I normally try not to talk about other stuff I’m doing, but I’m going to violate that rule and point you toward “Beginner’s Luck”. It’s a fan-comic for the Firefly/Serenity universe. This is insanely geeky, but I’m so thrilled at having gotten to work with Mike Russell and Bill Mudron–two comic gods–that I had to mention it.

If you’re into the Serenity thing, you might also want to check out Mudron’s stunning little book “The Black”.

Galley Friend B.W. sends this amazing video of a fireworks factory blowing up. It starts slowly at first, but stay with it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fYK0A8mRJ4]

That actually kind of ruins any CGI special effects for me. We see big explosions in movies all the time and they look impressive, but we don’t have reality to compare them with. This is better than anything Michael Bay has ever staged.

Drudge has a link to this video of a bunch of in-costume Disney characters simulating sex. Sure, it sounds innocent, but it’s not all Mickey-and-Minnie-do-missionary. You’re going to take that image of Goofy bending over the Chipmunks to the grave.

But that’s not even the funny!

The punchline is that if you turn up the volume, it’s clear that this is taking place somewhere in the vicinity of EuroDisney. Naturally.

I suspected that Google’s $1.65B purchase of YouTube was a sign that the we’re headed for a second internet bubble. It has all the hallmarks of the late ’90s: Huge cash which is provided by an incomprensible jump in stock price for a product that the buyer tried to create themselves (see Google Video), but couldn’t.

Awesome Andy Kessler provides an actual argument for this, and it’s basically new hotness:

So why bother buying YouTube? Is this a sign of strength (“we bought them because we can turn anything into gold”) or weakness (like, say, Ebay buying Skype as their auction franchise weakens) or desparation (Excite merging with AtHome). It makes a difference. On the surface, this looks like a deal from strength – video is the next frontier on the Internet, blah, blah. But really, did Google want to do it or have to do it?

Despite continued growth, Google has hinted at a few signs of weakness. One is their huge capital spending to build datacenters and servers and bandwidth capacity, dinging their cash flow. I thought the search business scaled with much less investment. Maybe not.

And second, Google actually paid for traffic – $1 billion to Dell over 3 years for a crummy toolbar on Dell PCs. The numbers may work, but it’s kind of like Hugh Grant paying for something he would get anyway. There may still be someone in Sheboygen who doesn’t know about Google. Is search now such a commodity that Google needs to pay money to keep growing?

It gets better from there.

What’s going on with Al Franken: God Spoke? The numbers don’t look good. As of Sunday, it had only grossed just over $64,000. But, it was only showing in 10 theaters, giving it an average of $1,144. That’s pretty bad.

The worse news for Franken is that his per theater average has been plummeting: $5,266 the first weekend; $2,981 the next; then $2,197; and now that putrid $1,144 number.

The Franken documentary is going nowhere, fast, and it would do well now just to break $100K, let alone to wind up in the mediocre territory of a lefty docu such as Outfoxed, which did $461K.

What’s really interesting, though, is this chart of political documentary grosses. Notice how many of the biggest-grossing political docus have come in the very recent past: 15 of the top 20 were released post-2000. Also notice how many of them are of a leftward persuasion. If nothing else, George W. Bush’s administration has been great for liberal documentary filmmakers.

Alright, that’s too glib. But it is striking how the liberal documentary market has come alive in the past six years. Of the 62 highest-grossing political documentaries of all time, 49 of them were released after the 2000 election, and nearly all of them are lefty. It’s another entire medium that has come to be dominated by the left.

Or has it? Could it just be that the political docu has finally come into its own as a medium and that, when a Democratic administration is in the White House, we’ll see the rise of conservative documentaries? They’re cheap and relatively easy to make, and the bar for success is set pretty low. You don’t need to open like Dead Man’s Chest to get on the map.

Anyway, most people don’t pay attention to the documentary category until they’re watching the Oscars. But I think that for a number of reasons–digital video and cheap editing software, the growth of digital delivery, the turbulent political culture–this medium could develop in interesting ways over the next few years.

Update: Galley Friend M.G. sends this Slate link about political docus. Writer Anthony Kaufman says, “After Michael Moore’s docubuster Fahrenheit 9/11 opened the floodgates with its $119 million in ticket sales, offering solid proof that political docs could make waves in the marketplace, a litany of films has arrived in its wake . . .”

I think that’s not quite right. Again, go to our political docu chart and you’ll see Fahrenheit 9/11 as the highest-grossing pic in the genre with $119M. That’s a huge haul. But the difference between first and second place here is gigantic. #2 is Inconvenient Truth with $23.7M. By the time you get to #5 on the list–The Fog of War–you’re looking at a gross of $4.2M. If only three docus in the history of the genre have topped $10M in total receipts, I don’t think you can interpret the success of Fahrenheit 9/11 has a sign that the genre is ready to do big business. It’s certainly expanding and growing, but I wouldn’t interpret this as it becoming a major part of the marketplace. It’s still a very, very niche medium.

What’s interesting is how that niche is dominated ideologically.

I’ve been saying for weeks that the Detroit Tigers felt a lot like last year’s White Sox. Now that they’re up 2-0 on the A’s, it’s reasonable to consider where we’ll have to put the Tigers’ two most important contributors in the grand scheme of things if they do win the World Series.

Let’s start with Jim Leyland. If Leyland wins World Series rings with two different teams–and those teams are the Marlins and the Tigers–doesn’t that put him in the pantheon of all-time great managers? That would be the equivalent of winning NBA titles with the Bucks and the Cavaliers. Or Super Bowls with Chargers and Bills. It’s an amazing accomplishment and should mark him as one of the greats.

And how about Pudge Rodriguez? He’s averaging .304 for his career and slugging .483. He’s a 13-time All Star, has won 11 Gold Gloves, and is the best defensive catcher of his generations. If the Tigers win the World Series, you’ll have to combine all of this with the fact that he’s the sparkplug which ignited two championship teams. How great is this guy?

This has nothing to do with anything, but I finally got a chance to sit down with Jody Bottum’s “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” and it is, hands down, the best piece of writing I’ve come across this year. It’s way long, so print out a copy and treat yourself. You won’t be sorry.

No, not that way. This way:

So, yeah, we haven’t talked lately and you know, Britney is always saying I’m like a bad communicator and shit but the truth is, yo, I have got my HANDS FULL. First of all, my acting career is off the HOOK. Check it out: I’m on CSI this week and listen, I fucking rock the house on that show. I’m pretty sure they’re going to ask me to have my own CSI. CSI: YOUR ASS. And I’ll go all over America investigating HOT ASSES. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Holla!

But seriously, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get my own show now, and then who’ll be the breadwinner, baby? That’s right: yo soy la breadwinner, bitches. And that’ll be the end of “No, you can’t buy a Slurpee machine,” and “Who’s the person in this relationship who HAS a Grammy?” and “please hold the baby.”