There were almost 9000 respondents. Even allowing for the freaks of nature who voted multiple times, that’s a lot of goddamn people. The lowest-rated selection got a vote of 1.9% — that’s more than a hundred people.

In 8 hours or so, you will have your EDISON shirts.

– W

UK revisionist historian David Irving has been arrested in Austria under laws against denying the Holocaust.

Mr Irving was detained after a routine check on a motorway last Friday by police acting on a 1989 arrest warrant issued by a Vienna court, police said.

He told a libel hearing in London in 2000 that the Nazi gas chambers had never existed – that they were “completely fictitious”. Giving his verdict, the British judge said Mr Irving was “an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism”…

following the disaster
zone of US television

Commander in Chief: full season renewal.
Freddie: full season renewal.
Hot Properties: on the fence.
Invasion: full season renewal.
Night Stalker: canceled.

Close To Home: expected full season renewal.
Criminal Minds: full season renewal.
Ghost Whisperer: full season renewal. (??)
How I Met Your Mother: full season renewal.
Out Of Practice: full season renewal.
Threshold: three additional scripts ordered.

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart: canceled.
E-Ring: full season renewal. (???!!!!)
Inconceivable: canceled.
My Name Is Earl: full season renewal.
Surface: full season renewal.
Three Wishes: six additional episodes ordered.

Bones: full season renewal.
Head Cases: canceled.
Killer Instinct: three additional episodes ordered.
Kitchen Confidential: canceled.
Prison Break: full season renewal.
Reunion: on the fence. (and not under it?)
The War at Home: full season renewal.

Everybody Hates Chris: full season renewal.
Love, Inc.: on the fence.
Sex, Love & Secrets: canceled.

Just Legal: canceled.
Related: six more episodes ordered.
Supernatural: full season renewal.
Twins: five more episodes ordered.

(Via Programming Insider)

The other day, some sides from the script of Aaron Sorkin’s new pilot, STUDIO 7, fell into my hands: his new behind-the-scenes series, this one about a “Saturday Night Live”-style comedy show. Sorkin really has the knives out for “Saturday Night Live.” Heavily influenced by NETWORK (which characters acknowledge in the script, often a sign of the writer not being quite comfortable with his lift/homage and ethically covering his arse), it puts a WING-scale cast into a tangle of personal history.

Amusingly, one of them is a director who can’t work because of a drugs infraction that prevents him from getting insured, explained in such detail that it clearly comes from Sorkin’s own well-publicised adventures in drugsucking. There’s a few little quirks: one of the show’s cast is a committed Christian, kind of the “Ainsley” role, a figure of tolerance whose faith nonetheless causes her professional and relationship problems. (Apparently inspired by a Christian SNL comic.)

The whole thing comes wrapped, of course, in that wonderful dialogue. Sorkin has a few phrases he loves the sound of, that I suspect come from his family or friends: “I hate his breathing guts” is a phrase that’s turned up in WING (with a “your” in there), that always leaps out at me because I’ve never heard anyone else say it. Every writer has a few of those. It’s a nice little signature on the work, to be honest; it says there’s a single voice on the work, not a committee. (Of course, another writer friend suggests that it’s a bemushroomed Sorkin’s drug-enhanced attempt to follow a network note to the effect that “fucking” is still a no-no word.)

Doubtless Tommy Schlamme will come in and make it all strut and spin — some of the visual gags seem written for him and his timing. The casting will be interesting. The lead spends most of the sides I’ve read half-blind and out of his brain on Vicodin…

Fine interview with Patton Oswalt about “The Comedians of Comedy”:

That myth is that your career comes down to one set and you’ve got five minutes, you’ve got one chance and if you don’t reach out and grab it and hit a homerun, your career is over. We wanted to show that a career is a constantly mutating and evolving thing. Please don’t believe that fucking gladiatorial myth about standup or about any career. Your career should be part of your life, when you treat comedy like that you’re just saying that your life is just a function of your art. That’s fucking ridiculous. Your art should be a function of your life; you should have an ongoing life, growth and change. It should not come down to five minutes.

ENGINE Filthy Assistant Maddie Greene has her ENGINE t-shirt. You want your ENGINE t-shirt. You want to go to ENGINEwear and buy your ENGINE t-shirt.

Look at this.

Yes. All quiet on the webby front, for I am making with the Brainwork and Extreme Genius and such.

You may entertain yourselves by showing each other your bums or something.

– W

Your fellow Americans have spoken, Yanqui dogs, and This Is What They Want:

You heard right. 4 MORE years. Sure the law says you can only serve 2 terms. Repeal it! The country needs W in ’08. Show your continued support for George W. Bush by wearing the shirt or placing the sticker over (or next to) your W ’04 sticker. God Bless America.

NEXTWAVE: Cover for the second issue, art and design by Stuart Immonen:

Lifted off a MySpace bulletin from the photographer and writer Siege:

KT and I were interviewed about our relationship by Em and Lo for a big article they wrote for New York Magazine’s Sex Issue, titled “The New Monogamy.” A little snippet:

“These two are open in every sense of the word: with each other, with everyone they meet, even with the public (Siege has a blog on Nerve.com to which he posts documentation of their escapades). When we requested an interview, Siege invited us to the Williamsburg apartment he shares with Katie. We both hesitated, then Em suggested a coffee shop two doors down instead. We’re usually fearless about nosing into people’s relationships, but knowing that this couple entertains guests on a more intimate basis threw us off balance. “What if they hit on us?” Em asked, insisting that she be the stenographer so Lo could handle the majority of the eye contact. “What if they don’t?” replied Lo.

It’s a response Siege and Katie are familiar with. “If you’re attracted to a friend, it’s like, are you going to skeeve them out?” says Siege. “But if you’re not, are you going to insult them?” Like George C. Scott reportedly once told an actress [before a love scene], “I apologize if I get an erection, and I apologize if I don’t.”

To our pleasant surprise, however, there is absolutely nothing skeevy about Siege and Katie. They’re smart, funny, polite, hip, attractive, self-deprecating, and affectionate with one another. And that’s the most disconcerting thing of all. Call us snobs, but it’s easy to dismiss suburban swingers who show up at orgies with a Tupperware container or Bay Area hippies missing the irony gene. But when a couple like Siege and Katie decry strict monogamy? It makes you wonder, How old-fashioned, socially programmed, and ass-backward am I?”

I think you’ll find the article to be an enjoyable and informative read, so check it out. Sadly, it looks like KT and I were the only ones bold enough to use our full names in the piece, which I think sends an unfortunate and wrong message, that having a v2.0 relationship is somehow something to be ashamed of. If a little nuclear family, married in the old traditionally monogamous sense, wouldn’t be afraid to shout it to the world, why should we be?

It’s the fear of public scorn that has delayed every advance and evolution in human efforts throughout history. It’s the freethinkers and liberally-minded being shamed and intimidated into silence by the backwards and conventional that have retarded progress. I say fuck that. That’s why I’m so open about my life. When you live your life proudly in the open you have no fear of being outed, and without that fear, without that shame, others have no control. It’s freedom.

Scotland’s workplace smoking ban will not apply to submarines at sea, the Scottish Executive has revealed.

Workers are set to be allowed to light up in designated smoking rooms on Navy subs and refuelling vessels following a request from the Ministry of Defence…

Melissa, this shot just seems to capture so much about you:

Melissa Gira is currently working on her 11th WHORECAST podcast, previous episodes of which can be direct-downloaded here. You can subscribe to it using http://feeds.feedburner.com/whorecast.

By John Cassaday with Laura Martin:

“*starlet*”:

A woman receiving treatment for diabetes at a state-run hospital in eastern India lost one of her eyes after ants nibbled away at it, officials said today.

The patient, recovering from a post-surgery infection, shrieked for help as the ants attacked her on Sunday night, but nurses told her it was normal to feel pain from the infection.

Yesterday, the patient’s family saw a gaping hole with swarming ants in it when they lifted the bandage on her left eye.

Authorities of the Sambhunath Hospital in Kolkata said they were probing the incident…

Rachel Young:

Medicines regulators are monitoring the antiviral Tamiflu after reports from Japan that two teenagers who had taken the drug committed suicide.

The European Medicines Evaluation Agency said it was aware of the cases. But it said there was no evidence there was a direct link between Tamiflu and the teenagers’ suicides, and said flu itself could lead to delusions.

Japanese authorities have amended the patient information which comes with the drug to list psychiatric effects, such as delusions, in the list of side effects…