Saw Amy Sedaris on Letterman tonight – she’s so funny I can’t breathe. (I don’t normally watch Letterman, but my brain was vibrating seriously from playing Halo with Mike VS and Sparky for several hours.) This is going to sound strange, but I was struck by how pretty she was. My only other exposure to her was on the hilarious and greatly-missed “Strangers with Candy,” and she must have done an amazing job making herself look hideous.

Listening to her tale of communicating with her imaginary boyfriend Ricky through sign language after he lost his hearing on a movie set was perhaps the highlight of my week. (“We’ll go crabbing later,” she signed.) That, and killing Sparky with the Halo pistol.

The Italian Job

Snappy, involving fun. Makes the most of the old “everyone in the gang has a nickname and a special skill” thing. Low-key for an action movie, but to me that’s a nice change of pace from the blow-everything-up-as-loud-as-possible school. I’ve never liked Charlize Theron more than in this movie. Mark “I’m not Marky Mark” Wahlberg now realizes he really can’t act, which is a good thing, but his ultra-low-key manner threatens to make him fade into the paneling completely – and if that’s the case, why not get someone cheaper? Lots of straight-guy one-armed hugs throughout.

Final thought in this brain-dump review: anyone who wants to buy me a Mini Cooper will earn my undying gratitude.

When you see it all written out like this, the lowdown on GWB is truly scary. (via MediaWhoresOnline)

“This isn’t about Saddam: it’s about us.”

(NOTE: NYT site requires free registration. I rarely link to them because of this. But this Paul Krugman column is worth it.)

Does anyone else get the feeling that people are beginning to care, just a little bit, whether this administration tells the truth? Or is it just wishful thinking on my part?

I’m not an artist, but I’ve become quite taken with a little program called DrawIt2 for my Sony Clie. It’s like a combination of Photoshop and Painter for the Palm. Most drawing programs for the Palm have ugly 1984-Mac interfaces; this one is elegant and usable. And it lets you do things like draw with simulated crayons or watercolors, like Painter. Above are some of my first efforts. I find it liberating to have such a small canvas – I don’t feel so intimidated trying new things.

If you have a color Palm, you should check this program out. Good stuff.

I feel like I’m on the edge of something. I just hope it’s something good.

My BlogShares portfolio has broken $1 million ($1,224,723.90 to be exact). My most valuable stock? My own, which is now at $439.20 a share. (Don’t you wish you had bought my stock when it was what, 5 cents a share?) Does this mean I should split the stock? Has it gotten too high? I don’t pretend to understand the “real” stock market, much less this one.

Not that any of this matters, of course, but it’s a distraction from work. I should be getting back to that….

Electric gallows

For those of us who tend to overthink pop culture stuff (one of mine is, why didn’t Dorothy just turn the hourglass over?), I offer Mike Benedetto’s treatise on “The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia.” He definitely clears up some questions I know I already had about the song, and brings up new ones at that. Great stuff.

Al Franken For President And Other Stuff That Will Never Happen But Really Should

Saw Al Franken on CSPAN2 last night. (Yes, I lead an unbearably exciting life. Shut up.) He was appearing with Molly Ivins and Bill O’Reilly on some sort of panel discussion for book publishers, since all three have new books coming out this year. Franken was amazing, and reaffirmed that he is one of the most forceful liberal voices out there today.

His new book (out this fall) is called “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” and he has a fair amount of righteous anger for liars on the right, and also, I think, for the people who have let them get away with all those lies. I do too.

The best part was when he eviscerated O’Reilly, sitting a few feet away from him, over just one incident where O’Reilly claimed multiple times that his old tabloid show, “Inside Edition,” had won two Peabody Awards. Well, the show actually won one – a George Polk award, the year after O’Reilly left the show. Then, when O’Reilly was called on it, he loudly denied ever having claimed the show won a Peabody, even though it was in transcripts of interviews he’d given. Nice.

Even better was O’Reilly’s loud “Shut up! Shut up!” as he sat at the speaker’s table listening to Franken cut him to ribbons.

Maybe Molly Ivins can be Al Franken’s VP.

Finding Nemo

The good stuff: the underwater imagery is beautiful, and the voice work is strong throughout. Ellen DeGeneres in particular has some really funny moments, the best of which comes at a shark support group meeting.

The not-so-good stuff: the script, or lack of same. This movie suffers mightily from raised expectations, both from the advance press and the sky-high bar set by “Monsters, Inc.” The writing just isn’t there.

The ‘give me a machine gun’ stuff: I had to leave the theater three (3) times to tell them to fix the focus. Note to Melissa: this is getting ridiculous. Movies are supposed to be in focus!

This is an entertaining, if draggy and sloppily written effort from the folks at Pixar. If they had lavished as much care on the words as they did the glorious images, they would really have something here.