The new Resident Evil movie has a character named “Nurse Betty.”

I’m always amazed at filmmakers’ ability to screw up zombie flicks.

I’m returning to my British roots and guest-blogging for the Economist next week. Visit often and drive up their traffic numbers.

Hannity and Colmes led tonight with Newt Gingrich, who’d quoted Charles de Gaulle to call the 9 Republican candidates “pygmies” at an American Spectator breakfast. I was at that breakfast, I noted the quote, but I’m still bemused that it was the big takeaway. I mean, Newt makes bitter snipes at Republicans all the time. The real highlight of the breakfast was a brawl between Ed Hudgins of the Objectivist Center and… well, and everyone else.

Hudgins didn’t care about presidential politics. He asked Gingrich about some of his recent writing on church and state. It was a long, rambling question, almost two minutes long, which always pisses off a room. But Newt made it worse. “Where do your rights come from?” This was a call-and-response: Hudgins was supposed to admit that “our creator” gives us our rights, since Jefferson said so. But Hudgins came loaded for bear and refused to cede that. When he started quoting something else Jefferson wrote about divinity, Gingrich asked it again: “Where does the Constitution say our rights come from?” It would have been very easy for Gingrich to cut off the debate — Hudgins had handed his mic back to the woman passing it around to questioners — but he had to keep needling Hudgins, and Hudgins kept answering. The two men got into a spirited tussle and with every round the groans in the room grew louder. “Let Newt answer the question!” Bob Tyrrell said. “Jesus!” said someone who looked like Jed Babbin. “Take his microphone away!”

Newt answered the question, Hudgins duly chastened. The next question: What can war supporters do to make sure the mission in Iraq is successful?

I snagged a guest-blogging spot on a blog named “Democracy in America.” Here’s the conversation I had immediately afterward.

ME: Woo, I’m guesting at Democracy in America next week.
FRIEND: Congratulations, Alexis.
ME: Who?
FRIEND: … Alexis de Tocqueville.
ME: Oh. Him!

I was already digging around in Lexis so I did a search for pre-millennial Harry Potter stories. Here’s part of a 1998 Newsweek write-up:

In England, where it was published last year, “Harry” has been a hit, selling a whopping 150,000 copies and winning a British Book Award and a Smarties Prize, sort of a Booker Prize for children’s literature. (Adults as well as kids have taken to the book. Rowling’s British publisher recently issued a second edition with a more grown-up cover, so older readers wouldn’t be embarrassed to carry “Harry.”) The American rights to the book were purchased by Scholastic Books for more than $ 100,000, the most ever paid for a first-time author’s children’s book.

150k copies? $100k for the rights? My sweet lord.

I really don’t like getting into blogwars — I don’t have the free time or the narcissism. But this post and its antecedents might bring some dark humor to you and yours.

I’m not saying that, on my third attempt to give the Harry Potter books “a chance,” I got sucked in. But I’m pretty sure I just knocked on a friend’s door at 11:15 p.m. to borrow the second book.

was, “too bad Wallace Shawn didn’t donate $5 to Obama.”

I am returning to Chicago on August 1 – back for the first time since I graduated from Northwestern. The ostensible purpose is to attend the Yearly Kos convention and get some stories and blog posts, but I want to hang out with a maximal amount of ex-NUers. Daveweigel at gmail, if you want me.

A fitting name for the single that really, really won’t break Never Hear the End of It. If Sloan’s dead set on releasing a Patrick song as the single they should produce a 3-minute edit of “I Understand.” It could be Modest Mouse-sized – which is to say, huge.