| Good morning. It is 17 days until Election Day. As of October 20, more than 3.8 million ballots have been cast in 2016 election. It's Like a Celebrity Roast with Two Targets, Getting a Little Too Personal Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, offering some jokes with a barb at the Al Smith dinner last night: "Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it, they think she's absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gives the exact same speech and people get on her case!" Trump said . . . Trump's next line struck a nerve. "Here she is in public, pretending not to hate Catholics," Trump said, referencing an apparent email exposed by WikiLeaks in which a Clinton spokeswoman seemed to joke about Catholics and evangelicals. Trump also brought up a moment from the debate Wednesday night. "Last night, I called Hillary a 'nasty woman.' This stuff is all relative. After listening to Hillary rattle on and on, I don't think so badly of Rosie O'Donnell anymore. In fact, I'm actually starting like Rosie a lot," Trump said. "Maybe you saw Donald dismantle his prompter the other day. And I get that. They're hard to keep up with and I'm sure it's even harder when you're translating from the original Russian," she said. Clinton also joked about her health, which Trump has made an issue on the campaign trail, as well as criticism over paid speeches. "I took a break from my rigorous nap schedule to be here," Clinton told the audience. "Usually, I charge a lot for speeches like this." Turning to Trump, she said, "Donald, if at any time you don't like what I say, feel free to stand up and shout 'Wrong!' after I say it." And diving into the dominant news of the day, she said: "I'm surprised I'm up here at all. I didn't think he'd be OK with a peaceful transition of power." The Al Smith Dinner, which supports Catholic charities in the New York area, is a wonderful tradition that just doesn't fit with the furious, bitter mood of the campaign and the country right now. In a new column, Matthew Continetti reminds us of the intense but respectful debate between William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan on the Panama Canal treaty. We as conservatives and Americans were better served by debates that focused on policy and consequences in detail, instead of insisting opponents had secret sinister ulterior motives. You're not opposing something that offends your values, you're just "white-knighting"! You're not defending your beliefs, you're "virtue signaling"! Today we have Trump's biggest fans in the media arguing that anyone not supporting him is a supporter of partial-birth abortion. There is a tone of seething contempt emanating from every pore in today's political discussions, one that repels decent citizens and makes political debates look like something no sane person would ever want to approach. Everybody feels like they're trying to reason with a hostile drunk. Checking In with the Senate Races . . . In Iowa, Senator Chuck Grassley gets Ben Stein to reprise his role in Ferris Bueller's Day Off in a campaign ad. "Judge . . . Judge . . ." 
In Indiana, Democratic candidate Evan Bayh is about to have another uncomfortable news cycle: Evan Bayh says that his Indianapolis condominium has long been his home, and that he has spent "lots and lots" of time there since deciding to run for his old Senate seat. But a copy of his schedule shows Bayh did not stay overnight there once during his last year in office in 2010. The schedule provided to The Associated Press shows the Democrat spent taxpayer money, campaign funds or let other people pay for him to stay in Indianapolis hotels on the relatively rare occasions he returned from Washington, D.C. During the same period, he spent $3,000 in taxpayer money on what appeared to be job hunting trips to New York, despite the assertion of his campaign that the trips were devoted to official media appearances. The revelations raise new questions about Bayh's ties to Indiana and his use of official funds as he campaigns to help Democrats retake the Senate. In Florida, the largest Spanish-language paper in the state endorses Marco Rubio for reelection to the Senate. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is pulling its ad spending for Rubio's Democratic rival. Turn out the lights . . . the party's over . . . In Ohio, Democrat Ted Strickland is just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it will stick . . . The two also argued about the Black Lives Matter movement, with Strickland accusing Portman of supporting "stop and frisk" — a policy that was struck down by the Supreme Court that allowed police to stop anyone suspected of a crime. Strickland was referring to a bill Portman introduced in 1994 as a member of the U.S. House. That bill never made it out of subcommittee. Man, when your big "gotcha" is an un-adopted amendment from 22 years ago . . . What, Strickland couldn't find any good opposition research from this century? The Secret History of Twin Peaks Review I'm just going to geek out for the next 1,000 words or so . . . Minor spoilers ahead. It's a high-stakes gamble when one of your all-time pop-culture favorites comes back a generation later. If it goes right, you get what you always wanted, more stories of delightful characters, retired before their time. If it goes wrong, it's a sour note, as you gradually realize you're going to spend the rest of your life insisting you liked the old version, not the new horrible reboot/remake/unwise resuscitation. Last December I was lucky enough to be invited to watch an early preview of The Force Awakens with some members of the 501st Legion — the folks who dress up in Star Wars costumes and visit children's wards at hospitals and march in parades. These are the most diehard Star Wars fans, and the mood that night was not, as one might expect, an entirely jovial and cheery one. There was palpable anxiety in the air. Deep down, many of the most passionate Star Wars fans knew this new film, the first by a new creative team, had to carry a lot of weight. It had to try to erase the legacy of three deeply disappointing prequels. Some fans argue whether Return of the Jedi lived up to the standard of the first two films. The Star Wars franchise had reached do-or-die time. If The Force Awakens was a disappointment, it might be time to acknowledge that the first two films were lightning in a bottle, never to be captured again. Most Star Wars fans found The Force Awakens terrific, and if not perfect, then a return to form. I believe Disney now plans to give us a new Star Wars movie every year for eternity. I have that same "please don't be terrible" feeling about Showtime's revival of Twin Peaks, coming sometime in 2017, presumably resolving the biggest cliffhanger ending in television history. Fans like me have been left wondering what was supposed to happen next since the final episode aired June 10, 1991. This week, Flatiron Books published The Secret History of Twin Peaks, a novel written by series co-creator Mark Frost. When the book was announced, the publisher said it would reveal "what has happened to the people of that iconic fictional town since we last saw them 25 years ago and offers a deeper glimpse into the central mystery that was only touched on by the original series." The final product offers a lot of the latter and only a little bit of the former, leaving an odd contradiction to the book. It's a a fascinating, eye-opening, throught-provoking fun read . . . that is still going to leave a lot of diehard Twin Peaks fans disappointed. Through memos and documents, we're informed that the FBI has recovered an extensive dossier from a crime scene, one that offers a bizarrely intensely-researched history of a small town in Washington state and the strange phenomenon that has always surrounded it. This book is perhaps best seen as a series of vignettes about mysterious and odd events in American history, a lot of nonfiction with a bit of fiction sprinkled in to tie the events to the town of Twin Peaks or its unique depiction of supernatural phenomena: the Freemasons and Illuminati; the alien crash at Roswell; flying-saucer sightings and Project Blue Book; the JFK assassination; L. Ron Hubbard; Operation Paperclip and the early days of NASA. If these sorts of esoteric chapters of history interest you, you'll love this book. Frost pulled off an amazing trick: a book of the eerie and otherworldly where a lot of what seems fictional turns out to be true. Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, really did die under extremely suspicious circumstances. Rocket scientist Jack Parsons, one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, really did embrace some of the weirdest and darkest occult beliefs. Late in World War II, the Nazis did develop a "flying wing" style aircraft, the Horton Ho 229, whose unusual tail-less V-shape could easily be mistaken for a UFO. There's a bit of National Treasure, JFK, Dark Skies, and Stranger Things in the world Frost develops. Flipping through the pages, I saw references to Richard Nixon and thought, "Ah, there we go, Nixon's the big bad guy" and sighed, expecting the clichéd villainous portrayal of the former president. I was thoroughly shocked when Frost chose to depict Nixon deeply sympathetically, almost heroically. There's a perfect melding of fiction and history when President Nixon is seen in possession of a "bad omen" object from the 1992 film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. One odd choice by Frost is the decision to transform a minor comic-relief character from the second season into "a kind of Kilroy of esoteric phenomenon" and arguably the central character. Throughout his journey through Cold War-era government secrets, a lot of fans are probably saying aloud, "this is all fascinating, but when do we get back to Twin Peaks?" Clearly, somewhere along the line, the book stopped being about bridging the 1990–91 series and the upcoming series, and instead refocused almost entirely upon the "prehistory" of the show and its mythology. Only about 150 pages out of 360 focus on the town's recent history, and most of the major characters from the show. There's so little information about the ultimate fate of the show's characters that it's genuinely jarring when one lands out of nowhere. A lot of characters are missing entirely, and many others make only cameo appearances. This may be a necessary concession to not revealing plot points and surprises in the upcoming series, but it's going to leave a lot of fans grumbling. The original series' massive cliffhanger is appropriately half-resolved. We don't know exactly what happened to Agent Dale Cooper after he saw a demonic reflection staring back at him in his bathroom mirror, but we know it wasn't good. The transition from television (and film) to text has a few bumps in the road. Already some fans are flipping out about some contradictions between the book and the series (Didn't Windom Earle stab Cooper in Pittsburgh, not shoot him?) and some new revelations seem odd. (Wait, Harry Truman's father and brother were also the town sheriffs before him, and no one ever mentioned that?) Twin Peaks aired on prime-time television in 1990 and 1991, meaning no one cursed; it's an unpleasant surprise to read a section that's supposed to be written by one of the characters, dropping the f-bomb left and right. But complaining about these details feels like randomly encountering a long-long friend and lamenting a scar on their forehead. Forget any imperfections, you're just glad to see him again. Most of the Twin Peaks fandom reveres David Lynch but I always thought Frost was the criminally underrated half, the one who brought the actual detective elements of the story. But I also understand why some fans are disappointed. As far as we know, this isn't "Volume One." This is the secret history of Twin Peaks, all the answers we will get until the new series debuts. And it begins with a terrific quote: "Mystery creates wonder, which leads to curiosity, which in turn provides the ground for our desire to understand who and what we truly are." ADDENDA: This week on the pop-culture podcast:trying to make sense of the NFL's Krayola Kombat Antagonize-the-Color-Blind nights on Thursdays; the inanity of allowing Daylight Savings Time to louse up two weekends a year; Trader Joe's Pumpkin Orgy; the biggest plot twists of all time and the ones that feel like a gut punch; and our listeners' fondest Halloween memories. Here's yesterday's Facebook Live discussion about the third debate. | 
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