“As I went out one morning to breathe the air around Tom Paine’s,
I spied the fairest damsel that ever did walk in a new unlined demi with lace…” The times they are a-changin’, ’cause apparently Bob Dylan is now hawking Victoria’s Secret. Ah well, as the guy notes in this article, I’d rather have Dylan selling lingerie than the new BMW or something. In fact, this may even be a step up for the big fella after Masked and Anonymous.
Author: KcM
Husky Do.
Congrats to Connecticut, who dismantled Georgia Tech relatively easily last night. (I put UConn in the Final, but, alas, I had ’em losing to Kentucky. So, with Ok. State, I only pulled two of the Final Four this year.) Now, on to more important matters…only five games left for the seventh-seed Knickerbockers…
The Boy in the Bubble.
“There was always something of the boy in the bubble about George W. Bush, cosseted from the vicissitudes of life, from Vietnam to business failure, by his famous name….Now we’re told the military is preparing an “overwhelming” retaliation to the carnage in Falluja. You can hear the clammy blast from the past: We’re going to destroy that village to save it.” Maureen Dowd ruminates on recent events in Iraq…and the Bush administration’s failure to recognize their gravity.
Gene Machine.
“The vortex of the late nineteen sixties swallowed up not only Eugene McCarthy. It consumed a whole generation of liberal politicians and radical thinkers and culture heroes, from John Lindsay and Marshall McLuhan to Tom Hayden and Buckminster Fuller — a long list of ‘an idea whose time has come’ types whose time abruptly ran out. The survivors wandered, as McCarthy did, through the decades that followed, caricatures of their former world-historical selves, like old heavyweight champions working as greeters in casinos. You could say that these people failed; but what would success have looked like?” A bit too glib as always, Louis Menand examines Eugene McCarthy (by way of the new biography by Dominic Sandbrook.) I’m not sure if McCarthy is really a very good exemplar of “postwar liberalism,” but this sounds like an interesting read nonetheless. (Via Follow Me Here)
From Plato’s Cave to Lacuna, Inc.
Via All About George, A.O. Scott applies Stanley Cavell to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’m a big Cavell fan…in fact, his reading of Emersonian perfectionism figured heavily in (and, with Michael Sandel’s work, helped inspire) my political philosophy list last week. Can’t wait to see how Cities of Words turned out, and how close it dovetails with his old Moral Perfectionism course at Harvard.
Where my K-9s at?
So, I don’t know what’s stranger…the claim that P. Diddy, Snoop, and Jay-Z are allegedly donning rubber masks for the new Dr. Who revival on BBC, or the assertion that Diddy’s got a full-size gold-plated Dalek of bling. Puff Davros? Diddy Digs Daleks? I think somebody’s having me on. (By way of Triptych Cryptic.)
Terminator J.
He’s big, He’s mean, He’s pissed…He’s the Son of God? The NY Times examines the rise of “Angry Jesus” among conservative evangelicals and other Christian groups feeling swamped amid a rising tide of secularism (Never mind that Mel’s paean to gory Christian martyrdom is the highest grossing film of 2004, and that the White House of the most powerful nation on Earth is currently manned by a born-again biblethumper.) C’mon y’all…to use the parlance of the movement, WWJD? Somehow, I’d think He’d err on the side of love and forgiveness, not run around like the Rock wreaking havoc on sinners and unrepentants. But perhaps I’m just old-fashioned.
(Bat)Man about Town.
Ok, it’s just Christian Bale in a suit. Still, if you suspend belief, you’ve got the first look at Batman Begins Bruce Wayne here. In related news, the official site, in an attempt to keep the fanboy buzz happy, put up a few shots of the new Batmobile online last week. Hmm…it looks like a cross between a monster truck and the troop transport in Aliens.
The Return of Harvey.
It’s official…A year after reneging on their two-year deal, the cretins at Sci-Fi have agreed to resurrect Farscape for the Peacekeeper War, a four-hour miniseries set for this fall. It’ll be nice to see Crichton & co. return for closure, and I’ll definitely have to break the Sci-Fi boycott for this event. Still, we were supposed to get 22 episodes, not 4 hours. Frellers…
Jackie Bond.
As the second chapter of the disappointing Kill Bill comes to the screen, Quentin Tarantino suggests making a low-budget Casino Royale, with Brosnan remaining as 007. Might be interesting, and it’s really a win-win for MGM…but the Bond franchise is so poorly run that I suspect Wilson and Broccoli will let this opportunity slip.