I was gonna write up a piece about REVENGE OF THE SITH and what I thought (short version: GLEE!), but Steve Pheley apparently read my mind and wrote it for me; so, thanks, pal.

“Developing”, as Drudge would say.

UPDATE 5/26/05: I forgot to also link over to Jeremy’s thoughts, mostly because doing so requires me to think about the movie more than I think I’m prepared to do. I’ve now seen the EPISODE III-as-political-criticism meme in too many places to dismiss it outright, but it strikes me as an awful lot like putting a pig in a dress. Sure, you can do it, and it might even be very pretty and charming, but at the end of the day it’s still a pig. We all see what we want to see; methinks those who are calling “foul” (or “bravo”) on Lucas for the inclusion of such “pointed criticism” doth protest too much.

And moreover, if you really believe that Lucas (and/or Tom Stoppard) actually intended REVENGE OF THE SITH (and indeed, the entire prequel trilogy) to be a modern political allegory and had put that much thought into crafting it as such, don’t you also think that the same or equivalent effort would have gone into the first two?

Although I’ve apparently missed the first two days of the three-day event, KenJen’s back on JEOPARDY! for the Ultimate Tournament of Champions finals tonight. Rock!

Actor Frank Gorshin, the impressionist with 100 faces best known for his Emmy-nominated role as The Riddler on the old “Batman” television series, has died. He was 72.

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Apparently, his last appearance will be on tomorrow’s CSI finale.

Continuing in my week (life?) of irredeemable geekery: ENTERPRISE ended last week. I watched it. The last, last, last STAR TREK episode for (probably) a good long while. It wasn’t good, and if I were the cast, I’d be pissed, since the entire “finale” was framed as a holodeck diversion for Riker during an episode of NEXT GENERATION.

Really. As in, they took one of the stories they’d done fifteen years ago, brought back Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis in fifteen-year-old costumes, rebuilt fifteen-year-old NEXT GEN sets, and shot the “new” scenes to conform with things that had happened in that old show. So now, when you watch that old episode of NEXT GEN, you can think to yourself, “Hey, this is the point where Riker goes and pretends to be the chef on ENTERPRISE.” Which, y’know, is cute, but seems kind of like a slap in the face for the current show.

Anyhoo. I gave up watching ENTERPRISE long ago; I’d come back to it every now and then, just for the hell of it, but never for good. Like VOYAGER before it, there was something so… bland?… about it that you just kind of lost interest. (Sacrilege to my inner fifteen-year-old, I suppose, but them’s the breaks.) So it was mostly out of a sense of duty that I caught the finale — it’s the last one, they aren’t doing any more, how can you not watch, yadda yadda. Too bad it stunk.

The reason I bring all of this up is to link you to this absolutely marvelous and very funny appreciation of ENTERPRISE and STAR TREK itself from James Lileks — which I found at, of all places, Volokh. Of course, Lileks says the opposite of pretty much everything I just said, but that doesn’t make it any less worth reading — his is much better, actually. But don’t take my word for it; go see for yourself.

This is THE POKY LITTLE PUPPY.

It is the story of five puppies who dug a hole under their fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world. Their mother, of course, is angry, and sends four of hem to bed without any dessert each time she catches them — but the last puppy (henceforth “Poky”) comes home late, after everyone is asleep, and eats up all of the desserts. The other four puppies get tired of being sent to bed, so when they’re caught the last time, they fill up the hole and are surprised by their mother, who then gives them all the dessert they could want. Unfortunately, however, this has the effect of leaving Poky in the lurch, and when he has to sneak back in to the yard through a different hole in the fence, they’ve eaten up all the dessert and he gets bupkes. “What a pity you’re so poky!” his mother says.

Here are the questions for you budding English lit majors to ponder upon:

1) Unless their mother is quite blind, she knows that someone’s dug a hole under the fence. Logic would dictate that it was done by one or all of her five children. Why, then, would she make dessert for them? Followup question: what does she think happened to it each morning?

2) Are dog’s senses so keen and accurate that they can hear/see/smell dessert being spooned into their bowls from at least a mile away?

3) Why are the four puppies rewarded for covering their tracks?

4) Assuming for a moment that there is a lesson to be learned here, is it a) digging holes is bad, but being late (“poky”) is worse; b) puppies are suckers for strawberry shortcake; c) selling out your poky sibling is okay if you get dessert out of it; or d) it’s a kids’ book, stupid?

TOMORROW: The implications of cultural politics in RANDOLPH, THE BEAR WHO SAID “NO!” Class dismissed.

Jeremy sends this along:

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas has offered to send Imperial stormtroopers to escort the fan encampment at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to the ArcLight cinema complex for the first screening of “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

But there are refuseniks in the ranks.

The fan line, which numbers some 200 of the most ardent “Star Wars” devotees, is holding forth at Grauman’s in hopes Lucas’ latest and final installment will screen at the theater there, where the five previous episodes opened. But Lucas has contracted to unveil the film at the ArcLight, a mile away on Sunset Boulevard.

…But not all the Grauman’s die-hards will join the march. The 200 registered place-holders represent some 600 fans, of which about 150 are refuseniks who will either remain on Hollywood Boulevard in a candlelight vigil or plan to catch a midnight screening in Westwood or elsewhere in Hollywood.

“A lot of us are set to go with the stormtroopers, but some decided to politely say no thank you,” said “Star Wars” camper Jerry Anderson, 27, a Los Angeles college student who’s been on line since April 2. “It’s heartbreaking. The series opened here (in 1977) – why not end it here?”