THIS MODERN WORLD

A couple of better pictures, as promised (with cell phone for size comparison).

Probably won’t be posting much over the holiday. Have a good one. I hope you have much to be thankful for.

…shortly after writing the last post, I clicked through the links and this time managed to get a ticket, and rushed off to the city. As it turned out, I did not need the ticket, because the crowd control was totally FUBAR and after waiting in line for an hour and a half I think I barely managed to get in the gate before the cutoff point — but I got in. Very cool day, and now my deadlines are truly imminent, so…nothing to see here, folks, move along. More later.

…there’s a surprise U2 concert in DUMBO this afternoon, in that park between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. Apparently you needed to get tickets ahead of time through an MTV website (and they’re all gone). I’m a longtime U2 fan, going back to the first album, but I’m also a little too far from the city to make it worth my while to head in on the off chance that I might snag a ticket or find a suitable perch…and of course, I’ve got that little problem of imminent cartoon deadlines and a working week curtailed by the holidays. (Though I have to admit, even at that I still had to think about it). At any rate I thought I’d go ahead and put this up in case anyone’s interested. Accuracy of rumor not guaranteed, so don’t blame me if you head off to DUMBO and it actually turns out to be a New Kids on the Block reunion concert.

…here’s a link, for what it’s worth.

I heard somebody on an NPR show last week, claiming that the majority of reporters and news anchors and other elitist media types were so thoroughly convinced that Kerry would win, his defeat has sent them into paroxysms of self-doubt and uncertainty and generally convinced them that they are Completely Out of Touch With the American People.

The assertion went unchallenged, of course — I did mention that I heard this on NPR, right? — but it can really only be described, and charitably at that, as complete and utter bullshit. Leaving aside the debate over whether or not this nation’s newsrooms are staffed by closet Marxists who did everything in their power to tilt the electorate toward Comrade Kerry, I don’t know anyone who thought they had any idea how this election was going to turn out. (Sure, partisan pundits spent the campaign season talking their own guy up, but that’s a different matter.) The idea that elitists media types were “certain” Kerry would win is just ludicrous, an outright attempt to rewrite history.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 – Democratic leaders and senators from both parties expressed outrage on Sunday about an obscure provision in the huge end-of-session spending bill that would allow the chairmen of the Appropriations Committees and their staff assistants to examine Americans’ income tax returns.

Republican leaders said that their motives had been misread and that there was never any intention to invade the privacy of taxpayers. They promised that the provision would be deleted from the bill in a special session on Wednesday before the spending measure, which cleared Congress on Saturday night, was sent to President Bush for his signature.

Story.