The Collected Graeme McMillan Tweets From The 1st Presidential Debate of 2008

@hermanos America’s greatest threat right now is a giant sand worm. 36 minutes ago from web in reply to hermanos 

Is McCain REALLY comparing Obama to Bush? 36 minutes ago from web 

Is Obama suggesting that we invade China? 38 minutes ago from web 

I think John McCain has a crush on General Patraeus. 39 minutes ago from web 

@abayer That makes one of you, apparently. 42 minutes ago from web in reply to abayer 

McCain is ASKING to be clowned about Palin. “Hey, I want to build a bridge.” To nowhere, John? I heard that Sarah was a big fan of that. about 1 hour ago from web 

Is that McCain snorting in laughter in the background? about 1 hour ago from web 

Hey, John, how were those three letters spread out across Putin’s two eyes? about 1 hour ago from web 

Loose nuclear weapons – A big problem. Let’s return to the world of prudish nuclear weapons immediately. about 1 hour ago from web 

Reasons why Obama shouldn’t become President, #1: That fine head of hair will go grey so fast, his head will spin. about 1 hour ago from web 

McCain’s losing his shit! It’s awesome! “I’ve known Kissinger for 35 years!” about 1 hour ago from web 

@francisskatekey THIS IS WHAT POLITICS IS ABOUT about 1 hour ago from web in reply to francisskatekey 

“The average South Korean is three inches taller than the North Koreans.” I’m so glad that this debate is about the important topics. about 1 hour ago from web 

McCain has lost neocon vote by saying that he will deal with Iran with the help of France. about 1 hour ago from web 

An EXISTENTIAL threat? What, really? about 1 hour ago from web 

“When I’M subcommittee chairman, I sharpen pencils and take the minutes.” about 1 hour ago from web 

“I’ve got a bracelet too.” WTF, PEOPLE? Is this a fucking “I empathize more than you” contest? about 1 hour ago from web 

McCain only said he’d wear the bracelet if it went with the rest of his outfit, to be fair. about 1 hour ago from web 

Shorter McCain: “I don’t think Obama’s as smart as me. I love Reagan. I have a record of being right. I hate being right, but I was right.” about 1 hour ago from web 

“If John wants to disagree with this, he can let me know.” This debate is a masterclass in passive aggression. about 1 hour ago from web

The Talipan? about 1 hour ago from web 

Cynical response to Obama: Why should the Afghan Govt. work for their people when no other Govt. in the world does that? about 1 hour ago from web 

I can think of another similarity between Osama Bin Ladin and Gen. Petraeus, John: They’re both massive Abba fans. about 1 hour ago from web 

Oh, Obama. Don’t try to be nuanced. No-one cares for your “facts” or “subtlety” in this election. about 1 hour ago from web 

I love that Obama just keeps muttering “It’s not true.” I think John McCain just described Iraq as having an outbreak of magic happiness. about 1 hour ago from web 

Did Obama just call John McCain “Tom”? about 2 hours ago from web

And here’s something you won’t see…

(I’m in the middle of a weekend of io9 editing and Onomatopoeia writing for the Comix Experience newsletter. Oh, and that whole “going to meet with the INS about my US citizenship” thing that happened this afternoon. But all this means is that my brain is well and truly puggled; I have too much going on for anything to settle in my brain, which is how I wrote the following for the CE newsletter before realized I didn’t have anywhere to go with it. So, for once, here’s something that won’t appear there… or anywhere else, for obvious reasons.)

If there’s anything that anyone who’s been reading superhero comics for any length of time whatsoever knows is unfailingly true, it’s that wonderful things come in unexpected packages, and most normally when you least expect to receive one of those said packages. For example, a friend of mine was absentmindedly going for a walk one day when the opportunity presented itself for him to save an old lady from certain death at the wheels of a passing eighteen-wheeler; he grabbed that opportunity – and the old lady – with both hands, only to be covered in radioactive glop that fell from the back of that passing doomwagon. The glop blinded him, but as we gathered at his bedside to offer our condolences and steal his Star Wars action figures, he revealed that it had also given him heightened senses of touch, hearing, taste and, unfortunately, smell. He added that I should really look into the various possibilities that deodorant may bring to my life and, while I was at it, put down that Han Solo In Hoth Outfit figure if I didn’t want my hand to be broken by an impeccably-thrown walking stick. 

You may have heard of my friend; he’s now a popular lawyer in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen” neighborhood.

The moral of his story was a clear one: never save old ladies from speeding trucks. But there was another lesson to be learned from his tale, and it’s this: You never know just what’s around the corner, but there’s at least a 50% chance that it may include you getting superpowers.

On Time Traveling and Stardom

(Work and real life have kept me from updating, so have another piece from the Comix Experience newsletter while we all keep waiting. This one’s from December last year, which may explain the Hillary reference, as well as that whole “Happy Holidays” thing at the end.)

I can’t tell you how excited I was to discover that I’d been chosen to be the next Heroes character to be sent one year into the future to discover that New York had become some kind of dystopic wasteland due to a disaster that only I, along with my co-stars and friends Hiro Nakamura, Peter Petrelli and that scary looking Cheerleader, could prevent. I’ll admit, I didn’t think that I was going to get the gig – I was sure that it was going to be Elle, what with all the buzz about her being from Veronica Mars and her being a girl and all; I figured that they’d done the geek in the future and neurotic white boy in the future things already in the first couple of seasons, and that I was going to be entirely out of the running because of that, but it turns out that Tim Kring and Jeph Loeb realized that their audience was still primarily white neurotic geeks, and that I perfectly personified their target audience, making me the ideal point of view character. “Point of view” – That’s one of those special media terms that I’ve learned since I joined the show.

I know, I know; you’re thinking “Graeme, I watch Heroes religiously each week. You’ve never been on the show, so what are you talking about?” To which I have to say, thank you. Really, it’s the small people like you that make our work so special and so necessary. Without fans like you watching every week, even when the show is really slow and dull and they keep cutting to that brother and sister from Mexico with the crying eyes of black tar, that keep us working through the long 4 hour days and our cocaine-fuelled nights of wild wild parties and singing karaoke versions of Duran Duran hits until the sun comes up. But to answer your question, you have actually seen me on the show, many times – It takes a lot of special make-up for me to portray fan favorite Micah Sanders, but you have to admit, the clues have been there all along: A comic collecting fan with the magic ability to talk to technology? It’s as if the role had been created just for me! Especially with the wonderful Ali Larter cast as my mother. For those who’ve met Ali, you’ll know that – just like my real mother – she’s a wonderful woman who speaks with a strong Scottish brogue and smokes like a chimney while being unable to cook a meal that doesn’t include either potatoes or spam bubbling in a hot liquid cheese sauce. Why, those first nights we spent together on set, reminiscing about our childhoods and similarities between our characters and ourselves in between learning our lines – It really doesn’t get any better than that, in this business we call show.

But anyway, getting back to the point. Meeting with the show’s many writers and producers, I was excited to learn that I would be the catalyst to the next story arc. It’s a big responsibility, but one that I knew I was more than ready for. For those who don’t know how television shows such as Heroes are made, you might find this next part an eye-opener, but one so shocking that it may even open both eyes! You see, while a large part of television is made up of technological trickery and a little thing we call “lying”, many of NBC’s popular hour-long shows – Heroes, obviously, but also Bionic Woman and ER amongst others – rely on state of the art technology and the cutting edge of documentary film-making to avoid such hackwork as the most recent season of Lost. Take my show and their time-travel escapades, for example. Those long, long scenes of Hiro back in 1671 China, talking to that guy from Alias who turned out to be a bad guy? They weren’t actually shot in China, of course; it was all on a back-lot in Canada somewhere to save costs – but they were shot in the year 1671. How else would we have been able to get such details as the scent of the air, or the texture of the prop samurai swords, so right if we couldn’t be there? It took a crack team of NBC’s special effects, props and wardrobe department, augmented with some of NASA’s greatest theoretical scientists, a full two weeks to develop, build, test and and then mass produce individual time machines for the entire cast and crew to use for the show, and all of that hard work is right up there on the screen for you to see. Think about all of those times that you’ve seen Hiro jump back in time so that he can see himself from earlier on – How else do you think that we could do that?

(Another popular science fiction show – Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica – uses similar techniques for its space dogfight scenes. The Vipers themselves may just be gigantic prop spacecraft built from fiberglass and balsa wood, but each of those scenes are shot in deep space by top cameramen from CNN, Fox News and TLC, giving you, the viewer, the kind of stunning camerawork that’s been nominated for, and ultimately cruelly snubbed by the selection committees for, countless awards. Compare and contrast that kind of dedication with a show like Ugly Betty. That chick’s not even really ugly! And those braces she wears? Fake! It’s shows like that that make me so sick to my stomach that I find myself waking up each morning both weeping and vomiting in shame for my chosen profession.)

Bearing in mind the fact that I would actually be travelling to the end of the year 2008 in order to shoot my scenes for the start of next year’s episodes, my mind started spinning out of control at all the cool things that I would see. The future! Would it be filled with genetically-modified beautiful people wearing neon orange jumpsuits as they speak to each other in some Nadsat-style futuristic language? Would we all be wearing jetpacks and flying to work in cars with clear bubble roofs, like on The Jetsons (And, if so, did that mean that we’d all have robotic maids like Rosie? I hoped so; I liked the idea of having my own personal robot to clean up after me, especially one that perpetuated the racist stereotype of the idealized, “safe” black maid of earlier cartoons and movies. It made me feel as if I’d be continuing some noble tradition as I continued to objectify “the other”)? Would every single wall surface be covered in some kind of flatscreen television, advertising new consumer-based products to me, making the beautiful promise of Ridley Scott’s perpetually-re-released Blade Runner come true? I could only close my eyes, lean my head back towards the heavens and clap my hands in uncomfortably-childlike joy at the possibilities that lay ahead of me!

Of course, that was when I went to talk to Milo Ventimiglia, who plays Scott Pilgrim’s emo retard twin Peter Petrelli on the show, for advice. He’d made the (quantum) leap most recently, after all, and I wanted to know what I should expect. Telling me that the future was just like now but, like, not happened yet, completely harshed my buzz and brought me down to earth with an almost audible bump. No wonder Rory Gilmore dumped his grumpy ass back in the day.

Nevertheless, on the day of shooting itself, my stomach was filled with butterflies as they filled my actorly jockstrap with the magic dust necessary for time-travel. Obviously, I can’t spoil too much of the story for all you fans out there or else it’ll appear in next week’s TV Guide, but suffice to say that both the dude that plays Sylar and myself were nervous about the prospect of our first scene together being set a year in the future where we’d fight with lightsabers made out of our emotions, just like Psylocke’s focused-totality-of-her-psychic-powers, while Walter Koenig looked on, laughing maniacally and screaming that “the vussians invented superpowered pouty fighting” over and over again. As we geared ourselves up for the jaunt ahead, I then realized the potential that my actorly career offered me: I could use this General Electric-sponsored trip twelve months into the future to learn all about what lay ahead for us all!

For a second, I thought about just what this meant. I mean, sure, I could see who wins the 2008 Elections and come back and tell you all, allowing each and every one of you to go and bet on not only the outcome but also the exact results and the name of the TV anchor that announced the news first (Brian Williams, by the way), but exactly what good would that do any of you, aside from all of the money you’d potentially win and the state of mind that you may have about voting knowing that your guy was either definitely going to win or not (I’m using “guy” in its gender neutral form, of course; I don’t want to let on that Hilary gets the Dem Nom just yet)? Not one iota. Let me tell you; I’ve got fame and fortune, and I still put my pants on one leg at a time every morning. Admittedly, I do so with the assistance of twelve scantily-clad models, and they are very, very expensive pants that were created just for me to best show off my buttocks from whatever angle viewed, but it’s the thought that counts. 

Then I thought about the fact that it’s the end of 2007 already, a time filled with both nostalgia for time gone past – Ah, 2006, you were so good to us! – and fear and dread over what lies ahead. Wouldn’t it be my duty, I thought, to alleviate some of that fear, drape a curtain of certainty over some of the dread? Perhaps not my duty as an actor, nor even my duty as the guy who snarks about comics for Comix Experience or online, but certainly my duty as a human being. Wouldn’t we all feel better knowing just one small piece of tomorrow in our hearts as we faced the new day (I’m being metaphorical, of course; the “new day” I’m talking about is really 365 days – I’m really talking about the year 2008. I don’t know if you got that yet or not. But I also want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who bought “One Small Piece of Tomorrow,” my debut single on Clive Davis’ J Records label, as produced by Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. I hope all of you caught my appearance on TRL last month)?

And so, in between takes, both Sylardude and myself ran away from our apocalyptic faux-New York set and into the year Two Thousand And Eight to find some small shard of futurmation to pass on to you. Koenig wanted to come with us, but his legs have given out on him these days, and so he just sat down and wept as he considered William Shatner’s career. And, oh, how we ran through the streets of Future Hollywood, gazing into store windows – Next year’s fashion tip: It’s all about the crimpelene, but with a 1970s suede finish – and beating up the old and infirm demanding to know what’s the buzz, tell me what’s the happenin’ (This just in: Old people cry easily). Eventually, we found two discarded first generation iPhones on the side of the road and used them to get onto the internet of tomorrow, going to Newsarama.com to find out just what we’d all be reading twelve months from now…

…and it was still fucking Brian Bendis going on about the Skrulls and how it was so shocking and exciting that he was making the Skrulls go undercover in the Marvel Universe and pretend to be Black Bolt. Apparently, there was some kind of delay in finishing the art for something, and so the whole thing had been pushed back until mid-2009, but there was going to be another special issue of New Avengers where Spider-Man made a joke and Luke Cage snarked back at him, but, really. I almost threw the iPhone into the road in horror, but the chewed up gum on the back of it stuck to my fingers.

It was then that Milo Ventimiglia, little Mister Sunshine, tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey,” he said, in that annoying mumble of his while he stared at me with those big eyes that freak me out each and everytime I see him. “Now do you get what I was saying about the future really just being like now, only not happened yet? It’s not like anything new is really going to happen in the next year that’s going to change everything you know about comics or anything.”

I stared at him in numb disbelief for a full three seconds – I timed myself to make sure it was completely effective, doing the whole “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi” thing in my head – before smashing the iPhone into his angst-ridden little head and running away. What made him so down about the future? Just because he’d been there first didn’t mean he knew everything about what 2008 had to offer. A new year was something to be celebrated for all the potential it has, even if some things never change, I thought to myself. Who cares if Brian Bendis was still going to be king of the hill and cock of the walk? I saw the headlines down below about Sufjan Stevens and Chris Ware resurrecting The Golem for Marvel’s MAX line and the Watchmen being revealed as the bad guys of DC’s Final Crisis just to piss Alan Moore off one more time. 

2008 is going to be the year where anything could happen. Happy Holidays, all.