I have a dream

No sooner did the Democratic Convention coverage and associated noise begin in earnest than I began to feel like those guys in the new Taco Bell commercials: "I'm full!!" Makes me wish I had taken vacation this week. The only thing I really liked in the newspaper this morning was a chart comparing box office figures for comics-related feature films. Each film was shown as a circle along a timeline starting about ten years ago. "Spiderman 2" is the size of Jupiter; "Catwoman," which just opened, is still merely Earth-sized in comparison. Sitting lonely in 2001 was the wonderful movie Ghost World, which had the misfortune of opening the weekend right before Sept. 11. (But the whole website is still up at that URL! So great!) Its little circle was the size of Mars.

Without reading anything else from the great media monster, let me offer my predictions -- call them dreams -- for the rest of the year.

• During John Kerry's acceptance speech, the teleprompters go blank, and he winds up improvising a speech that electrifies the nation. Michael Moore cuts a TV commercial contrasting this moment with George Bush's "My Pet Goat" stupor.
• During a rally in late August, Ralph Nader gets klonked in the head by a thrown Fudgesicle, and realizes the error of his ways. On the morning of the day Bush is set to accept renomination, Nader announces he's pulling out of the race and endorsing Kerry, and the news story dominates the rest of the week, forcing Bush off the front page.
• While dressing down a welfare mother at top volume, Bill O'Reilly has a brain hemmorage live on Fox News. Brains leak from his eardrums and his eyes pop out like John Cassavetes exploding in the last scene of "The Fury".
• Right-wing Christian mouthpiece Ralph Reed is caught in flagrante in the back room of a gay leather sex club, and videotape is on half the blogs in the world a week later. Trivia: In the film, Reed is getting it from Jack Ryan, the erstwhile Republican who was forced to pull out of the Senate race in Illinois after his divorce papers, showing a predilection for sex clubs, were publicized.

All right, enough imaginary schadenfreude. All I really want is for Bush to lose and for THEM ALL TO GO AWAY.