In keeping with the high diving theme of a couple weeks back, here via Making Light is a video of a French parachutist who straps jet engines to himself and jumps out of a plane.

I was going to write about Williams syndrome, a fascinating neurological congenital defect which leaves a sufferer developmentally disabled, on the one hand, but profoundly gregarious and chatty on the other. Maybe I will another time.

Right now I’m thinking about how, if I were only a better person, I’d be beginning to feel sorry for George Bush.
Doesn’t he look like he can’t understand why the rest of us are being so mean? Look at his eyes–that blank incomprehension may be native to his expression, but there’s also some real bewilderment. He’s Buzz Windrip in It Can’t Happen Here to the shit-kicking life. And here Congress is, subpoening White House records about the firing of all those traitorous prosecutors, and what else can a guy do but stonewall? And probably precipitate a little standoff with those Big Poopies in Congress. And then the Gray Lady Herself, the New York Times, comes out with a blunt editorial demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It’s so unfair, it’s almost the stuff of epic tragedy.

Which made me remember MacBird. Back in the Before Times, MacBird was a satirical gloss on both Macbeth and Lyndon Johnson’s presidency: Macbird is second to King John Ken O’Dunc; he is promised the kingdom by three witches (a beatnik, a revolutionary, and a muslim); mayhem ensues. The original cast of MacBird included Cleavon Little, William Devane, Stacey Keach (playing MacBird himself), Paul Hecht and Rue McClanahan. Somewhere in the maelstrom that is my shelves I have a copy of the play.

Anyway, it occurs to me that what George Bush needs is for someone to write the tragic story of his presidency. The question is: what play should it be mapped on? Not Hamlet–that’s not a play about a Decider. Not Lear, I think (Lear might tenuously work as the story of George HW, but not his son). I’m thinking maybe Titus Andronicus, which at least has lots of bloodshed and people having their tongues cut out (not so much with the commutation of sentence, however). Any thoughts?

“So, do you still think it’s a dress?”

Friday 12:15-2:00 Twentieth Century Fox-Twentieth Century Fox “jumps” into Comic-Con with exclusive looks at some of the most-anticipated movie events of 2007 and 2008. In the epic action-adventure Jumper, a genetic anomaly allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. The film, opening February 15, 2008, starring Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Jamie Bell, and Samuel L. Jackson, is directed by Doug Liman. The cast and filmmakers will screen footage.

(This is just one of 6 films Fox will be pushing in this time slot but I hope some of you are there and can tell me how it went.)

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By the way, Morgan and I are switching days to post (just for this week.) Morg’s in the death throes of Feral Sapients and needed to keep plugging.