Obama did it: "Arrested Development Movie Officially in Development."

Been busy today. Here are links.

* Pam Spaulding talks about the Durham City Council meeting last night at which a pro-same-sex marriage resolution was passed.

* "In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes."

* More bad news for Republican Chris Christie as a nonpartisan ethics group, NJ-CREW, has now called for an investigation into his time as U.S. Attorney. He's also facing criticism over unreported interest from a loan made to current staffers at the U.S. Attorney office.

* The Obama White House says reports of the death of the public option are greatly exaggerated. (No word yet on the pubic option.)

* David Cross was funny last night on the Daily Show.

* Mad Men footnotes.

* Xenophobia for Dummies: A District 9 Primer. Of particular interest are the historical details surrounding apartheid-era District 6. Via this AskMe, with more.

* Meanwhile, the usually-more-astute Spencer Ackerman denies that America is anything like those nasty racists in District 9's Johannesburg. What's a million Iraqis give or take?

* And the absolute worst news of all time: "Arrested Development movie is nowhere near happening."

Change we can believe in: Cynical-C has your protest sign of the night.

Sunday links.

* How Neil Armstrong ruined science fiction.

* Increasing cell phone use may be largely responsible for highway fatality numbers that remain static in the face of widespread safety improvements. If you're looking for hyperbolic commentary on this subject, check out Matt Yglesias and the good people at MetaFilter, none of whom have ever used their cell phones while driving, of course not, no sir.

* Curing blindness by implanting a tooth in the eye. Also via MeFi.

* And Buster Bluth stars in Ctrl, about a man who can use keyboard commands to modify his life.

Friday links 2.

* Cinéma vérité vérité: Trailer for an upcoming documentary about Arrested Development. Via Kottke.

* What liberal media: Why would the Washington Post fire one of its best reporters and columnists? Glenn Greewald is on the case
(here's more), while Steve Benen takes a look at the amazing balance in evidence on the Washington Post's editorial page post-Froomkin.

* Still casting about for ways to pacify the LGBT community without having to actually do anything, the Obama administration has announced it is "looking for ways" to include same-sex couples in the 2010 census. Pam at Pandagon has a more in-depth rundown.

* ThinkProgress reports 'Iranian soccer players reportedly suspended for wearing green wristbands.'

* TPM catches Colbert out of character.

Gawker reports Michael Cera has finally signed on to the Arrested Development movie. They employ a cute picture to illustrate this fact.

Monday links.

* I have only the deepest feeling of solidarity for the members of my generational cohort who are struggling with student debt. And I'm not saying my hurt feelings should form the basis for national policy. But I have to confess that on a purely emotive level I will be pretty royally pissed if this whole "forgive student debt" movement somehow manages to get off the ground. I'm very conflicted about it: forgiving student debt would help a whole lot of people, including close friends and family, and would really cost me nothing but regret. I am not incognizant of my privilege or my luck, nor I am unhappy with where my choices have taken me—but on a basic, visceral level, I'd feel cheated, and I know I wouldn't be alone.

* And speaking of other people's poor life choices: WTFSalon?

* Grouches of the world, unite.



* Identical Twins Escape Death Penalty With "Evil Twin Defense." I'm 95% certain this is just viral marketing for the Arrested Development movie.

* How to survive a B-movie.

* How much would it cost to build the Death Star? (last two via Gravity Lens)

* And your world in charts: this recession isn't like the others.

More.

* The headline reads: "UFO over Germany official." Via Posthuman Blues.

* More important, a different headline reads: "Arrested Development Movie finally a go?" Sadly, the article is mostly about Jeffrey Tambor threatening violence against Michael Cera, not about news of any actual deal.

* The stimulus bill gives a boost to the credit power of small colleges, probably good news for a lot of folks (not least of all budding academics, if only incidentally).

* As is pretty well-known, Republicans in the House managed to vote unanimously against economic recovery because they are unbelievably massive tools. Luckily, nearly everybody has finally figured this out, except of course a handful of red states and of course telvision news producers, who still give Republicans twice as much coverage despite their having almost no power or relevance.

More on the Republican Party's massive-tool nature as events warrant.

* While we're on the subject of Republicans, Steve Benen has a pair of good posts, one about the one line Republicans can't cross—disagreeing with Rush Limbaugh—and the other a reminder for 2012 about the legitimacy of widespread claims of "voter fraud". I don't even want to get into the whole stupid thing about Obama's tie.

Is Michael Cera holding up the Arrested Development movie? Say it ain't so!

Jeffrey Tambor: Arrested Development movie is "a go."

On the red carpet, Jeffrey told me he just spoke to Mitch and the movie is a go! He says Mitch Hurwitz spoke to him this week and while he didn’t know when the start date was, he said, ”when the writer/director calls you it’s a pretty good sign.”

When Olbermann reported this a few minutes ago, he confirmed that David Cross had also gotten a call.

There is a God.

So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out "terrorist."

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out "kill him", though it's not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn't seem to matter.

These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing.

Tim returns to blogging with a post that nicely encapsulates my precise reaction to the latest McCain/Palin tactic of over-the-top hysterical hate: you're opening a door to hell, stop.

"Kill him," someone yelled. Allow yourself to imagine it for just a moment. If that were to happen between now and election day, it is hard to imagine the backlash. And who would we blame if such a tragedy were to occur? Well, McCain for starters. And then his party as a whole. And then the media and every one of McCain's supporters that acted as a megaphone for what is clearly an inflammatory and racially tinged rhetoric...

Measure your words, John McCain: you're playing with fire.

Though Tim did have class enough to leave out my first reaction, which was, G.O.B.? (What a great show. Doesn't make me any less angry at McCain/Palin and their enablers, though.)

Late night.

* 'Our Phony Economy': Why measuring GDP doesn't tell us much of anything we need to know. In Harper's, via MeFi.

The purpose of an economy is to meet human needs in such a way that life becomes in some respect richer and better in the process. It is not simply to produce a lot of stuff. Stuff is a means, not an end. Yet current modes of economic measurement focus almost entirely on means. For example, an automobile is productive if it produces transportation. But today we look only at the cars produced per hour worked. More cars can mean more traffic and therefore a transportation system that is less productive. The medical system is the same. The aim should be healthy people, not the sale of more medical services and drugs. Now, however, we assess the economic contribution of the medical system on the basis of treatments rather than results. Economists see nothing wrong with this. They see no problem that the medical system is expected to produce 30 to 40 percent of new jobs over the next thirty years. “We have to spend our money on something,” shrugged a Stanford economist to the New York Times. This is more insanity. Next we will be hearing about “disease-led recovery.” To stimulate the economy we will have to encourage people to be sick so that the economy can be well.

* Springfield Punx Simpsonizes celebrities and superheroes. At right: Tobias Fünke.

* Al Giordano says Tim Kaine is growing on him for VP.

The number one rule in choosing a vice presidential nominee is "first, do no harm." If you're a presidential nominee, you don't want a running mate that will distract from you, commit gaffes, speak off-message, or that secretly thinks he or she is too good to be number two.

And the second rule is, "then, do some good." You want a VP that will reinforce your messages and make voters more comfortable with you.

Kaine is so far passing both tests with flying colors.

I'm not there yet—as I've mentioned before, just about everything I hear about Kaine turns me off—but Al's instincts have never steered me wrong. I guess we'll see.

* What are the essential reads in literary fantasy? Personally I'd have to start my list with heavy-hitters from the twentieth century (and my bookshelf) like Kafka, Borges, García Márquez, and Calvino...

* Mission accomplished, corporations! Wal-Mart employee voluntarily enforces her entirely false belief that "copyright lasts forever."

* And will Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers comedy, be the new greatest movie of all time? All signs point to yes:

Jeffrey "George Bluth" Tambor: "After months of speculation, I think we have finally figured out for sure that we are indeed doing an Arrested Development movie." God bless America. That is all.

Arrested Development: The Movie: it's real, per Jason Bateman on KO:



The pessimist in me worries that this will only ruin the world's most perfect TV show, but I'm willing to take that chance. Via MeFi.

Here's the faux Special Comment they reference in the interview, which I'd missed at the time:

Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, is pitching a new animated sitcom for Fox about self-centered high school teachers. That's fine, but if it gets in the way of my Arrested Development movie, there'll be hell to pay.

Spring break! Woooo!

There's more speculation brewing about an Arrested Development movie—all indications are that the entire team ... would return for series mastermind Mitchell Hurwitz—but there's one problem: no one can find Franklin.

So, before the movie starts filming, Arnett hopes someone will help him locate his naked, tuneless puppet.

“He did get sold, didn’t he?” Arnett said, speculating that Franklin may have fallen victim to the show’s liquidation. “Did somebody sell him for real? That makes sense.”

“Well, I built the first one, so I’m going to have to build it again. That’s a little ‘Arrested Development’ piece of trivia,” Arnett revealed. “I made Franklin.”

Really? “No, that’s a lie,” he grinned. “How would I know how to do that?”

In other Will Arnett news, Neil has been after me for weeks to blog that G.O.B. just got canned from the new Knight Rider movie because of conflicting contracts with Ford and GM. Not coincidentally, there is now no chance I will watch the new Knight Rider movie.

Daniel Clowes on comics, smoking, and publishing in The New York Times, at the Onion's A.V. Club.

The A.V. Club: How did you get started with Mister Wonderful?

Daniel Clowes: The New York Times has been doing the weekly comic strip for two years. I was the second person they asked, after Chris Ware. I was going to do it about a year ago, until I had to get open-heart surgery. The next opening was in September. I'd always wanted to do a weekly strip, or a strip that was in installments like that. It's been fun trying to figure out how to make that work. Their standards are so prissy that they won't allow me to use all kinds of language. Not only can you not swear, this morning I was informed I couldn't use the word "schmuck." I couldn't use "crap," "schmuck," or "get laid." Those three were beyond the pale. But you get around that, and it comes out better. I can't quite explain why.

AVC: Censorship helps, then?

DC: Were I writing a character that couldn't be this repressed, it would be disastrous. I don't know what I'd do. But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols. The reader reads into them something worse than what you normally would have. They work as this outburst of incoherent anger. I've found ways to write around swearing that are much more effective, rather than going for what someone really would say. [Laughs.]

It's a lot like Arrested Development in that respect, actually.

Today Amazon has what is surely the greatest Gold Box one-day-only-sale in its history—the complete three-season set of television's finest comedy, Arrested Development, for only $30, which is a quarter of what you'd pay for it in a store.

Buy this set. Thank me later.

Buy two more for friends and family. They will thank you.

Could the writer's strike achieve the impossible and bring about an Arrested Development movie? Jason Bateman's been teasing people about the possibility for months, but it sounds as if things could actually almost be heading somewhat in that direction, maybe:

On the other end of that phone was “AD” creator Mitchell Hurwitz, who has found himself with a lot of time to talk since Hollywood’s writers put down their pencils. “This writers strike, it’s a devil’s playground,” grinned Bateman, who has been lobbying for a big-screen “Arrested Development” ever since the show that resurrected his career died a premature death. “The guy doesn’t have anything to do.”

...

“[During the strike] you’re allowed to write things you’re not being paid to do,” Bateman explained, revealing almost as much as a never-nude. “I’m trying to talk [Hurwitz] into writing the ‘Arrested Development’ movie. And he could be coming around.”