The Washington Post has transcripts of the public 9/11 commission testimony, which are fascinating reading. Here’s Tuesday’s testimony, and here’s Wednesday’s.

Another quick note on the matter of the practicalities of speech-oriented boycotts: It’s the Internet era. We’re moving inexorably closer to the day when you can’t shut anyone up. Ask Christopher Allbritton — not that anyone was trying to shut him up, but he’s a great demonstration of how much the reach of the independent commentator/journalist has grown. People who want to get their message across need big media less and less. ...

George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead has entered the public domain, which means anyone who likes can digitize the whole thing and stick it up online for you (yes you) to download. And I’m not about to spoil a set-up like that by skipping the punchline (original). No bittorrent yet.

Glenn Reynolds wants to know if Hollywood is swinging conservative. He quotes one of his readers: “At the moment it is almost impossible to imagine Hollywood producing a MASH or Catch 22 or Doctor Strangelove (Although I hasten to add Strangelove will always be in my top five movies.) It wouldn’t dare. They may still smile knowingly over their designer water at home but not in their films.” The terrifying “they.” ...

The Celestial Pictures DVD restoration of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is maybe the clearest print of a Hong Kong movie I’ve ever seen. It’s beautifully vivid. The only thing that’d beat it would be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and I’m not sure I can count that. OK, look, it’s this pretty: Look at those reds and blues. They pop. In fact, my only complaint may be that it’s a little too vivid, but I’m not sure that’s not just my modern eyes watching a 70s Technicolor epic. ...

[More character noodling. This is for Rob’s Starchild game.] “Is that Summer or Strummer?” “Eh, you know, whatever…” Kai Summer is immensely young, and the heavy overcoat he wears — down to his ankles, collar turned up to his ears — does nothing to hide this. It accentuates his slender frame, skinny like the loosely knotted tie he sometimes wears. His ragged boots swallow his feet whole. You could drop him into a Chicago winter and he’d vanish like he was just another bad poet with too much pride to work retail and not enough time to live. I’ve never seen him without the overcoat off stage. On stage, though, he’s someone else. He doesn’t get any bigger, but he uses his guitar to carve electric lines through the air in minor keys that owe more to madness than to music. If you squint just a little you can see a shimmering field of music around him like an aura of sound. I’ve noticed that people playing with him don’t get too close. I can’t blame them; I’d worry about getting sliced in two by a stray power chord. It is trivial to say that he is the best guitarist of his generation because at the ripe old age of 17, he is the first guitarist of his generation. Perhaps in the end, if Mother doesn’t have her way, he will be known merely as the man who found the possibilities. Perhaps someone else will be the man who developed them. But I wouldn’t bet on it. He is playing tonight at the Broken Metronome. He told me the other week that he hopes to jam with Mary Pagan someday. It’s the first personal confidence I’ve ever heard from him. Mary? Are you out there? Can you hear me? This critic thinks you should make Kai’s dream come true. From Lester Shots’ “Beating the Minutes” column in the ChicaGO alternative wheneverwecan.

Sherman Cafe, in Union Square, has free wireless. The coffee is pretty good, too. Good place to hang out on a Sunday afternoon.

You either like Charlie Kaufman movies or you don’t, and if you do, you’re already going to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so no big review here. It’s in the top half of Kaufman films for me. OK, OK. Better than Human Nature and Adaptation, and on a par with Being John Malkovich. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind I sort of put off on the side because it’s a different beast. I thought it was completely comprehensible. The narrative wasn’t particularly chronological on one level, but on another level it was mostly linear, albeit with one big giant flashback in the middle. It’s all well and good to talk about how messed up a narrative is, but you’d think some people had never read any time travel stories… ...

And there you have it. As per my speculation yesterday, Zapatero’s threat to pull out his troops has Bush leaning back towards a UN resolution. Nicely done on Zapatero’s part. Now I’m going to go be sick s’more. Blah. You can tell I’m not well because I’m loopy enough to bitch about being not well here.

The popular right-wing talking point of the moment: " Spain did what Al Qaeda wanted." This is all very well and good, except that Spain is not pulling out of Afghanistan and that Spain is willing to stay in Iraq (original) under certain conditions — mainly a Security Council mandate. This actually looks like pretty smart diplomacy to me. To the degree that Bush needs Spain to stay in the coalition, he needs to bend to their demands. This would mean giving more say to the UN than he’d like, but those are the breaks of the game, right? ...