"In the voting booth, no one can hear you scream"

In this particular instance, it may have been televised, but it wasn't really part of the revolution. The revolution I'm talking about here is the Republican Revolution of 1994. In that year, there were 35 races for the US Senate. In eight of them, a seat held by the Democrats was lost to a Republican. In Virginia, however, the Democrats held serve when incumbent Chuck Robb defeated Oliver North. The fascinating documentary A Perfect Candidate chronicles this race.

Co-directed by a producer of The War Room, A Perfect Candidate centers mainly on Mark Goodin, North's campaign manager seeking a return promince after, and also on Don Baker, the disillusioned reporter from Washington Post covering campaign.

Is it that he is facing a man who testified under oath that he did lie to Congress (and now says that he didn't) that Chuch Robb feels that he has the safety to say in the televised debate "I would take food from the mouths of widows and orphans if we had to, to begin to solve this deficit problem"? Or is it that Robb has no clue how to be a candidate? Later on the desk of a North staffer, we see a "Widows and Orphans for North" bumber sticker. And yet Robb won. Robb while he was governor went to parties with lots of coccaine during his affair with a Playboy bunny, cheating on his wife who is the daughter of Lyndon Johnson--their wedding was in the White House. And yet Robb won. He clumsly went out of his way to clarify that he had no stance on issues in a race against a very charasmatic figure on the side that swept the Congressional races all over the country. And yet Robb still won. What does this say? "Who are you going to vote for, the flu or the mumps?" one astute voter says.

The commentary track by co-directors R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor is very good too about process of making a documentary like this.

Sympathy for the Transit Cops

For me, it will always be Prague where the transit cops are idiots, kings of their little kingdom of trains, trams, buses, and subways, taking the "fun" out of "funicular." For you, it may be a different eastern European city, Budapest, for example. If so, check out Antal Nimród's 2003 film Kontroll for another side of the story. Filmed entirely in the Budapest Metro (the oldest subway on the European mainland (provided you don't ask the Turks)), it is the story of Bulcsú and his merry band of ragtag transit cops. There's the new kid, the wise old "Professor," the guy with narcolepsy, and the guy who's, well, just weird. They're not the most successful squad (that honor and the new leather jackets that go with it belong to Gonzó's) but it is hard not to root for Bulcsú and the guys as they try to check unruly passengers for valid tickets or passes. Plus, there's the mysterious girl in the bear and the serial killer stalking the Metro to deal with. I found Kontroll to be quite entertaining, and pats on the back must go to Csányi Sándor and the other guy (and probably the stunt coordinator) for that simple--to describe, anyway--but rather cool lengthy shot in the climax.

Please, David Blaine, for your next endurance trick, try to go 5 years without doing another stunt.

Good Highday Trip

I finally got around to writing up my highpointing trip from last month. Check out my trip to the highest points in West Virginia and Maryland.

The Left Hand and the Right Hand--Do They Know What The Other is Doing?

With my appropriately camouflaged thinking hat donned, I can now see how it all ties together.

Item 1. Dateline NBC for the last few months has been teaming up with www.perverted-justice.com to do sting operations posing as 12-year-olds on the internet to lure child molesters to a house where Dateline's cameras are waiting. This has had the side effects of increasing their ratings and creating fear in the hearts of parents over where their children go online.

Item 2. Mariska Hargitay is pregnant, but her character Detective Olivia Benson is not, and the season is not yet over. Therefore, Det. Benson gets a transfer (She can't work with Stabler any more. They're too close. Is it because of unspoken romantic feelings, which will be crushed when Stabler reunites with his wife? We'll see.) to "computer crimes," with its ability to have her sit with a computer monitor in between her and the camera.

Both Law & Order: No Subtitle and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit have upcoming episodes that deal with kids on the internet and the people they meet. So, I put it to you, were the "To Catch a Predator" shows created in order to a) create headlines from which their series could rip stories? And b) create a logical reason to only show Mariska Hargitay from the neck up? If only some black helicopters could show up....

Is it just me, or...

...is there way too much U.S. Paintball Championships (presented by Vault) on ESPN these days?