A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
I got a $50 giftcard to Borders from one of my birthday attendees, so I lit over to the local store and spent a little.
In honor of MLK’s day, I bought When Negroes Walked the Earth, a blues record by Otis Taylor, whom you should be listening to (get Respect the Dead, to start out).
After that, I was kinda stuck. There were a bazillion things I thought about buying, but none that jumped out at me as something that would be perfectly fulfilling. So I bought this.
Last year, VM reader Elayne and essayist extraordinaire Ron Rosenbaum goofed on me for never having watched an Errol Morris movie. I finally sat down and watched my TiVo’d copy of The Fog of War a few nights ago. I’m still picking up pieces of my brain from the floor of my living room.
I wasn’t quite as angered as Rosenbaum was by Robert McNamara’s portrayal of himself (if you’re interested in reading Ron’s take on it, you should probably type “New Morris Film Traps McNamara in a Fog of War” into Google, then hit the “cached pages” option on the second link). I think it’s an issue of age; I was born in 1971, so rage about Vietnam is really second-hand. Intellectually, I understand the anger, but it’s not an era with which I have any direct experience, so my view of McNamara was more ambiguous than the one Ron demonstrates in his column.
Anyway, that’s why I added Errol Morris’ site to the blogroll. It’s got some intriguing content, and a really smooth-looking design.
At some point, I guess I’ll have to watch a Michael Moore flick, so’s I can write draw some sorta comparison between these two as filmmakers.
For the record, note that I wrote the following about a year ago: “Never bet against Bill Belichick.”
Peyton Manning could throw 200 touchdowns next season, and his team will still be an afterthought in the playoffs.
While Peyton was failing to throw even a single touchdown in yesterday’s playoff game against the Patriots, the official VM girlfriend and I flipped around the channels till we came across The Pride and the Passion, a 1957 flick about a lost cannon that the English and the Spanish are trying to keep away from Napoleon.
At first, we stuck with it to hear how bad Frank Sinatra’s “Spanish” accent would be, and to ogle Sophia Loren. Then I realized that, if I was going to watch programming about a useless cannon, I preferred Stanley Kramer’s to Peyton Manning’s.
Amazing (and long) story from the NYTimes offering a behind-the-scenes of the Ukrainian election crisis, detailing the tug-of-war among the Interior Ministry, the KBG-successor, and the army.
It includes on the great ass-coverings of all time, by someone who ordered troops to attack his own citizens.