"The Freshman"

Now this is worth reading. This is a wonderful piece of work.

If you haven't read "The Raven", the wonderfully tragic classic by Edgar Allan Poe, read this first.

Then go to pages 13 and 14 of this.

If it quacks like a duck...

... it's a duck. If it lies like a liar, it's a liar.

Excellent perspective by Molly Ivins, titled A bounty of Bush blunders.

The Stanislaw Lem Cover Quiz

The Stanislaw Lem site is running a contest where you can win an autographed copy of one of his books. A series of Lem's books have just been published in Turkey. The contest is to guess the books just from the covers. I think I can do well. This is a wonderful puzzle!

I should note that I have scanned the covers of all my Lem books as submissions for Lem's site. It ain't pretty, but it wasn't built for you.

Mean Girls

Some parts are really very funny, in the way that very good jokes can be told ("Almost as mad as I get when I think about the fact that my sister named him Anfernee.") The ending droned on a bit and lost itself as a comedy and served as a morality tale and lesson vehicle. It's not that I'm insensitive to the benefits of exposing the subtle and humilating ways high school girls treat each other, but as a 35-year old male with no children, I'm rather out of touch. I think it was really well written by Tina Fey, whom I suspect really wanted to bring a little conversation forward, and still managed to take off her top. I don't understand why she did that last part, either. Beth insists I watched it for the T&A.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

This is a good film, but not a great film. On one level, it was wonderfully enjoyable with its heavyweight cast, Wes Anderson-feel, and slow, deliberate jokes. On the other hand there was something overbearing about the film that left me uneasy. Part of it was my high expectations not being met by Bill Murray's performance, which is nuanced for sure, but not worthy of an Oscar. My other primary concern is that the film is either too short, or too long. In other words, it was probably much longer, and poorly cut.

I'll probably see this movie again.

Reformation did wonders for the New York Times

Looks like the New York Times has handled their post-Jayson Blair issues by replacing their traditional content with crap:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/nyregion/20mitzvah.html

An except from: TODAY HE IS A DOG; ACTUALLY, HE ALWAYS WAS
By: Lily Koppel
Published: December 20, 2004

In the long walk of history between man and dog, the bark mitzvah could be seen as an unexpected pit stop. Yet it was celebrated on Saturday night in the Bronx in a traditional way, with a party for family and friends of the 13-year-old that included a chopped-liver sculpture, choruses of "mazel tov!" (or, in this case, "muzzle tov!"), a cantor and gifts.