A procrastinator's dream website...

One of those lists of stupid laws. I don't know how valid or enforceable any of these are, but some community bylaws are fairly entertaining. In Marlboro, Massachusetts, you're not allowed to have squirt guns, silly string or more than two dogs. You're also not allowed to detonate a nuclear weapon there, but apparently possession of said device is still a-okay.

And for fans of The Wire, you'll be happy to know it may actually be illegal to swear within the Baltimore city limits.

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In this week's Stephen Fry in America, our intrepid explorer goofed around on the Montana/Canada border. Getting a bit silly, he straddled the 49th parallel and proclaimed: "Now my right foot is breathing the air of freedom and my left is in the strange, incomprehensible - but clean - world of Canada."

Heroes producers fired

http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=heroes_producers_fired

Looks like NBC wasn't happy with how the show is sucking. Rather than cancelling it flat out - darn that writers' strike and the supposed lack of new material! - it looks like the show is going to stay on the air.

I suppose Nissan really gave them a lot of money for product placement.

In a perfect world (well, in a perfect world, Heroes wouldn't have sucked so bad) they'll scare up some new producers, sit down with the writers for a long chat, dig up those original plans for the show and see what's salvageable. And then come up with a plan to rebuild the goodwill of their hardcore fanbase.

It's sweet that they're going to revive the show, but it'll be interesting to see how the new producers are felt episode to episode. Will they let characters drive the plot? Will they abandon that thoroughly annoying habit of breaking the A story, B story, C story, D story (etc) into shallow little 90-second mini-commercials? Will they restrain themselves to two or maybe three storylines per episode? Will they stop jumping to the future all the time?

Will someone in charge there finally have an effing clue where the story is going? Hope springs eternal.

No word on who the replacements will be. My vote's for Joel Silver*: it might not make the show any better, but all the characters will suddenly develop a sense of humour, a fondness for film noir and an unparalleled store of snappy-yet-cynical one-liners.
*Yeah, I know he's a producer, not a showrunner. Still.