This link is here to keep [regular commenter] Caroline out of jail.

Looks like the flood is coming, what do we save.  You gotta have priorities - via digg

totally amazing - I can't remember where I saw these

This is horrible news for me, since I'm an SEC fan living in NC, The Raycom games are all available streaming on yahoo.com, now that ESPN has bought all those games the regional ones will be unavailable to me, meaning that I will miss about 6 UK basketball games a year

This video is both good and impressive.  It appears that they just did this on the spur of the moment.  it's really good.  I heard it on the Delta Park Project.

This paragraph is from Dave Barry's article today and is pretty much the best summation I have heard of the DNC anywhere:

That message, in a nutshell, is that Barack Obama represents hope and change and an attractive but nonthreatening wife and experience in the form of Joe Biden; whereas John McCain -- although he is a great patriot for whom the Democrats have the deepest personal respect -- is the warmongering environment-wrecking house-forgetting evil demon spawn of Satan.

This, from The Onion, is really hilarious, but if you visit the site, the headline is dirty

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.674452&w=425&h=350&fv=file%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Fxml%2F85481%2Fvideo%26autostart%3Dfalse%26image%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FOBAMA_SNOB_article.jpg%26bufferlength%3D3%26embedded%3Dtrue%26title%3DPortrayal%2520Of%2520Obama%2520As%2520Elitist%2520Hailed%2520As%2520Step%2520Forward%2520For%2520African%2520Americans]

THE ONION ISSUE 44-30

- Alias, storied Anticon producer and one of the nicer guys around, has a strong new album, Resurgam, out this week. I review it in this week's Phoenix.

- I also wrote this fairly silly article about "five books to read (or pretend you're reading)" to land your first college mate. It's kind of dumb and snarky, but that's sort of the point.

- I was also just thinking about how Michelle Obama looked pretty hot on Tuesday night at the DNC. Can't find a picture, but that's probably for the best. And, via Gawker, coverage of how the Convention is destroying MSNBC. (This makes it a significant bummer that their online video feed is just the convention proper and none of this bonkers commentary.)

- More big praise for the new Walkmen album. Still probably gonna write about that soon.

- And the latest in the Onion A.V. Club's awesome "New Cult Canon" series - which is pretty loosely defined, because most of these films are movie buff movies and not much more - about Lars von Trier's The Kingdom. (Do yourself a favor and read the piece on Showgirls. Hilarious.)

As Attaturk says, you would think this would get some attention from Media Man. You'd be wrong, I think.

Life is The Onion: "Eight Million Americans Rescued From Poverty With Redefinition Of Term."

Anyone interested (or at least, anyone who thinks the media is playing a fair or unbiased role) would find it a worthy exercise to compare and contrast this NY Times "news" article, published online yesterday, and one the Onion mockingly reported on in Time. I'll get you started:

The New York Times: Starting in law school, Mr. Obama began pulling together a large cast of mentors, well-connected and civic-minded friends who rose in Chicago and Illinois politics along with him, including a spouse he thought was ideal.
“He loved Michelle,” said Gerald Kellman, Mr. Obama’s community organizing boss, but he was also looking for the kind of partner who could join him in his endeavors. “This is a person who could help him manage the pressures of the life he thought he wanted.”
While he speeds along rope lines, Mr. Obama sometimes connects better one on one. In spare moments, he will surprise supporters — a doorman who scraped together a small contribution, an elderly woman he had heard enjoyed his memoir — with an out-of-the blue phone call. Waiting backstage to speak to 20,000 people in Seattle in February, Mr. Obama grew so absorbed in talking to a retired Michigan couple that he had to be reminded not to miss his entrance cue.

The Onion: The 24-page profile, entitled "Boogyin' With Barack," hit newsstands Monday and contains photos of the candidate as a baby, graduating from Columbia University, standing and laughing, holding hands with his wife and best friend, Michelle, greeting a crowd of blue-collar autoworkers, eating breakfast with diner patrons, and staring pensively out of an airplane window while a pen and legal pad rest comfortably on his lowered tray table.
Sherwood said he was granted full access to the candidate, and was permitted by chief strategist David Axelrod to ask any question he desired—an opportunity the reporter used to lob the easiest softballs at Obama yet, ranging from how happy he felt when he met his wife to what songs are currently on his iPod playlist.

The New York Times: Nearly a decade ago, Mr. Obama joined luminaries like George Stephanopoulos and Ralph Reed for regular seminars, organized by Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard and the author of “Bowling Alone,” about the deterioration of American community ties. As a young state senator from Illinois, Mr. Obama was one of the less prominent members of the group. But soon everyone was referring to him as “the governor” — a friendly smack, said Mr. Putnam, at Mr. Obama’s precocity and drive.
From an early age, Mr. Obama was taught by his mother to think grandly about his potential to help others. Once he reached adulthood, admiring teachers and mentors reinforced the message, steadily directing his sights higher and higher. As a law student, he mused about wanting to be mayor of Chicago; as a law professor, he talked about running for governor of Illinois; not long after that, he was running for president.
“I thought of him much more as a colleague” than a student, said Laurence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard for whom Mr. Obama worked. “I didn’t think of him as someone to send out on mechanical tasks of digging out all the cases.” Other students could do that, Professor Tribe added.
Mr. Obama’s campaign promotes accomplishments from his days in the Illinois Senate: He successfully championed campaign finance and racial profiling laws, as well as child care subsidies and tax credits for the working poor. But “he didn’t participate in rank-and-file things,” said John Corrigan, a former consultant to the State Senate’s Democratic caucus. “He was destined for something bigger than potholes.”

The Onion: "When the American people cast their vote this November, this is the piece of fluff they're going to remember," Stengel said. "Not the ones by Newsweek, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Economist, Nightline, The Wall Street Journal, or even that story about lessons Obama learned from his first-grade teacher we ran a month ago."
"Situations like these are when you have to get on the phone and talk, not only to his mother, but to his aunt, his uncle, a Boy Scout leader, or maybe even one of his camp counselors growing up," Sherwood said. "And if they don't return your call, you turn to Sunday school teachers and former babysitters—anyone who is willing to go on record and say that Barack Obama was a really good kid who was destined for great things."

The New York Times: These voters are not the first to see a contradiction between Mr. Obama’s aura of specialness and his insistence that he is just like everyone else.
Last month, while visiting Jerusalem, Mr. Obama crammed a note in the Western Wall that was promptly fished out and posted on the Internet. The message was elegantly phrased, as if Mr. Obama, a Christian, had anticipated that his private words to the Almighty would soon be on public display.
In the note, Mr. Obama asked for protection, forgiveness and wisdom, a message in keeping with the humility he tries to emphasize. But his uncanny self-assurance and seemingly smooth glide upward have stoked complaints from his critics and his opponents...

The Onion: Sherwood was also fearless in his effort to paint the candidate as someone who is "surprisingly down to earth," a phrase that is used a total of 26 times throughout the feature.
The article, which follows Obama for 12 days during his campaign, was written by reporter Chris Sherwood, and is relentless in its attempt to capture the candidate at his most poised and polished. Sherwood said the profile easily trumps all other fluff pieces in its effort to expose the presidential candidate for who he really is: "an awesome guy."

[Just to be clear: the Onion article, which was published July 18, points out the unabashed fawning coverage Obama gets in the media; the Time article it cites is made up by them. But the NY Times article I quote here is real, and was published yesterday (and I suspect will be found in today's print edition). I guess you could pretty much switch out the Onion's fake quotes for real ones from the Times and have a factual article from the Onion, and still an unreservedly pro-Obama "puff piece" in the NY Times masquerading as news.]

[update, 3:50 pm: The New York Times story did indeed make the print edition, and no less a place than front page, above the fold, with a jump to a full-page story inside.  Disgraceful.]

The actual story was first published in 2002 in one of the largest papers in the country, Aftenposten.  Much like an article from the Onion, most of the humor is in the concept of the story.  Here's a choice quote, though:

"This is the first time I have heard that moose are getting drunk. But I assume that they react the same way people do to intoxication - some become harmless while others are the exact opposite," said district veterinarian Paul Stamberg in Kristiansand.

Nice to know that Norwegian moose behave the same way as Norwegian humans.  The real question is when the government is going to find a way to tax the moose alcohol!

Not being one to want to talk about someone behind his back, I sent Neil this question through his website and, unsurprisingly, didn't get a reply back. Neil's a busy guy, so he's upfront about the fact that he can't respond to every question.  He has also covered so much ground in the seven years he's had his journal that he points out on his message-leaving page that a search of his site is in order before leaving messages because he's probably already answered whatever it is the reader wants to know.

I did a search for the term "wife" on Neil's site before sending him my question about why he rarely mentions his wife and let me tell you, for the 400 or so hits I got back, finding the ones that directly related to his wife was like finding a marble at the bottom of a pond.  I was willing to let that marble stay at the bottom of the pond because I wasn't that bothered by not knowing who Neil's wife is.  I wasn't even curious enough to conduct a Google search until I began getting hits on this blog for Neil Gaiman's wife and, in playing around with my Facebook page, happened upon a Facebook page for Neil.  Funny that.  He recently said that he didn't have time to create a page and, indeed, this one looks unofficial, having been cobbled together from his Wikipedia entry.  It named his wife as Mary T. McGrath.  (That deserves bolding - Mary T. McGrath.)  I promptly Googled "Mary T. McGrath" and pretty much every entry that came up referenced her in relation to Neil, but gave no other info.

[8/28/2008 - Due to privacy concerns expressed to me via email by the Web Goblin, I have removed this paragraph.  My sincere apologies for any trouble I've caused Neil, his family, or staff. - MW]

In examining Neil's Wikipedia page, I realized that almost all of the information therein was stuff I had read on Neil's journal at some time or another.  This, and all those hits on my blog for Neil's wife, made me want to do a more complete search of his journal.  If there was anything to discover about Mary T. McGrath, surely Neil was the best source.  Over the course of this past week, I searched the journal using the terms "wife," "Mary," "mom," and "mother" and teased out any posts referencing her.  This was no small feat because Neil has used these terms in reference to lots of different people.  I did what I could and what follows is my compendium of what I found.  I make no guarantees about having found every possible reference to Neil's wife, but this will give the curious a good place to start.  Pay particular attention to the first link, which I did not find on my very first search of Neil's journal.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/12/get-well-soon-julie-and-so-on-and.asp

Wherein Neil answers a question about why he doesn’t mention his wife.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About_Neil/Interviews/An_Interview_with_Neil_Gaiman_by_John_Krewson,_The_Onion

An interview between John Krewson of The Onion and Neil Gaiman in which Neil mentions he has an American wife.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About_Neil/Interviews/Neil_Gaiman:_%27I_enjoy_not_being_famous%27_by_Porter_Anderson,_CNN_(July,_2001)

CNN story on Neil posted by Neil on his blog – Neil’s wife is mentioned.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2002/01/lots-and-lots-of-helpful-people.asp

In which Neil’s wife asks him to take out the garbage.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/07/cucking-claptrap.asp

In which Neil says he wouldn’t inflict a booksigning tour on a dog, let alone his wife.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/Neil_Gaiman_on_Dave_McKean

In which Neil and wife give the gift of chocolate.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/06/hmg.html

In which Neil recalls the birth of his daughter Holly – an event his wife had a pivotal role in.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2001/11/and-there-ive-done-last-draft-of.asp

In which Neil plays with a digital camera and his wife makes commentary on his photos.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/03/more-on-free-and-suchlike.html

In which Neils says he didn’t marry his wife to get to America.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/agblogarchive/2001_07/

July 2001 blog archive page (which means a lot of freakin’ scrolling to find what you’re looking for, but I’m going to narrow things down a bit – check the end of the July 27, 2001 entry) – In which Neil mentions that his wife loves Italy.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/agblogarchive/2001_09/

September 2001 blog archive page – more scrolling. Go to Neil’s second post on September 9, 2001 – the one posted at 11:48 a.m. – to see his conversation with his wife concerning Maddy’s two violins. Incidentally, Neil’s understated reaction to 9/11 is on this page.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/12/sleep-now-maybe.html

A post in which a reader asks who is taking care of Maddy while Neil and the wife are away. Neil’s wife returned in time to pick up where Neil left off.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/04/bet-you-thought-i-was-dead.html

In which a reader asks Neil if his wife is the Web Elf. No, she isn’t.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/11/evil-and-goats.html

In which a reader wonders if Neil locks his wife in a turret. Neil doesn’t answer that question.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2002/10/so-last-week-before-trial-when-i-was.asp

In which Neil’s wife suggests that Neil take Maddy on an adventure.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/06/whales-beavers-unborn-rabbits-and.asp

In which Neil mentions that his wife got him an awards cabinet because she was tired of tripping over his awards.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/11/balancing-acts-and-mithras.html

In which a reader asks how Neil balances all of his travel with family time and whether his wife is okay with this. Neil did not speak on behalf of his wife.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/10/end-of-round-one.html

In which a reader asks Neil if his wife was upset that he lost a thousand dollar Waterman pen. Neil did not answer for his wife.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/06/i-also-named-boston-brands-dog.asp

In which Neil tells Holly the circumstances of her birth (including the fact that Mom drove while having contractions) and embellishes things a bit.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/12/tonight-christmas-present-ghost-of.asp

In which Neil’s wife gets him a Swiss Army Knife for Christmas.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/01/in-amsterdam-airport-en-route-to-paris.asp

In which Neil shaves his beard and nobody, not even his wife, notices.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2001/06/american-gods-blog-post-67_03.html

In which Neil’s wife points out that he’s English.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/07/in-which-author-is-briefly.asp

Neil is nocturnal; his wife is diurnal.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/06/extraordinary-piccolo-players-and.asp

In which Neil’s wife thinks a two-headed bunny is sweet.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/04/heigh-ho-glamorous-life.asp

In which a reader asks if Neil’s wife remembers Neil’s name anymore. Neil doesn’t respond to that.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/05/regaining-my-marbles.asp

Neil’s wife likes Passion.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/snow-shovelling.html

In which Neil explains his American wife’s belief in weather predictions.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About_Neil/Interviews/Neil_Gaiman:_%27I_enjoy_not_being_famous%27_by_Porter_Anderson,_CNN_(July,_2001)

A CNN article by Porter Anderson that says that Neil and his wife moved to the U.S. in 1992.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/01/bits-bobs-blobs-blits.asp

In which Neil’s wife wants a report back on a show.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/03/proper-post-with-stuff-in.html

In which Neil’s wife lets him know that Maddy has returned home safely.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/11/what-i-did-next.html

In which Neil has dinner with his wife.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/12/early-night.html

In which Neil’s wife is in Italy with Holly.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/12/early-night.html

In which Neil’s wife understands her daughter Maddy’s need to take haircare products to England.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/06/i-still-havent-improved-on-this-whole.html

In which Maddy says hi to her mother.

]]> http://wirsprechenonline.wordpress.com/?p=1708 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:21:33 +0000 Gerrit Eicker http://wirsprechenonline.wordpress.com/?p=1708 http://Decider.com is The Onion's competitive answer on Citysearch; http://is.gd/1XcR

(Also, Features Editor Joe Garden sells tampons and candy bars outside his office. True story.)

The Onion can do no wrong if you ask me. Top notch journalism!

greg

She leads the story off using the John Edwards webisodes shot by Rielle Hunter as an example of a web series. Wait, huh? Edwards' use of video may technically be a web series in that there is more than one episode, and you can watch it on the web -- but classifying this bit of politicking as a web series seems misguided. This was basically an ad -- or a cool way to pick up chicks, depending on your point of view. But I wouldn't put Rielle Hunter's work in the same story with Marshall Herskovitz's.

She also cites webisodes for hit TV shows like The Office and Battlestar Galactica as almost tacky examples of web series. But while these may be more serial in nature, they wouldn't exist without their TV counterparts (Why do you think studios wanted them classified as "promotion" during the writers' strike?). As she points out, they were made to embrace viewers from the TV show -- the fans. But so what? Fans get obsessive, why is the opportunity to create a bigger fictional world online so bad in and of itself?

For such a savvy reporter, Herffernan seems woefully out of date. She references Afterworld, lonelygirl15 and quarterlife as name-brand serials. Too bad all those series ended (technically, season one of Afterworld ended, but its producers have gone all Hollywood with Gemini Division and Woke Up Dead). She does reference Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but incorrectly says that iTunes is the only place to watch it (you can also sing along at Hulu). As the folks at Tilzy.TV point out, Heffernan' post doesn't even mention The Onion News Network, You Suck at Photoshop, Ask a Ninja or CollegeHumor's Hardly Working.

Heffernan basically calls web serials the slower cousin of viral videos. Why she feels the two need to be exclusive of one another rather than complementary is unclear. True, Chocolate Rain is fun to pass around, but sometimes people need more substance. That's why CBS carries both Big Brother and 60 Minutes.

Where Heffernan does make a valid point about web series is when she says that she doesn't like to watch web serials as serials. I don't think the web has spawned a "must-see-newteevee" show yet that has people marking their calendars either. This could be for a few reasons:

1. There is a ton of content out there, not to mention all the other media we consume, so keeping track a particular show is tougher.

2. With the three-to-five minute episode length of most web series, it's more difficult to engage the audience as fully as you can with a half hour or hour-long drama. Plus watching web series is usually not done in a vacuum. On a PC, instant messaging, email and even other web browsing are all just a click away.

3. The content hasn't reached a mass audience yet. Watching web video is just now becoming a more mainstream activity, and web series as an art form are really young. Give us a minute to get some decent acting and special effects, will ya?

Overall, I'm just not sure what Heffernan was going for in this article. She bounces around from political scandal to viral video to quoting Jean Cocteau about art and film. Heffernan nears the end of her piece with the following:

So where’s the true art? I’m not sure. I know I continue to prefer the strange, beautiful, comical and mysterious stuff of YouTube — the unclassifiable stuff — to the laudable efforts at nouveau serials by bona fide directors. But I still believe that, one day, another serial — not called a serial, maybe, and certainly not webisodes — will exploit the eccentricity of the virals and manage to make new and serious jokes about the truth-illusion-truth-illusion of cinéma vérité, which is what “lonelygirl15” once did. With that, the thrill of filmed “reality” will be returned to viewers, as it was in the early days of film, radio and television.

We've already written about why there won't be another lonelygirl, but maybe Heffernan should just relax and enjoy the web show (I'd recommend the genius adaptation of Get Your War On), though I wouldn't expect many more from John Edwards, anytime soon.

Update: Heffernan said in a post online that space constraints kept her from adding more web series to her rundown. She recommends series like 2/8 life, Drunk History, and Squeegees among others.

Apparently I missed quite a bit of good drama.

Via Playing Chess with Pigeons and Pharyngula I came across an article written by a creationist named Tom Willis.  Now, I'm not one to usually throw adjectives like "crazy", "kook", and "nutjob" around, but others have already done so in reference to Willis, and I'd be hardpressed to reject those descriptions after reading Willis' latest article.

To sum up, Willis believe that evolutionists (all of them, apparently--it doesn't matter what religious affiliation they may have) are ignorant, insane (even criminally so), socialist, etc.  Furthermore, evolutionists are doomed to be put to death by followers of the Antichrist.  In the meantime, however, Willis finds it entertaining to dream about what should be done with evolutionists before their unavoidable demise. 

Willis' ideas include:

Putting them in labor camps.
Forcing them to wear placards around their necks.
Force them to reject evolutionary theory.

It's quite entertaining.  In all honesty, it would make a wonderful satirical piece (think: "The Onion"), but since it doesn't appear to be satirical, it's just frightening.

Also, I am wondering how many of you will actually be saddened by this article. Is it really funny? I realize I am preachin' to the choir.  :)

Here you go!

CARPENTERSVILLE, IL—Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.

"I don't want to go to school," Bolduc told his parents, the crushing reality of his situation having yet to fully dawn on his naïve consciousness. "I want to play outside with my friends."

While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick him up on his first day of elementary school, his parents reportedly were able to "see the wheels turning in his little brain" as the child, for the first time in his life, began to understand how dire and hopeless his situation had actually become.

Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed. According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms.

This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario does not take into account additional time spent on homework, extracurricular responsibilities, or college, sources said.

"I can't wait until school is over," said the 3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount of time between now and summer, let alone the years and years of tedium to follow.

The concept of wasting a majority of daylight hours sitting still in a classroom when he could be riding his bicycle, playing in his tree fort, or lying in the grass looking at bugs—especially considering that he had already wasted two years of his life attending preschool and kindergarten—seemed impossibly unfair to Bolduc. Moreover, sources said, he had no idea how much worse the inescapable truth will turn out to be.

Shortly after his mommy, homemaker Ellen Bolduc, 31, assured him that he would be able to resume playtime "when school lets out," Connor's innocent brain only then began to work out the implication of that sentence to its inevitable, soul-crushing conclusion.

When pressed for more detail on the exact timing of that event, Mrs. Bolduc would only reply "soon." At that point, the normally energetic child grew quiet before asking a follow-up question, "After [younger sister] Maddy's birthday?" thereby setting the stage for the first of thousands of rushing realizations he will be forced to come to grips with over the course of his subsequent existence.

Madison Ellen Bolduc was born on Sept. 28.

After learning that the first grade will continue for eight excruciating months beyond that date, it was only a matter of time before Bolduc inquired into what grade comes after first grade, and, when told, would probe further into how many grades he will have to complete before allowed to play with his friends.

The answer to that fatal question—12, a number too large for Bolduc to count on the fingers of both hands—will be enough to nearly shatter the boy's still-forming psyche, said child psychology expert Eli Wasserbaum.

"When you consider that it doesn't include another four years of secondary education, plus five more years of medical school, if he wants to follow his previously stated goal to grow up to be a doctor like his daddy, this will come as an interminably deep chasm of drudgery and imprisonment to [Connor]," said Wasserbaum. "It's difficult to know the effect on his psychological well-being when he grasps the full truth: that his education will be followed by approximately four decades of work, bills, and taxes, during which he will also rear his own children to face the same fate, all of which will, of course, be followed by a brief, almost inconsequential retirement, and his inevitable death."

"Even a 50-year-old adult would have trouble processing such a monstrous notion," Wasserbaum added. "Oh my, I'm 50 years old."

The first of Bolduc's remaining 2,299 days of school will resume at 8 a.m. tomorrow. On the next 624 Sundays, he will also be forced to attend church.

Aaron Sorkin Announces New 'West Wing' Animated Series At SorCon

I still miss The West Wing. I love the description of the fans in this section of The Onion's story:

"I'm excited to bring my Emmy Award–winning writing to the field of animation," Sorkin said in a speech before approximately 30,000 screaming fans, many of whom were dressed up in the business-suit costumes of their favorite Sorkin characters.

Cop Vows To Hunt Down Punk Who Successfully Pressed Brutality Charges Against His Partner

August 18, 2008 | Issue 44.34

DETROIT—Christopher O'Dell, a 16-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department, told reporters Monday that he will not rest until he exacts revenge on the man who got his long-time partner, Officer Rick Noonan, 38, suspended for using excessive force during an arrest at a peaceful demonstration last March. "That punk is going to get what's coming to him again," O'Dell said. "If it's the last thing I do, I'll make sure that scumbag is taken off the streets, not properly informed of his Miranda rights, chained to a radiator beneath the station, and kept awake for days of interrogation without being formally charged." O'Dell added that the suspect in question is going to wish he had never filed a complaint for sustaining a concussion and broken collarbone after O'Dell is finished breaking his leg and giving him a concussion.

I <3 The Onion .. ""Michael seemed really excited to be back," said Bowman, adding that the male swimmer became playful upon entering his tank, breaching the water and sounding repeatedly. "He just started swimming freestyle and backstroke, and only stopped to slide belly first onto the tank's platform so he could be fed dozens of fried egg sandwiches.""