which along with Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas was supposed to form the Clinton firewall: the states where more conservative, practical voters with economic issues on their minds would turn out for Hillary Clinton and arrest the momentum of the Obama campaign. Instead Obama came away with a big win with a couple of weeks to crow about it before the next round of primaries. Practically it's not that meaningful, since Obama only picked up 19 more delegates than Clinton yesterday, and Ohio and Texas are the real must-win states for her campaign (and I may be mistaken lumping Wisconsin in with Ohio and Texas as a firewall state).

On the Republican side, McCain won in Washington where half the state's delegates were up for grabs (the other half were assigned at the caucus, or would be if they'd ever finish counting the ballots) and also won in Wisconsin. He is still a significant ways away from securing the nomination, but he is inching closer to the point where Huckabee could release his delegates to McCain and give him the nomination. I have no earthly idea why Mitt Romney is hanging onto his delegates, because he has 286 and McCain only needs 270, and Romney made big speech about how if we don't all support the Republican frontrunner the terrorists win. Huckabee is at least angling for a job in the McCain administration (like vice president). Nothing much will change in the next couple weeks for the Republicans as they have a series of island primaries in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and several other unforgettable islands I couldn't point out on a map (and I still have no idea who won in Guam).

Delegates State Super Total
Obama 1184 162.5* 1346.5
Clinton 1023 240 1263

(*-I have no idea why he has half a superdelegate either)

10 things recently brought to my attention

1. Everybody hates Zug

It's not just me. Nobody can go there for business (or in my case via chicanery) without catching some twinge of the evil spirit that pervades the place, causing an imbalance of the humors that leads to uncontrollable, bilious outbursts whenever the very name of Zug is mentioned. It's the unhappiest place on earth.

2. Freddie Mercury was a freighter captain

And he had a dirty, dirty hold. Seriously I have a good source on this.

3. Democrats are in league with the forces of terror

Thanks to Mitt Romney, we now know that a vote for anyone but the Republican frontrunner (regardless of who that may be) is a vote in favor of the forces of terror that threaten to overwhelm the world. Kind of makes you wonder why he ran in the first place, if all his candidacy was doing was sowing the seeds of discord for القاعدة.

4. Omarosa is batshit crazy

This was actually not much of a surprise, but you've got to love somebody who knows she's on thin ice and certain to be fired if her team loses... and figures the best thing to do is to sabotage her own team. Apparently her thinking was if she could provoke a meltdown through constant personal insults about Piers Morgan's family, she could throw him to the wolves. And on TV no less, just to make sure nobody wants to work with her ever again. She's the only non-celebrity on the Celebrity Apprentice, basically because watching her implode and take people down with her makes for good television, and to be fair, it is an amazing achievement to make Piers Morgan look like an embattled man of principle.

5. Scotland has its own legal system

As part of the act of union, Scotland has maintained its own legal and judicial system for the last three hundred years. I still can't figure out why the English are so desperate to hold onto all their various appendages... to quote Eddie Izzard, “Not the Falkland Islands! We need those for strategic sheep purposes!”

6. Jenna Jameson carries a gangster roll.

No checkbook for Jenna Jameson (although I do shudder to think of where she might keep it) who pulled out this giant wad of bills to pay for a charity carriage ride with her boyfriend. Apparently she's left her husband after several years of exclusively performing with him, and hooked up with an ultimate fighter which is probably why she doesn't worry about getting mugged carrying $10,000 in cash on her person (although she may just have a good hiding place).

7. Mike Huckabee is the key to understanding the intricacies of our universe.

Stephen Colbert claims he created Mike Huckabee, although Conan O'Brien claims his revitalization of Chuck Norris as a public figure made Norris' endorsement of Huckabee meaningful, while Jon Stewart claims to have created both O'Brien and Colbert, and by extension, Norris and Huckabee... and they had a knock-down, drag-out fight between the three of them to settle it that Jon Stewart described as “the dumbest thing ever shown on television”. That's a lot of TV history Mike Huckabee managed to tap into, and a lot of silliness, and it's sadly probably what I'll remember about the 2008 Republican primary season.

8. In Japan, fingering a stranger's butthole isn't just for the bathhouse.

There's an arcade game in Japan called Boonga-Boonga in which a player chooses a character representing some vexing person in their life, and then fingers their ass while they scream. I don't even know where to begin commenting on this one.

9. Crowd shots at the AVN Awards are a lot more fun than the Oscars.

Old directors clapping and grimacing irritably at the camera in their face, or hot young women pulling their dresses open and kissing each others breasts when the camera comes by. You decide.

10. Washington State loves church, Mike Huckabee not so much.

The Washington State Republican Party had a caucus to assign half their delegates, then never bothered to let anybody know how those delegates were assigned, or if they'd ever finished counting ballots. Seriously still no delegate count on CNN a week later, but last Saturday night they were so sure a 2% lead would hold up (with 13% of ballots uncounted) they announced a winner and, according to the state party, had to quit counting ballots so they could go home and be well-rested and alert for church the next morning. Then the evangelical candidate, Huckabee, sued them for a recount, apparently believing they could have slept in and gone to the evening service.

Annoying 2008 Election Update: The Republicans

For those of you wandering the streets of London looking for a restaurant offering you more than dry crackers (for £26) and want to know what's going on in America, here's what happened to the Republicans since Super Tuesday.

Mitt Romney suspended his campaign, and both he and President Bush tacitly acknowledged John McCain is the inevitable Republican nominee and that Mike Huckabee should drop out and get behind him. Governor Romney came dangerously close to announcing that anyone who didn't get behind the Republican front-runner was in league with the forces of terror, but then he didn't release his delegates. After this, Ron Paul announced that since there was no real possibility of a brokered convention with Romney out, he was scaling back his campaign and focusing more energy on his Texas congressional race, so the whole race is down to McCain with a giant lead over Huckabee.

After this, Mike Huckabee won in Louisiana and Kansas, and then the Washington State Republican Party announced McCain won their caucus and we should all take their word for it even if they didn't count like, every single ballot from like every single precinct, because that would take all night or something (and then Huckabee took them to court). He was still way behind, and this Tuesday was the so-called Potomac Primary with winner take all contests in Virginia, DC, and Maryland, and Huckabee got killed. Hopefully he can build some momentum in this weekend's primary in White Trash Hawaii before next Tuesday's primaries in Wisconsin and Washington... that's right, Washington has a primary like a week after their caucus, talk to them about it. (I only know like two people in Washington who could maybe explain to me why they do this, and I don't have contact info for either one.)

McCain is actually quite close to reaching a point where Romney or Huckabee's delegates would be enough to secure the nomination and end the nomination process, which creates interesting possibilities for the smoke-filled room.

A brief update on the Democrats: Barack Obama won in Virginia, DC, and Maryland and by a significant margin, which means for the first time he has the overall lead (not counting superdelegates he's been in the lead since the Iowa caucus). It's still extremely close and supposedly upcoming states are packed with the poorer, less well educated people who have thus far turned out for Hillary Clinton so things might swing back her way with Ohio and Texas voting in the beginning of March. The last Democratic events until then are a primary in Wisconsin and a caucus in Hawaii, both next Tuesday.

Ken Branagh... why?

I was watching Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Othello, until I finally gave up halfway through, because I had started wondering where exactly his reputation came from. I have by no means seen all of his films but there's no shortage of crap in them, from his stunt casting in Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet, the inexplicable diversions from the plot of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, to the hysterical chanting style of Hamlet, or that weird white hairdo he had in Hamlet (God I hated that adaptation).

So I looked back at every film of his I've seen, and I realized I've hated almost all of them. I liked Dead Again, and that gray, neurotic version of Twelfth Night was at least interesting, but that was about it. Once he didn't have Emma Thompson to play off, she went on to write award nominated screenplays and generally be charming and he cranked out a couple aggressively bad adaptations of classic literature. I guess I should have been warned, since his mystique did really explode after his 1996 showdown with Baz Luhrmann over who could do the worst adaptation
of Shakespeare (Hamlet vs Romeo+Juliet) and trick the most people into watching it. A fair contest: Even after 10 years to reflect, I still couldn't tell you which is the least watchable.

Annoying 2008 Election Update - Democrats

First, in case you didn't hear, Barack Obama won the Louisiana primary,
the Nebraska caucuses, the Washington State caucuses, the Virgin Islands
primary, and the Maine Caucus this weekend, and won all five contests by
a significant margin. He is close to taking enough of a lead in
regional delegates to neutralizing Senator Clinton's advantage in
superdelegates and formally take the lead, but he's still only halfway
to the nomination. This creates some interesting concerns about the
future strategy of the Clinton campaign, and the nature of the
delegates. There are still ways Senator Clinton can lose the regional
primaries and still be the nominee:

1. Use Florida and Michigan

Both of these states were stripped of their delegates by the national
party for holding early primaries, and they seemingly just realized that
Howard Dean wasn't kidding and they really are out of the whole process.
Both are pursuing reinstatement of their delegates, but most of the
Democrats refused to campaign in these states and weren't even listed on
the ballot in Michigan, so they don't have many delegates. On the other
hand, Senator Clinton campaigned in both states and promised to seat
their delegates if nominated, so she swept up in both primaries. If the
delegates are reinstated, they would mostly go to Senator Clinton.

This many not come to pass... because of the strong labor unions in the
area who don't want to be left out of the convention, Michigan may have
a caucus to assign delegates and Senator Obama would obviously be on the
ballot and campaign for those delegates. Florida is intending to keep
pursuing a legal challenge, but one possibility is that their delegates
will be assigned according to national proportions (likely split evenly
between the two candidates) and this would allow Florida to participate
in the convention but not to affect the nomination.

2. Win the Superdelegates

If the race stays close and she's behind, Senator Clinton can lock up a
lot of superdelegates to get herself the nomination. Some prominent
Democrats have denounced this idea as suicidally stupid, if political
insiders overrided the stated preference of Democrats who came out to
caucus in huge numbers for Senator Obama. Al Gore's campaign manager
Donna Brazile has said that the intended purpose of superdelegates is to
break a deadlock or hasten the nomination of an inevitable frontrunner,
and that she would quit the DNC if superdelegates actually reversed the
outcome of the regional primaries.

3. Get John Edwards' delegates

Since Senator Edwards suspended his campaign rather than dropping out
like Congressman Kucinich or Governor Richardson did, he hasn't released
his delegates and could still deliver them to somebody else in exchange
for say, the vice presidency, or being named attorney general. He
doesn't have that many delegates, but getting their votes would be
equivalent to a big win in a whole other state.

4. Steal Obama's delegates

A lot of these early contests are caucuses, in which voters get together
on the precinct level and choose delegates to district conventions,
where delegates will be chosen for the state convention. In my district
the vote was overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, but there is nothing to
prevent my fellow district convention delegates from choosing state
convention delegates who will support Hillary Clinton instead. In 1984,
Vice President Mondale won the nomination by getting unbound delegates
to switch their vote, and really anything can happen. Again though,
using my state as an example, Minnesota went so overwhelmingly for
Senator Obama that to actually swing the state convention for Senator
Clinton would invite a disastrous backlash, but she could pick up a few
more delegates if they switch sides.

Combine these elements together and that's a lot of delegates, but all
of these things only matter if the race is close and Obama is ahead,
since Clinton has the connections to pull these things off and I really
doubt Obama does. The more blatant this stuff is the less likely she'd
be to get away with it, and the harder it would be to convince
disenfranchised Democrats to show up and vote for her in the general
election. If she falls too far behind, Senator Clinton won't be able to
raise enough money to stay in the race anyways, and this weekend she
already started loaning money to her campaign to keep it afloat. If she
gets pummeled again in the Mid-Atlantic primaries tomorrow, that could
be the beginning of the end, because now that McCain is tightening his
grip on the Republican nomination, the Democrats want their nomination
settled quickly. If Senator Clinton does well tomorrow though, this may
not be over until the very end.

Delegates: (regional)
Clinton 1143 (920)
Obama 1125 (997)
Edwards 26 (26)

Amstelboy's Switzerland Itinerary

Day One:

8am – 30 minutes of nude yoga

9am – blueberry cheese fondue breakfast special

10am - 12pm – hide behind trees, pop out and shout “GRUZEI!” at startled strangers

12pm – go to Zurich Zoo to select animal to eat for lunch
(note: Dr. Uhler recommends the zebra tartar)

2pm-6pm – complete merger by smashing any remaining ATMs in Zurich

7pm – fondue and racism with Dr. Uhler

9:55pm – flush toilet before deadline

Day Two

8am – 30 minutes of nude yoga

8:30am – breakfast meeting with the Honey Monster
(note: bring Sugar Puffs, buttermilk, cheese grater and 2 kilos of swiss cheese)

10:17am – Train to Geneva

10:47am – disembark in Zug, beat the crap out of train station employees for not putting up a damn sign in the train station that says ZUG on it anywhere.

10:52am – back on train to Geneva

12pm – cheese fondue
(note: keep it light and use Swiss cheese or something else with holes in it)

1pm – 6pm – Torture POWs
(note: buy Alannis Morissette CD)

6:37pm – Train to Zurich

8:38pm – disembark in Zurich

8:43pm – realize it's Zug, beat up train station employees
(note: while in Zug, buy a cake on string and beat up bakery employees)

9:13pm – disembark in Kloten

9:14pm – call mom to make testicle jokes

9:15pm – buy hairspray and deodorant in aerosol cans at airport

9:45pm – arrive in Basel after unnecessary plane ride and spray hairspray everywhere to further destroy ozone layer

10pm – cocaine and fondue party at Martina Hingis' house

10:52pm – call Rufus to ask him why he's up at 4:52am

Day Three

8am – 30 minutes of nude yoga

8:30am - stop off at “American embassy” for egg mcmuffin

9am-12pm – count gold coins in vault with Adolf Eichmann, jr.

noon – more $%&#'ing cheese fondue

1pm – 3pm – attend modern art museums and loudly ask “What the fuck is that supposed to be?”

3:30pm – Go to Mariott and drag Rufus out of booth
(note: it's been 5 years, better bring a razor and change of clothes)

4pm – 6pm – drown children in racetrack pool at Alpa Mare

7pm – 10pm - get drunk and shoot off guns with Swiss Militia

10:52pm – call the Captain and ask what he's doing up at 4:52am

11:00pm – tip Roger Federer's cow

Day Four

8am – 30 minutes of nude yoga

8:45am – help Dr. Uhler put up satellite dish

9:30am – walk to Seilbahn Rigiblick

9:37am – take #10 tram to Bahnhofplatz

10:00am – take IC train to Bern Hauptbahnhof

11:30am – take S3 commuter train to Wankdorf

11:32am – arrive Wankdorf, realize Young Boys is just a football club and Wankdorf doesn't mean what I thought it did, leave country in disgust

1pm CST – arrive at O'Hare

1:15pm – tell customs “No I'm not a drug mule, that dark blob on my x-ray is just 10 kilos of cheese fondue”

1:45pm – tell cabbie to head for the nearest pharmacy

1:55pm – buy two boxes of exlax and try to get that cheese fondue moving

3pm – exercise American right to flush toilet in freedom

Super Tuesday, in brief

Now that it's over, pundits can start the complicated process of
pretending they know exactly what happened and why, but here at least
are some of the results.

On the Democratic side, the candidates split most of the contests, with
Barack Obama winning in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North
Dakota and Utah, while Hillary Clinton won in Arizona, Arkansas,
California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, and
Tennessee. What's really important though are delegates, and Clinton
came out ahead, making up some ground and now holding 618 pledged
delegates to Obama's 614, in addition to her 193-106 lead in
superdelegates. The fallout of that is, the race is still very much
alive: Clinton failed to land the knock-out blow she was hoping for on
Super Tuesday, and while Obama didn't score a massive upset like beating
Hillary in California, the widespread belief has been that with momentum
on his side the longer the race goes on the more support will swing his way.

This weekend the Democrats have primaries in Louisiana and the Virgin
Islands, as well as caucuses in Maine, Nebraska, and Washington State,
and next Tuesday is a DC area set of primaries in Virginia, Maryland,
and the District itself, with the Hawaiian caucuses Wisconsin primary a
week later (then they leave us all alone for a bit while they go lick
their wounds and raise money).

On the Republican side, everybody won some primaries. Mike Huckabee won
a few southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and West
Virginia) while Romney won some contests (Alaska, Colorado,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Maine over
the weekend) and came in second in a couple big states like California
and Illinois. The problem for Romney is some of his wins didn't give
him much of an advantage, for instance his win in Massachusetts gave him
22 delegates to McCain's 17, while some of his second place finishes
were essentially worthless: while Obama's big win in Illinois picked
him up 62 delegates to Hillary's 31, McCain's win in Illinois (by a
smaller margin) got him 54 delegates to Romney's 2. McCain's wins in
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New
Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma (where the wind goes rushing down the
plain) proved devastating. What I can't figure out is after
Conservative Christians told us that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment
for wickedness, why it is every state that voted for Mike Huckabee was
struck with tornadoes? (Apparently he's not getting Jesus' vote after all.)

Here's how the Republicans stand, with 1,191 delegates needed for the
nomination:

John McCain 616
Mitt Romney 269
Mike Huckabee 170
Ron Paul 16

The Republicans have a similar schedule with a few differences. This
weekend they'll have caucuses in Kansas and Washington State as well as
the Louisiana Primary, and the same DC, Maryland, and Virginia primaries
next Tuesday, but since the Hawaii Republican Caucus was in January,
they'll have a White Trash Hawaii Caucus instead on the island of Guam
before the Washington State and Wisconsin Primaries. Actually they've
got a bunch of little island caucuses coming up soon in Guam, the Virgin
Islands, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa.

So anyways, this weekend is Louisiana, Washington State, and at least
one plains state for each side (Nebraska or Kansas), and the Democrats
will go to Maine. The Democratic race should continue to be interesting
in a close race where the underdog has momentum and money, and I would
have to think somebody's going to run out of money on the Republican
side soon if they don't get catch up a bit, but who knows.

Cocktail Napkin for Super Tuesday

Just based on a map that went up on Meet the Press this morning and what
I could figure out about pledged delegates, I've been trying to figure
out what Super Tuesday is looking like. Barack and Hillary are each
leading in several states, but the states where Hillary is leading (AR,
CA, MA, NJ, NY, OK, TEN) have more delegates (943) than the states where
Barack is leading (AB, AK, GA, ID, IL, KS, MN, ND, 440 delegates) but
most delegates are proportionally allocated, and the undecided states
(AZ, CO, CT, DE, MO, NM, UT) add another 305. It really helps my
cocktail napkin calculation to have New York and California going
Clinton's way, but if Hillary loses in California she could be finished.
Of course, Obama has momentum and splitting the primaries and getting
800 delegates would probably keep him alive long enough to win the
nomination.

On the Republican side, because Mike Huckabee's plucky third place takes
a lot of votes away from Mitt Romney (don't ask me why) and according to
polling, this lets McCain beat him a lot of winner take all states.
Romney's strength is in states that have proportional allocation of
delegates, so it's quite possible that the Republicans will have a
nominee... in February. Can't we at least wait for the Ides of March or
something?

In any case polls are getting ridiculously inaccurate with response
rates around 20%, so who knows what's going to happen, but this should
be fun. I've never been to a caucus before, and two days before Super
Tuesday, I still haven't decided which party's caucus to go to, so I've
left it in the hands of fate: if the weather's bad, I'm going to the
Democratic Caucus because it's being held next door, and if the sun is
shining, I'll walk the mile to the Republican Caucus over on Nicollet
Island.

Four Forgettable Films

Sunshine
Saw IV
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Halloween

All four of these movies were more or less forgettable, but the only disappointment that came as a surprise was National Treasure, but that's because I seem to be one of the only smart people who enjoyed the first one. In the second installment, there's less bother about American history, which leaves much more room to show divorced couples fighting. For some reason this is very big right now, I think because so many celebrity break-ups have been part of the tabloid showcase in the past few years, and I can't go to the grocery store without seeing that Jennifer Aniston's family have made some new plea for Brad Pitt to come back home (allegedly). Parts of the movie are genuinely funny, but the charm of the original is completely gone. I'm sure the tie-in video game is great though, with all those scenes in the half-drowned city of gold.

Danny Boyle has made an entire career out of near misses, so if Sunshine disappointed it's my own fault for getting my hopes up. There are some interesting facets to Sunshine, including a really interesting performance from Chris Evans that had me stunned to find he was the same guy from that awful Fantastic Four movie. The problem in Sunshine is that the climax of the story passes so quickly and unobtrusively in the beginning of the movie that there's nothing left for the characters to do in the falling action but react, to the inevitable end. There's no jeopardy, since the outcome of the mission and the consequences for each character are completely obvious, and nothing to do but watch them all wait for the inevitable. There is an attempt at a vibrant plot twist with a crazed killer on the loose, but it's just pointless and comes out of nowhere far too late in the film to change the narrative. I think I was supposed to care about the characters, but only Evans showed enough depth amongst these one-faceted characters to make me feel anything for him. The end was supposed to be this big triumphant moment with sunshine and rock music, but the grim mood of the movie just drowned out all the attempts at spectacular visuals or any sense of hope, making it a tiresome plod, not an adventure. The really sad thing is how much the film lexicon of the magpie creators is on display, and makes it one of the few times I can say: just watch 2001 and Event Horizon while shining a bright light in your eyes, and you've pretty much got the whole movie.

In the case of Saw IV, I had a clear warning of how bad it was going to be: it was called Saw III. The latest film decided to dispense with the claustrophobia and engagement with particular characters of the first two films and just focus on strange ways to kill all the half-remembered characters from the first three movies. Seriously I had no idea who half the people were who end up playing a pivotal part in the denouement of this film, and I swear at least one of them was killed on-screen in the last movie. Oh, and the end of the last movie, when it sets up a sequel in which Saw's post-mortem death traps will haunt Angus MacFadyen as he tries to save his daughter, that was wrapped up in six seconds, but not until I had spent an hour and a half wondering what happened to his character. (This movie skips around in time a bit and doesn't always bother to inform the viewer, just to pull out a big ha-ha twist at the end with no dramatic investment, and consequently no real pay-off.) The entire film spends no time with its characters, instead choosing to give a long, uninventive backstory for Saw, which any intelligent viewer should be able to see coming when his pregnant wife is shown working with junkies at a free clinic. Mainly it's just frantic and pointless.

When I heard Rob Zombie wanted to do a remake of Halloween, only go deeper into the backstory of Michael Meyers, I kind of should have seen this coming. There are a host of movies from the 70s that lose something in translation, because the people who remake the movies always take out all the mystery. The shark in Jaws and Michael Meyers are my favorite examples of something ordinary that behaves in an extraordinary way, tapping into a larger fear of the supernatural without going so far as to step into fantasy. Since the 80s, every horror movie has abandoned this and unraveled in one of two ways, either as something banal and gory, or exploding into the ridiculous and losing all sense of the macabre. The original has a kid who's scared of the bogeyman for a reason, and this silent killer moving in this unnatural way on some inner murderous timetable hints at something otherworldly that has come out of a dark corner into the banal world of this baby-sitting teenager. Rob Zombie decided to take all that away by trying to explain how Meyers got to be this way, showing the abuse and early experimentation with killing animals and the withdrawal from the world behind a mask, and while creepy it forms a very weak bridge to the rest of the story, when Meyers must be unnatural and inhuman. Apparently there's a reason it's all compressed in Carpenter's original, leaving it a mystery that Dr. Loomis is only able to explain by referring to the mythical: Meyers is either obsessed with druid legends, or he actually stepped straight out of one. So anyways, the remake starts out interesting but because we know him too well, Meyers gets a little ordinary when he becomes a big guy chasing around cheerleaders with a knife.

Forget what I said about John Edwards

Okay ignore everything I said about John Edwards, because he dropped out of the race. I thought he'd at least wait until Super Tuesday and then offer his delegates up to somebody in exchange for a prominent role in the new administration rather than go back to his old job as a TV psychic, but I may have been because the media was salivating over the prospect of a brokered convention. The only real possibility of that happening was if Stephen Colbert had been able to run in South Carolina, since he said he would refuse to release his delegates until the convention, unless they allowed him to speak.

Nobody really knows who Edwards is going to support, but after a handful of states have voted, the race is down to two candidates on either side going into Super Tuesday. Mike Huckabee is still alive, but has not mounted a serious challenge since Iowa, so I assume he's going to run out of money and throw his support behind McCain at some point, along with the critical Chuck Norris endorsement he carries. So your choice, if you choose to caucus in Minnesota or vote in the Illinois Primary this Tuesday, has been slimmed down significantly to Barack vs Hillary, or McCain vs Romney.

Super Tuesday should be interesting as a couple things swung towards Obama, the first being Bill Clinton's continued presence in the headlines of his wife's campaign. Running down Obama created a racial schism in the Democratic party, and now he's jousting with hecklers, and generally looking like he's been sent out to win the nomination for his wife. Unfortunately now that Hulk Hogan has formally endorsed Senator Obama, that seems increasingly unlikely.

Florida Primary Results

First off, my favorite result. Hillary Clinton won 50% of the vote in
Florida in a crushing victory over Barack Obama and John Edwards,
picking up... oh yeah, ZERO delegates. Hillary's two big wins came in
Michigan and Florida, states which were stripped of all their delegates
by the DNC for holding primaries before Feb 5, with no other candidates
actually running in the state. In her other primary wins in Nevada and
New Hampshire, she still came away with less delegates than Obama and so
far the only place she's winning is in Washington and on CNN, but
nevertheless Hillary Clinton has officially "won" the Florida primary.
Fortunately next Tuesday a huge number of delegates will be up for
grabs, and the whole thing gets real.

In the Republican Primary, Rudy Giuliani had staked his whole campaign
on a win in Florida the way Fred Thompson and John Edwards were counting
on South Carolina. Instead, John McCain won the primary with 36% of the
vote, taking all of Florida's remaining 57 delegates (half of Florida's
delegates were stripped by the RNC for holding an early primary, which
is less exciting than it sounds). Mitt Romney came in second with 31%,
and Giuliani and Mike Huckabee were well out of it with 15% and 14% of
the vote respectively, with Ron Paul scooping up most of the rest.

This may mean Giuliani has to drop out of the race and narrow it down
even further, if losing in Florida means his financing dries up.
(Candidates will run as long as people will give them money, donors stop
giving when their candidate can't win.) Mike Huckabee is solidifying
his hold on third place, and the races seems to be settling down to
McCain vs Romney and Hillary vs Barack, with Huckabee and Edwards
holding onto third place and representing particular interests (poor
people and people who think I'm going to hell, respectively).

The third place candidates can stay in it because they have the
opportunity to swing the whole thing if there's a tight race and nobody
has the nomination locked up going into the convention. There is a lot
of speculation that Edwards won't give up his delegates without a vice
presidential spot, which is more likely to work for Clinton than for
Obama (who really doesn't need another charismatic one-term senator on
the ticket). If Huckabee can deliver a lot of Christian values voters
and a significant number of delegates, he can demand a cabinet position
and wield influence over the vice presidential nomination as well. So
this should be fun if either one survives Super Tuesday with a
significant number of delegates and fund-raising in place.

Election coverage will continue next Wednesday morning.

Three Things Amstelbooij is Not Allowed to Buy

1. Gasoline

Powering up the DMX requires some sort of super-premium rocket fuel refined in Switzerland with flecks of gold mixed into it, and with the huge premium attached to buying gas in Cook County scraping together enough coin for a fill-up is harder than dubbing Nicholas Cage's movies into Cantonese. I wondered why he did all those triathlons, now I know it's because at $17.86 a mile he ain't going by car.

2. Pr0n

Still can't hide it from the lady of the house, still sending me to Keg & Cask for the latest copy of Inches.

3. The Torch

Wicked Lasers has come out with a new 4,100 lumen flashlight which is for the time being the brightest thing on the market, and god help us if Amstelboy gets ahold of one. The damn thing is so powerful the beam will light paper on fire, and the instruction video should have $@%&'ing Yoda in it for a beam that hot. The last thing we need is a remote detonation system for fireworks dropping into Amstelboy's hands, so he has absolutely got to be stopped from dropping $300 on one, blinding people and engulfing the north side in flames. To find out more there's an article on slashdot, and to see the insanity of this thing for yourself here's a video of The Torch being used to light a cigarette.

Apparently I'm not the only one pissed about Eli Manning going to the Superbowl

Obama wins in South Carolina

Just in case anybody was wondering, Barack Obama won the South Carolina Primary, which is noteworthy for its significant proportion of black voters. Consequently it's not surprising that Obama would do well, but it might put to rest the idea that black voters were going to abandon Obama for the Clintons because Bill Clinton is more genuinely "black" than Barack. Instead Senator Obama won the primary with 55% of the vote and an enormous turn-out of black voters, 80% of whom voted for Obama.

White South Carolina voters split on the white candidates with the men going to Edwards and the women to Clinton, and Edwards could have used a win in South Carolina to make himself a viable candidate, but he still came in third (again). Hillary Clinton really got hit with the backlash of Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama and attempts to make race a heavy issue, and amazingly she still has yet to come up with more delegates than Obama in any venue other than the DNC.

Up next is Florida, the last primary before Super Tuesday.

Fred Thompson withdraws candidacy

Finally, after months of anticipation, something significant has
actually come out of the primary system. Fred Thompson had been
counting on a win in South Carolina to make him a legitimate candidate
for president, and it didn't happen. He came in third and secured no
delegates, and my guess is this dried up his finance, leading to his
withdrawal from the race. There's a lot of other speculation about what
he might do now including the possibility that he'll endorse Senator
McCain, but unfortunately I think his gig as the DA on Law & Order is
gone. So it's down to McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and Giuliani as
potentially viable candidates for the presidency.

The only other real result so far has been John Edwards' inability to do
much more than hang around, pick up some delegates here and there and
make speeches. This leaves Barack and Hillary as the only foreseeable
nominees, with John McCain the only Republican who comes anywhere near
beating them in polls. On the other hand, it's only #$%@'ing January so
I don't know who's taking those polls seriously.

This Saturday is the South Carolina Democratic Primary, and given South
Carolina's large number of black voters and the racial tension stirred
up around Martin Luther King Day between Barack and Hillary, this should
be fun. Oh yeah, that was the other thing we've learned so far, Hillary
hung onto the Hispanic vote in Nevada, and this makes the Florida
Primary next Tuesday a lot of fun as well. And rest assured, I will be
here to share all the results and pretend I know what's going on.

John Randle training video

It's been ten years since this commercial came out, but I still think it's funny. And I love that John Randle does his arts and crafts work in uniform.

Timberwolves 109 - 108 Warriors

Who put a quarter in Ryan Gomes? The Timberwolves starters dropped 102
points on the Warriors, including 35 from Gomes. In recent weeks he's
been quietly productive, until he went crazy in the first half tonight,
propping the Wolves up until Jefferson got going late.

When the Wolves kept being stymied by the Warriors draw and kick moves
in transition, and kept building leads only to give them away, I never
thought they'd break their ridiculous road losing streak, but it clearly
makes a huge difference when somebody in the front court steps up
besides Big Al.

6-34, and upwardly mobile! (Okay, not really.)

World of Warcraft gold limit reached

I've never played World of Warcraft, but I did think this was kind of
interesting, given all the strange moneymaking behavior that has gone on
in MMORPGs in recent years. Apparently because of the use of signed
integers (I have no idea what that means), there is a 2^31 upper limit
on the amount of gold a character can have, and you can't accumulate
more than 2,147,483,648 gold pieces or coins or whatever. This has
interesting implications for inflation in the WoW economy, and just the
fact that somebody kept playing so long they stretched the limits of the
system has other, sadder implications.

Just for some perspective, this limit is still 2^21, or 2097152 times
greater than the Captain vs Amstelboy chess tournament limit which
concluded at 2^10, after the Captain failed to recover his initial wager
after ten rounds of double or nothing.

Nuggets 111 - 108 Timberwolves

I know the Timberwolves need to keep losing games since they only have a
3-game lead for a top 4 draft pick (the Wolves will never win the
lottery with Miami, Seattle, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia all in
it), but this is getting ridiculous. Some improvement or consistency
would be nice... right now I know three things going into a Wolves game:
Al Jefferson will get 20 and 10, Rashad McCants will foul out, and the
Wolves will lose. So here's my wish list for the Wolves in the new year.

1. McCants playing better defense

Hopefully Rashad McCants might learn to play smarter defense and quit
committing stupid fouls. He and Al Jefferson are the only consistent
scoring threats (in the NBA you really need three), and when McCants
gets in foul trouble the Wolves are completely screwed.

2. Better shooting from Telfair

Maybe Sebastian Telfair will discover the backboard, or maybe just sneak
up and loosen the rims at Target Center. Telfair is the team's only
healthy point guard, he's light and quick, but he can't get anything
into the hoop, missing lay-ups and not making anyone respect his jump
shot. Even on a full strength team, I really think Telfair could be a
dangerous change of pace off the bench if his shooting was just a bit
better. (Telfair shot better last night and the Wolves were in it until
the final whistle.)

3. 3-point shooting

I wish somebody could hit an outside shot on a regular basis. Every
once in a while somebody in our small forward logjam goes nuts showing
off their three point range, but then they don't play for a week. For a
team that has one threat: Al Jefferson in the post, it's frustrating
when teams feel free to pack the paint. (Again, 45.5% from 3-point
range last night and the Wolves lost in the last minute.)

4. Consistent play at forward

If some roles could be assigned to one of the various forwards the
Timberwolves have accumulated, that would certainly be nice. Currently
they seem to have a lot of role players who've decided they aren't an
important part of the team so whatever they do is gravy. McCants has
decided he's a scoring leader, Telfair and Jaric that they're
play-makers, but I can't figure out what half this team is doing.

5. A center, my kingdom for a center

There should be at least one shot-blocker on this team with the height
and weight to keep people out of the paint, but usually Doleac shows up
to the game in a suit, and Theo Ratliff is still coming back from surgery.

6. No more lazy veterans

Antoine Walker occasionally has some big games but it seems the
Timberwolves are like a AAA rehab assignment for him, and he still can't
play two games in a row. Greg Buckner shows little interest in Wolves
games when he plays, and I really can't blame him, but he does have
another year on his contract. Next summer that makes them both trade
bait to a team looking to clear cap room, but I really hoped they'd play
well enough to get them out of here before the trade deadline. I'd
rather watch Gerald Green and Corey Brewer flail around, because at
least they have upside.

7. Clear the hospital wing

Between Madsen, Foye, Ratliff, and whatever the hell is wrong with
Walker and Doleac, and whatever rookie wall Brewer and Richard hit,
that's a lot of options gone. Some of them weren't so great anyways,
but Foye and Ratliff might help this team immensely in terms of
consistency and post presence. I hope nothing bad happens to Al
Jefferson, because he's the only consistently solid player on the team,
and without him they have almost no presence in the paint.

8. A front office that knows what it's doing

Next summer is going to be huge, as cap room is cleared and decisions
are made about which players to re-sign. Free agents have to be brought
in to fill gaping holes, and there should be a huge decision to make on
draft day. Considering our current GM gave up the rookie of the year
for cash and drafted Ndudi Ebi out of high school so he could wear a
suit to games for three years while collecting three times as much money
as the Wolves got for trading away Brandon Roy, I'd like to hope there
would be some fresh blood in the war room.

9. Lucky ping pong balls

The Wolves are unlikely to get the #1 pick, but I hope they at least get
a lottery pick instead of dropping back to #4, because that would annoy
the hell out of me.

Annoying 2008 Election Update: SC & NV

The Republicans:

For those of you who turn exclusively to Absolut Rufus for your election
news, John McCain has won the South Carolina primary. In this case
winning matters: McCain's 33% of the vote won him 19 of 24 delegates,
with Mike Huckabee's 30% second place finish winning him only 5. (The
state party was stripped of half of its 47 delegates for holding an
early primary.) Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney got most of the rest of
the votes, but no delegates.

Meanwhile in Nevada, Mitt Romney spanked everyone with 51% of the vote
and 18 of 31 delegates, but everyone picked up a couple delegates.
Shockingly, lunatic fringe libertarian congressman Ron Paul came in
second, but he's also the only one to buy TV ads in the state.

Here are the updated delegate counts, as near as I can figure:

Mitt Romney 72
John McCain 38
Mike Huckabee 29
Fred Thompson 8
Ron Paul 6
Rudy Giuliani 2
Duncan Hunter 1

There are a couple of consequences to these results, one of which is
that since South Carolina was supposed to be the state that kicked off
Thompson's campaign, so picking up no delegates and getting about half
the support of McCain and Huckabee is bad. The second result is nobody
has any clue what's going to happen in the Republican party right now,
because McCain, Huckabee, and Romney have all won primaries, and Rudy
Giuliani (who still has less delegates than Ron Paul) may change the
dynamic again if he does well in Florida.

The third result I found interesting is the failure of Mike Huckabee's
two big SC messages: change the constitution to reflect the will of God
(don't worry, I'll tell you what it is), and I love the Confederate
flag. He can't possibly win a general election threatening to stick a
flagpole up the ass of anyone who decries a racist symbol and being the
pro-theocracy candidate, and Republican voters are going to figure that
out. (Isn't that why we're supposed to fight the War on Terror, to
prevent the rise of a caliphate that would impose theocratic rule over
the West?)

The Democrats:

The South Carolina Democratic Primary isn't for another week, but the
results are in from the Nevada Caucus. It turns out Hillary Clinton won
the primary... sort of. She won just over half the vote, but because
delegates are assigned proportionally by each county, she and Obama
split the votes in Clark County down the middle, and Obama won many
outlying counties with odd numbers of delegates, meaning when it came
time to allocate the 25 national delegates, the odd delegate went to
Obama. So Hillary won the primary, Obama won more delegates. (If you
would like the special math of the Democratic Party explained to you,
ask the Captain, I just report what the AP tells me.)

Here are the update delegate counts, as near as I can figure:

Hillary Clinton 210
Barack Obama 123
John Edwards 52
Dennis Kucinich 1
Mike Gravel 0

Hillary and Obama continue to split delegates in the regional contests,
and her lead is down to greater support by superdelegates in the
national party, so anything can still happen.

Up Next:

Democrats vote in South Carolina on Saturday, January 26, in a primary
very heavy with black voters, so this could be interesting following
Hillary Clinton's recent missteps on Martin Luther King and all the
racial issues stirred up recently. Next Tuesday January 29 is the
Florida Primary, when Giuliani enters the race, and the last primary
before Super Tuesday.

The Primary System Explained part one: The Democrats

For the education of those not native to the United States and the mechanics of its singular electoral system, or for those who have been sipping espresso and eating cheese fondue on a jewel encrusted office chair in Switzerland so long they've forgotten how their government works, I have decided to provide a brief explanation of the whole system, and of upcoming events. Unfortunately, since I don't understand it all either either I will have to resort to mostly pulling this all out of my ass.

There are three peculiarities to understand: the nomination, the candidates, and the contests.

The Nomination:

By all accounts, the American primary system appears very strange to the rest of the world, who find a year-long election rather excessive. Sometimes I wish the rest of the world would take into account the fact that we aren't electing the leader of an (effectively) unicameral parliamentary legislature who can be recalled at any time by a vote of no confidence, but rather an independent executive with authority over the greatest economic and military power in the history of human civilization, but that isn't the point here; the point is, this isn't an election.

Every political party in the world chooses its candidates before an election, and usually this is done by the party leaders in a smoke filled room with the door firmly barred. In the United States, at this time, it's largely done out in the open by a popular vote of members of that party. The Democratic Party does this by a vote of 4,049 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, with the first candidate to secure 2,025 delegates being nominated to run for President of the United States, at which point they may choose their own candidate for Vice President. Most of the delegates (3,253) are assigned by a proportional vote in each state, and the remaining 796 "super-delegates" are composed of Democrats holding federal office as well as various other party luminaries.

The Candidates:

Several have dropped out already, like Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Christopher Dodd. Really there are only three serious candidates for the nomination, and four who get any news coverage at all. Consequently, I'll tell you all about Mike Gravel until he gets at least one single solitary delegate to commit for him, and in the meantime here's some info on the other four. (Not all of this information is accurate, but I should hope it's obvious what parts I just made up.)

Hillary Clinton: Senator from New York
Signature Move: Morph
Fatality: Soultaker

Hillary Clinton has spent the last 17 years in Washington as First Lady in the Clinton Administration (you may have heard of her husband, he had a fondness for cigars and that orange drink NASA used to make) and as the junior senator from New York State. After a disastrous beginning in the White House with an ego-driven national health care initiative, she has built a reputation in the Senate for quietly building bipartisan support for more modest initiatives. Considered the chosen candidate of the national party, she often appears to be glaring at Barack Obama for daring to run against her.


Barack Obama: Senator from Illinois
Signature Move: Blade Spin
Fatality: Decapitation

Barack Obama is the junior senator from Illinois, running on a platform of thoughtfulness, charisma, and inexperience. That last one is supposed to be a positive, because he isn't caught up in an entangling network of Washington political relationships and brings a fresh perspective. On the other hand, he reportedly never learned the rules of the Senate because he started running for president as soon as he realized he was the only politician in America who doesn't appear to be lying through gritted teeth every time he speaks. His greatest political influence so far is in his father's native Kenya, where Senator Baraka has been trying to use his goodwill to prevent civil war and the spread of AIDS. (I also blame him for making me break down and buy an I-Pass.)

John Edwards: Former Senator from North Carolina
Signature Move: Shadow Uppercut
Fatality: Torso Rip

John Edwards is a former senator who didn't run for reelection because he was pursuing the vice presidency in 2004. Before politics, his career as a medical malpractice attorney was bouyed by his uncanny ability to speak with the dead. His campaign is focused on delivering an eloquent anti-poverty message while tossing his sexy, perfectly coiffed mane (I assume he didn't get that $400 haircut from Juan). Edwards is running third but counting on momentum from being the only southerner in the South Carolina primary, and should Hillary or Baraka stumble, he will be the only charismatic white man with a law degree the party can turn to.

Dennis Kucinich: Congressman from Ohio
Signature Move: Invisibility
Fatality: Uppercut Decapitation

Dennis Kucinich has basically no chance of getting elected to anything, because his politics are too far to the left and he isn't ashamed of that fact. Kucinich is running to be heard, not to be elected, and honestly I only include him out of respect for anyone, right or wrong, who will take the amount of ridicule he does for the opportunity to speak on a national stage. To access Congressman Kucinich, seen here being decapitated by Baraka, pull down on both joysticks when the "toasty" guy appears on screen.

The Contests

The primary system theoretically acts in concert with several other aspects of American government dating from its origin as a union of several independent colonial governments, to protect against the rise of powerful pluralities and make it so the entire country has to be considered in federal politics. It also theoretically acts to screen candidates by making them go through a series of small contests in a variety of regions with different types of voters, letting party voters get to know their candidates before committing their vote. Theoretically. One of the other major benefits is by winning individual state party primaries, a candidate can prove they're capable of getting votes, and this in turn allows them to raise enough money to win.

There are two types of event to consider: caucuses and primaries. A caucus consists of a bunch of people getting together on the precinct level in small groups and choosing delegates to send to county caucuses, who then choose the delegates for a state caucus. A primary is just an election for all voters in a party. Some primaries are open, and some require that you be registered in that party. In Minnesota, we have both, and non-binding caucuses in the winter help determine who the party endorses for offices, while a fall primary chooses the final nominee, and anybody is free to vote in any party's primary. Confused yet?

Basically however states decide what to do, delegates are assigned by a proportional vote. This means all the talk in the media about who "won" is kind of silly, for instance Obama and Clinton got the same number of delegates from New Hampshire, despite her "winning" by 3% of the vote. The other part of the race, the super-delegates, are free to announce who they're voting for, but haven't all done so.

Iowa & New Hampshire

The traditional first two contests are Iowa and New Hampshire, where because of all the time candidates have to put in, they get out and talk to real people in the street. Simply put, Iowa is a bunch of thoughtful farmers who love ethanol tax credits, and New Hampshire is a bunch of white New England revolutionaries who hate the government. Doing well in Iowa made Obama look like he could actually win, so this helps when he goes to other states. Getting 39% of the vote in New Hampshire kept Hillary from going down in flames. Getting any delegates kept John Edwards alive going into South Carolina, and getting no delegates made everyone else but Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel drop out.

Michigan & Florida Primary

The Democrats agreed that only four caucuses and primaries (IA, NH, NV, SC) could be held before Super Tuesday (Feb 5), and then Michigan and Florida jumped in ahead of South Carolina without permission. Consequently the party stripped both states of all their delegates, and the primaries are just for show (this is on the Democratic side only!) Major candidates except Hillary Clinton dropped out of the Michigan Primary, and running unopposed she came in with 56% of the vote, with 40% voting "uncommitted" or "undecided" (and the last 4% going to Kucinich and Gravel). It remains to be seen what will happen in the now symbolic Florida Primary, or whether Florida's lawsuit to keep their delegates will succeed.

Nevada & South Carolina

Now that a couple predominantly white, northern states where prostitution is illegal have weighed in on the Democratic nominee, you may be wondering when the rest of you get a chance to be heard. To address that, the party has early primaries in Nevada and South Carolina. Nevada (that's the one that looks like a box-cutter and has gambling) is the first western state to vote and has a significant enough proportion of Latino voters to allow candidates to specifically appeal to the national Latino vote by courting Nevada Latinos. Also, I would think the Nevada primary would allows candidates to get out the prostitute vote nationally, but the media hasn't really picked up on that aspect. (For the life of me I can't imagine who I know in the Democratic Party who would push for a prostitute-heavy early primary... I'll have to ask the Captain about that one.)

The South Carolina Democratic Primary is important because it draws out a lot of black voters, and it's the first primary in the South. John Edwards is counting heavily on South Carolina to make him a viable candidate, and Barack Obama gets to prove he can carry black voters and hopefully put to rest all the whispers about whether he's really black enough. Based on what I've seen in previous years, it appears the Klansmen vote in the other primary.

Super Tuesday

This is the first day any state can schedule a Democratic primary, and 22 states are having one, including New York, California, Minnesota (caucus) and Illinois (primary), allocating over half the delegates (2,075) on a single day. If you have US citizenship and you live in one of these states, you should get your ass off that jewel-encrusted office chair you smuggled out of Switzerland, get out and vote.

The Race So Far:

Regional Delegates:
Obama 25
Clinton 24
Edwards 18
Everybody else: ZERO

As a point of curiosity, Obama is still slightly ahead after the first two primaries, and he and Hillary have each "won" one, without really pulling ahead of Edwards, but as I said, 2,075 delegates are at stake on Super Tuesday and there are 796 super-delegates, so 25-24 is a pretty ephemeral lead.

Super-delegates: (of 3,253)
Clinton 166
Obama 78
Edwards 33
Kucinich 1
Everybody else: ZERO

As expected, the national party loves Hillary and she has more super-delegates publicly committed to support her. It's worth noting that as federal elected officials, Clinton, Obama, and Kucinich are all super-delegates themselves, as is former President Clinton. I mention this because I assume that's how Kucinich got a delegate.

Total delegates: (of 4,049)
Clinton 190
Obama 103
Edwards 51
Kucinich 1
Everybody else: ZERO

So despite what you hear about primaries won and lost, Hillary has a near 2-1 lead, but ten times as many delegates are at stake on Super Tuesday and there are still 500 uncommitted super-delegates who might start picking sides after South Carolina and Nevada, or pile on the front-runner after Super Tuesday. I will do my best to keep you all apprised.

The Primary System Explained part two: The Republicans

I rambled on at length explaining the primary system in my post about the Democrats, so on the Republican side I'll just confine myself to explaining the candidates and aspects of the upcoming primaries particular to the Republican Party, who have some different caucus dates and different approaches to punishing states for early primaries. I'm also ignoring Duncan Hunter because I don't have the slightest clue who he is, as well as professional sacrificial lamb Alan Keyes.

The Candidates:

Mitt Romney: former Governor of Massacheusetts Signature Moves: lightning bolt, teleport Fatality: Electrocution

Edgy for being a Masshole, a Mormon, and a Republican, in addition to serving one term as governor of Massacheusetts, Romney was CEO of the Salt Lake Olympics, and is apparently also from Michigan. I think his plan is to win the nomination by virtue of being from everywhere.

Mike Huckabee: former Governor of Arkansas

Signature Move: flying kick Fatality: Dragon

A strong showing in Iowa set up this showdown between Romney and Huckabee as the "change" candidates for the Republicans. He's also the devoutly Christian candidate, which hasn't played as well in later primaries. I honestly haven't been paying that much attention to Huckabee, since the whole constant reference to Jesus thing hasn't worked out too well in American politics. If he can't keep something going, he may fade back into the margins as the Christian conservative candidate.

John McCain: Senator from Arizona

Signature Move: ice ball
Fatality: spine rip

Because of the debilitating injuries he suffered in a POW camp during the Vietnam War, John McCain can't raise his arms over his head to comb his own hair. He is the oldest candidate, with a reputation for integrity and a record of pursuing campaign finance reform.

Fred Thompson: former Senator from Tennessee Signature Moves: leaping stomp, chest pound, spinning slaps, tremor pound

Fred Thompson is a former actor who's very good at acting presidential, best known for his recurring role as the New York County DA on Law & Order. He entered the race late and so far has made no real splash.

Ron Paul: Texas Congressman
Signature Moves: invisibility, spits venom
Fatality: Acid Puke

Ron Paul is a strongly libertarian candidate who is generally ignored by the national media. He has raised a lot of money on the internet, voicing the libertarian perspective. Unfortunately in terms of mainstream politics, his views are quite nutty, for instance he wants to bring home all 600,000 American troops overseas. He's not going to win the Republican nomination, but he's interesting.

Rudy Giuliani: Mayor of New York City on 9/11
Signature Moves: Bloody Spear
Fatality: Toasty!

In his tenure as mayor, Rudy Giuliani presided over the revitalization of the city, but has based his candidacy on the perception that he expertly managed the crisis on 9/11, to the point where Fred Thompson accused Giuliani of working 9/11 into every sentence. Giuliani has claimed disinterest in the early primaries, and is counting on a big win in Florida to start his campaign.

The Delegates, and the Primary Results:

The Republican nomination process is simpler than the Democratic process, with no super-delegates, and 2,380 delegates assigned by state, with 1,191 needed to win. The primaries and caucuses have been as follows, without all caucus results being binding. (Yes, American elections are a mess to figure out, why do you think we don't vote?)

Iowa: Mike Huckabee had critical early success here, but Mitt Romney also came out of Iowa with a fair number of delegates.

Wyoming: The party stripped Wyoming of half its delegates as punishment for holding an early caucus, and not all of Wyoming's delegates have been assigned, but Romney won here.

New Hampshire: This established John McCain as serious again, as far as the national media was concerned. Again, Romney came in second and picked up delegates.

Michigan: Stripped of half their delegates, Michigan was still important, as Mitt Romney built on his lead by winning and scooping most of the state's delegates.

The important upcoming events are the Nevada Caucuses and the South Carolina Primary this weekend, and then after that the Florida Primary where Giuliani will get into the race for real.

So far, these are the estimated delegate totals, with 1,191 needed to win:

Mitt Romney - 54
Mike Huckabee - 22
John McCain - 15
Fred Thompson - 6
Ron Paul - 2
Rudy Giuliani - 1
Duncan Hunter - 1

So basically only Romney has been in every primary and had any momentum, Huckabee and McCain need to prove they aren't going to flame out after the single primary they each put all their money into, and Giuliani and Thompson need their big debut events (FL and SC) to get started. We're only 5% of the way through this, though.

Signs you're reading a bad movie review, vol. 3

#3: DVD Details

Anybody who mentions the transfer quality almost certainly will not tell you anything about the film, because they think in the mindset of film lovers who've seen it 88 times and are just looking for a new latest and greatest version. They're speaking (as geeks so often do) only to people exactly like them who don't need to be told if Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up is a good film (it is) they just need to know are there any scratches on the print?

Also included in this group are anybody who mentions the DVD extras. I've enjoyed the commentary tracks on a number of DVDs, notably Joss Whedon pointing out continuity errors in his own work then sheepishly apologizing for ruining the movie, and if you love a movie, it is interesting to see more about how it was made. However, anybody reviewing the DVD extras, or pretty much even watching any of them, is usually unable to give a neutral review, and even if they could they won't... like the DVD transfer guy, they're a geek who thinks only in terms of people like themselves to even be bringing up the DVD extras on a rental website.

Sample review:

I was excited to finally get a definitive release of The Third Man on DVD, only to have it ruined by a harmonic reverberation in my home theater from the twang of the zither music, an issue that frankly should have been fixed by sound engineers for a 50th anniversary release, as well as cleaning up some of the numerous scratches and pops in the soundtrack for a modern audience with 7.1 channel audio systems. Don't waste your time.

Best movie endings of 2007, vol. 3

Ocean's 13

Just because it was funny... George Clooney and Brad Pitt give each other a self-aware parting shot to close out their final caper, in a film crammed with all the glib excess of a farewell tour. Settle down and have a couple of kids, indeed.

The Bourne Ultimatum

I enjoyed this movie immensely as the conclusion to this series which begins with the blank slate of Bourne's amnesia and keeps adding more and more levels of intrigue. The final film turns reflexively to the beginning, recreating many of the first film's most striking scenes but playing them out differently (a fact lost on a lot of the audiences who couldn't figure out the point of the hair-dying scene is that it doesn't end with hot espionage sex). The Ouroborosian final shot of Bourne, back in the water unconscious the way he started the first film, is broken by the scene of Nicky watching the news report on the climactic shootout, and when when she hears no body was found and pictures Jason swimming away... when that teary smirk breaks across her face, I couldn't help but grin with her.

Signs you're reading a bad movie review, vol. 2

#2: The use of the word "slow"

Nobody who describes movies as “slow” ever has anything meaningful to say about them, or gets the point, often because they didn't finish watching the movie. It's one thing to report pacing problems, or an excess of distracting subplots (see Fred Claus). But for some reason when people say a movie is “slow”, especially with heavy emphasis, they never seem to be able to express themselves in a more sophisticated way about any other aspect of the film, or communicate in any sense if it's atmospheric, if it lingers in silence over certain shots, if it's long in developing it's core plot... most often it means there just isn't enough tense, expository dialogue.

Sample Review:

Slooooooooooooooooowww. Shut it off after 15 minutes.

Best movie endings of 2007, vol. 2

Black Book

When the first scene of Black Book is set in Israel, as the recollections of a middle-aged teacher confronted with a face from a past that's twenty-five years ago and a thousand miles away, I assumed it was just the same tired narrative device I feel like I've seen in a thousand tedious biopics. I figured it was either that or the “Hey remember back when...” framing device used for events of great historical import as an attempt to ground them in the modern world, like an aged Private Ryan visiting a French cemetery.

In Zwartboek, there is instead this underlying sense that Rachel would prefer to never in her daily life see any reminders of the events that took place in Arnhem in the early 40's, or her role in the Dutch resistance, but it is not clear at the beginning if this is meant simply to heighten the gravity of the oncoming flashback (which is hardly necessary for this film). In the final moments of the film, Rachel concludes her day and heads home amidst air raid sirens into a kibbutz lined with barbed wire, as her new home, is either enmired in the Yom Kibbur War or soon will be. I felt this overwhelming sadness for Rachel, seeing her walk in past guard towers and gates, like an inverted concentration camp where Jews went to stay alive and erected barbed wire fences to keep others out. The sense I felt was that while Holland had long since moved on and had joined a pact to never allow the horror of war to sweep over Europe again, Rachel lives in the one place in the world where World War II never ended, where the Holocaust loomed over her new country's birth and in '73 had to seem to somebody who suffered like Rachel that it was finally concluding with the violent end of the Jewish state.

So her evasiveness, her reluctance to admit to being Rachel from Arnhem, possibly even to seeing herself that way, may indicate that she is unable to look back at the war and the Holocaust because she for her they didn't end with the liberation of Arnhem. That theme is clear in the film, as all of Holland celebrates and children and hot chicks all pile onto American tanks to ride through town, while Rachel's resistance cell continues their hunt for traitors. I didn't really connect all that until I started thinking about the ending, which was interesting.

Zodiac

The closing music and the final line of Zodiac gave me one of the only real chills I had in the entire film, since I seem to have developed an allergy to slavishly sequential cultural and historical mimesis that really took me out of the film (if I just wanted to know what happened next I could have watched one of the fifty-seven documentaries or read one of I'm sure countless books written on the subject). Notably none of the big stars were in the scene, which returns to the stark and grisly murder that serves as the film's opening, as the surviving witness identifies his attacker from a photo array. The affected flatness of his reaction, studying the face and commenting on features, before calmly concluding “...the last time I saw that face was in 1967 when he shot me,” giving way to Donovan's “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and the closing credits, sent the second chill up my spine (the first is when Jake Gyllenhaal realizes he's talking to a man with a basement).

Despite all the diversions and obsessions of the film, and the random irrelevance of the actual crimes that Robert Downey Jr expounds on during the film, there is a specter that lingers over the case and the film, a dull and unreasoning yet grimly elusive bogey man whose spirit was never laid to rest. (And of course the chill Minnesota wind picks up as I write this and I hear noises from downstairs that I hope were my windows creaking... I really need to stop getting into creepy topics and slighting serial killers right before going to bed.)

Nuggets 118 - 107 Timberwolves

Apparently if you don't really bother with transition defense or keeping an eye out for back door cuts (the Nuggets made copious use of the alley-oop), winning an NBA game becomes harder than dubbing Nicholas Cage into Cantonese. Marcus Camby reminded Wolves fans that our front court is a little light by smacking every one of Craig Smith's early shots right back into his face (7 blocks for the game), and it took Big Al quite a while to get going as well. Since the Nuggets started two point guards I would have thought Marko Jaric would do something with his significant size advantage over Allen Iverson on the offensive end to compensate, but apparently not.

You'd think on a night when Big Al and Rashad McCants scored big, and somebody put a quarter in Ryan Gomes and he offers that rare (for the Wolves) third scoring option with a perimeter shot, you'd be able to stay in a game. The refs for once gave the Wolves the benefit of the doubt and called a fair game, but the first few minutes watching lay-up after lay-up and clanging shots gave the Nuggets a lead they never relinquished.

I still can't figure out the Wolves line-up, where players appear and disappear on a whim. I expect point guard and center to be a little screwed up because of injuries, but whatever happened to Gerald Green? Given a lack of depth at point guard, the Wolves started both healthy point guards, brought their best shooting guard off the bench (McCants), barely played Buckner, and completely benched Green. Maybe it was match-ups, benching Corey Brewer and playing bigger forwards, but it was a weird line-up, and it's a different one every night.

Randy Foye, Mark Madsen, and Theo Ratliff all show up to the game in suits, Antoine Walker, Greg Buckner, and Michael Doleac don't seem to be able to contribute many minutes. Ryan Gomes, Corey Brewer, and Gerald Green all seem to have decided to be swing-men and role players who can just throw in a little here and there, and Craig Smith and Chris Richard really are role players at power forward. That leaves the inconsistent point guard duo of Telfair and Jaric, the slashing scoring of McCants (sometimes), and Big Al trying to go one against four in the post with no perimeter threats. Half the team can't or won't play, and the ones that can don't complement each other: a catch and shoot guy, or a spot-up three point shooter would go nuts playing off of Bash and Big Al (good thing we traded our last one to appease Garnett). Wait 'til next year I guess, when Buckner, Walker, and possibly Green and Gomes will all hit the bricks, Foye might be back, and the Wolves will have the 4th and 31st draft picks and a shit-load of cap room to build around Foye and Big Al.

This year, they're going to stay in contention for the worst record in the history of professional basketball in America... they need to lose 74 games to clinch the record, and tonight was #28. They won't make it (I hope) but if they continue winning one game out of 8, it's going to be awfully close.

Best movie endings of 2007, vol. 1

I recently went over this year's list of Oscar eligible films and really confronted how few films I saw last year. In order to turn over a new leaf, I thought I could honor the year coming to a close by looking back at the ten best film endings of 2007. So in no particular order, here are the first two, a couple of closing moments remarkable for their excesses, in both humor and horror.

Death Proof (major spoilers)

I think this entire film was built in reverse starting with a theme captured best in one shot that kicks off the closing credits: Rosario Dawson lifting her leg straight out as far as she can, and dropping a daring heel right onto Kurt Russell's head. Each segment of the film serves to add, one piece at a time, all the elements Tarantino needed to set up his final scene, using an entire half of the film to flesh out early victims so he can create real jeopardy at the climax. All that work means his heroines' sudden reversal makes for one of the most visceral grrrl power moments in cinema without trite misandry. And I positively giggled when Rosario dropped that heel on Stuntman Mike, that was just a fucking good time.

Hostel part II

Obviously what was most remarkable about Hostel part II was really the opening, in that it got to the point a hell of a lot quicker than the first installment (which tried to keep restless teenagers in their seats with an increasingly tedious parade of bland boob shots). But I did enjoy the ending, in which a film franchise that seemed to take itself way more seriously than human reason could permit finally just threw up its hands and admitted how silly it is to watch a movie about a resort created to relieve the ennui of sociopaths. When Beth shows up as the Grim Reaper with a scythe, and the violins start keeping time to the cute but menacing children playing soccer with a hot chick's head I had to laugh, and that burst of silliness was like a sweet (but gory) dessert to sweep away the taste of a very over-seasoned meal.

Next up (when I get around to it): Zodiac and Zwartboek

Signs you're reading a bad movie review, vol. 1

My many years as a customer of online rental services like Netflix and Greencine, coupled with many wasted hours browsing Jump the Shark, Rotten Tomatoes, and the Internet Movie Database have given me a lot of time to read a random selection of people's comments on film and television, usually when I was trying to figure out if something was worth a rental. Unfortunately, a lot of these reviews just weren't very helpful, and I started to perceive some common elements of bad reviews that contained no insight or information, or were coming from a perspective so skewed or limited that their experience could never match my own. As a result I started to recognize a series of cues to stop reading or discount certain reviews, mostly brain-dead and negative but even some well-written and positive reviews. As a service to my vast readership, here is the first sign a movie reviewer has nothing of value to say.

#1: Any mention of who else was in the room

Often this goes into bad reviews, taking the form of “My wife and I were sitting on our couch and as soon as the movie was over we looked at each other and said,'Wow, Ben Affleck really can't act.'” For some reason “on the couch looking at each other” is a very popular meme in useless comments, but generally the more extraneous detail, the less the person actually has to say about the movie. Other forms include a long introduction about what theater they saw it in, and if it's an old movie the year and the crazy clothes they were wearing, but generally the actual direct commentary they make about the movie can be summarized in two words: “It rocked!” or “It sucked!” Longer comments are possible, but rarely more insightful. Also included as a subset of this is any recommendation of who to watch it with.

Sample review:

I saw this movie back at the old Chesterfield Theater on Wabash back in 1977, with my future ex-wife and her sister. As soon as the credits rolled, I hiked up my bellbottoms, brushed back my mullet and looked at my then girlfriend and the future bitch-in-law and said “You know what baby? After being with you, Star Wars is the coolest thing ever!” and it was true. And even my ex who was usually all cranky had a good time, so you know this is a good movie to watch with your girlfriend.

Top 10 Business Seminars in 2008

The beginning of a new year is always a time for self-examination and self-improvement, unless like the Captain you're waiting for Chinese New Year. With that in mind, here's a bunch of tired inside jokes about business seminars I'm considering attending.

10. Who Moved My Cheese Fondue? Zug, Suisse

9. Who Moved My Cheese Onto My Head? Green Bay, WI

8. Who Cut My Cheese? Chicago, IL

7. Who Made My Swiss Cheese into a Bong? Bathroom at Little Tiajuana's, Minneapolis, MN

6. Who Moved My Lasagna? St. Paul Port Authority, St. Paul MN

5. Who Made My Cheese from Cow's Milk? Queens, NY

4. Who Moved My Orange Windmill Tie? Padova, Italia

3. Can I Feed Your Pussy Met Mijn Kaas?? Den Haag, Netherlands

2. Who Securitized My Cheese? (I was going to eat that!) Greenwich, CT

1. Cheese and Rice! London, Engle-land