No more standup, that is.  I’m taking the rest of the month off from standup to work on a newer, longer set.  I’ll post events here by the end of next week.

Let’s get this out of the way right now. The hype about Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight is, frankly, short of the mark. He owns this film in a way no other actor could have.  The Joker was on screen less than five minutes, and I already wanted to kill him. No wonder Ledger found himself a bit disturbed. Now that’s acting.

Ledger’s Joker, while acknowledging the past efforts by Cesar Romero’s campy clown and Jack Nicholson’s enraged prankster, takes the character into darker waters than anyone had imagined. Ledger’s Joker is chaos incarnate for the sake of chaos.  Heath Ledger makes both Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter look like a weak James Bond villain.  (Incidentally, both Cox and Hopkins would make excellent Penguins and wash the bad taste of Burton’s freakish version out of everyone’s mouths.  Christopher Nolan, write that down.)

Director Christopher Nolan already took Batman in a different direction when he created a real world version of the Caped Crusader in Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne is created in a much more convincing manner. Alfred is a loyal schemer, much more than a cardboard parody of Reginald Jeeves from Jeeves & Wooster. Gotham City is not the bland, washed-out nightmare vision Tim Burton has already overused to the point of parody. No, Nolan’s cops, clean and corrupt, are very real. And Gotham?

Gotham is so real in Nolan’s vision of the DC universe you can almost see the exit signs to Metropolis on the freeways. The Dark Knight amps this up a bit. The Dark Knight is about how far people will go to confront evil. The Joker’s parallel to modern terrorists, right down to hijacking $68 million of the mob’s cash and convincing them to pay him half of it to kill Batman, needs no subtlety. The Dark Knight is about three good men - Bruce Wayne/Batman, Jim Gordon, and newly-minted DA Harvey Dent - wanting so bad to destroy the criminals who control Gotham City that they’re willing to sell off pieces of their souls to do it.

Jim Gordon does it by looking the other way when he thinks it’ll serve the common good. Batman does it by crossing a few ethical lines that make even brilliant technical wizard Lucius Fox want to move away. And Harvey Dent?

Batman fans know what becomes of Harvey. But rather than the psychotic prankster played by Tommy Lee Jones in the dreadful Batman Forever, Aaron Eckhart’s Dent is a man who gives Gotham City all of himself in order to save it and is rewarded with death and disfigurement. Transformed into Two Face, he becomes Batman’s evil twin, one to whom no one is innocent any longer.

If only for Ledger’s performance, The Dark Knight is light years ahead of Batman Begins.  The Joker here is a terrorist more evil than Osama bin-Laden, if only because he lacks any other cause than wanting “to watch the world burn.”  But it’s not just Ledger.  Ledger merely does what is required of him, which is to be an unreasonable force of destruction, one for whom death is not a sufficient deterrent.  But credit must also go to Christian Bale, who gives Bruce Wayne and Batman humanity.  If Ledger is over the top and terrifying, Gary Oldman, who might have played the Joker in an earlier era with as much venom as Ledger squeezes out of the role, is the opposite, the quiet voice of reason against the Joker’s madness.  Michael Caine, of course, is excellent as the voice of Bruce Wayne’s conscience.  Aaron Eckhart plays the cards he’s dealt with an underdeveloped Dent and Two-Face and does well.

Nolan must be given points for bringing in Maggie Gyllenhall to take over Rachel Dawes from Katie Holmes.  I liked Holmes in Batman Begins, but she doesn’t have the chops be a foil for the likes of Heath Ledger or hold her own with Bale, Caine, and Oldman.  Gyllenhall, on the other hand, sells Rachel Dawes all over again, an older, more seasoned actress to handle a much darker film.

I was disappointed in the development of Dent as Two Face.  Nolan had a terrific take on the character, a maimed vigilante out for revenge.  However, Harvey Dent, who as the District Attorney comes off as the guy you’d want McCain or Obama to name their running mate, never gets enough time after the transformation to grow into the grieving, enraged villain.  Also, the horror show appearance, which defies reality in what’s billed as a “real world Batman,” mars a terrific effort built around Heath Ledger’s psychopath in bad make-up.  In short, there’s no way Two Face could carry on a normal conversation with the damage to his face.  It’s one point (and the ONLY point) Joel Schumacher scores over Nolan.  Then again, one wonders why Schumacher didn’t go this route while Nolan would opt for Tommy Lee Jones massive scarring.

That’s the biggest flaw in the movie.  The only others for me were technical.  A scene where hostages were bound up to look as though they were holding other hostages was a bit confusing.  And throughout the streets of Gotham, Chicago is showing.  Not that I mind, but while Nolan does a good job creating a fictional city that’s bigger than New York, it almost threw me out of the story when the Joker and Batman do battle in front of an office I worked in over the most recent Superbowl weekend.  (Nice job painting out the Sears and Hancock buildings, btw.)  But if those are the biggest flaws, other directors should be so lucky.

The question now is how Nolan tops this.  The answer is he doesn’t.  The Penguin is on deck, and if Nolan is wise, he’ll stick to the franchise’s new-found love of the real world.  Instead of one of Tim Burton’s upchucked nightmares or Schumacher’s poorly executed camp villians, Nolan could go with the dapper Penguin.  After all, the mob is out a boss.  The Joker is likely in Arkham (most likely for good, with the loss of Heath Ledger).  And after such a dark, dark movie, it might not be bad to lighten up a bit and put Batman up against a dapper don in a tuxedo for getting really dark again.

Think about it, Mr. Nolan.  Don’t make the same mistake they did with Spiderman III.

The City of San Francisco is letting voters decide if they want to name a sewage plant in honor of George W. Bush.

Personally, I’m all for renaming Mill Creek for him.

Trail at Ash Cave

Ohio is either known for Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Dayton, for WKRP in Cincinnati, or vast sections of flat farmland.  But its also home to the Appalachian Foothills in the state’s southeast corner.  About an hour outside of Columbus lies Hocking Hills, a large swath of forested wilderness that, while not quite mountainous, gives you the impression you are, in fact, in the mountains.  No surprise there.  The Appalachians of West Virginia rise only a a hundred miles east of here and, beyond them, the Great Smokies to the south and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia further east.  Hocking Hills is where it all begins.

Now, if you need to have subways, bars open late, and the roar of a city, I suggest New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.  If you want to forget about the modern world for a weekend or even a whole week, I suggest Hocking Hills if you’re on a budget.

The highlight of Hocking Hills are the caves - or in most cases, the remnants of caves.  Among them, Old Man’s Cave is probably the most famous.  A ravine formed by the collapse of a large cave, Old Man’s Cave stretches for about two miles toward a reservoir and drops you fifty to a hundred feet below the rim.  Old Man’s Cave is linked by a 6 mile hiking loop to Ash Cave to the south.  Ash Cave remains a cave, but is this otherworldly place gouged out of the side of a former mountain that has eroded away over time.  Ash is linked to still another eroded cave at Cantwell Cliffs, a rocky, steep crack in the earth overgrown with lush forest.  In all, you can conceivably hike ten miles from the vistor center to Old Man’s Cave down to Cantwell Cliffs and back up through Ash Cave.  I’ve done the Ash-Old Man’s loop, about six miles.  So what’s harder?  Climbing the dam to the reservoir above Old Man’s Cave ravine or walking the cave floor?  I’ll get back to you.  I will say this.  In the state’s earliest days of white settlement, the trail at the floor of Old Man’s/Ash Caves was the main highway into the Ohio Country.

I will never complain again about the condition of I-75.

But if hiking’s not your thing, there are plenty of cabins and lodges to stay at, most of them without Internet and nearly all of them cell phone inaccessible.  If you truly want to get away from it all, may I suggest Ravenwood Castle?  Built about 10 miles south of the state park, Ravenwood, a castle built atop a wooded hill, sits on several acres of isolated forest just north of McArthur, Ohio.  Accomodations range from roughing it in one of the camper-sized wagons to primitive comfort in the fairy tale cottages - former campground huts in a small meadow below the castle to the Celtic village, where you can stay in fully equipped and furnished cottages ranging from a small loft to a house big enough for you and ten of your closest friends.  Or you can opt for the luxury of a room in the castle.  I’ve stayed in the meadow, the cottages, and the castle, and the difference depends only on your mood.  Breakfast, part of your nightly rate, is a fantastic buffet of just about anything you’d want, including home-made granola and pancakes made from scratch.  For an extra fee, the castle also serves dinner nightly (reservations required).  Even if you’re not a guest of Ravenwood, you can still make a dinner reservation.

Hocking Hills is not where you go for the history of the Rock Hall or the Liberty Bell, the bustle of Times Square, or the tourist traps of Fisherman’s Warf.  You turn off your cell phone, forget there’s an Internet, and tune out the rest of the world.  You’re never so glad the modern world can’t intrude.

And never better prepared to face it than when you get back.

The Jib Jab boys are back, like cicadas, only once every four years. Not nearly as good as “This Land Is Your Land” with Kerry and Bush, but still funny.

It’s no secret I’d like to see the gasoline-powered engine head the way of the buggy whip.  And while I continue to call $4 a gallon gas little more than consumer rape (Try the $8 a gallon they pay in Europe.  I’m surprised there hasn’t been a few civil wars over that yet.), I am glad to see the auto industry pushing harder to build more hybrids, flex-fuel engines, electric cars, and…  Dare I say it?…  Hydrogen?  (GM plans to shift its hydrogen fuel cell program into high gear sooner rather than later.) 

But all that’s the long-term.  Even assuming GM’s first fuel cell vehicle goes into limited production by 2012, it will be in limited numbers until the price falls in line with current technology.  In the meantime…

I keep hearing the same rank stupidity whenever domestic drilling is brought up.  “It won’t produce anything for 3-10 years.  And it won’t drop prices.”

Um…  Can I have whatever you’re smoking?  Sounds like some really whack stuff.

First off, not producing anything for 3-10 years is not an intelligent objection, let alone a legitimate one.  3-10 years is actually much later than we need domestic oil.  Far be it from me to praise George W. Bush, the Warren Harding of his generation, but George got it right when he lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling.  Let’s be honest here.  What makes the people who object to this think the Saudis, Iranians, and Venezuelans are going to be any friendlier in 3-10 years?  And what good will come of staying with them when gasoline hits $5 or $6 a gallon?  Yes, we need to get off crude oil, but it ain’t happening in the next 3-10 years.  On the other hand, maintaining the status quo while we wait for the auto industry, British Petroleum, and Shell to change over to ethanol, hydrogen, and electric is inviting a few more planes into the upper floors of some very tall buildings.

Assuming the airlines are still in business to supply the hijackers with planes by then.

To the latter point, explain to me how not having to ship oil by tanker across multiple oceans - already proven to be an environmental risk greater than drilling itself - is going to run up the price of oil.  It’s not.  Here’s the problem with that theory.  Even if oil still goes higher, at least domestic supplies will keep the profits here.  The problem is we’ve been sending money overseas to people who don’t like us much, and people we don’t like much, either.  You tell me what’s cheaper:  A few rigs off California?  Or the Saudis turning off the taps.

At some point in the next decade or so, America and Europe are going to turn off the spigots, or at least turn them way down.  At that point, no one will care what the Middle East or Venezuela thinks of the rest of the planet, other than…

“Hey, buddy.  Got a bite to eat?  We’re starving over here.”

Until then, we need to bring the oil home and stop pissing off the rest of the world because we’re too self-righteous to drill our own.

There are lots of things I’m pissed off about.  Obama’s sell out on FISA.  Gas prices.  The continued popularity of Howard Stern.  Ann Coulter was not stillborn.  As you can see, I have a lot to get worked up about.

The sale of Budweiser to Belgium’s InBev is not one of them. Why?

I drink Killians, which is a lager brewed by Coors based on an Irish red ale.  When I’m not drinking that, I’m drinking Samuel Adams, some of which is brewed here in Cincinnati by the old Hudepohl brewery.  (”Would you like a Hudie?”  “I’d be delighted!”)  When I’m not drinking that, I’m drinking Bass Ale or its cross-England rival, Newcastle.  And when I’m not drinking those, I’m drinking Irish ale, usually Smithwick’s or Harp’s.  And when all else fails, I drink Warsteiner, which is a weak German beer.  Which means you have to drink the entire bottle before it knocks you on your ass.

In other words, I like beer-flavored beer.  I love the Great Lakes brews and good ol’ cheap Spotted Cow from Wisconsin and its more full-bodied counterpart, Capitol Ale.  I love Christian Morlein and the kick of the stuff they brew at Rock Bottom.  I’ve been to New York to have Brooklyn Beer and Philadelphia to have Yuengling and to San Francisco to have Anchor Steam.

I never bought into the myth that the working man must drink really bad beer, even though I did go through a Pabst phase in my early drinking days.  No, sir.  No Schlitz, Milwaukee’s Best, or Stoh’s for me.  (Sorry, Erin.  Can’t drink it.)

For me, mass-produced American beer like Budweiser is little more than alcoholic soda pop.  It’s good to quench your thirst, but there’s nothing to it.  It has no kick, no flavor.  Oh, if I’m forced to drink cheap beer, I’ll usually opt for Bud.  And I will admit it’s not as watery as Coors.  (Will someone please tell me why it was such a big deal to sell Coors east of the Mississippi in the 1980’s?  I can’t believe they made a Burt Reynolds movie about it!)

Yes, a foreign company has bought Anheuser-Busch.  So what?  If I still drank it regularly, I might get worked up about it.  But I’m not.  I say spend the extra bucks and get the microbrews.  In this economy, the little breweries need your support.

And in this economy, you need something stronger than Michelob Ultra to get you through it.

‘Scuse me.  I’m gonna run downstairs and fetch me a Killians.

I’ve embarked on a project to read a biography of every president of the United States, including the obscure ones famous more for their facial hair than their accomplishments. So far, I’ve read Edmund Morris’s Theodore Rex and David McCullough’s John Adams. I’ve come away with new respect for Fox News. Their more outrageous assertions (those not spewed by Sean Hannity, anyway) are pretty tepid compared to some of the outright libel printed about Adams and Jefferson in the early days of the nation or perpetrated by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.

What I’ve also noticed is that it’s easy to pick out a relatively objective biography of a president up to about Nixon, and even then, some even-handed accounts are coming out about Tricky Dick. In fact, I would have to say Ronald Reagan is the most recent president you could find a biography about without a large amount of political ax grinding. Oh, sure, you have to hunt for one that doesn’t make him out to be either evil incarnate or a Conservative God to whom Rush Limbaugh sacrifices ex-wives.

You can’t read about a sitting president objectively. It’s not possible. While I wouldn’t put money on the current George Bush being the Second Coming of Harry Truman (for starters, too rich. Truman’s net worth in 2008 dollars was less than mine.), there is the cold, hard fact that history is going to need time to make its own judgment.

Similarly, I’ve yet to hear anything about Bill Clinton that doesn’t make him out to be either a treasonous serial rapist or the greatest president since Lincoln. No happy (or in George W. Bush’s case, unhappy) medium.

So why not George HW Bush, aka Bush 41, Bush the Elder, Bush the Wiser, or The Man Who Should Have Pulled Out? Considering the elder Bush’s presidency was largely finishing up Ronald Reagan’s paperwork and bringing in the Cold War for a soft landing, one might think it possible to give a thoughtful, objective overview of his time in office after 15 years.

Thanks to his son, everything Bush, Sr, did is going to be regarded in light of what Bush, Jr, did. Even if George W. Bush had the most successful presidency in history, his taking office a mere eight years after his father colors and shadows any accomplishments or mistakes made between 1989 and 1991. John Quincy Adams had the luxury of taking office 25 years after his father and with a different party. Benjamin Harrison, remembered largely for being Grover Cleveland’s seat warmer, was the grandson of a president, and one who promptly got sick and died after taking the oath. But W? He started out in his daddy’s shadow and ended up eclipsing him.

Granted, no account of a president’s life can be wholly objective. Historians have agendas like anyone else, and everyone - even me, who says he has no party or ideological loyalty - has an agenda. It’s human nature. But the farther a president fades into history, the more we have to rely on their papers, letters (and someday emails and texts), and records and less on the media’s usually questionable account of the day’s events.

So who’s the most recent president you think you can read about without feeling you’re being lectured by some pompous ass like Hannity or Michael Moore?

Yesterday, I talked about the travel budget being shot to hell for the foreseeable future.  Nita and I, though, have talked about places we’d like to go next year.  Jamaica has been discussed, as has been Florida, Savannah, and the Tennessee or West Virginia mountains.  One place I talk about a lot, though, is the Lake Erie Islands.

Last year, I got to go to historic Put in Bay for the first time.  Both as a place to waste time in bars and a tourist trap, I loved Put in Bay.  Out in the middle of a large inland sea, it stays cool from breezes off the water.  You get around South Bass Island - where the village of Put in Bay sits - mainly by golf cart.  They have a winery, the Perry Monument, where you can see clear to Canada or back to the Ohio mainland and Cedar Point Amusement Park.  Most of the island is a state park, and the island is a place to party.  Plus, Put in Bay has one of the largest marinas in the state.  It’s a great place to dock the boat while you go out to eat or just chill on the beach.

Kelley’s Island, closer to the mainland, is more “suburban” than Put in Bay.  While Put In Bay shows signs everywhere that hardly anyone lives full time on the island, Kelley’s looks more like a small town out in the middle of the sea.  It, too, has a terrific state park, great for hiking, and a winery that fully admits all Lake Erie wines (and Ohio wines for that matter) are sweet because you can’t age the grapes there more than a year.  (A certain nameless winery on the afforementioned island suggested they’re bullshitting you in California.  Kelley’s Island suggests you try Napa Valley for the dryer wines.)  The odd thing about the Kelley’s Island WInery is that it’s more like a bar.  I sat having wine and cheese at the Kelley’s while watching the Nationwide NASCAR Series.

Kelley’s is a fully functioning town with its own school and a working rock quarry.  While tourists pack the island from April through October, there are 367 people who call this place home.  Like South Bass, golf carts are the preferred mode of transportation for visitors.  However, most of the bars are clustered near the marina on the eastern side of the island.

My one visit to Kelley’s involved bar hopping.  After spending the morning exploring the island, I started out at one bar at the beginning of an Ohio State football game and worked may way over to the island’s sole brew pub and back to The Caddyshack for the end of the game.  It was late fall, and the tourists were fewer in number.  All in all, a cheap weekend away while the ex enjoyed Cedar Point on the mainland.

Ziggins and I talk about having a boys weekend out on the lake, starting in Sandusky and boating over to Kelley’s Island, then Put-in-Bay, before heading back to the mainland.  There’s something these tiny, isolated villages in the middle of the water that’s irresistable.

Once upon a time, there was a US territory called “The Panama Canal Zone,” so named because America was running the canal instead of Panama.  And prior to 1953, an American born there was not eligible to run for president.

Once such individual is John McCain.  Oops.

Wanna bet nothing comes of this, but would have if it were Barack Obama?

Actually, nothing will come of this because the GOP fears having to watch Mitt Romney try to sound black again.

But if Barack pulls another boner like the FISA compromise, at least we’ll have a president who will finally get those damn kids off the White House lawn.