A Different Portrait of America
Accumulating stuff takes time. After reading this unusal portrait of America, I had one question: How much time do people actually spend shopping? Until the end of my teenage years, I used to enjoy bargain hunting immensely and spent endless hours in pursuit of gadget that fell within my budget. I hate shopping now and my favorite shopping experience is Amazon.com’s “One- Click.” Takes less then a minute to get the item I want delivered to my place.
In Modern Era, Self-Storage Has Right Stuff By DAVID WESSEL (WSJ)
Whatever the strains and shortcomings of the U.S. economy, we Americans have a whole lot more stuff than we used to. How much? So much that there is enough space in rentable self-storage lockers in the U.S. for each man, woman and child to stand on a spot 2
Disappointed Peter (Pan)
I barely finished Peter Pan. The reader of my diary will remember that I was very excited about the first couple of pages of B. F. Berrie’s famous children’s story. The last few pages again were excellent. But in between lay for the adult reader one hundred forty painfully boring pages. Even as a child I found it was silly when adults spoke in baby talk. Those who engage in baby talk think it resembles the level of simplicity in the speech of young children although no child ever talks that way. What is so captivating about the Wizard of Oz is that it truly can capture the interest both of child and adult alike. B. F. Berrie, by contrast, writes a lot of baby talk that gets very tiring. Berrie also commits an atrocious crime against adult sensibility: he fundamentally misrepresents what adult life is about to make his young readers feel very special.
Love and Passion Reconsidered
In college I had the privilege of taking a yearlong reading and writing course that picked a new theme every quarter. In the first term we read books and wrote essays on the idea of love going back all the way to Plato’s Symposium. Although I was fully able to articlulate Plato’s view of love, I emotionally did not understand what Plato was talking about. I wish the review article “Fidelity With a Wandering Eye ” by Christina Nehring had been on our reading list. Nehring is deeply informed, her language is clear, and its a pleasure to follow her guided tour. See for yourself by clicking on the “More” button.
Crash
Not since American Beauty has a Hollywood picture been so surprising. The film is set in LA and evokes a similar mood as Lost in Translation. The first half made me restless: “Dave Chapelle does a much better job composing racist dialogues for his show on Comedy Central. Is this all the film has to offer?” But we are merely set up to be fully unprepared for what descends upon us in the second half. What makes Crash in the end an amazing movie experience is that it creates a car accident in which you first think you know who is the guilty person. It turns out to be much more ambiguous and this ambiguity becomes the dramatic center of a poetic piece of cinema.
Angels in America
The word that arrived at my doorsteps about the HBO miniseries Angels in America was: fantastic. I knew Al Pacino and Meryl Streep were among the cast, but I had no idea what the miniseries was about. This gave me a most pleasant of surprises watching the first of the six episodes. The teleplay was so powerful that I suspected the film had to be based on a play. I was correct. For very good reasons Tony Kushner won a Pulitzer Prize for the play Angels in America. The second and third episode were disappointments given the high bar the first episode had set. Episode 4 and 5 were again much better but final one again suffered from a lack of discipline and a good editing job.
America’s “Deep Throat” in Action
What a man! Taking down a president is no small job even in a democracy. Mark Felt, then working in Salt Lake City, posed in this 1958 photo.
Turning a Confession into a Small Work of Art
If you have something to confess and a catholic priest is not your type, here is an alternative. I discovered a fantastic weblog called PostSecret. Send them your confession!
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A Conservative Columnist updates Karl Marx
David Brooks fills the role of William Safir as the conversative op-ed columnist in the NY Times. I often don’t agree with his columns but today he is written one that is right on the money about educational segregation.
Karl’s New Manifesto
By DAVID BROOKS (NYT)
I was in the library reading room when suddenly a strange specter of a man appeared above me. He was a ragged fellow with a bushy beard, dressed in the clothes of another century. He clutched news clippings on class in America, and atop the pile was a manifesto in his own hand. He was gone in an instant, but Karl’s manifesto on modern America remained. This is what it said:
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Sex Offenders Get Medicaid-Paid Viagra
When I planned my humor weblog, I had no idea that I would frequently encounter promising entries that would be funny and very serious at the same time. Here is another piece of black humor. It is far too early to tell what the fallout of this bureaucratic snafu will be. Unsatisfied Bob Doles?
By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
Nearly 800 convicted sex offenders in 14 states got Medicaid-funded prescriptions for Viagra and other impotence drugs, according to a survey by The Associated Press. The majority of the cases were in New York, Florida and Texas. Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, is administered differently in every state. Thus, while some states allowed Medicaid payments for prescriptions for the drugs Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, other states did not.
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