Three Simple Rules

I think it was the legendary actor James Cagney who once explained that there were three simple rules to connecting with an audience: "You hit your mark. You plant your feet. And you tell the truth." Equally-memorable actor Spencer Tracy once said that the three basic rules of performing before an audience were: "Be on time. Know your lines. Try not to trip over the furniture."

On Thursday evening at the DNC, I believe Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama did Jimmy Cagney proud. On Friday morning, in Ohio, in introducing neophyte Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I'm pretty sure presumptive Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain violated Spencer Tracy's third rule big time.

Does the Republican political machine really assume that supporters of Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton are so shallow that they will switch their allegiance to the opposing party simply because Governor Palin shares the same plumbing as Senator Clinton? If I were the good Senator from New York, I think I'd be spending most of the next two months reminding prospective voters that they need to support her agenda, rather than merely her gender.

I'm just saying...

Okay, I'm Back (Now Where Have We Heard That Before?)

Yeah, I know. I promised I'd blog on a regular basis, swore it actually, and since it's been a month since my last blog, I obviously (though unwittingly) lied and now I'm probably going to go directly to Hell when I die, and I won't pass GO, and I won't collect $200, and I'll probably wind up sharing a one-room twelfth-floor walk-up apartment with Dick Cheney or someone even more despicable, who'll probably eat nothing but steamed cabbage and fart a lot, and the apartment's one teeny tiny little window will probably face in the wrong direction and it won't even have a good view of the fiery sulphur pits of the Seventh Circle and I'll...oh, look! A Butterfly!

I'm sorry. Where was I?

Oh, right. I'm back.

Truth to tell, I started to write up a nifty blog entry right after I got home from the San Diego Comic-Con, but that entire week was so unspeakably wonderful and so utterly overwhelming that I just couldn't figure out where to start. I mean, seriously.

First, on the day before the Con, the good folks at WB Online Games finally announce that the Watchmen video game will be coming out around the same time as the blockbuster movie next March and that I'm the lucky sonuvagun who got to write the thing. Finally, after all those weeks of obligatory silence, I can tell the world what I've been doing for the past six months. I still can't talk details, but the game is gonna be cool. Trust me. Have I ever lied to you? I mean, aside from saying I was gonna blog regularly?

Then, on Thursday, the first actual day of the Con, the absurdly-handsome Hugh Jackman makes an unannounced appearance at the Fox Panel to show the trailer for the new Wolverine feature coming next May, and makes it a point, in front of 6500 people, to call me out and then jump down from the stage to shake my hand, telling all and sundry that this was the hand that had given him a career, leading to photos of the two of us together that appeared in nearly all the entertainment blogs and magazines. I mean, Jeez Louise, how the heck do you top that?

Well, I guess you top it the following night at the Annual Eisner Awards when I actually heaqr my name called to come on up and accept one of the blessed thingies and suddenly find myself inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame. Seriously, that's just wrong. I haven't been in this business anywhere near long enough to have made that kind of mark, and to find myself in such stellar company as those who've won the honor in the past? Clearly, I've got to be dreaming.

And that, Gentle Readers, is why I haven't blogged at all during the past month. Apparently, I've been having one hell of a dream and I really don't want to wake up.

You'll just have to forgive my snoring.