* Vaya con Dios to Graeme McMillan, the trailblazing comicsblogger who’s saying goodbye to his gig at io9. Good writer, good people.
* Recently on Robot 6:
* and tons and tons of Lost art and comics.
* Now that I’ve finally gotten around to watching it, I agree with everyone who told me how fascinating this BBC roundtable on Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza is. First of all, I didn’t know Sacco had that accent. Secondly, it’s good to see someone object to Sacco’s standard, subjective, “here’s the side of the story with which I sympathize” take on things without obviously sharing the agenda of the other side. Finally, apparently in the U.K. you can be an elected official and not feel obligated to act stupid and talk at a third-grade level to the people who voted for you. I await a world where American congresspeople use phrases like “filmic immediacy” in a televised discussion of a comic book with the same fervor of Teabaggers anticipating the Rapture. (Via Boots.)
* Chris Evans is Captain America. Okay, sure.
* Nothing really leapt out at me from Whitney Matheson’s weekly plumbing of the Lost commentariat hivemind, but maybe you’ll feel differently. I also recommend taking one last plunge into last week’s Lost thoughts comment thread here at ADDTF before tonight’s goes up.
* For her birthday, I got the Missus tickets to see her favorite choral composer (and mine), Eric Whitacre, conduct a program of his work–e.e. cummings adpatations specifically–at Carnegie Hall in April. So I’m pretty thrilled to see this video of his song “Lux Aurumque,” performed by a “virtual choir” of 185 singers who filmed their separate contributions with their own webcams, go viral. Damn it all, listen to how beautiful this is:
* Beautiful woman on magic horse: Olivia Munn or Alison Goldfrapp–who wore it best?
(Munn on Mike Choi’s unicorn via Heidi MacDonald. Goldfrapp via her own bad self.)
Michael Gove doesn’t normally speak quite so intelligently given that he’s the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and as a working opposition politician is required to talk out of his arse rather more often than that clip would suggest. Gove has a long history with Newsnight Review – before he was a full time Tory he helped to make up the show’s right of centre critical voice, these days he very occasionally pops back in an effort to help shore up the Conservatives intellectual credibility with the chattering classes. I imagine he enjoys it too given that he’s been doing it for so many years on and off.
It’s worth bearing in mind that political discourse over here is far less polemical than it would appear, to this outsider’s eyes at least, to be in the US. Intellectual argument still counts for something despite our tabloids’ best efforts and our politicians, of all stripes, do from time to time make appearances on TV and radio shows that demand a bit less big P Politicking and a bit more thoughtful discussion.
As Tories go I don’t mind Gove, but the fact is that he represents a party that is still the best fit for most of the UK’s little englanders and bigots, and his views on the Palestinian situation are almost certainly closer to the views of “the other side”. In terms of US politics, however, I appreciate that our Conservative party must seem like a right bunch of socialists.
What really stood out to me wasn’t Gove’s forthrightness and reasonableness, but his wonderfully cliched (you couldn’t have scripted the beats better) conversion to comics.
This was not intended as a commentary on Gove’s merits as a person or politician, since I don’t know him from Adam–I’m just saying that it’s unimaginable, inconceivable that an American politician, ESPECIALLY one from the more conservative of the major parties, would go on television and run the risk of sounding smart. Even the best of them tend to talk to us like we’re kindergartners over here. I mean, “filmic”? I think hearing, say, Mitt Romney say something like that would literally give me an erection.
I’m just saying that it’s unimaginable, inconceivable that an American politician, ESPECIALLY one from the more conservative of the major parties, would go on television and run the risk of sounding smart
Bloody awful state of affairs. Can’t help but feel the BBC is a big part of the reason why that sort of thing is possible over here.
(Annoyingly and in my view somewhat ironically Gove likes to go in for a bit of BBC bashing, a popular right-wing pastime.)