The heat wave has broken. Toronto feels habitable again. “Superbad” remains in the top spot at the box-office, so it’s clearly catching on with audiences, and last night I had the pleasure of attending a benefit for the young writers’ workshop 826NYC at New York’s Beacon Theater, which featured a rocking Canadian musical lineup (Feist! Kevin Drew! A.C. Newman covering King Missile’s “Hemophiliac of Love” with strings!) as well as Spoon’s Britt Daniel, the warblers of Grizzly Bear and some mad yodeler from My Morning Jacket, hosted by Demitri Martin with contributions from Eugene Mirman and Sarah Vowell, whom I heart greatly.

And just when one thinks it can’t get any better, what with the Wilson Yip movie at 11 and the Ian Curtis bio at 2 and, um, “Balls of Fury” at 7 … one ventures over to CNN.

The only downside? Gonzales was the administration’s useful idiot — the cheerful incompetent who could be trotted out as a pleasant distraction whenever the really dark stuff was going on, as a way of reassuring Congress that, while Bush and Cheney may be pathologically opposed to Constitutional freedoms and even the very notion of democracy, they were working with people so inept that they couldn’t possibly do any real damage.

In other words, the man Bush calls “Fredo” (unironically, of course) is leaving some big shoes to fill.

Clown shoes, sure, but shoes nonetheless.