Politician in Newfoundland getting +$100k/year while on “administrative leave”:

This is the kind of thing that makes greedy youngsters want to get into politics. How inspiring!

Tommyboy: you been arrested yet? Seems like the thing to do.

It’s hard to take anyone’s word on a comedy. The Flight of the Conchords is comic genius to me (the first season, anyway), but I’ve never been able to turn anyone on to the show. I know plenty of people who laugh at everything Ben Stiller does, but he does nothing for me. And sometimes you just have to be in the right mood to get into a comedy. So…

Judged as a comical zombie movie, Shaun of the Dead succeeds completely. I don’t watch zombie movies, but I laughed all the way through this one. The zombies are funny, not scary or gross, and the main characters are hilarious. It’s a clever, smartly-written comedy in a style similar to the UK The Office, but with zombies. It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen for a long time.

Guess who was born on this day in 1931?

I had to post this.

It won’t be out until next October.

I’m talking about the original 1933 version of King Kong. It is a great movie and a hell of lot more violent and gruesome than I ever thought. It must have shocked and scared the crap out of audiences in 1933. I never realized what an incredible movie it is.

The stop-motion special effects are executed with style and drama that are so expressive, “the beast” comes across as a sensitive guy. There isn’t much of a story until Kong comes into the picture — and then you can watch the movie with the sound down if you feel like it because everything unfolds in broad strokes: 1) Island natives capture Fay Wray for sacrifice to Kong; 2) Kong runs into the jungle with Ms. Wray, protecting her instead of eating her; 3) A rescue party runs into the jungle and are killed off one at a time by Kong; 4) Kong is captured and brought back to the US… and so on. Although King Kong is sometimes considered a B-quality monster movie, it’s operatic and poignant as well. I’d love to see it in a theatre someday.

I was never a huge fan of any of the Godfather movies until I watched the entire trilogy over the period of a week. (The Godfather – Part III is the dud of the series, infamously diminished by the casting of Sofia Coppola as Michael Corleone’s daughter. She can’t act. That’s not the only problem with the film, just the most obvious. It might be best to pretend Part III doesn’t exist.) The Godfather (Parts 1 and 2) are so good, so rich in character and story, so masterfully acted and directed, there’s nothing I can say about the films that hasn’t been said with greater insight by hundreds of critics already.

Check out this one paragraph from the linked DVD Talk review: “Religion is important in The Godfather. In all of the films, sacred events are used as cover for the sin of murder, be it the christening in episode I or the street fair in the flashbacks in II, when young Vito (Robert De Niro) goes after Fanucci (Gastone Moschin). Notice, too, in that latter scene, Fanucci gets an orange on his way to the assassin’s bullet. Coppola often uses poetic imagery to tie together different events across this vast timeline. Oranges always foreshadow some kind of violence or death — older Vito (Marlon Brando) is getting oranges when he is shot, and later eating one when he eventually dies, in one of the most poignant death scenes in all of movie history. So, too, is Michael eating an orange when he is plotting various hits near the end of part II and again in the final scene of part III. Though not a recurring theme, one of my favorite images in the movie is in part I when Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) is being strangled. Coppola steps out of the room and films the attack through a glass pane decorated with a fish pattern. Later, when Michael and Sonny (James Caan) and the others are informed of Luca’s death, it’s with one of the movie’s most quoted lines: ‘Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.’” That’s just a taste of what’s going on in The Godfather (Parts 1 and 2). Francis Ford Coppola was in the zone when he made these movies. The genius of the filmmaking reveals itself more with each viewing. Damn, I think I’ll watch them again right now. See ya!

This is my daughter’s first song she composed, titled Falling Leaves. She’s been taking piano lessons since the fall and part of their curriculum consists of composition, which is impressive – I was never taught that.

Click the image for a larger view.

I’ve never met anyone with the name Esmé. The one and only time I’ve seen it is in J.D. Salinger’s short story, “For Esmé — with Love and Squalor.” It’s a masterpiece. It’s a quiet story about loneliness and compassion. The Wikipedia entry for the story states: “Lack of purity and innocence in the adult world, love of childhood itself, and the power of words and writing are among the story’s themes.” Okay, that too. It’s the one short story I make sure to read every couple years. There is something in the follow excerpt that resonates for me, always has.

Now, for the third time since he had returned from the hospital that day, he opened the woman’s book and read the brief inscription on the flyleaf. Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words “Dear God, life is hell.” Nothing led up to or away from it. Alone on the page, and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. Then, with far more zeal than he had done anything in weeks, he picked up a pencil stub and wrote down under the inscription, in English, “Fathers and teachers, I ponder ‘What is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” He started to write Dostoevski’s name under the inscription, but saw — with fright that ran through his whole body — that what he had written was almost entirely illegible. He shut the book.

The entire story, along with just about everything else Salinger has written, including his uncollected works, are available online at freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/. My guess is Salinger’s lawyers will have the site shut down ASAP.