Supernatural power is either wielded or invoked. If it's wielded, it's just something natural in the world, an internal/external force that some people can harness, and some can't, and it can't really be learned or transferred. If it's invoked, it's an external force which must be summoned, invoked and used at the…

I dunno, he's got some kind of Miranda Sings thing going on there.

There is a "complete soundtrack" floating around the web that restores the 2/3 of the movie soundtrack that wasn't released on the original album. It is TRANSCENDANT, because it adds all those art-rock and glam oddballs like "Avenging Annie" and "Fat Lady of Limbourg" to the mix.

Yesterday we were chatting about Marc Shaiman and his work on "The Addams Family," and today his comedy album with the South Park guys is a newswire! It's Shaiman week!

Have you read "Capone" by Laurence Bergreen? In the final chapter, he unveils a conspiracy theory that someone (I think Nitti) had been using Capone as a patsy, pretty much a P.L.E.A.S.E. guy to attract big attention and take the fall while the Outfit did all the real business without him.

It's also a great teaching example of the new way the musical creation process goes, where a show isn't frozen until it goes into licensing, as opposed to being frozen when it opens on Broadway. Chicago to NYC there were huge changes made (not enough changes), but then Broadway to Tampa, where the tour had a sit-down…

Shaiman is king of the occasional song: he's the go-to guy in television, Hollywood or Broadway to write a song or a parody for a special event. Just two weeks ago he wrote "Hilary Tonight" for a big Clinton benefit.

Film composer Marc Shaiman is an acquaintance of mine, and though I love his score to the movie (I think it's the best thing he ever wrote; he's more partial to his musical scores), I can't deny the brilliance of having the goofy Addams Family snap-snap theme segue into the Nino Rota gothic romance of the Addams…

"Ven do ve return to Transylvwania? I grow veary of this voirld." (As soon as you catch Moose und Squirrel!)

My favorite bit of trivia from that film: action stars Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing) and Shuler Hensley (Frankenstein Monster) had recently worked together, playing the two leads in the remake of the movie musical "Oklahoma!" From singing, dancing farmers to violent movie monsters in five years.

That's the brilliant thing about the films that no other adaptation of the Addams Family franchise has really latched onto: the Addams Family is pure, unrepentant, openly-satanic EVIL. The rest of the world is right about the Addamses.

Although the original series' Thing was a strange man who lived in the walls (seen more clearly in full-body form in original drawings by Charles Addams), the Thing in the movie doesn't seem as much inspired by severed hands or Hands of Glory as by European ghosts of phantom disembodied hands.

"Doctor… Doctor Who?"
"It doesn't matter!"
"…Okay! Have some extra lives!"

Cracklin' Oat Bran is already almost a Samoa cereal.

It's a controversial opinion, but I think "The Grinch" works, by and large. There are weak spots, sure, and it's a movie that didn't necessarily NEED to be made, but it runs on a similar principle to "National Lampoon's Christmas:" take something immediately recognizable and nostalgic, and leave big space for your…

Jesus Christ would be a nice president, but no way he'd get elected- bearded, Jewish, no political background, poor.

If you'll look past the comics (where canon is flexible anyway), B:TAS, probably the franchise's most codifying element, is REALLY FUCKING QUEER. The Riddler's sexuality has always been neuter- it's never really entered into the story, and he's voiced by an out gay man. The series' version of Penguin reads pretty…

That's half the reason; the other half is, like the original Carpenter score to "Halloween," there is not much "there" there. About an EP's worth of music without tracks simply being repeated.

Some are good creators, and some are good interpreters/good storytellers. I'm a storyteller; I wrote one completely original piece once and it's taken YEARS of workshopping to make it anything remotely resembling decent, but I've got a talent for pulling things out of the public domain and rethinking them entirely.

The whole thing is in verse of varying quality that only sometimes rhymes and messes around with internal rhythms too much? Then who really…