"Ray"

Anj and I slept on this joint for way too long. We should have caught it in the theaters when it came out. Missed it then, missed it at the Parkway, missed it at a Monday movie night at the Independent (formerly the Justice League for you heads; might head back there this Thursday night for a timely Rebirth Brass Band show).

But we finally moved it to the top of the Netflix queue (connect to us if you're on there), and it arrived while we were in SoCal. So we started it last night--got about an hour in, and did another hour earlier this evening. Maybe this is some irrational exuberance, but this may be the best movie I've seen in years.

Watching it has reminded me that I've never really listened to the man's music. Another huge gap. Time to remedy that. Just trying to decide whether a 2-disc Ultimate Hits collection suffices, or whether to spring for the full 5-disc Genius & Soul. Both are Rhino productions, so they're probably both quality collections. But then there's the Atlantic box set, The Birth of Soul (3 discs). The breadth the Rhino collection is appealing--but the Atlantic stuff is what I'm most interested in hearing, so that could be a good way to go for now.

OK, just impulsively bought the Atlantic set off of Amazon. Maybe I'll have the cream for the Rhino set someday in the future.

Anyways, the four days in SoCal were good. Well, San Diego was a journey to the heart of emptiness. As I posted here on Yahoo 360, (get on there as well and connect to me, and start feeding in your content)--Gertrude Stein ought to be directed at SD, not Oakland. But hanging out in Hermosa and Manhattan Beach with some buddies was surprisingly fun.

We'll have to get down there again and hang with you Dillytaunters. Maybe we can even get juniorcooper out to the west side sometime soon, have ourselves an editorial meeting.

one market under god...

I don't if it's the long descent into middle age, finally making more than a grad student stipend, or just getting out in the world...but I'm no longer the raging leftist I once was. I'm even hearing the siren song of market-based solutions, and feeling a distrust of "big government." Peep Tierney's column from a week ago and tell me what you think. Here's the concluding paragraph:

"Private flood insurance has come to seem quaint in America, but in Britain it's the norm. If Americans paid premiums for living in risky areas, they'd think twice about building oceanfront villas. Voters and insurance companies would put pressure on local politicians to take care of the levees, prepare for the worst - and stop waiting for that bumbling white knight from Washington."

BTW, the subject line is the title of Thomas Frank's other book.

the most important time in history...

Crazy and interesting times we're living through. Just finished Roth's "Plot Against
America" a couple weeks ago. One of his central themes: history tramples over the lives of those ordinary folk living through it.

Is Katrina and New Orleans a historical event on that grand scale? Just to remind you what else we got going on: Two openings on the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice spot--and a nominee for that spot that could occupy the position for the next 30-40 years. A war in the heart of the Middle East. China's central bank controlling the fate of the US dollar. A nation with a nuclear arsenal headed by a military dictator, who could be overthrown and/or assassinated attempts by the ascendant Islamists in his country (and whose intelligence agency quite clearly proliferated the hell out of their
nuclear technology, and who sits across from another nuclear power.)

As for that subject line, check the full text here.

Juniorcooper, I know you like that line. Which reminds me: we've got to resurrect that project of building hip hop's lyrical allusion network.

Drezner reads "Proof"

Have any of you read or seen "Proof"? A production came through Detroit a couple years ago, to the Fisher Theatre, but we never made it in to see it. (The only production we caught at the Fisher was "Copenhagen".)

I was reminded of it by this Drezner post:

This month's general interest book is in response to the question I get asked on occasion-- "So what's the University of Chicago really like?" The work that I've seen best capture the spirit of the place is actually a play -- Proof, by David Auburn. The drama won a Pulitzer and some Tonys, and has been made into a movie that will be released this month (click here to see the trailer).

The movie's director, John Madden, was smart enough to shoot the film on location on campus and in Hyde Park, and even in the trailer you get a strong sense of place.

Take a look at the post for his other reading selection.