I don't know how Havrilesky managed to pass for human among the critics, but I find it hard to believe that everything was that superficial. I've attended a few sneaks of movies, the closest thing to attending a press junket, and the talk of those of us who left the theatre afterwards was always about what we had seen. "My God, we're all doomed." "I remember when Robin Williams was funny." "We don't need a plot, we got CGI!" "The merchandise'll be in Big Lots two weeks after the premiere."

And yes, I know about nondisclosure agreements, and how busting release dates can end your career as a critic, but there must be an average estimation for the quality of the new shows that wouldn't violate the agreements. "My nose won't bleed that much this season" or "Makes me long for the sweet embrace of death" or something.

Sheesh. Send me out there next year. I'll deliver something much closer to the goods.

First of all, posting anonymously or with a pretentious pseudonym doesn't do you much honor. It makes you seem as untrustworthy as "Moriarty" of "Ain't It Cool News." Either you stand and deliver or sit and shiver.

Second, I wouldn't have been a Premium Member of Salon for the last several years if it had been solely for Heather Havrilesky. I support Salon for other reasons. Its intelligent and non-Media-Whoring coverage of politics and current affairs is worth the cost alone. The features and "light" pieces look for weird and unusual people, and for the most part doesn't mock them - or mock the reader for being interested in these subjects. And, with the certain exception of Havrilesky, the arts features are not snooty or contemptuous.

Good things deserve to be supported. Good websites that care about their content deserve support. Not just "seeing the ads" but putting cash into the hands of the people who edit that content. And no, that doesn't mean the writers; that means the owners of Salon.com.

Forget the lies told to you by writing "coaches" and writing schools. In the near future NOBODY will be paid for writing anything; the Internet has shattered the concept of writers ever being paid for their work. So the least I can do is to pay the people who provide bandwidth to good writers, and who bother to edit and encourage the best writing.

To the snarky guys out there, I choose NOT to be anonymous because I want to be responsible for what I write. (And yes, you can find several other places on the net where "tomreedtoon" appears, but that would require you to know how to work a computer.) You can also look up my history of comments on Salon.

Someone who posts anonymously is, basically, a Klansman wearing a hood.

And yes, I'm willing to put myself up for brickbats and Klansman torches because that's what a responsible writer does. I'm not being paid to write (and neither is Heather Havrilesky) but my words are my bond. Writing will soon be a no-money deal, but there will still be a difference between stand-up people and Klansmen. When the world goes to hell and we're all starving in a polluted, jobless, Klansmen-run world, honor will still matter.

And frankly, although I think she's a troubled reviewer, Ms. Havrilesky is willing to stand up too. She has learned the lesson that the Klansmen never will.

(I wouldn't hammer her so much if I thought she didn't have a chance to become a better critic.)

This may sound irrelevant to some, offensive to others. But while reading this article, all I could see was a rerun of the cheesy disaster movies of the 70's, mostly directed by Irwin Allen. It has the main elements of "The Posideon Adventure" and "Towering Inferno" - corporate hubris and people incidentally along for the ride who suddenly face disaster.

The hubris of a country in a war zone using PR to portray itself as a center of culture and art, with cocktail parties and smooth-talking flacks, is no different than the vanity of the corporate bastards in those movies. (Who were pale, Hollywood reflections of real corporate bastards - like the guys running Hollywood today, for example.)

There's the protagonist who goes along with the big party at the top of the very flammable skyscraper or in the ballroom of the badly-built ocean liner. He has no complaints or foreboding, and he never notices that anything's wrong until disaster suddeenly hits, then he spends the rest of the movie trying to get to some kind of safety. At the end of the thing the protagonist hasn't learned anything useful like "never go on an ocean liner again" or "don't be a media whore for a war zone government" - he just gasps and thanks his generic Hollywood God that he survived.

And yes, that is an intentional slap at the writer, who seems to have learned nothing about life or himself from the experience.

All that's missing are a handful of celebrities doing cameos in which they die in colorful ways. Nobody cares about the crowds of extras dying out there in the background - they're people that the protagonist doesn't know personally and with whom he has no emotional ties. There needed to be a part for Shelley Winters or Red Buttons in this mess.

Believe me, I wanted to see you at Comic-Con, but my bosses wouldn't let me leave Florida. But there is a really nice, BIG, science fiction/fantasy/comic convention on September 1-4, and it would be a GREAT place for you to show your stuff. All right, maybe not this year, but think about it for 2007, okay?