Rider and Obama Vs. China

What would it take to coax your ol' pal Rider out of blogging retirement? How about the sweet promise of a jaunty drive down to the local currency exchange where he'll convert billions and billions of yuan into a cool one hundred U.S. dollars?

Imagine how my eyes lit up tonight upon reading how a cell phone manufacturer ripped off a name I invented in a Photoshopped image of my very own smartphone over a year ago...then mentioned it again the next day in this post...then again a day later.

Seeing as how I've had my fair share of visitors to the Block from China--and since "Haff-Comm" is a Chinese company, I think I have a damn good shot at squeezing some crazy cash out of these copycats.

Now all I need for my lawsuit is to team up with someone with slightly more credibility than a lowly blogger. Someone who may have also been wronged in the ad. Perhaps a public figure whose image was appropriated without permission to hawk knockoff electronics.

Why, if I made enough money to actually retire, I'd have so much time on my hands I'd start blogging again.

Speaking of swipes, Rider asks that you not get him started on the similarity of this photo from his January 19, 2008 post, and the concept behind this T-shirt.

I Always Knew If I Went on Facebook...

...that I'd blog less.

But don't give up on me, yet. I'll be back someday soon.

ShamOww!

Click here to read the Rider's Block Twitter page regarding Vince Shlomi's altercation with an alleged call girl.

Sorry I Crashed Your Black Panther Party

I'd heard excellent things about writer Christopher Priest's run on Black Panther back in 1998, but I didn't actually pay attention to the character until the series relaunched seven years later. I picked it up mainly because fan-favorite artist John Romita Jr. penciled the first arc, but also because writer Reginald Hudlin's take on the hero seemed intriguing.

Hudlin lost me shortly after J.R. took his leave. I forget the particulars; suffice it to say it was because of the writing, not the character.

My interest is renewed because of Marvel's Secret Invasion: Black Panther collection. At only three issues long, it's one of the shorter comic trades you'll find, but it managed to make me care about the character again.

There's something inherently right about an arrogant warrior-king who's always two steps ahead of the bad guys. This ain't your typical neurotic superhero fretting about where the money for his aunt's medication is coming from. He's an Oxford-educated physicist, an inventor, and a skilled military strategist. This cat (yeah I said it) rules an industrialized African country that's never been conquered by anyone. He's like Batman crossed with Tony Stark crossed with Dr. Doom. Who would dare mess with the guy--especially knowing he won't hesitate to run you through with his sword?

Aliens, it turns out.

Jason Aaron wrote this incredible tie-in to last year's Secret Invasion event. While the rest of the Marvel heroes had their asses handed to them by the invading Skrull armada, Black Panther formulated a plan before the green bastards even arrived in his kingdom of Wakanda.

They should've turned around as soon as they caught a glimpse of what the slack-jawed readers saw on page three.

It was a tight, action-packed read, and it left me wanting more. I'm going to order Christopher Priest's two trades from '98 for starters. (Come to think of it, that's all I can order since the rest of his run isn't collected.)

After Iron Man 2 and The Avengers, Rider would like to see Marvel Studios release a Black Panther movie. Just keep Hudlin away from the script and it could be great.

Rider Takes Public Transportation After Dark

This review is leaving the station and will take a turn down a dark tunnel to Hell. Don't despair, though, because I'll let you off at an unusual bus stop. You might even thank me.

Clive Barker is one of my writing influences, and many of the movie adaptations of his work have also left their mark on my subconscious. Images from Nightbreed to Candyman have stuck with me through the years. Even as recently as yesterday I was reminded of my favorite Andrew Robinson quote from Hellraiser: "It's never enough."

The director of The Midnight Meat Train, Ryûhei Kitamura, apparently echoes Robinson's claim--except in this film he isn't talking about the human condition...he's talking about the liberal use of blood on a movie set.

The sheer amount of gore here is almost a wonder to behold. It's absolutely gruesome. Even without it, this movie grips you by the back of the neck and drags you screaming into the black abyss. This isn't a horror flick for the casual viewer.

Keep in mind I love that kind of thing. I cheered during the lawnmower scene in Peter Jackson's Braindead (or Dead Alive, as I knew it when it was released in the U.S.). But that's how I roll. Your mileage may vary.

Vinnie Jones plays a sinister heavy named Mahogany who waits patiently on a subway bench, Forrest (Ackerman) Gump-like, for the first train after 2:00 AM. And pity the poor soul who happens to share a car with him once he reaches into his large black bag and retrieves his silver tenderizing mallet.

Just like any great Barker story, Meat Train doesn't flinch from the necessity of an inevitable, bleak ending. And, brother, it is bleak. How much more bleak could it be? None. None more bleak.

In other commuter news, here's a cool scene from the upcoming Fox Searchlight movie (500) Days of Summer. I'd buy a year-long pass for that bus ride. Wouldn't you?

Last stop, Rider's Block Station. Mind the gap.

We here on the Block would also encourage interested parties to check out The Midnight Meat Train's special feature "Cliver Barker: The Man Behind The Myth." Rider has never felt like more of a lazy jerk than he did upon seeing the staggering number of paintings Barker has completed--keeping in mind the man started painting at the age of 45. This image shows you how many canvases he considers "failures." They're kept in a tent and referred to as "the planet of the fucked-up." And even some of those were painted over five times.

Battlestar Gateway-ica

A preliminary note to Battlestar fanatics who stumbled upon this post while searching "Galactica kicks ass": This blog will only anger you. Stop reading now. Back-button and go away. You won't like what I'm about to say here in my little corner of the Innertubes.

If you read ahead anyway and are determined to label me a douche, allow me to take the wind out of your puffed-up chest right from the get-go by saying:

I'm an idiot. I write unentertaining things. Of the 200 posts I've published, none of my commenters has ever agreed with my ridonkulous positions on pop culture.

Buh-bye now.

Now--are my three regular readers still here?

Good.

This is for your eyes only:

Battlestar Galactica started out as a friggin' phenomenal show. Remember when I watched every episode, up through the second season, in an unemployment marathon screening one year ago? Remember how I said it was "truly one of the best examples of the science fiction genre, period"?

Well, it was.

It goddamn well was.

If someone offered me a kick in the nuts or free DVD copies of the first two seasons of Battlestar, guess which I'd choose?

But that's exactly where it stopped being unbelievably excellent and became...just slightly above average.

The show sputtered and flamed out halfway through the second season's last episode ("Lay Down Your Burdens"). No spoilers, but I'd thought that finale was just a dream. Then the third season picked up with that deflated turd of a twist, and I sat back on my couch with my head cocked to the side like a retarded Labrador and said, "Huh."

But I persisted. It was still better science fiction than Enterprise, and I watched that entire run with a vapid smile on my face. I plowed through the rest of the shows as they came out on DVD, finally catching up to the live ones just as the final season began. I enjoyed them enough to patiently wait out the mid-season hiatus, and, just as I was getting excited by the possible direction of the final ten installments...

...I just don't know what the point is anymore.

The series became anti-climactic 30 minutes into that premiere. Now it's literally crawling toward the finish line like Simon Pegg's character in Run Fatboy Run.

We're down to the last two episodes. One tonight. One next week.

I almost don't care to watch, though, because even if the producers manage to pull out of this screaming nose-dive with a fantastic finale, it doesn't make up for the fact that the series has become a shadow of what it promised to be. What's more, it's become a bad parody of itself.

Fer frak sake, I always accepted how much smoking and drinking was going on on that damn ship. I'm a liberal guy. I get it. When your civilization is wiped out and life sucks, one expects a few vices to surface. And they surfaced a lot. But last week Adama actually started toking weed.

I don't know how I expected the series to end, but I didn't think it would dovetail with the sensibilities of Pineapple Express or Half Baked.

I hear Adama's new first officer will be Tommy Chong.

Rider Watches Them, That's Who - Updated

I'll be honest: there's no way for me to write an objective Watchmen movie review without mentioning the comic. I considered several different directions to take this review, and they all came full-circle back to the source material. (Kinda like the first and last panels of the actual mini-series...and if you don't get that reference, you should stop now.)

I read the individual issues as they first came out in 1986, and I knew from the beginning that I was experiencing something way beyond the cookie-cutter superhero comics I'd been buying up until that point. Important and complex things were happening. By the twelfth issue, I didn't exactly consider the series bona fide literature--but that was only because I hadn't realized that comics could be literature.

I reread the hardcover collection in the weeks leading up to the movie's premiere, and there's no doubt in my mind that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created a literary masterpiece. (I also listened to the entire series of Comic Geek Speak "Footnotes" podcasts recapping each issue, because I knew I'd missed themes and symbolism in the past. Those boys clued me in to stuff I hadn't even considered. Kudos to them.)

I wish I could tell you that if I weren't the comic book fan I am, that I would've loved the movie anyway. I wish I could, but it's impossible to be sure. At the bare minimum it succeeds in depicting an alternate world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, populated by a handful of impotent heroes forced into retirement and/or employed as weapons by the military. The plot poses the mystery of who would eliminate these castrated heroes and why, then asks us to judge a Big Bad who uses a proverbial sword on a Gordian Knot in order to change everything. Going by a "this tale hasn't been told on film yet" level alone, it delivered the goods.

Zack Snyder compressed a lot of storytelling into his film, but it didn't feel like overkill. I summarily dismiss other critics' claims that he was a slave to the adaptation. It's nonsense. As much respect as I have for Gibbons' art, I wouldn't necessarily call his work dynamic. Snyder's visuals on this movie were dynamic; almost breathtaking at times. He lifted many panels from the comic, but you're an idiot if you didn't expect him to. He owned the look of this reality (only David Fincher could have done it better).

Snyder took liberties with a few plot elements, and many fans have, in turn, taken issue with those fixes. (The poor guy simply can't win...should he change shit or shouldn't he?) I can confirm that the ratio of what he left to what he noticeably changed is about 10 to 1. But the things he did tweak were necessary to the believability of the story. There are a lot more folks who'll see this movie that didn't read the comic than those who did, and they're not gonna notice a change in tone or sense something was deleted. And those of us who realize movies and sequential art are two intrinsically different art forms--and that some things simply don't translate well--just won't care. (Follow this minor spoiler footnote for the three "big" differences I noticed...and why they still don't change the tone of the film.*)

Watchmen was almost three hours long. Snyder took his time and paced it out. He let it breathe and didn't rush it. He loosely stuck to Moore's already loose two-issue-per-character exploration, but I could've gotten to know the characters even more--especially Rorschach and Silk Spectre II (the former being my favorite, and because the latter didn't have a real origin). None of the heroes were slighted, mind you, but I honestly wanted a longer movie.

I hear there's a director's cut in the works. That's a must-own. I'll strip naked and cover myself in blue paint while watching it.

What? That's what I did while reading it.

Note: I'll award a Rider's Block no-prize to the first commenter who tells me where Zack Snyder worked a 300 reference into Watchmen.

* Rorschach takes a more hands-on approach to dispatching a child killer than he did in the comic. So the hell what? It made his origin story all the more shocking.

In the comic, Dr. Manhattan is the only hero with actual powers, but in the movie the others are throwing thugs across rooms and breaking walls with their fists. This was probably done to appease mainstream audiences who need to see snapping bones in their R-rated action movies, along with comic fans who didn't "get" the subtle tone of the original story. I was cool with it, and I especially liked that the bad guy took a few licks...he needed to.

There's no space squid in the movie, and I don't care. I always thought that was the most outlandish element in Moore's plot. Snyder's change actually makes sense, and improves the story without altering the tone. The doomsday clock is stopped and gives a terrified world a chance to reflect and give peace a chance. Whether it's accomplished due to a psychic blast or [the movie's alternative], the outcome was never certain and ultimately open to interpretation.

Regarding Dolls and Escapism

I've only got two things to write about this afternoon, but the real reason for this post is to let you know I'm still sucking air and haven't abandoned the Block (or my Blogger duties).

First off, you should be watching Dollhouse on Fox. I'm as big a Joss Whedon fan as one can be without building a shrine and sacrificing farm animals, and I'm here to tell you: the man creates better episodic TV than anyone--including J.J. Abrams.

(I tried watching Fringe. I tried really hard. I even held my thumb over Joshua Jackson's face whenever it appeared onscreen to diminish the lameness he brought to the series. But you know what was missing from Fringe? That special Whedon touch.*)

I've heard fair-weather critics express doubt over what Whedon is doing in his latest production; that Dollhouse's premise is shaky and flies in the face of the strong-female-lead work he's done in the past. Because that's what it seems like with--what?--three episodes in the can.

But to those folks, I'll humbly point out that Mr. Whedon has always been a dude who writes toward an ending. He's got an entire mythology mapped out, and after seven seasons of Buffy and five of Angel, you should be ashamed of yourself if you think there's not more going on in the D-house than just hot babes serving as escorts.

I see the seeds being planted, and each episode has been better than the last. Were I the speculatin' type, I'd say we're witnessing Eliza Dushku's "Echo" about to go rogue from her mind-wiping overlords, and the show's premise will actually center around her bringing the Dollhouse down.

Watch last week's episode, "Stage Fright," over on Hulu, and tell me how it compared to any other hour-long drama you've been a slave to. Watch it for no other reason than to see what Echo does to an arrogant pop star with a folding chair. (I watched that scene three times, wishing the same for Beyoncé.)

The second reason for today's post is to let you know that my habits have changed recently. I'm gonna use a Revolutionary Road analogy to explain.

I like DiCaprio. I like Winslet. I like Mendes. But it'll be a cold day in hell when you catch me wasting my time on Revolutionary Road. I watch movies and read comics because of the escapism factor.

The world is a scary place right now. I know people who have lost--or are threatened with losing--their entire careers in the worst economic climate in a long time.

The day I choose to watch a movie about two beautiful people whining about their "horrible" jobs and abandoned dreams, rather than popping in Hellboy II on DVD, is a sad goddamn day indeed. (Perhaps one day I'll make an exception and watch Revolutionary Road and United 93 and maybe a little Old Yeller. Then I'll take a candlelit bath and pop in Pink Floyd The Wall on the CD player. Sure. I'll be just fine.)

That's a very long way of saying that I've been reading and writing other stuff. Escapist stuff. I'm still committed to the Block, of course. More than likely, what you'll see popping up here in the future will be movie and book reviews. (Possibly on deck in the weeks ahead: The Midnight Meat Train and Watchmen.)

If you've been paying attention these past few months, you've already been clued in on where to find my other projects.

If you haven't been paying attention, may I suggest a Joshua Jackson film marathon. Anything from 1998 to 2005, keeping in mind he peaked with Cursed.

* For example, Whedon would've killed off Josh Jackson within six episodes--just for the shock value. And he would've done it in a particularly nasty way that would've made me scream, "Take that! Fuckin' Pacey sack of shit!"

Wells on Mood Pockets: Who Will Review the Reviewer?™

Imagine you're a writer and someone flies you to another town to appear in a discussion panel. They put you up in a hotel, but the ethernet cable in the room is too short and the connection is not "strong enough." So you inform the organizers of the event that you're upset and don't want to fulfill your obligation...and you leave.

Then you blame them on your web site for not snapping you out of your funk. You also liken the lack of Wi-Fi to "the four horsemen of the apocalypse... circling and going for the kill."

That's the stunt Jeffrey Wells pulled on the Oxford Film Festival this past weekend.

Oh, he had a grand time sight-seeing before the world turned to shit and spit in his face, having visited Graceland and Sun Records on his way to Mississippi. He even stayed overnight in the Internet-challenged Oxford Downtown Inn, knowing full well he was cut off from The Cloud. How he must have tossed and turned that night! He'd heard there was a funny YouTube video of a boy tripping on painkillers, but he couldn't access it without walking all the way down to the lobby! And no way was that gonna happen!

He was, in his words, in a "mood pocket." That's sort of like a Hot Pocket, but with swirling, debilitating emotions instead of rancid lava-meat. He was cut off from his post-1999 safe zone where immediate wireless Internet is a necessity to do one's job and his balls are lovingly massaged by 802.11 digital spectrum fingers at all times.

Reading his responses to comments on that last blog post, everyone's to blame for Wells' hissy fit--including his AT&T broadband card which doesn't always work even though he pays $60 a month for it. Boo hoo hoo. Time to switch to VerizAlltell, Jeffrey?

The last time someone overreacted like this, he had running mascara and was imploring us to "leave Britney alone."

Read the controversial Who Will Review the Reviewer™ debut post here, wherein Rider takes a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic to task for phoning in a movie review.

Hail to the King, Baby

If you're a multi-millionaire author like Stephen King and you rip another writer's work, there's a risk of coming across as a mean old bully. I mean, you don't see Tom Hanks criticizing Drew Barrymore's limited acting range (although that'd be awesome).

But since King is one of my influences, and since he recently went after two best-selling authors whose work I despise, I applaud the balls it took for him to speak his mind.

No one who reads Stephenie Meyers' weak take on vampires is gonna be swayed by anything I write here in my little corner of the Innertubes, but maybe they'll take a card-carrying horror master's word for it.

The same goes for fans of James Patterson, whom I recently credited with pinching out such a steaming pile of literary excrement that it made me realize I'm already a better writer than he or his collaborators could ever hope to be.

Put 'em in their place, Unca Steve. I got your back.

Rider's One Positive Thing Review of Tooth & Nail

One Positive Thing is a series of reviews wherein Rider savagely pans a lame-ass flick but, because he's normally an optimistic individual, still finds one good thing to say about it...'cuz his momma raised him right.

I don't remember putting this DVD on my Netflix queue, but it showed up in my mailbox anyway. It's the rental equivalent of a boring stranger accidentally receiving an Evite to your Superbowl party and then actually showing up. You don't want to talk to him because he's saying shit you've heard a million times before, but his girlfriend is sort of hot so you let him eat some Tostitos.

Tooth & Nail is what you get when a filmmaker has only two things going for him: A) access to one cool location, and B) Michael Madsen's phone number. Seeing as how 80% of this movie takes place in an abandoned hospital, and that Madsen co-produced and "starred," Mark Young couldn't have shot his vision of an apocalyptic future without either one.

I knew T & N was gonna have major issues when the title credits ended with "Written, Directed, and Edited by." That's not the order you're supposed to list 'em in, right? Unless you're pulling a Robert Rodriguez and going with "Shot and Cut." But wouldn't that require resigning from the Directors Guild? (Mr. Young, please take note.)

We are introduced to two factions of survivors: the Foragers, led by a bewhiskered Robert Carradine, and the Rovers, a band of Road Warrior-lite cannibals headed up by Madsen. Imagine the much scarier Reavers from Firefly, except their leader chases you while whistling "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and they announce their arrival by blowing a trumpet.

No. It happened. More than once.

All logic goes out the window when the voice-over reveals that society didn't end because of disease or war, but rather because, "the world just ran out of gas."

Really? All those charred bodies sitting behind the wheels of abandoned vehicles during the opening sequence were the result of folks simply running out of fuel on a Jimmy John's run during a fucking energy crisis? And if that were the case, why are the main characters shacked up in a hospital rather than their own homes?

What is it about an apocalypse that makes folks go from one place of safety to an unfamiliar, unsafe location to chill with strangers? It can't be for the security, because even with bloodthirsty cannibals roaming around, it never occurs to anyone to secure the hospital's doors once bodies start piling up. It's almost as if Young decided to depict a good-natured End of Days on the outskirts of Mayberry where honest folk leave their doors unlocked while they're getting a slice of pie down t' the diner.

Another pertinent question: if you were struggling to survive after the breakdown of civilization, what reason would you have for changing your goddamned name? And presuming you had one, would you change it to reflect an industry that caused the end of the world? Here are some of the Foragers' names, and I'm not messing with you: "Ford," "Viper," "Torino," "Nova," and featuring Rachel Miner as "Neon."

Don't get me started on the cannibals' names. They have their own motif: an oddly non-threatening Vinnie Jones is "Mongrel," and there's also "Jackal," "Shepherd," "Wolf," and "Badass." (The latter clearly not getting it.)

The actors try to do what they can with what they're given, but the guy who played The Jerk Security Guard in Dawn of the Dead is relegated to disappearing early on for a non-surprising reappearance later (I'd say "spoiler" if it mattered, which it don't), and the rest of the Foragers exist to show off clothing in the director's apparent attempt to do a cross-promotion with Eddie Bauer.

There are so many unsettling leaps in human behavior that we're asked to swallow that it's impossible to reconcile them. At one point a female character who hated one guy earlier, says to him, "You shaved your face. I like it." Then she kisses him, pissing all over the memory of the man she'd been sleeping with two days earlier who tragically ended up on a spit.

The best thing I can say about Tooth & Nail: Nicole DuPort has a nice head of hair. In my above Superbowl party scenario, she's the girlfriend.

Rider's opinions are fully those of Rider's Block Enterprises. Keep in mind he doesn't personally know Michael Madsen or any other actor whose only solid work was done with Quentin Tarantino, and he doesn't have a feature film of his own to prove he knows his shit.

Rider Reimagines Monkey Shines

Alternate title: Proof I Can Write About George A. Romero Movies Without Lapsing Into Zombie-speak

I caught Romero's 1988 flick Monkey Shines on IFC last night (for the first time since its video release) and it didn't disappoint. It had all the elements of a perfect film: quadriplegic sex, a killer monkey wielding matches and syringes, and John Pankow's enormous forehead.

But deep down inside my wooden cranium I wondered how it could be better. How could it be updated with current celebrities and state-of-the-art FX to really make that monkey shine?

For starters, I'd put Jason Statham in the wheelchair. He'd still be the quadriplegic hero who uses a mouth-tube to roll around his house, but I'd set the film in a future where he telepathically controls a pair of hologram arms for getting dressed. That way, when Yakuza cyborg-ninjas attack, Statham's "holarms" can defend him with a twisted-up shirt. Besides, his contract stipulates that clothing be used as a weapon in at least one scene.

Ella, the helper monkey who both loves and taunts him, will be played by Dakota Fanning. I'll use Lord of the Rings-like forced perspective and camera tricks to make her appear 18 inches tall. Nothing will make the audience cheer more than when Statham seizes little Dakota's neck with his teeth and chokes the life out of her as she gibbers and screeches. Fanning doesn't do her own stunts, so we'd have to use a Monchichi stand-in.

I'll change the epilogue to bring the Statham legend full circle: after his character's spinal surgery is a success, his girlfriend picks him up at the hospital (she's played by Angelina Jolie's CG doppelgänger in Beowulf but voiced by Doc Hammer as "Dr. Girlfriend"). She's driving a black Audi A8 or a BMW--depending on who offers more for product placement. It seems they're going to move to France, and he's going to call himself...Frank Martin! Never mind that it's set in 2021 and The Transporter took place in '02. It's Statham. Why question it?

After the credits roll, we'll fade back in on a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse, and a voice on the radio will say, "The dead are rising from their graves and eating the flesh of the living."

D'oh!

Operation: Oh No

"Happy 2009," he said to a man who wasn't there. He scurried away from the terminal, his humorless cackle echoing through the dark room.

It had been an hour since his wife had gone to bed. An hour since the new year had begun. An hour since he'd embarked on "Operation: Oh No."

The mission was proceeding better than expected. The pockets of his robe were already full, and he had begun loading more pilfered booty into his pajamas. They made a pleasant plastic-y grinding sound as he exited the east wing, as if his bed clothes were lined with LEGO blocks.

He gripped a nail file in one sweaty fist. The handle read "Revlon," but it may as well have read "Mjolnir," as, verily, it infused him with the power of a Norse god on this glorious quest.

He silently entered the pitch-black Palm Room, and spied another nearby computer terminal. No sooner had he begun to jab at the keyboard, than a creepy, impossibly loud whisper emanated from the darkness.

"What are you doing, George?"

"Whozat?!" he cried, leaping away from the computer. His nail file was lodged vertically in the keyboard. "Oh, Dick, it's just you."

The newcomer's grin--a frightening smirk, really--materialized out of the darkness like that of a fucked-up Cheshire Cat. He spoke in a whisper, but his lips didn't move. "Are you doing what I think you are?"

George patted his robe, the plastic bulge crunching. He turned back to the keyboard. "I'm'a give 'em a taste of their own medicine."

"I know it bothered you at the time, George, but the liberals will just say you copied Clin--"

"I couldn't type my middle initial for days, Dick," George said, popping the "O" key off and sliding it into his elephant pajama bottoms. "This'll learn 'em. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of work to do in the Press Corps Office next door."

He felt a cold hand fall on his shoulder. It made him shiver. His balls tightened. "19 more days, George. You're jumping the gun."

"But-but we can do without that letter till then, Dick," he whined. "I wanna crawl in bed next to Laura tonight and tell her 'Mission accomplished.'"

"Prematurely?" asked the whisper.

"Aw, come on, Dick! I don't wanna put 'em all back!"

"I'm not saying you have to put them back...just leave the ones in the Oval Office."

George squinted, thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. "Oh, right. I'll need it to pardon Scooter."

"And don't forget that 'surprise' involving bin Laden's 'capture' in two weeks."

George smiled at the horrible floating grin in the dark. "How could I forget?"

He went to the door, eager to continue his quest. When he turned to say good night, the floating grin was gone.

"Happy New Year," he said, this time to an empty room.

Rider wishes his readers a prosperous 2009. Here's hoping it's better than '08 and the previous eight.