Spatula Forum

Friday miscellany...

• Between the disappointments of some comic I won't mention again and the comedown that was "Ocean's 12" (doesn't suck, but was hoping for more), it was good to find something that was as good as I hoped, Michael Mann's "Collateral," which I watched the other night and dug the heck out of. Moody and stylish thriller supreme. And when did Jamie Foxx actually become a good actor? Wow. Check it out if you like thoughtful movies about people who kill people.

• Sometimes I wonder exactly what it will take for Bush to dump Donald Rumsfeld. Now even Republican senators who don't feel the need to toe the party line on every issue are dumping on the man, whose incredible tomfoolery and unprecedented arrogance in running our armed forces should really dismay conservatives and liberals alike, and anyone concerned about the men and women on the ground who get hurt the worst. I think my favorite comment lately came from "The Daily Show", which did an inspired bit about how ordinary screwups get booted from the Bush cabinet, but those who rise to a truly extraordinary level of idiocy get to stay. If Rumsfeld screws up much more, perhaps he'll get nominated to the Supreme Court.

• After talking about it for, like, a million years, we finally upgraded all the Macs we use at work to OS X, and while we were at it Quark 6, this week. Entertaining in the extreme to hear all the usual complaining from the slow-to-embrace-change crowd, and dealing with the various bugs that come out of these upgrades. I've been using OS X for more than a year now at home so it wasn't too big a transition for me. Finally decided to give Firefox a spin too while I was at it and am enjoying it so far, have been using Safari at home for several months but while it's definitely better than IE, it has a few bugs and speed issues that so far Firefox doesn't seem to have. Will see if it lasts over the long haul.

• Some quick comics reviews coming tomorrow, including Shaolin Cowboy #1, Ocean #3 and Madrox #4. Onwards.