Incidentally: Please keep Zack Snyder away from Dark Knight Returns.

Andrew Klavan wrote a controversial essay in the Wall Street Journal saying that The Dark Knight is, in fact, a thinly-veiled tribute to President George W. Bush, who, in Klavan's mind, is another leader who, like Batman in this film, has done what has been right instead of what is popular, and is willing to exchange taking the heat now in exchange for ultimately being validated by history:

Go ahead. Stare into those dreamy eyes.

Thank you for being a friend, Estelle Getty.

Calling out of work, Manny?

Phoenix editor Lance Gould, Boston Globe scribe Meredith Goldstein, and WFNX-er Henry Santoro tell you what's news and what's not. Don't worry - they won't mention that New Yorker cover

Someone here has never read me...

Inspired by a post on New York mag's Vulture blog, we tried to find out: what is the Phoenix staff's secret shame? What book are we most embarrassed to have never read?

We got quite a few good replies, including Huck Finn and Wuthering Heights, but it turned out that there are a few of us here who have managed to miss those two

Jon Reiss’s new graffiti documentary takes us waaay back in time — we’re talking prehistoric cave paintings here — but BOMB IT is far from a cut-and-dried history lesson. Reiss talks to big-time bombers across the globe, from New York graf pioneers Taki 183 and Zephyr and “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”-sticker-dude-turned-Obama-campaign-poster-designer Shepard Fairey to Brazilian twin mural artists Os Gêmeos and Barcelona fish tagger Pez.

Today, the front page of the New York Times declares boldly:

“Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either permanently or for long stretches.

They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate.

SOCIAL STUDIES
5 Years Ago
July 18, 2003 | In an interview with Zadie Smith, Camille Dodero asked the author about her anti-social tendencies.
Q: After those periods of isolation [spent writing her books], do you find it hard to relate to people?

A: Yes. If I'm let out to go to a party, say, and I haven't been out for three or four weeks, I don't realize that most people have colleagues and they know how to smooth things over [in conversation].

We've been waiting for it for more than a year, and it's finally here. Sure, we haven't even seen it yet, but others have, so we're opening the floor for people to post their thoughts on the entire thing, with all plot details fair game for discussion, including the ending. If you haven't seen it yet, consider yourself fairly warned!

Little Big Planet

We didn't go to E3, so we talked to someone who actually did: G4 Games Editorial Manager Abbie Heppe.

What impressed you the most from the show? Were there any specific games that you were genuinely blown away by?
Despite being a scaled down E3, there were a tremendous amount of big games on the floor.

Jason Brown’s short story collection, Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work — chilling, outstanding, November of mood — takes place in a fictional Maine town called Vaughn. And this is not the Maine of lobster and lighthouses. This is no Vacationland. His characters — loggers, drinkers, jealous siblings, high schoolers, angry widows, trapped humans of all sorts — circle around the town, but cannot quite escape.

Empire Online has the trailer for Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore and David Gibbons' Watchmen, the best graphic novel of all time (and we're not looking for arguments on this, either). The trailer has long been rumored to be attached to The Dark Knight this weekend. You can watch it by clicking that still of The Comedian.

NYT and the New Yorker criticize Madonna so you don't have to!

Yo, Madonna is really all over the place this week, and we’re not talking just People, PopSugar or Perez Hilton. The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Slate have all covered Madonna in one way or another in the past few days, which could be a good thing except they're all sort of shitting on her.

The power of Sir Salman Rushdie’s work rests in his ability to blend the miraculous (Saleem’s unusually large nose and its ability to smell emotion from Midnight’s Children comes to mind) and the real, allowing us to believe that the supernatural — the extraordinary, the mythic, and the magical — can be a part of everyday life and found in the simplest places (even a nose).

No, we are not actually at E3 right now, but you don't have to be to know that something big happened on the first day there. Everyone is still talking about yesterday's news - some in less healthy fashion than others.

For those who don't know, the Microsoft press conference kicked off E3 and, for most of it, it was a surprise-free affair - they discussed numerous games that had already been announced, including Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5 (which, according to some observers, has received a whitewash), Rock Band 2 (now with asskicking tracklist!), Lips, and Fable 2

In case you had forgotten - and, how could you, really? - this Wednesday is the premiere of Season 5 of Project Runway. Hooray! Somewhere, someone is littering the streets with confetti in the shape of high heels from Bluefly. Anyway, not to spoil things already, but Bravo has already provided a list of the episodes - guest judges included - on their website

On the eve of E3, it's Nintendo with the first surprise. Today, they announced "Motion Plus," which they say will offer "more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation." In other words, a 1:1 connect between the WiiMote and the action on the screen. Obviously it remains to be seen how well it works, but our immediate thought was that those saber melees in The Force Unleashed may have just gotten a lot cooler.