Posts

Oh, Ann Coulter (original). It’s a great column. I mean, you get the usual “liberals are the devil” stuff which of course only coincidentally resembles the rhetoric of extremists who really would like to see liberals dead. You don’t get an Ann Coulter column without that; they don’t have anything without glossy intellectual hatred in it. But you also get the pit bull going after Bush, a fine spectacle indeed. It’s worth it for that aspect alone. Don’t stop! There’s more. ...

J. Papelbon: 4 innings, 2 hits, 0 runs, 0 walks, 2 Ks, 0.00 ERA. Nice little series for the kid. The Red Sox were flawed, they made the playoffs anyway, and they didn’t do well. Next year ought to be pretty good. It is not necessary to bring back Damon; he’ll be 33 and may well have peaked over the last four years. Thanks for the title, Johnny! The question for the off-season: who’s the ace? Schilling isn’t coming back as his old self, Clement isn’t an ace, and so on. Not a lot of great pitching on the free agent market. Burnett? I don’t think so. Morris or Mulder? Hm. Or maybe they’ll finally make the Manny trade. ...

Versions of “Shoot Out The Lights” in my music library: The original, off Shoot Out The Lights, one of the best albums ever. Linda Thompson provides backup vocals. They were months from divorcing at this point, and you can tell; Shoot Out The Lights is also one of the most voyeuristic albums ever. An acoustic version, from A Rare Thing. This album is a bootleg from the 1994 tour (August 13th, 1994, in Chapel Hill); middling quality, but good music. This is the only acoustic version I have, although I have a number of acoustic Richard Thompson albums. It’s not really an acoustic song. Then again, that’s what makes this version interesting. ...

Suck news of the day: the Brattle Theater is in trouble (original). Compared to Katrina? This is a pretty trivial deal. But it’s still significant enough for me to care. The Brattle has film programming as good as anything I’ve seen anywhere, including the Castro Theater out in San Francisco. Ned Hinkle, who does the programming, has an exhaustive knowledge of film and he has the contacts and know-how necessary to program festivals ranging from a complete Wong Kar Wai retrospective to a classic film noir series. They also run the Boston Fantastic Film Festival, which is small potatoes compared to Fantasia or Sitges, but which does not in the least suck to have around. ...

Speaking of fractures in the Republican Party: Roy Moore, the Alabama Chief Justice who was removed from office for ignoring an order to remove a representation of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building, will challenge Republican governor Bob Riley in 2006. Betcha he wins.

My initial read on the Miers nomination is that she’s the big business pick. She spent almost three decades as a corporate lawyer, eventually becoming a partner at one of the biggest law firms in Texas. She worked with Karl Rove on Texas tort reform back when Bush was governor. And, as has been reported just about everywhere, she’s tremendously loyal to Bush. It reads like she’s part of Bush’s Texas business-oriented crowd to me. This is one of the pillars of Bush’s support, alongside the social conservative bunch. Social conservative is perhaps an oversimplification here; I’m not sure I should be putting anti-government types like Grover Norquist alongside Rick Santorum. But close enough for now; they’ve got more in common than either of them do with Dick Cheney. More to the point, it’d have been possible to nominate a Justice who’d satisfy both Norquist and Santorum. ...

Long distance relationships have gotten a lot easier since I was in college. It’s all technology, right? But I cast my mind back, and I remember when phone calls were a huge deal. You had to ration them, because there’s nothing you want more than to talk to your girlfriend for a long, long time, but an hour of phone conversation is awfully expensive. Ramen or voice contact. Hard choice. So you get a call a week, maybe two, and you have to keep it reasonably short, and letters are very nice but not quite the same. ...

The answer to the question “how does filmed entertainment reach the eyes of the viewer” continues to change, as per this article on direct to video movies. This isn’t anything new, of course; Disney has been doing this for years and years. Just ask any parent. Still and all, it’s significant that the direct to video market in the US is gaining… aha. Legitimacy is the word. Direct to video Disney releases is one thing; a direct to video sequel to Carlito’s Way is more interesting. ...

The Complete New Yorker is pretty cool. Kind of easy to describe, too: it’s every single New Yorker scanned and archived on 8 DVDs. You can get a tour of the interface here (original). Yep, I bought it more or less instantly. Come on — $65 on Amazon (or Barnes and Noble)? Sure thing. It’s cool. The interface is a tad clunky on the Mac, but it’s easy to flip through an issue and it’s very very readable. The search is slowish. I’m not sure how well it’s indexed; a search on Red Sox for the last five years or so returned nothing. On the other hand, a search on Cronenberg was quite successful. I imagine each article is tagged with key words. ...

I should be checking the eTree live music archive (original) more often. Cowboy Junkies, 94 shows. Drive-By Truckers, 138 shows. Hayseed Dixie, 13. Mike Doughty, 42. Three Decemberists shows. Warren Zevon, 53 shows. Mmm, tasty.