. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman. I may be threatening to enter uncharted nerd territory by writing about a book that explores the behind the scenes machinations of the Bush administration for the second week in a row, but this newly released tome is the first to fully focus on the most controversial and enigmatic character in our long national Commedia dell’Arte-cum-Jacobean Tragedy: Dick Cheney. In most previous works that explore Bushworld (thanks, Maureen Dowd), Cheney comes off as a sort of Voldemort of the Rockies, lurking in the shadows as his more high-profile subordinates go about his bidding. That this new book places him center stage could very well prove to be a creative challenge for Gellman. How do you shine a bright enough light on a person whose very tenebrous secrecy is the reason for such ongoing fascination? I’m rooting for Gellman to succeed in creating a fully nuanced portrait as opposed to the sort of generic, Freudian simplification that Thomas Harris succumbed to in doing so much damage to the literary legacy of Hannibal Lecter; while the Grand Guignol Hannibal remains one of my favorite literary guilty pleasures, Hannibal Rising was a smelly, bulbous turkey of a novel. And yes, I am fully aware that I’m comparing our Vice President to a cannibalistic serial killer, but I’d like to believe that the self-deprecating Cheney might actually take this analogy as a compliment. In stores now. KINDA WANT TO SEE Mandy Patinkin in The Tempest. Sadly, I’m not provided with enough space to fully detail the level of artistic admiration and love I feel for the man who has given the world both Inigo Montoya and a signing Che Guevara. With that...