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Oh, most important album to be released in many a month, Wilco's A Ghost is Born , way to get put up on their official website for all to listen (to)!

I'm still slogging through Foucault's Pendulum , slogging being used affectionately here as I do like it. Scotter gave up after 40 pages or so which was a mistake, but it's definitely in the same vein as Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest in that it starts off right in the middle of things (or, in the case of IJ , the end) and goes a bit before giving any sort of backstory. But once you get to the explanations of everything that's going on, Foucault's Pendulum is quite accessible and not considerably easier read than you'd think. There isn't a whole lot to it though. Anyway, I bring this up now because I was reading this in the Times about what would seem to be a similar book (they compare it to The Name of the Rose , but they're all the same, I'm sure). I have no desire to read any more secret society/occult/mass conspiracy books right now, but what caught my eye was this: "The novel will make a debut at No. 6 on The Times best-seller ...

Cicadas are a specialized breed of ninja .

In addition to seeing poor movies on Friday night, I also ventured to Williamsburg for dinner with folks. Now, this was my first time in Williamsburg as a civilian (i.e. not as part of a Lubabvicher youth mission--"Excuse me, are you Jewish? Do you want to be?"), and I don't know. I think the part we went to, around Bedford Ave (jeez, I was at the complete other end of Bedford today), was the nicer, more expensive portion, and it was pretty nice. And certainly less expensive than anything in Brooklyn Heights. And there were girls, girls with piercings in places that didn't make them look too revolting--the girls with revolting piercings probably inhabit points east. But I would grow to hate the L train more than the F (which I really have no legimate reason for hating, as I never ever ride it), and it would fuck over my commute. So no Williamsburg. I think there are plenty of girls with piercings in Boerum Hill. Oh, and if you happen to have $500k, that's what th...

Form posted this is the comments to Banana's review and I am hereby elevating it to an actual entry. Thanks, Dave! Sharon wanted me to take her to see Troy for her Birthday/Graduation present, and she made me promise not to read Anna's review until we went. But last night I saw the movie and this morning, I read the review, so now I post without regret. This movie pissed me off. Not so much that I would sit in my war tent and sulk. But enough to tie the DVD to the back of my car and drag it around my house seven times. If Wolfgang Peterson came to my house to ask for it back, I wouldn't allow the funeral games to be held for it. Peterson is a great director, and I say that because he directed "Das Boot," the greatest submarine movie of all time. At the end of it, I actually felt bad for the German soldiers. And as we know, the "go to" villain in this age of moral relativism is the Nazis. You can hate them without having to apologize to anyone, but Peter...

I saw Coffee & Cigarettes last night. I knew it wasn't particularly well-reviewed (and it won't be here), but I was kind of excited by the cast. And the director directed Ghost Dog , which I never actually saw but had come close to seeing at several points in my life, so this was atoning for that. Or something. Coffee & Cigarettes isn't a movie; it's a bunch of 6-10 minute scenes with famous and not-so-famous people talking and sometimes not-talking (though usually talking), ostensibly linked together by certain thematic and visual elements (c.f. coffee and cigarettes). Now, maybe three of the dozen or so scenes were genuinely entertaining, but I'm not even going to mention which on the off chance that someone out there might be intrigued and see the movie just for them. Don't do that. Even your typical artsy Sunshine Cinema crowd was walking out of the theater bitching about the movie. The only bright point was the air conditioning, which was in full ...

Oh, man... updates to follow.