Rogers over at Kung Fu Monkey has a wonderful discussion of story, plot, act structure, and character arcs. I think I will be studying this a lot, because some of the things he talks about are the very problems I’ve been having of late.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between story and plot, Rogers manages to explain it very succinctly.

So there’s this guy, see, and he’s overweight. He out and out calls himself fat. And to do something about it he’s decided to walk from his home in San Diego to New York City.

Yowsa.

Of course, he’s keeping a blog about his journey, called appropriately enough “Fat Man Walking.” He’s evidently managing to put up entries somehow.

(Via Food is Worse Than Crack)

Update 7/29/05: It seems several people who’ve come to this blog don’t understand that I have nothing to do with the Fat Man Walking. If you’re interested in contacting Steve Vaught or in giving him notes of support, please go to his page and contact him and his wife. I don’t know if he’ll ever see this page, and you’ll be sure to let him know how you feel if you write to him instead of me. Thanks.

A friend of Darin’s is a big fan of the show Alias. Darin and I watched Alias when it first premiered and gave up on it during the teaser of show 2, I believe. But Darin’s friend really wanted us to watch it, so he loaned us three seasons worth of DVDs. And we sat down to start watching, see what we’ve missed.

Well, we both agree Not much. Still seems pretty silly and fake to us. But I discovered something even odder: real life really can ruin the fantasy experience. I’d find myself thinking, That’s Jennifer Garner. She was married to Scott Foley, but then they broke up and she took up with Michael Vartan, but I guess they’ve broken up because she’s having a baby with Ben Affleck now.

Then we came home last night after Date Night and the babysitter had the Alias season finale on. Sydney’s father was telling the CIA agent—the aforementioned Michael Vartan—that he could marry Sydney. And I thought, How weird is that? On the show they’re going to get married, despite the fact that they’ve broken up and she’s having someone else’s baby? Hope that was a good breakup, ’cause otherwise that’s an acting job that would totally suck.

And mind you: I don’t particularly pay attention to Jennifer Garner gossip and we haven’t watched much of Alias. But what I do know has completely affected how I look at her and look at her show.

In related news, while I am amused by the coverage on the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes relationship—there’s some doubt on its veracity, let’s say, in mainstream gossip publications—I can’t actually imagine what else Tom could do. A man’s got to date somebody.

Bill Frist’s Northeast political director at the NRSC in 2002, James Tobin, was the guy behind the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal from that year. (From Josh Marshall: “The state Republican party hired an Idaho company to knock out the phones of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation on election day by placing hundreds of automated hang-up calls to their phone banks.”)

Well, Tobin was indicted by a grand jury. But, no fair! he cries. The jury was biased against him. Why?

It contained Democrats.

Tobin now says, in motions filed with the court, that his indictment in the case should be thrown out because the grand jury that indicted him included Democrats.

And in line with Tobin’s apparent contention that Republicans now constitute a protected class (will they mind if we call them a ‘discrete and insular minority’?) there’s this …

And if the case does go to trial, Tobin’s lawyers want to question prospective jurors extensively about their politics and their exposure to media reports of the case to root out potential bias.
A proposed questionnaire would ask prospective jurors to disclose their political party, union membership, whether they’ve ever had a bumper sticker on their car and what it said, what Web logs they read and whether they ever watch TV shows such as “West Wing,” CNN’s “Crossfire,” MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” and “The McLaughlin Group,” which mostly runs on public television stations.

Tobin’s lawyers also want jurors to describe themselves by checking off all that apply: “aggressive, articulate, emotional, entrepreneurial, intelligent, laid back, loyal, naive, perceptive, stubborn, (or) other.”

Federal prosecutors countered that Tobin is required to prove actual bias by the grand jury: He cannot ask judges to assume that Democrats would indict based on their political convictions, anymore than judges can assume Republicans would indict Democrats in violation of their oath to look only at the evidence.

Let’s see: we have a President who will only make public appearances in front of vetted party members, we have lobbyists being forced to hire Republicans if they want work, and we have the administration insisting that telecom representatives going to a conference overseas be Republicans.

And now trial by acceptable political activity.

Just in case you’re wondering where this is headed.

Now this is a movie review: Anthony Lane of The New Yorker reviews “Revenge of the Sith.”

What can you say about a civilization where people zip from one solar system to the next as if they were changing their socks but where a woman fails to register for an ultrasound, and thus to realize that she is carrying twins until she is about to give birth? Mind you, how Padmé got pregnant is anybody’s guess, although I’m prepared to wager that it involved Anakin nipping into a broom closet with a warm glass jar and a copy of Ewok Babes. After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask.