Eye of the Tiger/ Blog hiatus

A highlight of Persepolis (which is really good)

Actually, the clip is funnier in the context of the movie, where it signals her emergence from a deep post-breakup depression. Fun Wikipedia fact: “In 1984, singer/comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic wrote & recorded a parody of Eye of the Tiger called: The Rye [...]

Adieu to Angela

A lot of the girls’ friends are leaving town. I feel sad about it. The emotions and friendships of four-year-olds are so intense and volatile, yet still pretty transient. The feelings don’t quite have the permanence or stability of older kids’. Their close friend Adeline will be leaving town soon; we’re [...]

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Most-emailed article on the Time Magazine site (as of a few days ago):
How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?
As a longtime imsomniac who is always trying to get more sleep, I am a bit skeptical of these claims:
Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live [...]

Leftist Buzzwords

Report Assails Political Hiring in Justice Dept.
Justice Department officials illegally used “political or ideological” factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law school graduates with Federalist Society membership or other conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés, an internal report found Tuesda.
This is the funniest/most outrageous detail:
Investigators reviewed e-mail messages from [...]

The Strange Life of Carole King

I’ve been reading Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon–And the Journey of a Generation. After 50 pages I threw it aside, too irritated by its writing style to keep going — it’s annoyingly effusive, arch, and just plain badly written in many ways. But the gossipy details drew me back, [...]

Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a really cool and innovative movie. Its primary filmic P.O.V. is that of the protagonist, Jean-Do, who is paralyzed from head to toe such that he cannot express himself in any way other than blinking. So, the camera represents his perspective, and we see [...]

Os Mutantes Happy Meal/ Chris Knox Heineken

I know this sort of thing is old hat by now, but this still sort of blew my mind. I’m watching game 5 of the NBA finals, it cuts to an ad, and I hear a familiar tune over a scene of a bunch of a first graders playing soccer. It’s (not that [...]

Kathryn Davis’s The Thin Place

Kathryn Davis’s The Thin Place is a really unusual, enchanting novel. “Everyone prefers to stick with the subject of people” but this novel opens up the characterological range to include several dogs, moose, beavers, a pike, tadpoles, and even lichen. As well as old people, children, and a more usual range of human persons. [...]

Wii

So, we got a Wii. This has been a long time coming. Sarah decided to get one for me/us for Xmas, but of course she could not buy one (Nintendo has not been able to meet demand for them ever since they were introduced in December 2006, unless you prefer the conspiracy-theory approach [...]

Done with my class/ Heathcliff nightmare

I’m done with my summer session class. That went really quickly, actually. Just need to finish grading papers and exams this weekend.
One student made a comment to me that made me feel that I’d succeeded in some small way: he reported that he’d had a nightmare about Heathcliff the night before. “He [...]