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Why, it just seems like a few weeks ago that X-FACTOR #1 was out. And it just seems like a few months ago that FALLEN ANGEL was consigned to the scrap heap by DC. Yet here are the next issues of both. What were the odds?

Whad’ja think?

PAD

The drive back was a crisp 16 hours including one hour sleep break and an hour for breakfast. The important thing for these types of trips is to stop every two hours or so because you don’t want to be seated unmoving for much longer than that. Good way to develop blood clots in your leg that can break loose and, y’know, kill you. Which would be bad.

Been having extended discussions with Axel Alonso over the upcoming events at Marvel, which sound pretty exciting. Also, I’ll begin work shortly on the Wonder Man limited series. But first I have to write the rest of the script for “Fallen Angel #4.” Meanwhile I’m waiting to see what’s going to be happening with “Soulsearchers.”

Expect a fairly major announcement soon about something else.

Rough night of bowling last night. How rough? My first game I, with a 182 average, shot a 127. That’s not the horrific part. The horrific part is that it wasn’t the lowest score of the game. The low score was 125, shot by the opposing team’s anchor (i.e., best player) who carries a 197 average. Tough oil pattern. Kicked my next two games to 154 and finally a 188, but still, crappy night.

PAD

So Christmas presents were distributed at Kath’s folk’s house, and lo, there was much happiness. I received an interesting assortment of stuff, including a little wind-up bowling game, a walking and growling King Kong (it took me a while to figure out how to position his arms so that he didn’t fall flat every time he moved) and an assortment of books including–most intriguingly–a book of correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s final letter to Adams, likening themselves to the Argonauts, is both amazing and depressing–amazing because of the poetic way in which he frames their participation in the American revolution, and depressing when one considers how far the holders of the highest office in the land have fallen in their ability to express themselves with anything approaching intelligence, much less poetry.

PAD

If so, a marvelous medication has been brought to my attention that could absolutely help you. So check out http://www.panexa.com

You’ll thank me later.

PAD

Whenever we’re traveling long distances, I always prefer driving at night. Our latest excursion to visit Kath’s parents for Christmas is no exception. Our cat-sitter bidding us good-bye, we took off around 10 PM and I drove all the way through to about 6 AM. It’s great because there’s no traffic except for trucks. At 3 in the morning, you just blow down the highway with your brights on and nothing in your way. No glare from oncoming headlights, and moonlight is a lot easier on the eyes than sunlight. You don’t have to worry about cranky kids because they’re all asleep.

At 6 AM, though, I felt fatigue finally kicking in. So I pulled into the next rest stop, sat back and closed my eyes. The rest of the family didn’t even stir. Police and security patrols were in the area so I didn’t have to worry about miscreants. Slept for an hour, woke up refreshed, and hit the road again for a few more hours until we stopped and had breakfast. Afterwards Kath took over driving for a couple of hours while I got some more sleep in the back, then I took back over and got us the rest of the way. Total travel time, not counting breaks, fourteen hours.

PAD

It’s been quite some time since a TV villain has had the degree of impact in the real world that Nip/Tuck’s “The Carver” has had. When a real-life whack job is endeavoring to model his crimes on the series’ vicious mutilator, notice must be taken. To that end, I’ll now handicap what I see as the likely candidates to be Nip/Tuck’s resident fruitcake. Keep in mind that since I don’t exactly have a steel-trap memory, there may be someone on the list who has an iron-clad alibi and I simply don’t remember.

Let us also keep in mind that although the Carver raped Christian, well, they’re doing amazing things with plastics nowadays, so…

(Some necessary spoilers to recent episodes contained below)

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What a terrific actor has been taken from us, and what a horrific instance of life imitating art. I’ve been a Spencer fan ever since the double whammy of his brilliant work on “L.A. Law” and his incredibly noirish turn in “Presumed Innocent” that made you wish he’d been around to film black and white gangster films in the 40s and 50s.

When Leo McGarry had a heart attack out of nowhere last season, I was one of the many fans decrying the ER-esque turn of events. Yet now no one can ever watch those episodes in repeats without getting an eerie, chill feeling, watching an actor doing a dramatized version of his own future passing. Sheesh.

Since I don’t want to muddle up comments on the passing of a person with the more fannish concerns about the future of his television series, I’m jumping to the extended entry for comments on “West Wing.”

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So Kath and I arranged for child care for Caroline and went to see “King Kong” yesterday, hitting an early morning show when the kids were all in school.

Is it worth seeing? Right, like anything *I* say is going to make a difference to you one way or the other on that score. Bottom line: If you intend to see it, absolutely don’t wait for it to show up on DVD. You should see it on a big screen. Spoilers follow:

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Although some folks have been commenting on the previous update thread, this will be the official commentary thread for the new issue.

Whad’ja think?

PAD

FALL OF KNIGHT: Copy-edited manuscript proofread and shipped off to publisher. Next up to be proofread: The galleys for “Writing Comics With Peter David,” due out beginning of summer 2006.

FALLEN ANGEL #1: Advance copies received from IDW. Looks fantastic. Considering everything we had to go through to make this happen, I feel like I’m holding a small miracle in my hands when I flip through it. I’m told the on-sale date is December 28.

X-FACTOR #1: Out this week. Advance copies were made available in Marvel’s advance look package, and Silver Bullet Comic Books has already posted something like half a dozen reviews of it as part of their Sunday Slugfest. We’re told that the aggregate score is among the highest ever received from the SS. So that bodes well.

Next up: Working on the Battlestar Galactica novel for Tor. A tight deadline, but I should be able to make it.

PAD

So the Bush White House endeavors to send out a nice, simple, inclusive holiday card. No different than millions of Americans of all religions send out.

And what happens? The extreme religious right is offended. Hell, let’s not even call them the extreme religious right, because that makes it sound like extremist Jews, Muslims, Shintoists, etc., are all on the same page. Let’s call it what it is: Extremist Christians.

Here’s the fascinating thing about Extremists: They’re all the same. The philosophy of Extremist Christians is fundamentally no different than, say, that of Extremist Muslims. They believe in the same things: Exclusionary thinking. Intolerance. Ignoring fundamental lessons of their own faith when it runs afoul of extremist thinking. Where is the philosophy of Christian charity and understanding? Where is the writings in the Koran specifically forbidding the killing of innocents? They don’t serve the Extremist viewpoint of exclusion and intolerance and thus are cast aside.

They only differ in degrees of their actions. Some chop off the heads of helpless victims. Others blow up abortion clinics.

And the most consistent link is that trying to accommodate them never, ever works. That’s what Bush is discovering now, having staked his political star to the whims of the Extremists. It’s insufficient for Extremists that eighty percent of this country celebrates Christmas. Instead the ONLY acceptable greeting at this time of year is “Merry Christmas” rather than something inclusive such as “Happy holidays.” It’s insufficient for Extremists that there is already an implicit lack of separation of church and state around the holidays (the government shuts down for Christmas. You see the government shutting down for Yom Kippur? For Ramadan?) They want an EXplicit lack of separation by having the official greeting card from the White House be in celebration of Christmas only.

It’s never enough for Extremists. Never enough. Because the only thing that will really satisfy them–whether they’re walking bombs or just bombasts–is if everyone thinks just like them, believes just like them, and wants the same things as them. Which is never, ever going to happen, which is why they will never, ever be satisfied. Bush has been trying to appease them and hopefully even he is now realizing that it’s hopeless.

One is left shaking one’s head at a people who are claiming their holiday, their very beliefs, are being threatened. No. When Romans were throwing them to the lions, THEN their beliefs were being threatened. Here, in this country, their core philosophies have complete dominance over just about every aspect of life in this country.

And it’s not enough.

When dealing with Extremists and terrorists…it never is.

PAD

Twenty five years ago, I was at home in my apartment in Queens with then-wife Myra. We were watching the TV news and were stunned when they announced that John Lennon had been shot. At the time, that was all we knew: He’d been shot. That was appalling enough. The notion that the gunshot was fatal was almost too much to contemplate. Then, almost immediately thereafter, they gave an update stating that Lennon had passed away.

It’s just one of those moments in life–like when JFK was shot or when the Challenger blew up–where you remember exactly where you were when you heard the news.

PAD

Check this out. It explains so much.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189&rss=1

PAD

Three years ago yesterday, I drove an in-labor Kathleen to the hospital. We arrived just before midnight and I parked right nearby the hospital itself since almost no one was there. When I left late the next day–today, December 5th–my car was buried under a foot of snow, and blizzard conditions were such that I skidded three times on the dangerous drive back home.

Somewhere between all that, Caroline Helen David was born. One of the first remarks by a nurse: “Oh my God, look at those FEET!” Great gunboats they were, indicating this was going to be one tall kid (now more than halfway to six feet in height).

We had her “official” party on Saturday since that was when all her little friends, cousins, aunt and grandparents could attend. Today’s her actual birthday, so we’re having the remains of her birthday cake and trying to work out a time to take her to see “Chicken Little.”

PAD

Last night on “West Wing,” Toby Ziegler, in a spirited confrontation with Josh, explained precisely why he wasn’t wild about Santos and didn’t see him as presidential material. He said that what makes someone presidential material is that–rather than being dragged into the fray, as Josh did with Santos–a true president believes that destiny and the gods have brought him to this time and this place so that he can grab the presidency with both hands, and so that he can come up with the tough answers that stump everyone else in the country.

Not only did he neatly summarize everything I find lacking in Santos, he also described what I find so annoying about Bush. Because I have the sense that Bush was steered into the presidency in the same way that Santos was. He didn’t grab the presidency with both hands; it was handed to him on a platter. That’s what I think he was doing back on 9/11 when he was informed that the towers had collapsed and he sat there immobile for six minutes: Staring at his hands and thinking, “Who handed me THIS?”

PAD

Thus far we’re seeing solid progress in the Gordon Lee case down in Georgia, where several of the counts have already been thrown out in pretrial motions. See here for more information, and also check out the various auctions that the CBLDF is running to help raise money for this costly case:

http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000282.shtml

PAD

Season 5 of “West Wing” is out on DVD, and it’s the first season that I’m not bothering to buy. But the current one is certainly shaping up as something different. Spoilers below…

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