“W.” trailer– Let the madness begin!

This is the trailer for Oliver Stone’s new film about the life and times of George W. Bush. It is slated to come out October 17th, and will no doubt draw screams from the RWNM (Right Wing Noise Machine). From the trailer, I was a bit disappointed at how little Josh Brolin resembled and sounded like W. I saw press photos that looked much better and thought that being a native Texan, he could nail Bush’s elocution. At the moment I see this movie going one of two ways–20-30% on Rotten Tomatoes as an awful stinker, or 60-70% on Rotten Tomatoes as a good but flawed movie. Given the polarizing subject material, rushed production schedule, and general insanity of Oliver Stone, I can’t see this being a “great” or “outstanding” movie. The Fahrenheit 9/11 crowd will laud it even if the pacing and dialogue bomb, and the RWNM will pan it even if it’s surprisingly good.

On average, I write like an imbecile

According to “The Blog Readability Test,” this blog’s reading difficulty is “Junior High School.” I was pretty embarassed. All of my friend’s blogs were College (Post-Grad). To see if it was thrown off by my many entertainment reviews, photography posts and short rants, I entered in some of my longer essays about veterinary economics and evolution-ID debates.

My essay ”Vets and Debt: The possibility of Poverty” was rated as College: Undergrad, “Firings and Evolution in Academia” was rated College: Postgrad, and my article on the ”National Veterinary Medical Services Act” was rated as Genius. So judge this test with a grain of salt.

On a side-note, I’ve always preferred the writing of minimalists like Hemingway and Carver over blowhards.

“Who uses regular unleaded anymore?”

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today–I know, I know, he’s horrible, but I like to think of him as my version of the Two Minute Hate–when he went off on how cheap regular unleaded was. He then went on to say, “And who even uses regular unleaded gasoline anymore? You’re putting it in a GM car? That stuff is crap.” When he came back the break he said, “Folks I’ve gotta be honest, the staff here in the studio is giving me flak for my comments about unleaded gas. Apparently THEY ALL use it. I don’t understand it, you must all drive crap cars!”

This is just one of many callous comments he’s made over the years. He clearly lives in a bubble, unaware of how most people live. I actually don’t know anyone who DOESN’T use unleaded with gas prices so high right now. I think it goes without saying that he made the comment as part of a diatribe pushing for more offshore oil drilling to lower gas prices.

Sorry Rush, not everyone makes $38 million dollars a year to yell about liberals and spout falsehoods.

On Obama’s Middle East and Europe Trip

Hey news media: That’s enough. It’s getting tiresome reading, listening and watching what has essentially been one, big week-long story. I don’t need to know every site he visited, what he ate, who he talked to, what was on his jet’s inflight movie or what color tie he preferred each day. Give me the highlights in a short, abbreviated snippet and move along with the news. And this is coming from a guy who has an Obama button link on the top of his blog.

Amos Lee: Great acoustic blues guitarist

I was listening to Weekend Edition on NPR today and they were doing an interview with singer/songwriter Amos Lee. I’d never heard of him before but I became intrigued from the program.

Lee was an obscure indie artist when Norah Jones noticed him and helped sign him to a major label. Since then he’s opened for big acts like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

Amos was apparently a school teacher in Philadelphia and started learning guitar as an outlet for the frustrations he felt trying to get through to the inner city kids. He wrote a song called “Street Corner Preacher” after seeing a preacher helping the homeless on the street in Camden, NJ.

Lee discussed his old job working at a record store and how it exposed him to artists varying from Coltrane to current hip hop rappers.

His music is acoustic blues/folk with a soulful twang, and the songs are just great. In his song “Truth” his voice is reminiscent of the early African American blues singers like Blind Lemon Jefferson. I’m a fan of his song “Keep it loose” in particular. 

You can listen to the Weekend Edition interview and sample some of his songs here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92691367

In between interview segments they played clips from his songs then he did an impromptu live performance of his song “Keep It Loose.”

Growth At Any Cost

I wrote this article about our national obsession with GDP to the exclusion of other concerns for the progressive blog In One Ear…Out the Other.

After you’re done reading “Growth At Any Cost,” check out the rest of their site, which is filled with some good articles.

On a related note, I will be writing a series of essays on the illegal immigration issue for their site in the near future. Stay tuned for details.

Sometimes the literary critics are right…

In 1998, the Modern Library published a list of the “100 best novels of the 20th century” in the New York Times. Some criticized the list for being the obscure choices of elitist academics (I happen to think most are safe, obvious choices). So the Modern Library also surveyed the population at large for the so-called “Reader’s List.” After looking at the two, I can say the one by the experts is much better. Here’s the first ten of each:

THE BOARD’S LIST

1. Ulysses – James Joyce

2. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce

4. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

5. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

6. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

7. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

8. Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler

9. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

–

THE READER’S LIST

1. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

2. The Foutainhead – Ayn Rand

3. Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard

4. The Lord of The Rungs – J.R.R. Tolkien

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6. 1984 – George Orwell

7. Anthem – Ayn Rand

8. We The Living – Ayn Rand

9. Mission Earth – L. Ron Hubbard

10. Fear – L. Ron Hubbard

_________________________

Source: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

4 Ayn Rand books? 3 by L. Ron Hubbard??? To be fair, at least they included 1984 (on the critics list at slightly lower 13 slot ) and To Kill a Mockingbird (not on the critics list). Lord of the Rings were fun books with some important things to say but I definitely wouldn’t put it on a list of “100 best 20th century novels.”

Cliche, Redux