The suitcase is packed. The overnight case is not, but hey, we're making progress. While I doubt I'll be able to actually post entries while we're gone, I do plan on keeping a trip journal and will likely put up excerpts and photos here on our return a week from Saturday. I'm going to try to time release a few little teeny random posts while we're gone though.

The most wondrous thing I encountered today was buried in a NYTimes piece about the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, and the extremely diverse films that are chosen for it and how.

There were firsts like "Tin Toy," the first time a character with lifelike features was successfully animated digitally, and "Princess Nicotine, or the Smoke Fairy," a five-minute silent short from 1909 that was the special-effects pioneer of its day. Using double exposure, stop-motion animation and mirrors, the film makes it appear as if fairies are hiding inside a man's pipe and dancing near his Sweet Caporal cigar box. ("A 1909 film with dazzling special effects and product placement," Mr. Leggett pronounced. "How modern can you get?")

Wow, do I want to see this. Princess Nicotine -- someone alert Mattel.

And of course, oh for a return to those jaundiced days, when people enjoyed their vices cute and special effect laden rather than going nuts and overdoing the, shall we say, fallout from a breast getting bared in public.

Now they're going to make all boring live TV events even more boring by putting them on a time delay that precludes spontaneity. (The only upside I can see is that if such a time delay had existed, we wouldn't be subjected to the endless nattering about a BOOB.)

This is bullshit: Also yesterday, ABC notified the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that it will, for the first time, use a five-second delay on its Oscar broadcast in order to be able to bleep out inappropriate language. ABC actually approached the academy about the five-second delay before Jackson's Super Bowl halftime performance, according to academy Executive Director Bruce Davis.

"They've been getting some not-so-subtle FCC pressure, particularly about awards shows, based on the Bono incident a year ago and then the other incident this year at the Globes," he said.

That is story is worth reading because it discusses ALL the craziness that's currently going on, in some sort of Puritan Prude Revival (or some would say Renaissance). ER cuts old breast flash from show, Oscars will be time delayed by five seconds, Jackson's been cut from the Grammy's though Timberlake apparently hasn't (who watches them anyway?), and ESPN is canceling a highly rated original series because the NFL don't like it. Sheez.

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I was going to mention The Washington Post's contribution to the recent articles about Spalding Gray and his probable suicide, but that'd be a sad note to end on in a pre-holiday post. So, go check it out if you're interested.

Needless to say, I didn't even get started on the book rewrite yet -- upon return. Did finish the first draft of a story and must do a very quick revision and polish while we're in Mexico.

Be good while we're gone.

earworm: "Freak Magnet," Tuscadero

rec: A HAMMOCK BENEATH THE MANGOES, Stories from Latin America, ed. by Thomas Colchie

namecheck: Susan "Super Agent" Groppi