You’ll have what the Flintstones would call a “gay old time” with this week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic, “I Can See Queerly Now.” That’s because the column, published Aug. 10, 2003, talks about the trend of gay-themed TV shows that was developing at that time. Get it? That’s why I said “gay old time.” Because the column is about gay TV shows. Do you get it?

Coincidentally, this was one of the last columns I wrote for the Daily Herald, published a mere 10 days before my services at that paper were deemed no longer necessary. That had nothing to do with this particular column, of course — but then again, the scuttlebutt is that the Herald’s executive editor — we’ll call him Shrandy Shwright — saw my occasional dealing with controversial topics as a threat to the paper’s circulation numbers, and he recently told the newspaper’s publisher that he’d wanted to get rid of me ever since he joined the staff. So maybe this column, and other “hot button” columns like it, did contribute. Who can say? The important thing is, it’s been four years now (the anniversary was Monday, thank you), and I am very, very glad not to be working there anymore. I’d have chosen a different way of exiting, sure, but if the alternative was that I’d still be there now, in 2007, I’d take the ignominious firing.

Anyway, the point is, here’s a column about gay TV shows, which is soooo 2003.

I’ve written more than 550 “Snide Remarks” columns in the last 10 years, and I’m not ashamed to say that some of them have been absolute crap. There are deadlines involved, you see, and writing “Snide Remarks” has never, even in its heyday, been my sole occupation. Not that that’s any excuse. I’m just sayin’.

Here are my picks for the 10 worst “Snide Remarks” columns I’ve ever written. They are painful for me to read now. I hope glancing at them will help you appreciate the good ones all the more.

(P.S. Which columns would you have put on this list? Go ahead, let me have it.)

10. “The Young and the Viewerless” (Aug. 29, 2005)
This is the most recent column on the list. The idea was that I, a non-viewer, would watch one random episode of “The Young and the Restless,” summarize it for the reader, and see if that one episode made me interested in watching the show regularly. For some reason I thought my summary of the show would be a lot funnier than it was. Turns out it’s just boring.

9. “Shutteth Up!” (Feb. 2, 1998)
I attended a BYU production of “Romeo and Juliet,” leading to this column in which I a) made lame jokes about Shakespeare in general, and b) expressed frustration with people who talk and make other noise in the theater. The Shakespeare jokes were straight from a column I’d written seven years earlier, when I was in high school, and it shows. The other stuff was just rant-y and generic.

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It was almost a year ago that I told you of my attitudes toward spiders, and this week’s “Snide Remarks” column is a continuation of that theme. It is entitled “The Adventures of Spider and Man” and I do hope you enjoy it ever so much.

You might also take advantage of the space-age SnideCast® technology and listen to me read the column aloud. The SnideCast© is accessible right there on the page itself; you can also hear the podcast here, or subscribe to the podcast here.

On another topic, I caught “The Last Legion” over the weekend, and you can read my review if you want to. No pressure, though.

We’ve had some excellent comedies this summer, and now, as the season draws to a close, we’re favored with “Superbad.” It comes from the people behind “Knocked Up” and is every bit as funny as that film was. What a delightful pair of bookends for the summer!

Significantly less delightful is “The Invasion,” starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. This latest incarnation of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is mediocre at best.

Something called “The Last Legion” is also opening, but it’s one of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets (i.e., they wouldn’t screen it for critics, which almost always means it’s bad). It’s about the last emperor of ancient Rome, and something about a special sword and a young boy and a wizard played by Ben Kingsley. It’s a prequel to the King Arthur/sword in the stone story, I think. It stars Colin Firth. I know: Colin Firth? Doesn’t seem right to me, either. Review to come this weekend.

Also in this week’s edition of “In the Dark”:

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Prize-giver and fashion icon Joseph Pulitzer.

After reading “The Road,” I wondered if it was the first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction I’d ever read. Certainly it’s the first time I’ve read one so close to its winning: The awards were announced on April 16 of this year, and I read the book four months later.

Wikipedia has a handy list of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners. Note that before 1948, it was called the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel; those winners (1918-1947) are here.

It turns out I’ve read several. To wit:

“Middlesex,” by Jeffrey Eugenides.

“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” by Michael Chabon.

“A Confederacy of Dunces,” by John Kennedy Toole.

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee.

“The Old Man and the Sea,” by Ernest Hemingway. (Is it even possible to graduate from high school without having read “The Old Man and the Sea” at some point?)

“The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” by Thornton Wilder.

“Kavalier & Clay” and “A Confederacy of Dunces” are two of my most favorite books ever, and I quite liked the other Pulitzer winners I’ve read, too.

Which Pulitzers have you read? Which ones should I read? Discuss.

Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year and was on quite a few Best of 2006 lists. I have finally read it and can tell you it’s one of the most beautiful, emotionally devastating books I’ve ever read.

It’s set in a near post-apocalyptic future, where something (nuclear war, probably) has destroyed all animal life and most human life. A man and his little boy walk through the rubble, finding food where they can, avoiding marauders who would cannibalize them, hoping to find other survivors who can be trusted — other “good guys,” in the parlance of the man and the boy. They are good guys themselves, the man reassures his son, although it may be that the man is becoming less of a good guy as time passes and the situation becomes more desperate.

It is not a science-fiction or horror novel. We don’t learn what caused the devastation, because it’s irrelevant; that’s not what the book is about. McCarthy’s writing is spare all the way around. We don’t learn anyone’s names, nor specifically what part of the United States they’re wandering through. Only references to “the interstate” confirm that it even is the U.S.

McCarthy even writes largely without commas. Preferring to start a new sentence fragment where a comma would have gone. Mostly brief sentences like this. There are no chapter divisions. Contractions like “don’t” and “won’t” don’t get apostrophes. Dialogue does not have quotation marks. Usually I find tactics like these pretentious and annoying — “Ooh, look how modern I am! I don’t use punctuation!” — but it works here because it fits the stark desolation of the story. Everything has been pared down to its barest essentials.

The story itself isn’t particularly elaborate, but McCarthy’s vocabulary is; evidently the world’s thesauruses survived the apocalypse. What’s more, he writes beautifully, poetically, piercingly. It’s hard to cite individual passages. It’s more the overall effect. And when you boil it all down, it’s really just a story about the love between a little boy and his papa.

See what I mean about the k.d. lang thing?

My pal Scott Weinberg wrote something for Cinematical the other day where he was talking about Chris Sivertson, the director of the recent Lindsay Lohan fiasco “I Know Who Killed Me.” In the course of this, he mentioned that Sivertson’s last film, “The Lost,” premiered at South By Southwest last year, and I realized: I totally saw that movie! And I totally hated it!

I had glanced at Sivertson’s IMDB page while writing my review of “I Know Who Killed Me,” but “The Lost” is a rather nondescript title, and it didn’t register that I had seen it. It wasn’t until Scott mentioned the SXSW connection that my brain caught up.

And then I realized that I once corresponded with Sivertson! And he was kind of cool!

In my 2006 SXSW Film Festival Diary (Day 5), I said this about “The Lost”:

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One organization I’ve frequently enjoyed mocking in “Snide Remarks” is PETA, and one such column is this week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic. It’s called “Pet Peeves” and it’s from May 25, 2003.

Funny news stories about animals, and PETA. That’s a fine combination, folks.

(For the record, this was the fourth time I had written a column about PETA. The other three were here, here, and here. Enjoy!)

An Instant Messenger exchange between my brother Jeff and me:

JEFF: [Someone we know] is very much like that [other] weiner, in that she dances from one subject to another without ever addressing the criticisms of what she says.

ME: Yeah, that’s true.

JEFF: In addition to the obvious similarity of both being idiots.

ME: And wieners.

JEFF: Is that how you spell it?

ME: I before E, my friend.

JEFF: I know that’s the general rule.
JEFF: I guess wiener is the one word in the English language I don’t know how to spell.
JEFF: I knew there must be one.

ME: Wow.
ME: I’m glad we found it.

JEFF: It used to be asphalt.

ME: It’s too bad it’s not an exception to the I before E rule… then the mnemonic device to remember them all could be, “The weird foreigner seizes neither leisure nor weiners.”

JEFF: Totally.
JEFF: For that reason alone, I propose an official change.

ME: I don’t even know who to write to about that.
ME: The Queen?

JEFF: Ms. Miriam Webster.

ME: Good one.

Oh, this is rich.

On April 15, 1994, Dick Cheney was asked about the United States’ actions during the Gulf War three years earlier — specifically, whether we should have pressed on into Baghdad and toppled Saddam Hussein then, as some people had wanted or expected.

Here’s what Cheney said (transcript after the clip):

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