The Scaffold Critic

Looks like Hollywoodland has cooked up another self-referential, mytho-prosaical blockbuster.

I was talking to my friend Biz:

Biz (2:24:59 AM): okay well me jeet and some people went to see hollywoodland last night and the movies was so boring .. he wasn't sitting next to me at first, but we were the only ones in the theater so he went over to the corner to smoke a cigarette and climb on the scaffolding behind the screen and when he was finished he came back and sat next to me and the movie was so boring i just thought about him the whole time and got kinda excited .. yea i just realized how horrible a story that was

Me(2:25:37 AM): u were the ONLY ones in the theater?

Me(2:25:51 AM): thats a great story actually

Biz(2:26:04 AM): ohhh no !! there was this lady but she was slumped down in her seat and we didn't know she was there

Biz(2:26:21 AM): and when jeet started climbing behind the screen she said she would tell the movie people if he didn't stop

Electranetizens of the Day

I found the WaPo A-section news-pix slide show unusually evocative today:

Name of the Day

Invention of the Day

That Second Bush Administration "Look"

One of These Men Was Married to Cleopatra

Burning Man Goes Basra

Pre-Ignition Burning Man Goes Regensburg

Pick Your Effigy

Odd Lede Verb-Choice In Our Time

Today's strange verb, renew:

STOCKHOLM, Sept. 17 — Sweden appeared set to sweep away 12 years of center-left government today, voting to reject its longtime prime minister, Goran Persson, in favor of a conservative candidate who has pledged to renew the Swedish welfare state.

The NYT's Stockholm bureau is a little startled by the Swedish election results. The apparent winner is a mildish conservative reformer, which suggests a verb that would bring some sense to the lede-- a conservative candidate who has pledged to reform the Swedish welfare state. But their fingers just couldn't key in that word or that thought, so renew it was.