I hadn't heard. So sad.

In odd news...

President Bush was successfully treated for Lyme disease nearly a year ago, the White House announced Wednesday.

The condition had never been revealed until the White House on Wednesday made public the results of his annual physical exam. They said that he was treated for what they called "early, localized Lyme disease" last August after developing the characteristic bullseye rash, and that it did not recur.

Whoa, big earthquake in Jakarta. 7.4

In other news, Norther Spain is suffering a plague of voles.

I doin't remember that one in the Old Testament.

Such a shaky place to have so many oil rigs in the ocean.

OK,

TV Guide's Michael Ausiello has posted a rumor that the producers of ABC's Lost are considering Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell for the new role of Charlotte, a hot 20-something who is said to be "precocious, loquacious and funny."

Can you be precocious and 20-something?

[link]

Thank god for Canadians.

So very true.

Okay, who ordered the Apocalypse??

Okay, who ordered the Apocalypse??

oops.

I don't know who ordered 90 degrees with 45% humidity and a code red smog level, but if I ever find out, I'm going to hit him with a baseball bat after it gets cooler.

Have folks seen this Jane Espenson article in The New Republic ?

Harry Potter andThe Secret to Selling Sci-Fi.

It's difficult to sell a show with hard sci-fi or fantasy elements. It doesn't matter that the biggest summer movies (Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Transformers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) and book (Harry Potter again) are sci-fi or fantasy, or even that "Heroes" was the highest-rated new show on TV. Try pitching a purely sci-fi/fantasy show with a spaceship or an elf and see how it goes over. Put an elf on your spaceship and you might never recover. Even the SCI FI Channel seems reluctant, as they look toward a post-"Battlestar Galactica" era, to dive too deeply into Asimovian or Tolkienish waters. Non-cable networks are even more wary. And their reasoning isn't terrible. Networks are still in the business of broadcasting, not nichecasting. You simply cannot make a hit show by attracting only viewers who also attend Comic-Con, no matter how hard it is to move down a San Diego sidewalk in late July.

And yet, there is a certain kind of fantasy story that seems to be able to reach beyond the edges of the normal fandom. It seems to be able to cross the boundaries and appeal so strongly to people that they sometimes don't even notice that they're enjoying fantasy. Harry Potter is an example of that kind of story. The people who don't like Harry Potter seem to be the ones who haven't tried it yet. It's universally appealing, like pie and Anderson Cooper. That means, of course, that Harry has something to teach those of us who want to write, create, air or sell sci-fi/fantasy television shows.

Okay, who ordered the Apocalypse??

Well, I tried to order Apocalypto, but the person at Blockbuster didn't speak English that well, so I think there was a mix-up at the home office.