Personal Reactions to “Love in the Garden of Eden
On a beautiful summer day, when I was six or seven, my grandfather took me swimming. This gave me the opportunity to examine every feature of his body. Previously I had already noticed that, unlike any other human being I had laid eyes on, grandpa distinguished himself by growing extremely bushy and wavy eyebrows. Not long before this swim outing I had heard somewhere that human beings had evolved from ape-like creates. Now I discovered my grandpa
Love and Fraud over the Internet
You have seen it in the movies. Your friends recommended it to you. You may have tried it yourself. But just how much love and fraud is involved in internet dating. Dahlia Lithwick reports on the frontier of hook-up land and provides some interesting facts in Slate. What is the success rate of internet dating? If you want to know, read her article.
“I am Still Alive, for Christ’s Sake”
For millennia writers have employed mistaken identities as a tool to create drama and surprise. This morning I learned that real life tragedy resorts to the same device. The story that follows also shows one more time that the line between comedy and tragedy is often razor sharp.
Weeks After Accident, a Twist of Fate
By CHRISTOPHER MAAG (NYT) CALEDONIA, Mich., June 2
King Kong
Good writing goes a long way. I have seen the famous picture of King Kong on the Empire State Building in New York many times. “Isn’t that silly. Such an ape would never climb on top of the New York skyline,” was my reaction every single time. I was never much interested in seeing the original (1933) film, let alone the recent remake. But King Kong held me hostage on the airplane. The film is too long (you can skip the first 40 minutes until the film crew arrives on the island) but from then on Peter Jackson unleashes incredible special effects and the storyline of King Kong is excellent (much better than Jurassic Park), taking you along for a splendid ride. For me, the most amazing feature of the film was how Jackson got the animated animal to display emotions. Jack Black and Adrian Brody were miscast. The only Hollywood star that gives a good performance is Naomi Watts. Now I know where the expression “Beauty and the Beast” comes from.
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
One afternoon of my sophomore year in college my bicycle was stolen. For reasons I no longer can reconstruct, I decided not to buy another used bike, but henceforth to hitchhike to class. I met many interesting people this way: Professors, sex therapists, construction workers, mothers who wanted to recruit boyfriends for their daughters and the like. My goal for these trips to and fro campus was to strike up a conversation with every single person I met. Would I be able to get everyone to tell me a bit of his or her personal story? I did, indeed, manage to strike a conversation with all my lifters except for a man who I came to refer as the unhappiest person in the world. My efforts to get him to talk went nowhere. When I recounted this peculiar hitchhiking experience to a physicist turned psychotherapist, who gave me a lift a few days later, he explained that the man was probably clinically depressed.
Kanye West’s “Late Registration”
I bought my first hip hop CD, Kanye West’s Late Registration, a couple of months ago after hearing his soulful “Gold Digger.” I suspect that Mr. West does not play a single musical instrument. But this does not make him less a musical genius. West proves that most creativity lies in recombining existing material. He takes old music ideas, rearranges them in unheard ways, and lays on top lyrics that offer social criticism and breaks with the hip hop tradition of talking mainly about oneself. Late Registration is brilliant and a novel accoustic adventure not to be missed.
Listen to Sample of the CD
Go for Zucker
Go for Zucker is a delightful German comedy written and directed by Dani Levy. With a Midas touch, he navigates around highly sensitive topics for the German national psyche and creates the first post World War II German comedy about a Jewish family. Jacky Zucker (nee Jakob Zuckermann) was born to a Jewish mother in East Germany. She is on a trip to Frankfurt with her other son Samuel when the Wall dividing the country comes up, and she decides to stay in West Germany. Fourteen-year-old Jack determines to stay in the East German sports high schools he loves. For the next 30 years, the two brothers who hated each others’ guts as teenagers lead separate lives. The film opens just as the gambler Jacky is thrown out by his wife and about to go to jail for not paying his debts. His unsuspecting wife receives a telegram from Samuel, who in the meantime has taken up Orthodox Judaism, that their mother has died and that he is coming to Berlin lay her to rest in Jewish cemetery. The mother specified in her will that Jacky and Samuel will only get her money if they make up and spend one week together or morning her as prescribed by Jewish rituals. When Samuel first arrives in Berlin with the coffin of the dead mother, the schism between the brothers seems insurmountable were it not for the fact that both would have a good use for a big injection of cash. Go see Zucker!
Judas: From Traitor to Loyal Friend
Was there ever a greater case of slander? The reemergence of the Gospel of Judas suggests that poor Judas has been made into one of history
Supreme Court Deals with Greed, Sex and Deception
Older men and younger women - an age-old story. But an 89-year-old rolling into a strip club on a wheelchair and later marrying the stripper takes this idea to a whole new level. The Economist reports on what happened next.
THE words “probate exception” do not titillate. And yet a saucy, decade-long legal battle over a fortune of nearly half a billion dollars hinges on this clause, which deals with the boundaries between state and federal courts in estate disputes. At issue is whether Vickie Lynn Marshall, a former Playboy pin-up and exotic dancer better known as Anna Nicole Smith, will get anything from the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon with assets estimated at $1.6 billion.
On May 1st, Ms Smith won an important victory. Although her inheritance remains uncertain, the United States Supreme Court (no less) unanimously ruled that she could pursue her case in federal court. One suspects the justices were enjoying themselves, for once.
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March of the Penguins
In high school biology classes I watched many films about animal and plant life. The one I recall most vividly is Konrad Lorenz tricking little geese into believing that he was their parent during a particular phase in their young life. These films were produced on relatively modest budgets. In the hearts and minds of teenagers they could not compete with the Hollywood pictures that we went to see over the weekend. Once in a while I would doze off during my biology films because the classroom was darkened, tricking my body into thinking is was night and time to go to bed. Hollywood films on the weekend could never play this trick on me. March of the Penguins just as its eye-popping predecessor Winged Migration beautifully marries Hollywood style film-making with the genre of high school biology films. Invented was this potent genre in France where Hollywood films are taxed to subsidize domestic film production.
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