Thursday night links.

* Artists and the recession.

* Tough day for celebrity: Farrah Fawcett has died, and Michael Jackson has been rushed to the hospital with cardiac arrest.

* Superhero roast from 1979, starring Adam West and Ed McMahon. Surreal. Via @filmjunk. (No Superman?)

* Towards the personhood of whales: 'Whales Might Be as Much Like People as Apes.'

* 'Twitter Creator On Iran: "I Never Intended For Twitter To Be Useful." '

* In Tehran, state television's Channel Two is putting on a "Lord of the Rings" marathon, part of a bigger push to keep us busy. Movie mad and immunized from international copyright laws, Iranians are normally treated to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. Now it's two or three films a day. The message is "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Let's watch, forget about what's happened, never mind. Stop dwelling in the past. Look ahead.

So those are mine. What are your imaginative Urtexts, dear readers?

For me, a few runners-up:

* Superman (really, Superfriends)
* Star Wars (naturally, but less than you'd think)
* the Adam West Batman TV show
* Back to the Future II

and maybe most crucial of all

* the LEGO Space franchise

That last one might be more important than even these.

The last debate between Clinton and Obama, just before Super Tuesday, didn't actually have all that much in the way of fireworks. Both candidates were on defense in anticipation of Super Duper Tuesday, and neither had much incentive to take risks.

Tonight is different, and for that reason likely to be much more intense. Clinton is desperate for anything that has a chance of turning the race around, and I'm expecting her to throw a whole lot of vitriolic nonsense out tonight in the hopes that something sticks. Barack, as always, goes into these things at a double disadvantage: not only is he not an especially good debater, but his lackluster performance in debates has a tendency to disappoint people who have only heard him on the stump. His advisers have had a few weeks since the last debate to train him to give quick, pithy responses to negative attacks rather than trying to carefully and systemically unpack the misleading things that have been said—let's hope they've done their job and that he's learned his lesson well.

I also hope he's been trained to go for the jugular a little bit more when he needs to, which has been not his forte in debates either.

As always, let's hope he brings his debating pants.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: I'll be back tonight to liveblog, but in the meantime a sneak preview of tonight's debate is already available through the magic of the Internets:



Looks like a spicy one.