“recently claimed that there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.” In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed “walk freely” in some areas of Baghdad.
This picture clearly makes his case. The people alongside him (assistants, I guess) seem, um, heavily armed. And that’s a nice flak jacket he’s sporting himself. And I suppose it’s just lucky that Blackhawk helicopters and Apache gunships were patrolling overhead.
A review in today’s LA Times Book Review of “Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys’ Founding Genius” has me thinking that I love Wilson’s music too much to read an academic dissection of its tonal underpinnings. Musings I would read. A discourse might ruin it forever. In the way that seeing the brain-damaged Wilson “perform” (and I’m using the word generously) “Smile” two summers back almost did.
One of my favorite people, Kim Glann, has joined the blogosphere. Her blog, The Eco-Urbanite, reflects her environmental conscience, especially after bringing a baby into the world.
I’m with her on some of her remedies, such as using compact fluorescents and cloth bags. When it comes to mess transit, though, it just doesn’t work for most of us. At least not yet.
Why will I be seeing the new film “Next”? Because it’s based on a Philip K. Dick story, “The Golden Man.”
Meanwhile, Paul Giamatti is working on a Dick biopic, with himself in the lead. A couple of years ago Giamatti wowed me in back-to-back leads in “American Splendor” and “Sideways,” so to me this bodes well.
Finally, Cornel Bonca in the OC Weekly does a nice roundup of recent and forthcoming Dick events, as well as a generous review of the recently published “Voices from the Street.” She admits the book’s faults, but greatly oversteps when comparing it favorably with “Revolutionary Road,” a far superior novel by Richard Yates, a truly haunted man I knew briefly the one semester he taught at USC before dying. (Yates had a host of health problems, one remaining lung, and nearly choked to death at dinner.)
Regarding “Voices,” while my regard for Dick is undiminished, the book is nearly unreadable; I feverishly ordered it as soon as it was available and while trying to get through it I’ve finished three other books instead. At the moment it’s mostly gathering dust on my nightstand, two-thirds unread. The first of Dick’s “mainstream” novels I read was “Confessions of a Crap Artist,” a book with a tripartite point-of-view storytelling style that qualifies it as postmodern; it is also a compelling read that rewards one, page after page, with insights into male-female relationships and how the truth of such stories can never be known. It’s a great book. The next one I read, “Mary and the Giant,” was odd and rambling, but each page was such an affront to the sensibility of the 1950s that I couldn’t put it down; among other things, it concerns a tryst between a large black man and a young white girl. Had this been published in the 1950s it’s unlikely that Dick’s obscurity would have continued. But now that I’m reading “Voices,” I see the same faults identified by the editors who turned it down — its rambling, its passivity, the two-dimensional characterizations, Dick’s bad case of adjectivis — and I remember them in “Mary” as well.
All of Dick’s books will wind up kept in print and studied, not because they’re all good, but because he is becoming a canonical writer. As someone with a 30-year enthusiasm for his work, it’s odd to find myself in agreement with those editors who long ago decided that some of these books weren’t good enough and rejected them. From the descriptions and from the rejection letters published in several Dick biographies, I’m starting to suspect that the rest of the mainstream books are even worse than “Voices.”
While I appreciate the sentiment of the latest Jib-Jab video, below, railing against the news doesn’t seem particularly new. (This reminds me of Peter Gabriel attacking Jerry Springer on his last album, about six years too late for the zeitgeist.)
As if we needed any further proof of Ms. Winfrey’s all-powerful influence, the famously reclusive Mr. McCarthy has actually agreed to a guest appearance with her. That will be his first television appearance ever, and his first interview in decades.
Here’s my favorite ironic quote of the day (and again, please bear in mind that in this context “favorite” means I actually don’t like it, except for its irony), and it’s from this piece:
“If you want to reduce gasoline usage—like I believe we need to do so for national-security reasons as well as for environmental concerns—the consumer has got to be in a position to make a rational choice,” said a beaming Bush.
Uh, yeah. That’s why you shouldn’t allow automakers to LIE about it.
My good friend, actor-writer-director and crank Mark Chaet, has 
Why will I be seeing the new film “Next”? Because it’s based on a Philip K. Dick story, “The Golden Man.”
here, Oprah (of all people)