whether Esquiver can vote for a presidential candidate that misuses an apostrophe so egregiously on the first line of a memo. (Less obvious: which/that errors deeper within.)

Did you know that the two colors in Slim's black-and-white plastic serving spoon have different melting temperatures? And the white plastic melts much faster? And looks like marshmallow when it does melt? Neither did I. This is why she doesn't let me cook for her.

Finland: "Theodore H. Frank johtaa Legal Center for the Public Interestiä, joka kuuluu American Enterprise Instituteen. Hän pyrkii kumoamaan tapauksen sovittelun, jota ei ole vielä lopullisesti hyväksytty."

Norway: "Det ser derfor mørkt ut for hele søksmålet. Trolig er det, på tross av de over to tusen klagene, for lite til å kreve at Take Two skal gi fra seg noe av fortjenesten de har hatt med GTA: San Andreas. Advokaten Theodore H. Frank, som er ekspert på private søksmål mener saksøkerne nå har to muligheter.

- Enten kan de satse på å gå til sak og vinne gjennom slik at de får dekket sine utgifter. Den andre muligheten, som jeg anser for mest sannsynlig, er at de har tatt på seg en verdiløs sak som aldri skulle hvert tatt for retten i første hånd, sier han, ifølge New York Times."

Update: also Netherlands: "Het optreden van de advocaten, er waren in totaal tien kantoren bij de class action betrokken, in deze zaak wordt bekritiseerd. Theodore Frank, advocaat en directeur van het Legal Centre for the Public Interest van de American Enterprise Institute, meent dat er onvoldoende grondslag was voor het aanbrengen van de zaak. Dat is ook de stelling van de uitgevers."

Charlton Heston was more than prepared.

Caught in the act of doctoring news clips to make a talking head's sensible comment seem silly.

Slim and I saw the new Batman movie at the "local" IMAX — $12.50/ticket, plus $4 in gas. It was a good comic-book movie, and a decent enough summer-blockbuster movie, but I don't understand the inordinate fuss being made about it, to the point that "The Dark Knight" has supplanted "The Godfather" as the #1 rated movie of all time on IMDB.

(Spoilers be here.)

Ok, we'll grant that Heath Ledger is very good as the Joker, and puts Nicholson's take to shame. (I haven't seen anyone note that the Joker's knifework is ironically reminiscent of Nicholson's fate in Chinatown.) I like that the backstory is taken for granted, and that the Joker has fun making up new backstories throughout the movie. I like that the Joker is acknowledged to be irrational, which solves why his crimes are irrational without retconning. It's a frightening comic book villain, filling the screen with a Tarantino-esque menace in a way that the cartoon villains in Iron Man or Spider-Man did not. Indeed, it's the scariest movie villain since... well, since November and Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh.

And that's the thing. There's a lot that's good here, but nothing groundbreaking, and a lot that is just passable. Threads of the plot just disappear. (A big to-do is made when Eric Roberts's character betrays the Joker's location to police, who get ready to storm the meeting he's holding with other mob bosses—and nothing comes of it.) Twice Batman falls from great heights, lands on his back, and walks away from the force—as does a victim who lands on him. Someone else falls four floors and dies. A bad guy, unbelted in the back seat, kills a driver, causing an automobile to crash and flip. The killer shows up a few scenes later unharmed; we never learn what happened to his fellow passenger. Bruce Wayne taps into the entire cell-phone network with a ludicrous sonar device. Two Joker schemes require ludicrously impeccable timing and coincidences to work.

In terms of the aesthetics, Nolan's Gotham is very plainly Chicago in every shot. I love Chicago, but its recognizable landmarks take one out of the illusion and the result doesn't live up to the magic of Burton's Gotham or even the Gotham of Batman Begins. (A scene talking about the Joker's terrorist threat on "bridges and tunnels" of Gotham is followed by a wince-inducing shot of police searching the tiny little bridges off of Wacker over the Chicago River--they clearly left Chicago to film a ferry sequence, why not film a real bridge?) Most of the action sequences are filmed in a blur of quick cuts making it impossible to follow (or really care) what's going on; so much for the elaborate choreography showing off Christian Bale's training. The Batmobile is still an ugly Bat-tank that probably causes more damage to innocents than it prevents. Bale is forced to talk in a monotonic rasp when wearing the cowl, and the dialogue is goofy.

Fun movie; enjoyable movie; yes. All-time great movie? No. Not even clear to me that it surpasses The Incredibles, X2, Spider-Man, or Robo-Cop as a superhero movie.

Separately, it's not clear to me that the IMAX was worth the extra effort (big commute plus 30 minutes of standing in line--and we were pretty far in the back of the line) and the loss of trailers. Any additional wow from the six-story screen was offset by the big distracting piece of dust on an uncleaned lens.

A 1414-sq-foot 2-bedroom condo in my building is on sale for $599,000, reduced from $667,000. In May, a 1105-sq-ft unit in my building sold for $580,000, and a 919-sq-ft unit sold for $543,000. An 1113-sq-ft unit in the building rents for $2600-2700/month, so one would think this could rent for $3200-$3400. I almost want to buy this myself and flip it.

For my own future reference:

• Brillat-Savarin, a triple-cream Brie from Normandy. Named for Jean-Anthelme.


• Humboldt Fog, a ripened goat's milk cheese from Cypress Grove. We had this last night, along with its inspiration, Morbier, and the Fog was clearly more popular. It's fascinating how it becomes runny along the rind; a unique cheese.


• Midnight Moon, another goat's milk cheese from Cypress Grove, but aged six months-plus. Slim's favorite cheese, so what better justification does one need?


• Lamb Chopper—one might as well get a third cheese from Cypress Grove, this one a dense sheep's milk.


• With sheep- and goat-milk cheeses inspired by Gouda, one might as well get a real Gouda for contrast. Roomano, a skimmed cow's milk Gouda from Holland, is aged up to six years, giving it a crystallized texture. Perhaps my favorite.


• Mimolette Extra Vieille, a French cow's milk that's a cross between Edam and Cheddar, dyed with annetto, aged two years.

All we're really missing from this list is a good blue. I'm inclined to choose Point Reyes or Big Woods or Cabrales, but I'm not convinced that will be what I would choose a year from now.

To try: Pierce PT and Rogue River Blue.

A two-minute Watchmen trailer is up, and it's freaking beautiful, positively stunning--I've watched it four times, and pick up new details of faithfulness to the source material each time. (The Gunga Diner blimp! An elderly President Nixon, presumably in his fifth term, on a background television screen!) Terry Gilliam once called the Watchmen graphic novel unfilmable. If anyone knows from unfilmable, it's the director of the failed Don Quixote movie and one hopes that Gilliam was either referring to the technical difficulty of making Watchmen with twentieth-century technology or is simply wrong. Future neighbor and GMU law professor Chris Newman snarked to me that Alan Moore comics never make good movies, but Zack Snyder clearly has the right artistic vision here. A lot can go wrong as Snyder cuts from 180 minutes to 145, but the trailer shows such minor scenes as Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian in Vietnam, the police strike, and the scene on Mars, so it's entirely possible they'll capture the entire fugue, if having to drop some matters like the Black Freighter story-within-the-story to a special-features DVD set.

A professor who should know better decided to make a point about public desecration of the host, and Catholics rose to the bait with death threats that no one seems to be taking seriously and other abuse. Some on the Left noted the analogy to Muslims taking offense at Korans touching the floor and at Mohammed cartoons, though the death toll ratio from the two events still remains in the dozens-to-zero range. (In less secular ages centuries ago, even the accusation of the desecration of the host was grounds for pogroms and massacres of Jews, however.)

That's not to say the left-wingers gleefully cackling over the ironies of Catholic League outrage don't have their own sacred ox—and as the TPM and Daily Kos and Huffington Post people fume over a satirical Barry Blitt cover about the Obamas, one can see what is above desecration for some people. Imagine the outrage if Obama's turban contained a bomb! Compare and contrast — and note the lack of outrage from the right over similar satire. That's just Barry Blitt's work: check out Michelle Malkin's reprint of a Rolling Stone cartoon of McCain and of several racist caricatures of Condi Rice.

Update: turns of phrase I wish I had thought of: "attack of the Jonathan Swiftboaters."

In the DC Examiner.

The New York Times shows which ox-gorings it cares about. Iran threatens to wipe Israel off the map? Meh. Iranian police regularly beat dissidents and women? Uncovered. Iran doctors a photo? Above the fold on the website.

I did a very good job of keeping myself ignorant about the Hancock movie, my knowledge coming solely from the excellent and funny trailer that sold me on the high concept of Will Smith as a dissolute Superman and Jason Bateman as the pr agent who tries to revive his bad public image. The trailer didn't even mention the other big star in the movie, who is a favorite of mine, and the sudden twist in the middle of the movie took me completely by surprise. It's been a long time since I've been that pleasantly surprised in a movie (mostly my own fault from reading too much entertainment press), so I wish I could've liked the movie more than I did, but the discordant pieces don't ever gel, and the movie mostly falls apart after a twist that should have made it much more interesting.

Bateman is very funny, the acting of the three leads is good (though the supporting cast doesn't provide a lot of support, and one wants to throttle every child actor who appears in the movie), the funny scenes from the trailer are funny, but not much else works. The directing and camerawork are appalling, two big set-piece action sequences in the middle and end of the movie don't work in the slightest, the writing was mediocre, and someone from the studio really should have done something about the weird and sudden tone-shifts and inconsistent characterization. It doesn't help that the main villain never read the Evil Overlord list. The movie never decides whether it's dark or light, and there's a racial dynamic that's never addressed. Slim complained about weird musical choices, too.

A quick Google search reveals that this was originally written as a very dark movie that got punched up to be more of a kids' movie, but the result kind of gets stuck in the middle without satisfying either goal. The movie is a very hard PG-13, and not appropriate for kids; apparently, the first two cuts were rated R. The seams painfully show where edits were made to satisfy the ratings board, but that really should have been anticipated much sooner and rewritten so the movie isn't standing on the PG-13/R line.

All of this is frustrating, because this easily could have been a much better movie if the script had been a bit more polished and if the director had been less intrusive.

An American Family Association search-and-replace function was a bit too aggressive when rewriting the story of Tyson Gay's record-setting 100-meter dash.