My first full-length Hunter S. Thompson book! In memory of the good doctor, I got drunk before writing this blog entry.

This book took me months to get through. It’s 500 pages with very small print, and I was mostly reading it ten pages at a time on lunch breaks.

On the Campaign Trail ’72 is a collection of monthly articles Thompson wrote for Rolling Stone about the 1972 presidential campaign. The first half, covering the Democratic primary, is frankly pretty slow. It’s mostly horse race analysis, culiminating in a lengthy interview about the complex strategy engineered at the Democratic convention to ensure McGovern received the nomination. I skipped the interview, which was mostly incomprehensible even to a political junkie like me. The horse race stuff may have been groundbreaking in its time, but that’s the only type of media coverage we get these days, so I found it tiresome.

The second half of the book is better. George McGovern, Thompson’s favored candidate, started out 30 points behind Nixon and never recovered, losing everything but MA and DC on Election Day. Thompson’s tone is angry and depressed as he finds himself covering a campaign doomed from the start. But he relays several fascinating anecdotes, notably a precisely-planned “spontaneous” rally by the Nixon Youth and a tense march by disgruntled Vietnam vets through the streets of Miami to the Republican National Convention.

It’s remarkable the way history repeats itself. I saw all kinds of parallels between the ’72 election and the ’04 race between Bush and Kerry. It really is difficult to unseat a Republican incumbent in wartime, even a corrupt one, and even if the war is unjust.

In retrospect, I probably should’ve started my Thompson experience NOT with his dense political ramblings, but the same way everyone else does: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I’ll read that one soon enough.

Last night’s Bruce Campbell appearance was something of a disappointment. All I wanted was a book signature and a phonecam pic for my blog, but it turns out I had to purchase my copy at the University Bookstore to qualify for either. No one else got in.

It was probably for the best, since by the time I showed up there were several hundred people already in line. Instead of a three-hour wait, I watched the Q&A from the balcony, then went home, had dinner, and came back for the 10pm showing of The Man with the Screaming Brain.

Which, as it turns out, was not the secretly-brilliant b-movie (a la Bubba Ho-Tep) I’d hoped for, but more or less the quality of an average Sci-Fi Original Movie. Which is what it is. And it didn’t start until 11pm due to massive lines, so I left before the end to go home and sleep. Did I mention it cost $12 to get in?

Ah well. Live and learn.

Bruce has fully embraced the b-movie lifestyle, labelling them “B for Better.” He had a prepared rant, with notes jotted down on a 3×5 card, regarding the “creative bankruptcy” of Hollywood and its current offerings. Point made well enough, especially when he growled, “Herbie?! That movie’s been remade so many times even I’ve starred in a version!” But the crowd was strangely quiet during his Batman Begins tirade, probably thinking (as I was), “Um… but I liked that one.”

Bruce as a cult phenom may be almost played out, though, as far as I’m concerned. His writer/director/actor/nineteen-years-in-the-making film turned out to be underwhelming, and as of halfway through Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way, some of the humor works and some is broadly unfunny.

Worse, now I’m imagining the crowds at San Diego Comic-Con. I’m tired of being combined ATM and cattle — paying lots of money to stand in long lines — and SDCC is far, far worse about that. If Bruce drew this kind of crowd on a Monday night in Seattle, how many of the 80,000 nerds will want to see him in San Diego? He could fill a stadium. The mind boggles.

When I was hired at my new job, they said I’d have a salary review after a couple of months. That would be right around now, and on Thursday I was informed that my salary would be increased. I won’t say how much because you never know who’s reading this blog, but it was more than I was expecting. A lot more. Once the raise kicks in, I’ll be making more than I was in Tucson.

I’m about to be awash in surprise cash.

Frighteningly enough, one of my first thoughts was to give comic book self-publishing another go. Could someone please, PLEASE, shoot me in the head if I start in that direction again? I’d lose seven grand on it, easily…

Meanwhile, late last night I finished “On Charity,” the short story that’s occupied my time for three months. When I decided to turn one night’s odd dream into a story, I figured it would be about 1,500 words. Then I fleshed it out with a character backstory and my plans ballooned to 5,000 words.

Eight thousand words later, it’s done.

I’m not even sure it’s halfway decent anymore. So I’m going to do something that I never do: a second draft.

I can hear other writers chortling out there, but it’s my weird writing habit. It takes me ages to complete a first draft, but when it’s finished, it’s finished.

Just not in this case.

And none of you (except Vern) are going to see “On Charity” until I’m sure it doesn’t suck.

I saw Batman Begins last weekend. Short review: it’s good.

Longer review: It’s mostly good. Nolan films the fight sequences in close-up shakyvision, meaning he doesn’t know how to photograph or edit a good action-movie fight scene. So you’ll just have to be satisfied with excellent characterization, dark atmosphere, well-placed humor, and stark realism. That’s enough for me. I’ll admit, my head came out of the theater buzzing with the coolness of it all.

Batman even does some detective work! Yes, the longtime star of Detective Comics actually solves a crime by following clues. Next thing you know, James Bond will start doing some spying on other countries.

I also just read V for Vendetta, a work from the early 80s by comics god Alan Moore. Its protagonist V is a caped mutant in a Guy Fawkes mask plotting to overthrow a fascist British state (real fascism, not the bush league variety) in the far-flung future of 1997.

I wish I could say I picked it up out of a burning desire to read every great book of Moore’s (although that desire exists), but it’s more because the Wachowski brothers are releasing a movie version in November. (The weekend of Guy Fawkes Day, natch: Remember, remember, the fifth of November…).

This will be the second DC/Vertigo comic given the cinematic treatment, after Constantine, who was also a Moore creation. Moore hasn’t had terrific luck with adapations. He wrote perhaps the greatest graphic novel of all time, From Hell, and it was turned into good entertainment starring Johnny Depp. “Good entertainment” is usually a compliment, but when you start with the Greatest of All Time and cut out almost everything that makes it great… well, not so much. It was like Hamlet reworked as a tense murder mystery.

Then they turned Moore’s good entertainment The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — a comic so in love with Victorian fiction that my old online acquaintance Jess Nevins fills entire books cataloguing the references — into a steaming pile of crap.

All the while, Moore kept his distance, maintaining that the existence of the movies did not negate the quality of the books. Well, no more. He’s moved future volumes of League to Dark Horse to keep it away from Time-Warner, and pre-emptively disowned the upcoming V for Vendetta film. He gave his Vendetta option money — the whole $8,000 — to the artist David Lloyd.

I’m not yet sure what he’s upset about. Vendetta could easily be updated for the post-9/11 world by gutsy filmmakers, and if it hasn’t, then perhaps that’s enough. I don’t know. But I’m interested in finding out this November.

Cory Doctorow is offering his latest novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, for free download, just like the rest of his books. He theorizes that his online giveaways drive his bookstore sales, and I’m inclined to believe him.

Me? I’ve never been able to read an entire novel online. I spend too much work time in front of a computer to enjoy my spending my pleasure reading time there as well. But if I had a PDA, I’d be all over this.

Not Bruuuuuuuuce, as in Springsteen, but BRUCE. As in Campbell.

He’ll be a special guest at San Diego Comic-Con next month, but I won’t have to wait that long. One week from today, as a stop on his “Summer of Love” tour, he’ll sign his new book Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and screen his new flick The Man with the Screaming Brain at the Neptune Theater in Seattle. It’s about a mile from where I work, so I’m gonna try to be there.

(Yeah, more politics… with James still in China, I have no one to IM this stuff with.)

The Downing Street Memo, which by this time should need no introduction but apparently does, is finally starting to get some traction. The AP released some stories about it (a month and a half after the story broke), meaning it’ll get some play in the local papers now. And a handful of papers, even in “red” areas, have printed angry op-eds demanding answers.

Granted, some of us suspected the Bush administration was “fixing the facts around the policy,” lying about the threat Saddam posed, way back in 2002 while it was going on. Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, the IAEA, and a handful of anonymous CIA sources all said Saddam’s WMDs didn’t exist, but they were mocked and ignored. But now everyone else knows, too, or will know soon.

Britain’s Sunday Times continues to publish new documents, one at a time. I wonder who on Downing Street is leaking these things. Blair’s alliance with Bush has cost him dearly at the polls, which makes me think someone over there is trying to take Bush down a notch or twelve, so Blair can ally himself with whoever comes next.

It almost feels like there’s a Perfect Storm brewing. The Memo refuses to go away, and neither does Guantanamo. Gas prices aren’t coming down, but housing prices inevitably will. (See also: the latest issue of The Economist.) Bush’s approval has already dropped to 42%, and congressional Democrats were recently shocked to discover that their latest projections have them gaining seven seats next year.

Some people are even starting to talk impeachment, despite Republican control of both houses.

Interesting times.

Just when you thought my blog was politics-free…

For decades, the right wing has decried what they call the moral relativism of the left. And yet every defense of the acitivites inside Abu Ghraib and Gitmo runs along the lines of “the insurgents are beheading people — that’s much worse!”

Yes, beheading people is much worse. It’s also beside the point.

The administration used Amnesty International’s criticism of Saddam to justify the invasion, then dismissed the same group’s description of Gitmo as a gulag. They can’t have it both ways.

If that isn’t moral relativism, then what is? “It’s moral when we do it, but not when they do it.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), as lampooned on The Daily Show, defended Gitmo by reading the prisoners’ menu. Apparently, the torture of uncharged, secretly-held political prisoners is A-OK as long as they’re served rice pilaf afterwards.

Oh, but it gets worse. The conservative blog Powerline is now selling “I [heart] Gitmo” t-shirts to “support the troops,” and everyone’s favorite oxycontin addict offers similar t-shirts reading “Club Gitmo: What happens in Gitmo stays in Gitmo.” They’re no longer torture-apologists, they’re torture-EMBRACERS. Republicans heart torture!

I think my Anger Well must be almost dried up, because I keep dropping the bucket in and it comes up empty. I’m more fascinated than enfuriated. This period in history is truly a satire of itself.

Their argument for Gitmo is “it’s only SORT OF like a gulag! It’s not as bad!” Officially-sanctioned torture conditions are excusable, because we haven’t killed millions like Stalin (our death count is only in the 30s), gassed Jews like Hitler, or actually electrocuted any genitals (only pretended to).

As long as we’re talking scale, am I allowed to label them “Fascists, but not as bad?” Can I call them the Junior Fascist movement? Kinder, Gentler Fascism? Perhaps… Bush League Fascism?

(Incidentally, James Wolcott has a great post today on this very subject and cable news’s coverage of it.)

This link is a couple of years old, but I just re-encountered it today and it cracked me up all over again. Go and read The Cuddly Menace, a spoof of one of those “Little Golden” children’s books.

Find video of The Daily Show‘s instant-classic coverage of the Michael Jackson verdict and its accompanying cable news hysteria by clicking here. They skipped Rob Cordrey’s report from Neverland, though.