Maybe baseball should take a page from cricket and spread their games over several nights. Who wants to wait until 1:00 A.M. for the outcome?
October 29, 2008
Dick Dick Dick!
I just finished a volume of short fiction by P. K. Dick, my first taste of his fiction save The Man in the High Castle. A concentrated dose of Dick is a bit like watching the Twilight Zone marathons on cable; after a while, you start to see the twist ending from the outset. Everyone knows his stories from the big-budget movies made thereof; predictably, the movies are always worse–even Minority Report, which I liked. I knew that other films like Paycheck and Total Recall were authorized retellings of Dick stories, but there are plenty of unauthorized film versions of his stories as well. Terminator owes much to Second Variety, Dark City to Adjustment Team. The central gag in the Futurama episode “War is the H-Word” comes from Imposter. Fans of House Liao should find and read Faith of Our Fathers. Each of the stories is exactly long enough to execute its idea; no time is made for secondary concerns. Science fiction is always better when shorter. It owes more to the tragedies of the Greeks than to the novels of the Europeans.
October 23, 2008
Waugh Again
My last trip to the Public Library afforded me use of an Evelyn Waugh collection. This passage from Black Mischief amused me:
Only the Arabs remained unimpressed. [The African King] ennobled them, creating the heads of the chief families Earls, Viscounts and Marquesses, but these grave, impoverished men whose genealogies extended to the time of the Prophet preferred their original names. He married his daughter into the house of the old Sultan–but the young man accepted the elevation and his compulsory baptism into the National Church without enthusiasm. The marriage was considered a great disgrace by the Arabs. Their fathers would not have ridden a horse with so obscure a pedigree.
Fraser’s Flashman books are funny, but Waugh is funnier. It’s so good it’s almost exhausting to read; I have to put the book down every few pages to rest my appreciation cortex.
October 22, 2008
October 20, 2008
Rays Win AL
The Tampa Bay Rays are going to the World Series. See what happens when you take the word “Devil” out of your name? And get a halfway-decent font for your uniform?
October 19, 2008
For their own good
I propose the summary execution of anyone who “blogs” about American politics during the next sixty days, regardless of their inclinations or beliefs.
October 17, 2008
Pop Culture Penetration
Anybody else weirded out by Dear Prudence at Slate name-checking Dr. Manhattan?
Also, what happened to Smigel? Triumph isn’t funny at all lately. Not quite to Opus levels, but give it another twenty years of brick-pounding.
October 16, 2008
Breakfast on Broadway
Harsh economic times are forcing New York City restaurants to do something they ought have done years ago: open for breakfast (and stay open until dinner). It’s difficult to believe, but there are–or were–areas of the city where you were out of luck if you got peckish between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, if you couldn’t find a pizzeria or a bodega.
More Comedy From the Times
Panicked, stressed parents are struggling to explain and impose restraints, just when teenagers are expecting more spending money, not less. Many adolescents respond with anger at what they see as a bait-and-switch world, fear for their families and confusion about budgeting.
Family therapists, teachers and parents tell anecdotes about teenagers who are badly rattled by the news, in denial, or both. A daughter is shaken as her mother calls for an emergency family meeting. The son of a Wall Street financier whose fortune has collapsed tauntingly tells his father he can take care of himself: he will sell more marijuana.
Link.
Evolving Times
The Times covers the Evolution of Species and paleontology as well as a purely scientific magazine. Why? Would they be as interested if there weren’t still a few hold-outs against Darwin? (But surely they don’t subscribe to the Times! They’re reading the Post, right?)
