Hardball anchor Chris Matthews gets
ready to start his day.

• Last night, I sat through four hours of MSNBC primetime and live-blogged it on my Twitter. I probably won’t bother archiving it like I did with Morning Joe unless I find a thing that will do it for me.
• I think it was a mistake to start with Hardball, since that’s where all my vitrol and funniness went, and it made Countdown seem good by comparison, even though I usually find Keith Olbermann obnoxious.
• The night included the premiere of Lawrence “I wrote for West Wing” O’Donnell’s new punditshow, The Last Word. He’s a good dude and I wish him well, but his show was basically Countdown extended for another hour, with the same dumb Huffingtonesque stories (Y’all see the new Christine-no-relation-O’Donnell vid?? Check out what some meatheads said about Stephen Colbert’s testimony! Saturday Night Live is super-important, you guys!). Hopefully it will find its own identity as it continues.
• Rachel Maddow interrogated Richard Holbrooke, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the lawlessness of our undeclared drone war on Pakistan, and while it maybe wasn’t as strong as it could have been, it still made for worthwhile television. Why do I suspect she did it to make her co-workers look bad by comparison?

• I live-tweeted Morning Joe earlier this morning, which I’ve archived here with some pictures since it’ll eventually dissipate into the ether.
• Ok I didn’t pay attention to politics in the 90s because I was a kid, so I don’t really have a clear perception of who Newt Gingrich is* other than that he’s some guy from a billion years ago whose only job since then has been serving as a perennial possible presidential candidate for Beltway pundits to write down whenever they put together their little fantasy football teams. I’ve gathered that he’s perceived as “respectable” by the media or whoever, I guess because he’s articulate, wears a suit, and was important at one time. So why’s he trying to destroy this perception with all this jazz about Obama being an anti-colonial Luo tribesman and scaremongering 9-11/Left Behind snuff videos?? The Republican primary in the last election was already silly enough, with everyone jumping all over themselves to praise Ronald Regan and pledging to quadruple Guantanamo by throwing all the immigrants in there, but eventually GOP voters went with the least-silly guy amongst the bunch. Now, with all these birther and Tea Party and Sarah Palin shenanigans, things are bound to get even sillier, and none of the “possible candidates” have really stayed out of the fray to remain “respectable.” I DON’T THINK I’LL BE ABLE TO HANDLE ALL THIS SILLINESS!!!

  *yeah ok I know about the contract with america thing and shutting down the government and his marriagecrimes, etc., but what I mean is that I don’t really have a imaginary, media-constructed caricature of him in my mind, you know like “George Bush = folksy cowboy,” “Hillary Clinton = ambitious careerwoman,” “Al Gore = boring environment guy,” etc.

• I’m not sure how I feel about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s fauxtest thing. It’s annoying how much power Facebook groups seem to wield these days, like how they got Betty White to host Saturday Night Live (it’s FUNNY because she’s OLD!). Will all TV shows become entirely beholden to pandering to their fans and turn into televised Choose Your Own Adventure books in the process? Didn’t we all learn our lesson from Snakes on a Plane? Also, what’s up with Democratic consultants complaining that it will divert their apparently easily-distracted liberal activist minions from getting out the vote, as if Jon Stewart is supposed to be A Responsible Democrat or something? Oh man, if team blue loses, it’ll all be his fault, let me tell you…
• The Social Network is apparently getting MAD OSCAR BUZZ. I wonder what Mark Zuckerburg must be thinking. Wouldn’t it be weird if a big-time, fictionalized portrayal of your life, in which you are portrayed as a villain, suddenly became picture of the year? What did William Randolph Hearst think when Citizen Kane became lionized?
• While it’s my official policy to not give a shit about how much $$$cash money$$$ a movie made at the box office or how “shoestring” the budget was, it’s still disappointing Scott Pilgrim didn’t do better than it did. Once you get past its admittedly weird premise, I don’t think it was really as niche-y as the commercials made it out to be. Take the second scene, where Scott’s new girfriend shows up to see his band practice: he opens the door for her, the other guy slams it in her face, Scott opens it again and she’s only mildly befuddled, then he offers to take her coat, which he just drops on the floor. These are great, simple gags that don’t require any knowledge of video games, and the movie is chock full of them. They got to make the movie they wanted to make, and it still made way more money than I’ll ever see in my lifetime, so whatever.
• For the record, I am pro-Michael Cera, though I’m ambivalent to the stuff he did between Juno and Scott Pilgrim. I always thought he was underrated when Arrested Development was on, so it was pretty suprising when his star rose higher than his fellow cast members.
• I’m out of things to say, but I don’t want to end on Michael Cera. Hmm. How bout them Jets? Pretty good team, right? I’m assuming?

I feel like I owe King of the Hill an apology. I rarely watched it when it was on because it always seemed so dull compared to the surreal cartooniness of other Animation Domination (formerly “Da Boom”) fare like The Simpsons or Futurama. Sometimes I’d complain how the realism was a waste of animation. But lately I’ve been watching reruns on Adult Swim and I’ve grown to like it a lot and respect it immensely. Almost everything Hank Hill says is pure gold. You probably already knew that, though

• It’s stupid eye candy geared more towards showing off what they can do than benefiting the user
• It feels designed to make regular folk feel like they’re some super-important power user absorbing GIGABYTES OF DATA like some “L33T HAX0R” from some godawful movie from the 90s where the monitor somehow projects on their face, when they’re actually just looking for the lyrics to “When Mermaids Cry” by Eagle Eye Cherry
• Maybe I’m getting old but I don’t want to see a bunch of one-second flashes of information. I’M NOT A ROBOT, information overload makes me sick

• WOW thanks for searching the letter “r” for me google this is totally useful and not a complete waste of time
• You’re not going to get what you’re actually looking for until you’ve typed about 75% of your query, which means the multiple screens of search results you’re subjected to before that point are worthless garbage
• The blog post announcing it touted that it will eventually save you ELEVEN HOURS!!! But I thought people weren’t spending enough time on Google, which is why they’re supposedly making a new social network even though they already have several???
• Are Google engineers getting enough to do? Why do they keep adding worthless features to things? “Boy howdy I sure would like to phone my gmail friends from the browser, for some reason” – something that nobody in the world has ever thought to themselves

oh, so that’s why steve carell is leaving “the office”

John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise, “What You Did Not Know About Hoboes:”

And they devised a secret language of signs and scrawls used to alert their passing brethren to danger or opportunity. A crucifix chalked on the side of a house meant that religious talk would get you a free meal inside. A picture of a cat meant “a kind woman lives here.” […] And a picture of an H with sunrays around it meant that the hour had come: it was time to overthrow the government of the United States.

We all shared a good laugh as we listened to Hodgman wax nostalgic about the hoboes descending on Washington, only to be wiped out by polio. But now the hoboes are back, and they’re ready to overthrow the government for real this time.

Marc Lacey, The New York Times, “Republican Runs Street People on Green Ticket:”

Mr. Pearcy and other drifters and homeless people were recruited onto the Green Party ballot by a Republican political operative who freely admits that their candidacies may siphon some support from the Democrats. Arizona’s Democratic Party has filed a formal complaint with local, state and federal prosecutors in an effort to have the candidates removed from the ballot, and the Green Party has urged its supporters to steer clear of the rogue candidates.

The view, though, is different along Mill Avenue, where the first-time candidates appear to have been emboldened by the exercise, as Mr. Pearcy’s street corner campaign speech last Thursday night attests. Dressed up spiffily, he described himself as the illegitimate son of a stripper who had had run-ins with the law and a tough childhood but who had pulled his life together.

“I’ve been homeless,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth. “I got a place. Anyone can do it. We’re all good enough.”

There was nodding all around, more than when he went into his pitch to solve the budget deficit through the installation of solar panels. As Mr. Pearcy went on, Mr. May whispered “focus, focus, focus” into his ear to get him back on track and help prepare him for a debate in early October, which will be televised across the state.

Right now it all looks like nothing more than harmless Republican shenanigans. It’s doubtful any of these hobo candidates will gain a plurality of votes this election. But what happens when these newly-emboldened hoboes run in the next election, without their Republican puppetmasters? What happens when they start running in every race? What happens when the hoboes start winning these races? What happens when they seek higher and higher offices? What if, someday, a hobo becomes President? What then?

This is only Phase 1. Be prepared.

Have you been eagerly following the upcoming midterm election, constantly refreshing the New York Times electoral map, waiting patiently for Nate Silver to do his little number thing, writing blogs about how the congressional race in Nevada’s 3rd district will be a referendum on Obama’s choice of mustard? Well, give it up. I managed to get my hands on an advanced copy of the results (I won’t bore you with the details of how) and I’ve uploaded it to YouTube because information wants to be free. Beat that, Wikileaks! Now, obviously this contains spoilers, so don’t watch if you still plan on going to the voting booth out of some misguided nostalgia for the illusion of democracy. If you decide to do so anyway, at least pretend to be surprised come November.