Sea monkey: Even Stephen Colbert can't resist taking a dig at Aquaman. Comedy Central.

 

by Glen Weldon

Aquaman. King of the Seven Seas. Swift and Powerful Monarch of the Ocean.

Dude can't catch a break.

In the popular mindset, he's become a quite literal joke, and a tired one.

And so to all those cut-ups, wags and wacky funsters who have helped to spread the now pervasive "Aquaman is Lame" meme, I say this:

Enough. Basta. Move on.

Credit where it's due, though: Thanks to you, pointing out that the highly specific nature of Aquaman's power-set would logically circumscribe his effectiveness as a deterrent of crime and administrator of justice — ie, "The guy talks to FISH!" — is now officially the hoariest, hackiest arrow in the quiver of pop-culture commentary.

Qua humor, it is to our Internet Age what "And what is the deal with airline peanuts?" was to the skinny-necktie 90's.

It is not remotely fresh; it is fresh's antithesis, its polar opposite, its mortal enemy. It's what steps onto the Enterprise wearing a goatee after a transporter malfunction strands Fresh Himself in the anti-matter universe.

Stephen Colbert, bless him, recently managed to put a silly new spin on the Aquaman joke. (It's right around the one-minute mark). It's not bad, actually, as Aquaman gags go -- just dumb enough to crack Colbert up, which is fun.

But that's the exception. The rule itself is pretty grim.

After the jump, a short history of the Aqua-gag, involving Dave Chappelle, Craig Ferguson, Family Guy, Entourage, and the many others who've mistaken the Sea King's orange tunic for Komedy Gold.

• In the '60s, he had his own cartoon series, which cast him as a sort of sheriff of the underwater realm — courageous, dynamic, a mentor who was always in save-the-day mode. The only thing lame about him at that point was the show's animation, which really was pretty awful.

• In the '70s he co-starred in another cartoon series, Super Friends, and here's where the damage to his rep was likely done. (Though the first signs of it wouldn't be seen until years later.) This is the Aquaman who entered the consciousness of a generation — a smiling blond doof who didn't get much to do and sort of tagged along on missions.

• Throughout the '80s and '90s, Aquaman went through enormous changes in the pages of his comic book(s). Meanwhile, a few Aquaman jokes crept into the script of the 1988 Tom Hanks/Sally Field movie Punchline. Let's just say this didn't exactly catapult the character into the center of the cultural zeitgeist.

But then, on June 27, 1997, something happened. That night, on Comedy Central's Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, a young stand-up comic named Dave Chappelle shared some of his thoughts on the relative merits of Aquaman. This, evidently, was the seed.

Soon after that, Aquaman came in for more sustained satirical drubbing on the
popular (and profane) Web site of a humor writer with the nom de web of Seanbaby.

And then the deluge.

Soon he came to be little more than a figure of fun. In song. On the stage. In stand-up. On blogs and message boards. And, inevitably, on Facebook.

And oh, how he was and continues to be mocked on TV.

The second season of HBO's Entourage was essentially an extended Aquaman gag.

Family Guy has gone back to the Aqua-well several times over the years. (FOX doesn't appreciate our linking to the scenes, but they're only a Google search away.)

Here's the Aquaman-is-a-Putz gag in the form of a commercial.

In a running skit on CBS' The Late Late Show, host Craig Ferguson plays Aquaman as an advice columnist. Like Colbert, Ferguson earns points for twisting the Aquaman-is-Lame formula until it turns silly, and sorta charming.

And when it comes to making fun of Aquaman, Cartoon Network has been like a dog with a bone.

To be fair, not all the news has been bad for the guy. He does have some valiant online defenders, passionate devotees, and painstaking chroniclers. (Full disclosure, I've got a dog in this fight myself, albeit one who cusses like a sailor, so be warned.

In sum: Seriously, people, give it a rest. The time has come for all of us — bloggers, stand-ups, and the legions of bored teens who post "Aquaman parody" videos to YouTube (I'm not gonna link to any, because they tend toward interminable ghastliness) — to observe an Aquamoratorium.

by Linda Holmes

Every now and then, you get a reminder that half of life is showing up.

And the other half is not losing your stuff.

This week on The Amazing Race, the highly likable mother-son team of Toni and Dallas had made it all the way to the final four, along with three less likable teams. In descending order of likability and the mutters of disinterest they inspire, those teams were: brother and sister Nick and Starr (eh), semi-feuding couple Ken and Tina (feh), and incompetent buffoon clown can-barely-find-their-own-feet pals Dan and Andrew (bleh).

The previous week, Dan and Andrew had given perhaps the worst performance by any team, in any leg, ever. Most notably, they had to quit on a task and try a different one, because Dan couldn't walk in formation. Not tango, not mambo, not limbo: just walk. Walk in a straight line in a rhythmic fashion. Couldn't do it. Don't believe me? See for yourself. It was like Elaine dancing on Seinfeld, if Elaine had only been trying to walk at the time.

More on morons, after the jump...

This week sent the teams rushing around Moscow, where Dallas was temporarily separated from his mom while doing a task. Unfortunately, he was permanently separated from the little bag where the team keeps its money and passports.

This is where Race isn't Survivor. They can't just give you more rice, or stitch up your knee, or blur your rear end if it turns out your swimsuit is too revealing. If you're in Russia without a passport, you're...actually in Russia without a passport. So in all likelihood, Toni and Dallas would have been forced to drop out at the end of the leg anyway, unless they wanted to try to stow away in someone's luggage. But as a result of trying to get around cheaply after losing all their money, they came in last anyway, and they were eliminated.

And so Dan and Andrew are in the finals. Dan and Andrew, who cannot walk. Dan and Andrew, who once lost their shoes and had to buy more in the airport. Dan and Andrew, who would probably never have been cast but for the popularity of Judd Apatow movies about guys who have no recognizable merit but become successful anyway.

So I guess it really is shaping up to be a story right out of Hollywood.

by Linda Holmes

Join the final stages of grief: ABC recently pulled the (apparent) plug on Pushing Daisies (as it did with Eli Stone and Dirty Sexy Money), but there are still a handful of new episodes left. Tonight, a chef turns up dead at a cook-off. (ABC, 8 p.m.)

It's beginning to look a lot like tourists from Ohio: Last year at this time, I was actually working in Rockefeller Center, and believe me, it may be the most wonderful time of the year, but not if you are trying to get a peppermint mocha at the Starbucks in the underground concourse next to the skating rink. If you're doing that, it's nothing but a solid wall of people's backs. People who are not from New York, and therefore don't understand the Step Aside Rules, the Keep It Moving Rules, or the You Can't Just Stand There Where People Need To Walk Rules.

What I'm saying is that tonight's Christmas At Rockefeller Center (NBC, 8 p.m.) will not give you the real feeling of Christmas at Rockefeller Center, despite the efforts of Harry Connick, Jr., the Jonas Brothers, and American Idol champ David Cook.

More of tonight's TV, after the jump...

Elvis...the other one: The Sundance Channel also has a new series tonight called Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... Unsurprisingly, it features Elvis Costello sitting down with various interesting people for in-depth chats about art and such. Here's a clip from tonight's discussion with Elton John:

A future episode will feature Costello chatting with The Police, which I am really looking forward to, because I seem to recall a great line from Costello about how Sting really needed to stop trying to sing in a "silly Jamaican accent." Which: true, that. (Sundance, 9 p.m.)

Laced with promise: Tonight, CBS brings you the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. So, if you are an underwear enthusiast with a lot of free time, have at it. (CBS, 10 p.m.)

Knife skills: It's not too late to get in on this season of Bravo's Top Chef, which is a pretty good show. Last week's Thanksgiving feast sent home the maker of the gross-looking banana s'mores (when the Foo Fighters compare your dessert to spit on a cracker, that's a sign you're headed home), and this week takes the chefs to the Today show for a demonstration. (Bravo, 10 p.m.)

by Glenn McDonald

This is inspired.

At the extremely orchestrated, extremely annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City, those rascals at the Cartoon Network managed to Rickroll a crowd of millions, both in person and via the live broadcast on NBC.

If you're not familiar with the concept of Rickrolling, there's a good primer here. Basically, it's a fun but aging Internet meme -- an endlessly perpetuating prank that tricks people into watching a full-screen, full-volume version of Rick Astley's 1987 video, "Never Going to Give You Up."

More on Rickrolling, The Man, and how a meme dies, after the jump...

It was stoopid, and when I say stoopid, I mean stoopid-fresh. Astley has shown an admirable willingness to embrace his newfound, if ironic, fame. As well he should. Rickrolling has single-handedly revived his career -- the video has been viewed more than 20 million times on YouTube, and he was recently voted "Best Act Ever" at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

Like any good prank template, Rickrolling is a simple concept that can be extrapolated endlessly. We killed a few weeks at my office trying to figure new ways to Rickroll each other, disguising various links and otherwise customizing what is essentially a bait-and-switch con. But that was almost a year ago -- an eternity in webtime. With the Macy's prank, I think we can safely retire the bit. Like so many Internet memes before it, Rickrolling has officially gone mainstream. Kudos to the Cartoon Network, though. That's a pretty good way to go out.

RIP: Rickrolling
Time of Death: Thanksgiving Day, 2008
"All Joking Aside, That Guy Really Could Dance"

A room full of excitable nerds with acoustic guitars is never, never, never a bad idea. This video of Ben Folds covering the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" has been kicking around for a couple of years now, beloved by random YouTube stumblers and email link-followers. There's a lot of love in that room.

Happy middle of the week.

It used to be that one of the best sources of palatable holiday ads was The Gap. This one was actually the first time many people ever saw Rufus Wainwright, singing "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" for the holiday campaign in 1998. Around the same vintage, there were ads with Luscious Jackson singing "Let It Snow" and with Low singing "The Little Drummer Boy." It wasn't all hipster bands, either -- Johnny Mathis showed up to sing "The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year."

Gap history and holiday blues, after the jump, and be warned -- mute your computer first if you are working around sleeping babies, because The Gap will autoplay its merriment in your ear if you don't...

The holiday ads have fared no better. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry did the 1999 ads, but before long, we entered the regrettable Sarah Jessica Parker period, and now we have reached Merry Mixit.

Merry Mixit is a site where you are encouraged to download an application for your iPhone that encourages you to mix your own Gap ad. Seriously.

They've got their own stuff, too:

But just look how...studied it is. I enjoy both Rainn Wilson and Selma Blair in their natural habitats, but when an ad feels this self-consciously whimsical and pop-culture-referenced, you lose the sense that it has just sort of fortuitously occurred. Little hits like that Rufus Wainwright ad, or even "Khaki Swing," come along and seem like a bonus -- even the commercials are fun, yay! -- but when an ad has this much of a sense of itself as a phenomenon, it's not fun anymore.

Admittedly, however, I am a traditionalist: my favorite holiday ad is still this one:

Culture panic: Worried about applauding at the wrong time? You're hardly alone. iStockphoto.

 

by Linda Holmes

• The London Times is feeling mighty optimistic these days, judging from its creation of a list of the 100 Best Movies of 2008. Now, it doesn't always feel like there are two movies a week that anyone would want to include on such a list, but they've gone and compiled their list nonetheless. (Note that it's based on 2008 releases in the U.K.; some of these were released in the U.S. in 2007.) If nothing else, it does make a nice refresher on recent movies you may have missed, and there are handy links to every review.

TiVo, penny-pinching, and fear of culture snobbery, after the jump...

Interestingly, the column's presumption is that the imposition of fear and the discomforting of uninitiated listeners is an accidental and counterproductive malfunctioning of the culture — not an intrinsic part of what makes audiences with expertise feel good about themselves.

• Hollywood's ongoing Let's Shoot Ourselves In The Foot Project churns along, as the four major broadcast networks try to prepare for an actors' strike, a year after last year's writers' strike.

• Watching Andy Rooney brag last night on 60 Minutes about mixing premium gasoline and regular gasoline to save a few cents a gallon, I complained to friends about some of the obnoxious, horribly tin-eared penny-pinching stories being generated by our collective economic unease.

Jezebel is with me, taking (quite correct) offense at this irritating New York Times piece, which makes shopping at Trader Joe's sound like an adorable and exotic hobby, and which marvels at the idea of entertaining eight people at home for a mere $238 — about half of which, it appears, was spent on cheeseball decor guests don't care about anyway. (Hint: People who are actually on a tight budget do not spend $11 on a scented Christmas candle for a single party.)

• The math isn't pure, to say the least, but the Freakonomics blog post about how much writer Justin Wolfers loves his TiVo brings home an argument I have been making for some time: My favorite entertainment-related technological advancement of my lifetime is the DVR (digital video recorder).

Internet comment threads are not always the best way to restore your faith in humanity, but the thread attached to this story is pretty interesting — and refreshingly not overrun with "everyone who watches television is an idiot" posts, as often happens when television (and the quality of television) is discussed.

Roger Ebert's blistering takedown of what he calls the "CelebCult" delivers a well-earned beating to magazines and web sites supported by what would, without the intervention of cameras and thus "journalism," be easily classifiable as stalking. It's bad for us all, dealing daily in the details of whether Suri Cruise will or will not wear pants. Let us agree on that premise.

But because Ebert has bitten off so much -- the publishing crisis, the AP's 500-word limit on everything from reviews to interviews, celebrity obsessions, the disappearance of critical critics -- the piece is a little bit...all over the place. One of the things he doesn't directly address came roaring to the front of my mind as I perused the Rolling Stone "Hot List" for 2008: I have come to view hotness as the enemy of everything about pop culture that I enjoy. I hate hotness.

Why hotness is a menace, and what it's crowding out, after the jump...

Consider the Rolling Stone list. Barack Obama is hot; so is Leighton Meester from Gossip Girl. The sport of winching is hot; so is genuinely brilliant musician Bon Iver.

The closest I can come to explaining what "hot" is supposed to mean in this context is something like: "Things you have already heard of, or things that everyone else has heard of except for you, and if anyone finds out you haven't heard of them, they'll make fun of you, so listen carefully." Your cultural currency now depends on being able to nod knowingly and say, "Ah, yes, Bon Iver; that folk singer who released that one 'icy moonscape of a record.'" Not because you've heard the record, but because you read about it on a Rolling Stone Hot List.

One journalistic advantage to the Hot List is that you cannot argue with it. Can you write to Rolling Stone and argue with the idea that Leighton Meester is hot? That winching is hot? Of course not; they are on the Rolling Stone Hot List, so if they were not hot before, they are hot now, because it is possible to become hot by being considered hot. It's all in the perception. It is possible to become hot against your will, or by association, or after you're dead.

If I tell you today that Judge Judy is hot, then that actually takes Judge Judy one step closer to being hot. She is hotter if I say she's hot than she is if I don't say she's hot, except that if I say she's hot and there are 100 comments saying she is not hot, then that might make her less hot than if I had never mentioned her at all. Hotness is invented and perpetuated by being recognized; "hot" is, in that sense, the least organic adjective we have.

If you wander through the recent news listings looking for the word "Hottest," you will see exactly what I mean. As of this writing, the results include Lonely Planet's possible endangering of the Bay Of Fires by naming it the "Hottest Travel Destination" of the year; a discussion of the continuing hotness of the Wii; and plenty of coverage of the aforementioned Suri Cruise being named the Forbes "Hottest Tot."

That's right: Hottest Baby. Hottest Person Who Is Younger Than The Socks You're Wearing Right Now. Forbes was kind enough to explain what, exactly, makes a two-year-old "hot":

To determine which tykes were tops, we looked at both press clippings and Web presence for more than 50 A-list kiddies (5-years-old and younger) over the course of a year. Then, with a whittled down list, we reached out to Los Angeles, Calif.-based polling firm E-Poll Market Research for both awareness data for the kids and consumer appeal rankings for their celebrity parents.

So it's essentially an index of who's already been covered the most, along with "awareness data" (the next frontier in parental one-upmanship: awareness data!) including the hotness of their parents. For the most part, it's a measure of which baby has already achieved the greatest media saturation. And how many "related articles" are there in which other publications report on the report on which baby they report on the most? At last count, 353.

Hotness is just what it advertises itself to be: a constant taking and retaking of our cultural temperature, not to identify what might be worthwhile or interesting, and not to comment on what it says about us that we choose to hot-ify graphic horror films or celebrity babies. It is telling you the thing you are most capable of determining for yourself; it is measuring the one quality you are best equipped to eyeball: ubiquity.

There is, with every question, the What, the So What?, and the Now What?. Hotness is stuck idling in the What. Vampires are hot: that's a What. But...So What? And...Now What? For this, you have to look beyond hotness, and a good start is to resolve to never, never, never care about Suri Cruise.

Back in the halcyon days of the early 1990s, before broadband Internet and IMDb.com, my friends and I -- a small group of disturbed, minutiae-obsessed film geeks -- often killed time with something called The Movie Blurb Game. The idea was to think of a phrase that combined the titles of two or more films, then improvise a blurb for the movie that might appear in the newspaper. The other guy then had to piece together the title of the movie from the blurb.

I sense an example is in order:

In this cross-genre fairy tale musical from maverick director Terry Gilliam, Matt Damon and Heath Ledger star as 18th-century Chicago musicians on a mission from God to write timeless children's stories featuring the music of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles.

Answer: The Blues Brothers Grimm

The only rules were that you could not use the actual words of the movie name in the blurb, you had to use theatrically released films, and you had to stick to that dopey style of breezy entertainment journalism. In this game, it's all about style. For instance, bonus points are awarded for:

- incorporating admirable brevity ("M. Night Shyamalan adapts Jane Austen" = The Sixth Sense and Sensibility)

- incorporating inspired lack of brevity ("Robert Altman directs this Jimmy Cliff reggae classic starring Cher and Sandy Dennis as devotees of a tragically deceased screen star of yesteryear" = The Harder They Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean)

- incorporating Cher

Remember that films can be mashed up phonetically (Nosferatu Kill a
Mockingbird) and definite articles can be dropped (The Maltese Falcon and the Snowman).

Go to it, have fun, and post your answers below. (First-time players, be forewarned that answers may, indeed, be posted below -- don't scroll down unless you want to cheat.)

+++

1. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker star in Charlie Chaplin's classic silent comedy.

2. The Gotham franchise takes a dubious turn when Batman (Ben Stiller) moonlights as a security guard.

3. Michelle Rodriguez spars with Ed Norton.

4. In Robert Zemeckis' original time-travel classic, Angela Bassett enjoys a steamy, passionate affair with Michael J. Fox.

5. This strangest of chick flicks finds Christina Ricci, Rosie O'Donnell, Thora Birch and Melanie Griffith journeying upriver to assassinate a rogue colonel.

6.) Kurt Russell and Steve McQueen escape a German POW camp in Manhattan.

7.) Mike Judge's animated cult comedy stars Ron Livingston and Jennifer Aniston as primates shot into orbit.

8.) In this poorly received sequel, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns from the future to fight zombies, Robin Williams and painfully earnest prep school boys. (3 films)

9. In the quintessential heavy metal Elvis picture, the King teams with Jim Varney and Mark Wahlberg to join the Rebel Alliance. (4 films)

10.) Based on the Alice Walker novel, Steven Spielberg directs Prince in this touching tale of an autistic man and his brother, featuring Jim Carrey as comedian Andy Kaufmann, with Nicholas Cage and Cher as star-crossed lovers. (5 films)

Watch this space for future installments. (Next up: The Movie Blurb Game, Holiday Films Edition.)

Answers are after the jump, so don't spoil it for yourself!

by Marc Hirsh

It's a good time to be Taylor Swift, as if there's ever a bad time. Last Sunday, she won an American Music Award for Favorite Female Artist, Country Music, which should sit nicely alongside her awards for Top New Female Vocalist (Academy Of Country Music), Video Of The Year and Female Video Of The Year (CMT), Breakout Artist (Teen Choice) and last year's Horizon Award from the Country Music Association. She also currently has the #1 album in the country, with her sophomore release Fearless topping this week's Billboard 200 chart. Plus, of course, the cuteness and the perkiness and teenagerness and the used-to-date-a-Jonas-Brother of it all.

No such luck at the last two CMAs. The broadcasts are less about handing out awards than about providing a national showcase for country music, and Swift rose to the challenge with live versions of "Love Story" (from two weeks ago, shown at the top of the post) and "Our Song" (from last year) that were awful in the earnest, self-unaware manner of someone about to be rejected from her American Idol audition by Paula Abdul because neither Simon nor Randy feels like being mean to her. She seems to be sweetly, genuinely untalented. Yet here Swift was, in giant rooms full of music industry types ostensibly there to celebrate excellence who enthusiastically applauded her every time. Whatever, Nashville.

It's also worth noting that none of the awards mentioned above contain the word "best" anywhere in them.

by Todd Kliman

Looking to spruce up your Thanksgiving meal? Three words: cognac mashed potatoes.

A clever riff on hidebound holiday fare from Bobby Flay? A "kicked-up" concoction from Emeril?

Nope, the combination is the creation of perpetually stoned-but-improbably-functional rapper Snoop Dogg -- who else would think to fuse Yankee tradition with hip-hop chill? -- who shared his, uh, recipe when he did a guest turn this week on Martha Stewart. (A pairing so inspired, so hilarious, it makes Klugman-Randall look quaint -- and every other "reality" show look forced -- by comparison. Note to network execs: get this ultimate salt-and-pepper duo a slot in prime time.)

Me, I don't dare make them -- I still remember being blasted for futzing with the sweet potatoes one year -- but I'd love to hear from anybody who's got nerve enough to give it a go.

Now, a Cristal-spiked gravy -- that I could maybe get with.

Todd Kliman is a James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic and the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine. The Wild Vine, his book about the Rosetta stone of American wine, is due in 2009.

(See Part Two of the video, after the jump.)

Too much turkey? Recover on the sofa — with a nice big book full of easily digestible pictures. iStockphoto.com

 

by Glen Weldon

And so it begins: Another noisy, stressful, cousin-crammed festival of starchy overconsumption. Tomorrow, you will feast. And drink. And listen helplessly as your great-uncle updates you on the medical status of his bowels.

And then on Friday morning, you'll stumble from bed a bleary, still-bloated mess. In your compromised state, the shopping mall may beckon. Ignore it.

Instead, do yourself a favor: Hie your tired, tryptophan-addled butt to the nearest couch.

And take a book with you. One that:

1. You can polish off in a single lazy afternoon, and yet
2. Is so thick it could drop even a particularly belligerent yak.

After the jump: Five thick-but-quick books made for long gray weekends like this one.

Make it a comic book.

And not just any comic book. If your experience of comics isn't particularly vast, the latest issue of an ongoing series like Proof or Scalped won't fit the bill (though both, I hasten to add, are seriously groovy reads).

No, what you're looking for is a graphic novel. A big, thick, heavy one.

Why place such a premium on sheer heft, you ask?

Because the one thing I hear again and again from the many hapless non-comics-reading friends upon whom I've foisted various funnybooks is this:

"That's ... it? I read the whole thing in like six minutes."

It's true, I won't deny it; Comics have a high burn rate. Unless and until you can train yourself to slow down — to give yourself time to digest a given book's artwork — your text-hungry eye will simply carom from word balloon to word balloon, devouring panels and pages at a dizzying clip.

Doorstops and Dragons: Jeff Smith's Bone is the biggest of our holiday-reading recommendations. Cartoon Books

 

It doesn't take long to break that noob-esque habit, but it does take practice. The graphic novels listed below, which clock in at anywhere from 200 to, in one instance, even 1,300 pages — so huge the freaking thing practically bends spacetime — are just the ticket.

What's more, each one features a beginning, middle and end — no mere trade paperback collections of issues from ongoing series here. (But again: If you happen to be on the market for ongoing series? Proof. Scalped. Seriously, you'll thank me.)

Here they are in order, from least to most bricklike:

Mail Order Bride, by Mark Kalesniko. Published by Fantagraphics Books.

Compared to the other weighty tomes on this list, Mail Order Bride's pagecount — a paltry 264 — make it seem downright sylphlike. But this unsparing tale of an emotionally stunted comic shop owner (and the young Korean wife who quickly outgrows him) is a dense, rewarding read. Kalesniko is merciless in exposing the casual racism and misogyny lurking even among the geekiest strata of society, and provides a gratifyingly nuanced portrait of a smart young woman coming to the realization that the world's a much bigger place than she thought.

From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Published by Top Shelf.

A painstakingly argued, fact-based treatise on the identity of Jack the Ripper — albeit a gory, gorgeous, hugely entertaining one. This blood-soaked doorstop of a book, all 572 pages of it, contains multitudes: Dark conspiracies, hansom cabs, 40 pages of historical footnotes, Freemasonry, not to mention lengthy meditations on the fourth dimension and the nature of time itself. Plus: Surgery, syphilis, and stabbings by the dozen (Happy Holidays!) Not simply better than the movie, but an altogether different, more meditative animal than the movie.

(Speaking of which: If VIctorian-era disemboweling doesn't float your boat, you might consider Watchmen, Moore and Dave Gibbon's 416-page, gimlet-eyed take on superheroes. Get it now, before the movie comes out next March, and they change the book's cover to match.)

Blankets, by Craig Thompson. Published by Top Shelf.

Several now-classic tropes of the indie comic have set up shop between the covers of this 592-page memoir, which traces the author's youth and adolescence in a fundamentalist Christian household. Self-conscious narrator? Check. Impetuous, emotionally troubled girlfriend? Check. Resulting stomach-hollowing pangs of first love? Check. But Thompson's treatment of his subject — notably the haunting, even dreamlike imagery he'll employ to illustrate the smallest, seemingly unremarkable moments of a relationship — sets Blankets apart.

Box Office Poison, by Alex Robinson. Published by Top Shelf.

Robinson's sprawling, multi-character magnum opus (608 pages, but who's counting?) was written over the course of several years, and perhaps the coolest thing about it is: You can tell. The book — which kicks off as a solid if somewhat familiar seriocomic chronicle of New York-based twentysomethings trapped in unrewarding jobs — evolves as Robinson grows more assured and uncovers new emotional territories to explore. Some of his characters grow, while others resolutely do not — and the control Robinson displays as he shifts them in and out of the narrative spotlight allows us to watch a young writer come into full possession of his particular gifts.

Bone, by Jeff Smith. Published by Cartoon Books.

Bone is a study in contradictions — at once a breezy, all-ages, whimsically funny romp and a hugely complex epic fantasy of dragons and danger that runs to 1332 pages. (Smith has gathered the entire run of the original series, which was published over the course of twelve years, into one paperback volume.) Smith's approach owes much to Walt Kelly, but Bone is more than pastiche — it's a fresh, hugely imaginative, and fully realized world of its own.

By all means pick it up — but be advised that the book weighs 3.8 pounds so, you know: Lift with your legs.

by Linda Holmes

Holidays are made for family, ritual, and special episodes of television shows. Fortunately for all of us, Joost has gathered a bunch of Thanksgiving episodes in one place, meaning that if you wanted to, you could avoid your relatives for many, many hours without attracting attention to yourself. ("Gotta work," you could say, while hauling your laptop into a corner, plugging in your headphones, and enjoying the episode of Family Ties where Steven and Elyse get arrested on Thanksgiving.)

Joost is sort of like Hulu, with the disadvantages that the interface isn't as good, and the site requires you to sign up with an email address (everyone should have a free email account for exactly this kind of thing). The signup is easy, though, and once you're in the door, you can enjoy their Very Special Episodes, including -- seen above -- "The Late Thanksgiving," the episode of Friends where Rachel and Phoebe take baby Emma to the beauty pageant.

What's there, and what's missing, after the jump...

There are some grievous omissions, of course, if you pretend we live in a world where everyone has rights to everything and you're actually trying to come up with the greatest Thanksgiving episodes of anything. Two Friends Thanksgiving episodes and not the one with Brad Pitt? No WKRP In Cincinnati with the turkeys dropping from the sky? (Wait, that one's over on Hulu.) Not the Mad About You where Paul and Jamie have to buy a series of about ten turkeys to replace the ones dropped from buildings and eaten by the dog?

No, these aren't the best Thanksgiving episodes, but if you're in the mood for a turkey theme and a lot of cranberry jokes, and if you're looking for somebody to do the browsing for you, they've got you covered.

by Linda Holmes

Thanks to Whitney at Pop Candy, I was reminded of the Elf Yourself site, where you can make your very own video of yourself doing a Christmas dance. Up there? That's me. Doing my little dance. You can include up to five elves of your own making, which made it very tempting to run around grabbing photos of NPR staff to dance in my video, but I chose not to appropriate anyone else's image. Happy Holidays! Frightening elf heads for everyone!

by Linda Holmes

• It's that time again -- tonight on ABC is the final performance show of Dancing With The Stars. The finale will feature former NFL player Warren Sapp, model and TV host Brooke Burke, and N*Sync veteran Lance Bass. (Could they be any more famous?) Above is Lance's surprisingly enjoyable jitterbug from last week -- watch for the shocking plot development around the 45-second mark. You never know what will happen on live television.

Do note, however, what Steve Mason points out at Slashfilm: the thing dropped like a rock between Friday and Saturday -- it was "hyperfrontloaded," as he puts it, meaning that if you didn't go at your first possible opportunity on Friday, there's a decent chance you're not going at all.

• In case you think you're the only one who can't make digital projectors work when you have a big presentation scheduled, consider this story of an attempt at screening the upcoming Oscar-hungry film The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, which was called off when everything came up green.

• Via a link from the lively romance-novel-enthusiast blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, I found my way to this bare-knuckled Guardian piece about the value of reading bad books. One of the problems with criticism, I find, is a certain reluctance to call garbage garbage, and you certainly won't find that problem in this post, which (among other delights) names what writer Stuart Evans considers "possibly the worst sentence ever written." Thoroughly unsurprising: the ensuing war in the comments.

• If you still haven't watched the video, now rapidly becoming infamous, of the group of girls watching last season's American Idol finale, please do so right now. If nothing else, it's a great example of how, among some groups of girls, coming of age is a contest to demonstrate who can care the most about everything, who is the most invested, and who is the most consumed with feeling. While it is my sense that, among some groups of boys, coming of age is a contest to demonstrate who can care the least, who is the least invested, and who can be the most aloof.

• The latest celebrity baby is named Bronx Mowgli. I'm not saying you should care about this; I'm suggesting that Hallmark create a new greeting card that says, "Dear Mom and Dad: Thank you for not naming me Bronx Mowgli. And also for not making me a celebrity baby."

• If you enjoyed last season's writers' strike, you're sure to enjoy this season's possible SAG strike. Puppet shows for everyone!