I didn't waste four hours of my life watching Celebrity Boxing II. I was watching West Wing. I did flip over occasionally during commercials. So maybe I wasted ten minutes of my life. On to your questions about BLADE...

Given the choices of Bad, Quite Bad, Amazingly Bad, Incredibly Bad, and Damn Near Criminally Bad, I'll have to abstain. I thought it was a good comic-book action movie. It was light on plot, but I've never cared much about the comic book Blade.

As for the worst thing about BLADE, it's very funny you should mention this as a choice:

"Special effects budget ran out before the coming of the Blood-God, so Deacon Frost gets red contact lenses instead."

If you watch the DVD, you will see screen tests (extensive, almost finished actually) of an unused ending where the Blood God does show up in all its gelatinous, red-pudding-like glory. It was not at all menacing and was much better with it assuming the form of Stephen Dorff.

That said, I voted for "What it lacks in plot, it makes up for in eye-candy fight scenes and gore."

Because...well it does.

On question 9, I answered "Maybe you better sit down before I answer this one, Tony." But I was mistaken. My answer should have been: "Maybe you better sit down before I answer this one, Tony, because they did and it was more successful than the first one, so there will most probably be a third one."

Carrottop versus Gallagher?

I envision both of them disappearing under a mountain of props so we'd have trouble seeing who actually won. Seeing those two pitted against each other reminds me of a great quote from American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story by Cynthia True:

"Carrottop is for people who don't get Gallagher!"

--Bill Hicks

Wonderful to see your column on the net. Way back when I used to read COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE, your "I Cover the Newsstand" column was one of the things I used to look forward to. And I have many fond memories of your runs on Hawkman and Black Lightning. Keep up the good work!

In the CHICK-FIGHT TO THE DEATH, I have to back Daphne. She's caught my eye ever since I first started watching Scooby-Doo. Kind of a Linda Carter/Wonder Woman thing.

In an ANNOYING COMEDIAN FIGHT TO THE DEATH...Gallagher and his amazing Sledge-O-Matic! He slices; he dices!

In a GOP FIGHT TO THE DEATH, who'd win? The American Public? In one corner, we have the Veep, who doesn't let piddling little things like multiple heart-attacks slow him down. In the other corner, we have a man who lost the Missouri Senate race...to a dead man! (The more I see of this inept boob, the more I'm convinced that Missouri really did prefer the dead man). Yeah, I gotta give Cheney the nod on this one.

Does Tony need a hug this week?

Well...just remember I'm military and we have that "Don't ask; don't tell" policy.

Carl Henderson wrote: "Based on a positive review by Dave Van Domelen, over on Usenet's rec.arts.comics.misc, I picked up and read EDITH HEAD--and thought it was really quite good. I still liked RUSE #1 better, but since RUSE wasn't nominated for an Eisner, ME AND EDITH HEAD would certainly make a worthy winner. But I'm a comic book fan, so it only follows that I'm a glutton for abuse. So pour it on..."

I hope issuing another correction doesn't count as abuse, but RUSE was nominated for Eisner Awards in almost every category it was eligible for: Best Continuing Series, Best New Series, Best Writer (Mark Waid), Best Penciler/inker (Butch Guice--was Butch inking himself here or is the ballot in error?) and Best Colorist (Laura Depuy).

Apologies to Carl for jumping all over him in my nasty-gram, and my sincere gratitude for his kind words about ME AND EDITH HEAD.