I have this weird interest in the front page of the New York Times. One afternoon a few weeks ago I got quasi-Aspergic about it. It turns out you can look at any New York Times front page since February 13, 2002 by using a URL formatted like this one. Just enter the appropriate year, month and day.

Anyway, I realized that in all of 2007, the Times ran only two banner headlines. Neither of them took up more than one line and neither was in all caps, which usually identifies something REALLY IMPORTANT.

The first was on March 7, 2007, after Scooter Libby was convicted:

The second was on April 17, 2007, reporting the Virginia Tech shootings:

In fact, the last time the Times ran a multi-line, all-caps banner headline was more than a year ago (December 30, 2006), after Saddam Hussein was hanged:

I wonder if the Times is trying to de-emphasize banner headlines.

As a political junkie, I’m excited about tonight’s Iowa caucuses. But it’s a totally ridiculous system. As Gail Collins writes, “the sturdy Iowa voters will pull on their parkas and go out to fulfill their historic destiny. Perhaps as many as 15 percent of them!” Even David Broder, who is increasingly senescent, is on target here.

Not only will an incredibly small percentage of voters be choosing delegates in a process that doesn’t even allow a secret ballot; they’re not even choosing that many delegates. For instance, on the Democratic side, of the more than 4,000 delegates who will attend the Democratic Convention in August, how many delegates are Iowa Democrats choosing?

Fifty-six [whoops] Forty-five.

Yeah, 56 45 out of more than 4,000. That’s less than 2 percent of all delegates.

And yet the media will be hysterical and breathless tonight and tomorrow, and candidates will drop out either after Iowa or after New Hampshire next week.

It’s ridiculous.

I suggest a compromise. Let Iowa and New Hampshire be the first states to elect delegates (if they must), but make the results secret. No state should reveal the results of its primary or caucus until all 50 states have voted. That way, Iowa and New Hampshire can still go first, but they won’t have undue influence over any other state.

It’ll never happen, of course. Congress can’t make rules for state-by-state elections, let alone intra-party elections. And media companies will never forego their exit polls. And in our hypersaturated media age, the results would inevitably leak out somehow.

Our system sucks.

Here are some hilariously awful classical music album covers.

The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007.

Yesterday I watched what has instantly become one of my favorite films of the year: “Zodiac,” about the search for the Zodiac killer in 1970s San Francisco.

I’d heard a little bit about the movie when it came out early in the spring, and it seemed like something I’d want to see, and then I promptly forgot about it. But in the past few days it’s appeared on several critics’ end-of-year best movies lists, so I decided to rent it from Netflix. I popped it into the DVD player and got sucked right in.

I can’t explain exactly why I enjoyed it so much. It just had this haunting effect on me. It’s too long (2 hours 38 minutes), and yet the length is just right for the story David Fincher is trying to tell. I haven’t read much background about the film, but Fincher (who also directed “Se7en,” “The Game,” “Panic Room,” and “Fight Club”) seems as obsessed with the story as Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Robert Graysmith, is with solving the murders.

The movie has a great cast. Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr. (who deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, in my opinion), Anthony Edwards, Dermot Mulroney, Philip Baker Hall, Brian Cox, Chloe Sevigny, even Clea Duvall in a very small role. Familiar faces keep popping up all over the place.

Best of all is the eerie score by David Shire, which I’ve downloaded and am listening to as I write this. I think it’s the music that really makes the movie for me.

It turns out that a two-disc edition, including a director’s cut, comes out in just over a week. I’ll definitely be buying or renting it.

Blech. Neocon Bill Kristol is going to become a New York Times columnist? The guy who wrote this piece of crap?

I’m all for equal representation. But if you’re going to give a conservative a voice, at least don’t give it to a wackjob.

Today’s my 34th birthday. Ack! I’m 34! How did this happen??? And is there a cure?

I wound up going to the movies yesterday after all – and not by myself. I went for a walk through Central Park, meandering all the way down the western half of it from north to south. I started at the northwest corner on 110th Street, ambled up the Great Hill, then past the Sheep Meadow, halfway around the Reservoir, past the Great Lawn and the Delacorte Theater, around the west side of the Lake, and over to Bethesda Fountain (which always makes me think of the end of “Angels in America”); then Luke called and we made plans to see “No Country for Old Men.” I walked down the Mall, past the Dairy and the Wollman Rink, then finally exited at Columbus Circle.

Eventually I met Luke for the movie; there were only two seats left when we got there, which were in the front row. So I slumped down into my chair (which fortunately reclined a bit) and stared up at the enormous screen.

Great movie, dark and gruesome at times, and done really really well.

I’ve crossed four movies off my list so far this week — just a handful to go!

I always get all agitated about going to the movies on Christmas Day.

One of my favorite activities during the week of Christmas and New Year’s is going to see lots of Oscar-worthy movies. So far I’ve seen “Michael Clayton” (Friday), “Atonement” (Saturday), and “Sweeney Todd” (Sunday), and yesterday we watched “Ratatouille” on DVD.

The traditional Christmas Day activity for Jews is to go to the movies. Not “traditional” in the sense of “you MUST go see a movie,” but “traditional” in the sense that it just seems like the most enjoyable thing to do today.

The only problem is that Matt and I have very different taste in movies. He doesn’t like seeing serious, award-worthy movies, but I do. He doesn’t feel a need to go to the movies at all, really.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie by myself. I saw “Atonement” by myself. But for some reason, seeing a movie on Christmas by myself makes me feel lonely — sitting in a packed theater surrounded by couples or small groups.

I was about to head out to see “Charlie Wilson’s War,” but I’ve decided that I may as well take advantage of the daylight. So I think I’m going to go for a walk in Central Park instead.

Christmastime for the Jews indeed.

Merry Christmas.

Someone Has to Win the GOP Nomination.

That headline makes me laugh for some reason.

Hooray!

According to a joint statement:

“We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”

How I’ve missed them — although their absence has allowed me to go to bed earlier.

Now that there’s definitely going to be a Hobbit movie as well as a sequel bridging the gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the question is: what’s going to be in the sequel?

Here’s some speculation.

As a modest start for my own edification, I set aside every copy of the New York Times from September 12 through September 25, 2001, fourteen days in which every edition featured a banner headline across page 1, not a record for the newspaper in wartime, I later learned from the newspaper’s archivist – that would be a seemingly unsurpassable 141 consecutive issues, from December 21, 1944, through May 10, 1945, during World War II – but an extraordinary passage in recent American history nevertheless. The record for consecutive banner headlines in peactime, I also learned from that telephone call – and I have saved all of them as well – is November 8 through November 27, 2000, twenty issues altogether, which followed the surreal process of deciding who would be the forty-third president of the United States.

– Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book-Hunter in the 21st Century, by Nicholas A. Basbanes