Oh no they didn't

Best thing I got for Christmas (besides some very nice, very classy striped-green pajamas — the kind Nick Charles wears while enjoying his breakfast martini) was the Superman Ultimate Collector's Box — “ultimate” and “collector's” are ridiculously overused descriptors in the world of DVDs these days, but not so in this case.

The 14-disc set includes two versions each of Superman and Superman II; theatrical versions of Superman III, IV, and Superman Returns; 17 Superman cartoons from the 1940s (including all 9 of the exceptional Fleischer shorts); George Reeves in Superman and the Mole-Men; three full-length documentaries (all Superman fans should see Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman — it's 2 hours well spent); plus tons of the usual “making of” features, tributes, outtakes, yadda yadda yadda.

I doubt I would ever have bought this set for myself, which is what makes it such a great gift to receive. I'm having a great time rewatching these movies (well, I haven't gotten to stinker-royale Superman IV yet — Superman III is barely salvageable, thanks to Annette O'Toole's endearing performance as Lana Lang).

But, the point I'm trying to get to:

This afternoon I'm flipping around on TV and ABC Family is showing Superman. So (as if I'm not already immersed in this stuff), I watch about 20 minutes — Superman saves Lois, catches a cat burglar, pulls a cat out of tree, rescues Air Force One. Then he takes Lois on a personal flying tour of Metropolis/Manhattan. All of a sudden, the music jumps noticeably. They cut something. And I think I know what it is, but can't believe it.

So, I load up my new DVD and rewatch the scene, uncut. And sure enough, at the point where the music jumped, Lois and Supes fly past the Twin Towers. It's about a 2-second scene as they pass the World Trade Center on their way to the Statue of Liberty. And ABC Family cut it out.

I'm totally flummoxed. ABC Family left in the references to Lois's underwear, and even left in her line “How big are you... er, how tall are you?” But they took the time to cut out 2 seconds of the Twin Towers passing by in the background. They aren't even in focus.

They also trimmed the “mouthful of peanuts” line from the Air Force One cockpit (a 1978 Jimmy Carter joke). Apparently, in the bewildering minds of the ABC Family standards enforcers, the Twin Towers never existed — and a Democrat was never president.

Good thing I have these movies on DVD.

They're both Big Ten schools

I was going to cobble together a Ten Best Movies of 2006 — but it's been kind of an off-year, and I don't think I saw 10 new films worth mentioning. Casino Royale, The Departed, An Inconvenient Truth come to mind, but after that?

TV has been another matter, though — possibly one of the best years in television since the mid-80s NBC lineup of Cosby-Family Ties-Cheers-Night Court-Hill Street Blues? The early-90s peak years of Seinfeld, Simpsons, SNL, Letterman, and Conan? At any rate, the pickings have been good this year, so here's a crack at the ten standouts:

1. Battlestar Galactica
Who would've thought? It took the show two full seasons to really find its swing, but on the heels of the best cliffhanger since Bobby Ewing showed up in Pam's shower, the writers of this show stepped up and gave this (vastly underrated) cast some amazing material to kick off season three. And with Deadwood now off the air and Lost running in circles, their timing couldn't be better.

2. Deadwood
Oh Al, we hardly knew ye. Three 12-show seasons just barely scratched the surface of what this show could have been, had HBO let it live and breathe. Sanfansisco cogsuggers.

3. House
Admittedly, the current season has been its weakest so far, but the show's still as addictive as those Vicodin tablets Hugh Laurie keeps popping (and this from a guy who dislikes medical dramas immensely). Like other successful character-driven shows (Cheers, Friends), the show's strength lies in its six central characters — and it weakens when recurring “guest” characters intrude upon their circle (like last year's Sela Ward and this year's David Morse).

4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Underrated and much-maligned, this post-Heroes gem survived cancellation and lives to fight again in 2007. Maybe too many people were (inexplicably) expecting another West Wing from Sorkin, or maybe a show about liberal Hollywood comedians just confuses and confounds the Red-Staters... but I say SCREW THEM. They got the president and the war they wanted (and deserve). Well, this is the show I want. And deserve.

5. Smallville
Don't know how many times I decided this show was just too lame to keep watching. Still, I kept coming back, sometimes out of nothing more than habit. This year, after five seasons of crawling along in first gear, the writers finally took some bold steps — killing off one of their best characters, giving Martha something to do besides look worried, and letting more than a couple of supporting characters in on Clark's secret (the fact that Lois is practically the only one left who doesn't know is actually pretty comical). If nothing else, I salute them for finally letting the show gather some momentum. What's more, they've thrown in a lot of love notes to comic-book fans: guest appearances by Green Arrow, Brainiac, and Martian Manhunter, a peek inside the Phantom Zone, and — slated for 2007 — a fledgling Justice League.

6. Heroes
I'm still not as sold on this one as the rest of world seems to be, but I give Heroes very high marks for sheer potential. One hopes they've just been patiently laying the groundwork for a truly epic series — but in 2007 they'll have to prove (to me, at least) that they're selling something more than snake oil.

7. How I Met Your Mother
The sit-com is not quite dead. This show didn't quite grab me in its first season, but Maus loved it and so it stayed in the Tivo cue. Now, I have to admit I'm enjoying this Friends-wannabe, for two reasons: 1) the lead character, Ted, is no longer the whiny, depressed loner he was last year, but actually a funny guy; and 2) Doogie. Neil Patrick Harris carries this show with his hilarious self-involved womanizer Barney (think Dan Fielding in his late 20s). And Mother makes a great 30-minute appetizer before the heavy 2-hour Monday night main course of Heroes and Studio 60.

8. Star Trek - 2.o & “Redux”
In 2006 we were treated to two new variations on classic Star Trek. First, G4 barreled through the entire series in just 14 weeks with Star Trek 2.0, featuring aggregated series-long stats like “Torn Kirk Shirts” and “Scotty Doubtful” and “Uhura Undie Shots” — plus a real-time “Spock Market” which let the geeks at home invest in all the show's characters and technologies (Spock's stock tanked when he got court-martialed for mutiny, Scott's went wobbly when the transporters shorted out, and McCoy's took off after he cured the Horta).

Then, Paramount remastered and enhanced the original series for re-release, with better sound, more vivid colors, and new CGI effects. Unlike George Lucas, they did all this with reverence and respect for the original material, slipping in the new stuff gently and seamlessly — better views of the ship, more convincing backdrops, planetary details like clouds, rings, moons, etc. They even fixed it so the Gorn could blink. Both of these enterprises were a welcome twist on a very old favorite.

9. Big Love
I would've put Rome in this slot, but it occured to me that Rome wasn't on at all in 2006. Such is HBO's development schedule. So at least they gave us Big Love to fill in the empty space. It's about Mormons! And home-improvement stores! And nosy neighbors! Sort of a Desperate Housewives with just one husband. Maybe. I kind of forget — it's been a while since it was on and for all I know the second season won't come around until 2011.

10. Ugly Betty
Yep, it's pretty funny. And charming. And catching. America Ferrera's Betty Suarez has to be the best new character of the year. And Salma Hayek's cleavage should earn two Golden Globes for best supporting character.

And then there's Lost. Possibly the most aptly-named show of the year. It's off the list for 2006 only because I'm not convinced it's going to be able to return to the fine form of its first 1 1/2 seasons. I would love to be proved wrong. So, the show will have my undivided attention when it starts up again next February.

Honorable mentions: Boomerang is coming up in the world, with classic old episodes of SuperFriends, Fantastic Four, Batman, and Justice League Unlimited, all with no commercials (with the 10 minutes left over at the end of each half-hour, they show a long-in-the-vault cartoon — an old Teen Titans, or Aquaman, or even an old Fleischer Superman short). BBC America's Green Wing is nothing short of milk-up-your-nose funny (we're seeing the show two years behind its run in England, so technically we've been enjoying good TV from 2004). And on Maus's behalf, I must also tip my hat to Grey's Anatomy and Gilmore Girls, if only because they make my wife so happy.

Reverend Cleophus called home

In honor of the late great James Brown, as fine a toe-tappin' sermon as was ever howled from the pulpit of the Triple Rock Baptist Church of Calumet City, Illinois:

And now, people... and now, people. When I woke up this morning... I heard a disturbin' sound. I said, when I woke up this morning, people... I hearrrrrd a disturbin' sound! What I heard, was the jingle-jangle, of thouuuuusand lost souls. I'm talking about the souuuuuls, of all the men and women, departed from this life. Wait a minute! The Lorrrrrrd says the souls of us here on Earth is secret of divine life they'll not find. Because it's too late! Too late, yeah! Tooooooooo laaaaaaate for them to ever see again, the light they once chose not to follow! Don't be lost when the time comes! For the day of the Lord cometh, out of deep in the night. Amen! Amen!

DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT? DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT? HAVE YOU SEEEEEEEEEEEN THE LIGHT?

Praise God. And God bless the United States of America.

Joseph Barbera, exit stage left...

What can you say about a guy whose life defined Saturday Mornings through three decades? Anyone born in a TV-equipped household between the years 1955 and 1980 grew up in a Hanna-Barbera world.

The accumulation of titles and credits for Joe Barbera (1911-2006) is endless, but his Greatest Hits compilation would look something like this:

The Flintstones · Yogi Bear · Huckleberry Hound
The Jetsons · Top Cat · Magilla Gorilla
Jonny Quest · Tom and Jerry · Secret Squirrel
Space Ghost · Atom Ant · The Herculoids
Fantastic 4 · Banana Splits · Dastardly and Muttley
Scooby-Doo · Josie and the Pussycats · SuperFriends
Speed Buggy · Hong Kong Phooey · Dynomutt
Jabberjaw · Grape Ape · Godzilla
Jana of the Jungle · Richie Rich · The Smurfs

I hit my Hanna-Barbera years at the tail end of the 70s — Speed Buggy, Jabberjaw, and Captain Caveman were in my strikezone, and SuperFriends was right in my wheelhouse. I also remember liking Blue Falcon a lot, even though he was really just a straight man to Dynomutt (the Scooby-Doo cyborg).

My brother and I were only allowed to watch one show on Saturday morning, so we learned to choose carefully — in the post-SuperFriends era, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons almost always lost out to the 90-minute juggernaut, The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show. Fortunately for us, The Flintstones was a weekday-afternoon show, and thus didn't have to face off with the likes of Wile E. Coyote and the Legion of Doom. No telling how that would have turned out.

Wow, what are the odds?

Don't tell me I'm not willing to throw the monkey a banana when he does good: Bush did something right. A little late, given that O'Neil died three months ago — but then again, three months late is way ahead of Dubya's usual learning curve. It's still a classy move, considering O'Neil was passed over by the Hall of Fame earlier this year (to their eternal discredit).

That's right, sportwriters: You've been outclassed by George W. Bush. Sweet dreams.

It's winding

Hey, you hear that? The big storm that's been coming our way has just arrived. I just saw the rain switch from vertical to horizontal, heard the garbage cans falling over (smart move — keep those heads down), and it sounds like a whole fire battalion is hosing down the west side of my house. Also, the DirecTV signal of North By Northwest just cut out. Fortunately, I have the DVD. Don't tell me I'm not prepared for these emergencies.

Time to get the cats in the barn. See you all on the other side.

The goose is getting fat

Christmas is coming for sure. I present my evidence:

1) Tree. Big tree right smack in the middle of everything. It blocks my desk and the peripherals therein, forcing me to only use my laptop on battery power and thereby limiting all my online sessions to strict 2 1/2-hour intervals. It also blocks half my bar, forcing me to drink only from the left side, which fortunately is where the bourbon is kept.

2) I nearly burned down my house with faulty string lights. Only once I year do I tangle (literally) with anything electrical. I also cheated death multiple times during the hanging process. (Is it me that hangs the lights, or the lights that hang me?)

3) Someone's been topping my Makers with a float of macadamia nut liqueur (which, fortunately, also lives on the left side of the bar).

4) Maus is in the kitchen putting the Keebler gnomes to shame. As Nearly Blogless Jeff would say, “Let's get ready to rummm-balllllllll...”

5) Water in the basement. Usually a post-holiday treat, Squishmas has come early this year thanks to the November snows. This, friends, is the year I beat it. The seepy invader has gone into retreat since all that snow melted, but it will be back, and I'm all geared up and ready for when it makes its move. Bring it.*

6) Mid-December shopping panic starting to set in. As usual, when I review my gifting-manifest at the two-week mark, I find I've overdone it on one person and totally stiffed someone else. These are rotating honors — every year a new individual gets to be the lucky one who almost gets my cats for Christmas.

7) Good TV has gone away; good movies have kicked in. Studio 60, Heroes, House, Smallville, Lost are all in hibernation until 2007 (and Battlestar has just one more episode to go). Which is fine — come the big bleak dark of January, they will all be needed. Instead, the evenings are filling with A Chistmas Story, The Shop Around the Corner, Desk Set, Beautiful Girls, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Harry Potter, Miracle, It's a Wonderful Life, and Charlie Brown and Muppets galore. All this with a log burning in the fireplace, a mouthfull of rumballs chased with a sip of nutty bourbon, and a vague musty-ozonous whiff of bad wiring interlaced with seeping groundwater.

8) Finally, it wouldn't be Christmas without the familiar melodious strains of faithful believers of all stripes coming together in the spirit of the holidays and raising their voices in harmony to attack one another, point fingers of grinchiness, and sue each other for the right to be right. Oh, how you people warm my cockles. May your chestnuts get extra roasted this year.

*Note to the water: I'm engaging in rhetorical, hyperbolic chest-puffery here. I want only peace between us. I will be happy if we can just go our separate ways amicably. Please do not “bring it.” And Merry Christmas.

For your consideration

Last night we caught the fourth Chris Guest ensemble-improv-mockumentary (or the fifth, if you count Rob Reiner's seminal This Is Spinal Tap, which started the ball). And sadly, the buzz is true: For Your Consideration doesn't measure up to Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, or A Mighty Wind. I did enjoy it, though. Truly. But it does come up short in comparison with its predecessors.

For one thing, it literally comes up short — with such a grand cast, you really want everyone to get more screen time than a mere 86 minutes can accommodate. (Less than one minute of Michael Hitchcock and Don Lake? Only 15 seconds of Sandra Oh? You just know there has to be more good material left on the cutting-room floor.)

What really weighs this film down, though (spoilers here) is the third act, which is pretty much humorless and painful. And not painful in the wistful, compassionate way that A Mighty Wind was painful, nor in the heartbreaking manner of Guffman. It's hard-to-look-at, cringe-inducing painful — which can be OK if you follow with something lighter to bring the audience back up. Unfortunately, this one ends at its low point, so you walk out of the theater feeling... low.

Which is too bad, because the first 70 or so minutes are actually quite good — classic Guest fare. And the thing is, I've developed such a connection to this ensemble that I'd enjoy watching them in anything. I could watch them stuff envelopes for an hour and still be entertained.

At this point, most of these people only have to show up to induce a laugh. Fred Willard, Michael Hitchcock, Don Lake, Bob Balaban, et. al. are now officially funny on sight — but none more so than Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge.

It was also nice to see some of my favorite supporting actors from the previous films getting more screen time (such as it was) this time around — actors like Chris Moynihan, Jim Piddock (who played the greatest straight-man of all time alongside Fred Willard in Best in Show), and the fantastic Deborah Theaker, who stands alongside Catherine O'Hara (and all five Kids in the Hall) as one of Canada's funniest women.