We at the Beak are not role models. We drink to excess. We use coarse language in front of children and ladies. We “forget” to post for months at a time. And, perhaps most shameful of all, we smoke.

Like all smokers, we’d grown accustomed to paying more than we’d like for cigarettes. It was unpleasant, but you lived with it. Until a few months ago, when the President — himself engaged in an on-again off-again affair with tobacco — signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Mostly standard stuff, bigger warning labels and all that, with one nasty catch: it bans flavored tobacco products.

As a fan of fancy-flavored cigarettes, I was understandably alarmed. And not long after that, Horatio informed me that readers had been asking if we could post something about the situation. And why shouldn’t we? If I can build a robot at home, I can sure as hell figure out how to roll a cigarette. Luckily, I didn’t have to, since Horatio’s lady-friend (and all-around bon vivant) Ms. Monsterface has set up a blog dedicated to the making and smoking of your own homemade clove cigarettes. You can even follow along at home! It’s like a cooking show for your lungs!

I admit I haven’t tried any of her experiments yet, but only because I’ve been conducting my own. Unfortunately, I’m not able to write a guide as thorough as hers, simply because I forgot to take pictures of all the steps of the process. Also, I’ve already smoked most of my supplies, so that’s an issue as well. Luckily, I had a chance to talk with Ms. Monsterface a couple weeks ago, and gave her permission to steal my ideas. So for all I know, my clove-making techniques could be showing up on her blog at some point in the future.

And if they don’t, then I’ll just take some pictures and write about it here. This definitely seems like the sort of thing that could become a recurring feature; people love to learn indie-friendly ways to be unhealthy. In the meantime, though, we should all be grateful that Ms. Monsterface is on the job, bringing tastiness to the masses.

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for a movie that came out over a week ago, and that you’ve probably already seen, or at least read about by now. If you haven’t, but wish to remain unspoiled, read something else.

After putting it off for far too long, I finally saw the new Star Trek. My reaction to the movie itself — the plot, the performances, the ways it diverged from the original series — is about the same as what you’ve read everywhere else, and you don’t need to hear another nerd waxing nostalgic over DeForest Kelley. Just trust me when I say that, if you’re a Star Trek fan, or a science fiction fan, or just an average schmuck who likes big summer movies, this is a pretty safe bet.

Before it even came out, I spent a lot of time hoping it succeeded, partly because I’m a (relatively casual) Star Trek fan, but mostly because I’d be willing to attend a convention if it meant an opportunity to hang out with Simon Pegg. After seeing it, though, I’m not sure he, or anyone from the new cast, will be doing conventions. Indeed, I’ve begun to wonder if conventions will even be necessary after this. Star Trek fandom, despite the enthusiastic community that has sprung up over the years, has often been a lonely pursuit. Fans gather at conventions, and are amazed at how many fellow fans they meet, but during the rest of the year, they often have no one to talk to about their obsession.

Now, Star Trek has found a level of mass appeal that had previously eluded it. Some of the infamous Trek sermonizing was lost in the process, but the franchise’s fondness for exploring morality still comes through. The new film gives us a story about the futility of revenge, the acceptance of one’s limitations, and the ethics of dicking around with time travel — all themes that would feel perfectly at home among the redshirts and papier-mâché rocks of the original series.

Comparisons to Star Wars, that other venerable sci-fi franchise, are inevitable, and for good reason. This new Star Trek gives us fast-paced space battles, spectacular effects, a villain capable of destroying entire planets, and a team of inexperienced young heroes tasked with stopping him. And now it has a Star Wars-sized audience to match, and that audience is experiencing a renewed interest in the classic series.

If — and this is a big “If” — the movie’s popularity endures, if its new continuity is accepted by longtime fans, and if the inevitable sequels are worth a damn, we could see a permanent shift in the way Star Trek fandom works. Fans will be freer to talk about their fondness for the franchise, and will encounter far more people who share their interest. In short, we could be headed towards a pop-culture landscape in which Star Trek is not arbitrarily considered less acceptable than Star Wars.

That this could happen, and that the peaceful, progressive values of the Federation could be treated with the same relative respect shown to the (frankly medieval) Jedi code, is nothing short of a miracle for my fellow geeks. We’ve spent the last few decades — and the last eight years in particular — banging our heads against the wall in frustration, shocked and frightened by humankind’s apparent inability to overcome our urge to destroy ourselves.

Star Trek made an impact during the Cold War by depicting a future where humans had not only survived, but had become model citizens of a galactic civilization, and leading voices in a Federation devoted to peace, exploration, and diversity. For years, its fans have held it up as an example for our present-day society to follow, and have been largely ignored. We were told they were too idealistic, or simply too hard to take seriously when they wore fake Vulcan ears. Plus, “Voyager” kind of bogged down after a couple seasons, and nobody liked “Enterprise” that much.

Now, though, an explosion-filled summer blockbuster has provided them with their long-awaited opening, and a decent sequel or two will be more than enough to make the public wonder why they weren’t on board with Gene Roddenberry’s ideas in the first place. It won’t result in a radical overhaul of society, and it won’t compel us to model our world after the Federation, but it could very well get people thinking some of Star Trek’s lofty ideals.

As a nerd, that’s really all I’ve ever asked for.

As fans of “House” already know, Dr. Lawrence Kutner is dead. To the show’s credit, his suicide was handled about as well, and as realistically, as it could be. Instead of giving us one of those melodramatic TV suicides (you know, lots of foreshadowing, staring into the mirror, shots ringing out just before his friends rush in to save him), this seemingly came out of nowhere. Kutner’s friends and family were going about their lives when, not even halfway into the episode, he turned up dead.

This came as a shock, not just because Kutner was the show’s most consistently happy character, but because he was a fan favorite. After all, he was played by Kal Penn. The kids love him! So why would they not just write him off the show, but actually kill his character? This isn’t Lost! I was sure something else had to be going on.

And it was. Penn explained his reason for leaving the show in an interview with Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello:

I was incredibly honored a couple of months ago to get the opportunity to go work in the White House. I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I’m going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They’re basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It’s similar to what I was doing on the campaign.

Well. That’s a pretty good reason to quit a TV show. And here I thought he was just gonna do movies or something.

He admitted in the interview that he would be taking a pay cut at his new job, and although he isn’t retiring from acting, he is giving it up for the time being. And he’s doing it because he has a sincere passion for politics. Cynical as I am, I have to admire that. I follow politics, and sometimes engage in idle daydreaming about what I would say to this or that politician, but I’ve never even taken the time to volunteer. Kal Penn worked with the Obama campaign, and now he’s working with the administration in a job that I couldn’t explain if I wanted to. Honestly, I have no idea what the associate director of the White House office of public liaison does (I intend to look it up as soon as I’m done writing this, but for now I want to remain pure). If I had to guess, I’d say he was going to be some sort of mascot, but that wouldn’t be very nice of me.

Implied in all of this is the idea that Penn must have really impressed the Obama people during the campaign. Lots of actors volunteer on political campaigns, but it’s not often that one of them gets offered a job in a Presidential administration, so he must have some idea of what he’s doing. Pundits love to complain about actors getting involved in politics, claiming they’re attaching their names to trendy causes without really understanding without really understanding the intricacies and compromises of political life. I hope to be there when those pundits get proven wrong this time, giving another reason to admire Kal Penn.

Now that I’ve got all the admiration out of the way, let me get cynical for a moment. This is a great career move, not just for Kal Penn the politician or Kal Penn the activist, but for Kal Penn the actor as well.

Consider Al Franken: he was an SNL alumnus, a comedian, and a political commentator. He wrote a very funny book about Rush Limbaugh in 1996, but political humor doesn’t always age well, and many of the book’s jokes became dated within a few years. By the early 21st century, he was working at Air America and writing the occasional book — a respectable career, but perhaps lacking the glamour of some of his earlier work. And then he pissed off Bill O’Reilly. That’s not hard to do, but O’Reilly became singularly obsessed with Franken – everything Franken said was treated as an attack on O’Reilly, and everything he did was seen as proof of a vast left-wing conspiracy. O’Reilly’s minions spread the meme, his fellow Fox News pundits repeated it, and before long they had turned a fading comedian into the poster boy for the Evils of Liberalism. Franken’s books sold millions of copies, his story became evidence of conservatism’s misplaced priorities, and now he’s (more or less) a United States Senator.

That’s not bad for the guy who played Stuart Smalley, and it would be pretty good for the guy who played Kumar. If any conservative pundits are reading this, please, by all means, criticize Penn’s latest career move. Search for sinister motives in any acting roles he takes on in the future. Talk about him like he’s single-handedly responsible for destroying the American way of life.

I look forward to voting for him.

The Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. The Bailout, is moving forward, and people are cautious but hopeful. It may not have been the exact plan Obama envisioned, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what we had before. The money is going just about everywhere, including a whole host of provisions to help unemployed workers, including an extended Emergency Unemployment Compensation program. Americans who have been smacked around by the economy finally have a reason to feel slightly happier.

Except in Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal has refused federal aid for the unemployed. Accepting the money for the updated programs would require a change to Louisiana state law, which Jindal is unwilling to make that change out of fear that it could eventually result in a tax increase. Meanwhile, around 25,000 people in Louisiana won’t be getting the benefits they could’ve had in any other state.

When I first heard about this story, I was sure I had Jindal’s motive all figured out: he rejected the money so he could take a stand against “socialism” or “big government” (or whatever Republican leaders think Obama’s nefarious scheme is), and then brag about it during a hypothetical run for the Presidency in 2012. “That sneaky bastard!” I said. “Screwing over 25,000 people to score a few points in a contest that hasn’t even started yet!” Turns out the truth is far dumber.

Jindal has been more than happy to take stimulus money for other things. He’s even been happy to take it for unemployment; if you already qualify for unemployment insurance in Louisiana, you’ll be getting bigger payments. All told, he’s only turning down about $90 million of the money his state was set to receive. His anti-bailout posturing is purely symbolic — he gets to pretend he was the bold rebel who snubbed Obama, but his state still gets most of its money.

Of course, symbolic or not, the gesture still has its consequences. Those 25,000 people are still unemployed, and probably none too happy about it. I guess Jindal thinks he can impress them by claiming he kept their taxes low. Which is true, as long as we’re talking about a crazy alternate universe where those people all start businesses and become wildly successful, and also the emergency programs never get phased out despite their apparent success in ending the emergency.

Or, in the words of New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin:

Nagin went on to note that even without Jindal’s approval, state officials will likely go around him to secure federal aid. “[Representative James] Clyburn did something very smart. He said if the government does not want this money, the legislators can vote to accept the money. And I told the governor personally, any dollars he does not want, we will take them.”

And that’s the fiendish plot, in a nutshell. Bobby Jindal gets to claim he fought Washington on this issue, but still gets to take credit for his state’s economic recovery. In fact, I’m going to predict, right now, that this very issue is going to come up in the next round of Republican Presidential primaries.

I’m also going to predict that I will become depressed later tonight, because I’m talking about the 2012 primaries in February of 2009, which is too goddamn early.

Poor, poor Bristol Palin. It’s bad enough having an attention-hungry monster of a mother micro-managing your every move, and then to add in an unwanted parasitic little shit of a baby to raise. As if fate weren’t cruel enough already, earlier this week Bristol had to talk to Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. Though formerly a criminal defense and civil trial lawyer, wherein one assumes she was required to argue effectively, Van Susteren approaches journalism with a grueling mixture of inane parroting and condescension. Bristol was subjected to this curious methodology on Tuesday, when she sat down to chit-chat about the new baby — and Sarah Palin’s grandson — Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston.

Let me point out that there is absolutely no reason for this interview. Bristol Palin’s pain should have returned to the private sector after November 2008. But she’s stuck in the public eye now, and Fox has set her up to act as a half-cautionary tale, half-pro-life advocacy hybrid. Happily, when left to her own devices, Bristol is remarkably candid, and several times offers up samplings of the misery of motherhood, like,

“I’m not living for myself anymore.”

and,

“I wish it would happen in, like, ten years, so I could have a job and an education.”

That’s all in Part 1 of the interview, which I’m embedding here:

Now maybe I’m reading too much into this, but Bristol appears to have a blatant tell in her facial expression whenever she says something positive. Watch closely, and you’ll see Bristol’s eyes dart to the right (viewer’s left) and hover there, as if there’s a Truth Monster they’re trying valiantly not to look at. It’s especially evident when she says, “It’s so rewarding,” and, “I don’t regret it at all.”

Of course the quote that everyone’s talking about is Bristol’s admission that expecting teenagers to practice abstinence is “not realistic.” Specifically, she said,

“Everyone should be abstinent or whatever, but it’s not realistic at all.”

She’s mostly right, though I’d suggest that a more accurate way of putting it would be to say that expecting teenagers to practice abstinence is mind-bogglingly stupid, naive, and fucking absurd. Bristol’s declaration of the nonsense inherent in “abstinence education” comes at the end of Part 2:

Of course, this isn’t the really ugly bit of the whole affair. Where things get really nasty is when Governor Palin herself pops up “unexpectedly,” and by “unexpectedly” I actually mean, “so transparently and clumsily orchestrated you’d think a high school marching band were involved.” Van Susteren, who may be afraid of Sarah Palin at this point, frantically stumbles over her own tongue trying to assert that babies are “a joy,” and totally not the nightmare she’d been trying to get Bristol to come to terms with only moments before. Sarah, determined not to give up the spotlight for anybody, decides to speak for everyone in the room and wills Bristol, with her Sith mind powers, to sit with the goddamn baby and look cute for fuck’s sake.

The fact that Bristol doesn’t stand up halfway through this segment and scream, “shut the fuck up for five fucking seconds, mom!” is, I must presume, a testament to her patience. Or her fatigue. Poor dumb kid.

Saturday Night Live, long considered “not as good as it used to be,” managed to win back its viewers during the last presidential campaign, thanks to Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin. Fey had been doing just fine on her own, creating, producing, and starring in 30 Rock, but her turn as Palin elevated her from Smart Pretty Lady to Unstoppable Comedy Goddess. As well as she was doing, it was a cameo in a political sketch that made her a star in the eyes of the millions of Americans who weren’t watching 30 Rock.

If I were Dan Aykroyd, I’d want in on that. Apparently, Dan Aykroyd agrees.

Admittedly, John Boehner isn’t comedy gold in the way Palin was (despite the fact that his name is almost Boner), but I’m still curious to see where this goes. Will Aykroyd preside over a recurring series of sketches in which the Republican Congressional leaders come up with terrible ideas”? Because I’d tune in for that, or at least watch it on the internet on Sunday morning. Aside from being amusing, a sketch like that could be pretty useful in the real world — the next time the real Republicans try to present a stupid plan to the public, there’s a good chance that millions of people will laugh and say, “Dan Aykroyd already did that!” I approve.

And if SNL has a cameo role that will allow Chevy Chase to be funny for once, I’m okay with that too.