Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* There's a website for everything.

* Give yourself a little time to savor this one: Curious Expeditions has posted a lot of photos of beautiful library interiors. Now that's some amazin' architecture, and some heroic blogging too. (Link thanks to the Classicist.)

* Steve Sailer takes note of this year's Nobels and comes up with a great line: "White males (six out of six in this case) continue to oppress the rest of humanity by discovering and inventing stuff."

* Chimps are more patient than people are. Not only that, chimps resemble economics' idealized homo economicus more than people do.

* The Manhattan Institute's Julia Vitullo-Martin brings Jane Jacobs up to date.

* The Right Rev. James Bailey has a damn lot on his mind.

* Alicatte thinks that New York magazine has come up with both the best and the worst of recent magazine covers.

* Yahmdallah clicks onto Amazon's new MP3 store and winds up doing some major downloading.

* By the way, you can now post reader-reviews in video form on Amazon. Weird. Can there be such a thing as Too Much Video?

* DVD Spin Doctor reports that "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." will finally be appearing on DVD. Lordy, when I was a kid, did I ever love that show.

* TGGP wonders what was so bad about Charles Lindbergh. David Boaz notes that FDR once praised Mussolini.

* Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's bring a "hidden population" "out into the open"!

* Jim Kalb is skeptical about the hundred-dollar-laptop initiative.

* The Patriarch points out this hilarious bouquet of passages from reviews written by Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is especially funny on "Finnegans Wake" and "Citizen Kane."

* Even San Franciscans can get fed up with the homeless. (Link thanks to LlamaButchers.) A great quote comes from one local:

"Maybe there has been an epiphany," says David Latterman, president of Fall Line Analytics, a local market research firm. "People have realized they can hate George Bush but still not want people crapping in their doorway."

* Richard S. Wheeler has a question about porno novels. Ed Gorman confesses that he has written a few porno-Westerns.

* Piercing as a lifestyle.

* Did you know that a clitoral-hood piercing can be either vertical or horizontal?

* Culturebargain: Angelina Jolie made her reputation playing a junkie-model in Michael Cristofer's "Gia," and it's no challenge to see what startled people about her work. She's both go-for-broke and perfectly-collected. She's also, at least in the unrated version of the film, frequently naked in expressive -- as in bold, vulnerable, proud, and touching -- ways. The film, based on a true story, is worth seeing for many other reasons too, among them Jay McInerney's shrewd script and Elizabeth Mitchell's daring performance as Gia's sometime girlfriend. $9.95.

* MBlowhard Rewind: I raved about Jack Kelly's terrific private-eye novel "Mobtown" here.

Best,

Michael

As for the New York magazine cover, Bill C. should be in a blue dress.

Posted by: Bill on October 10, 2007 11:22 PM

Thanks for the link. I've been lax in putting up content, and if I was responsible I would be. Unfortunately I am not responsible and have a post planned for this morning, although I swear not to read or comment at any blogs for the rest of the day.

Posted by: TGGP on October 11, 2007 2:52 AM

re: the Time-Life monopoly on The Man From U.N.C.L.E: after grudgingly forking over the beau coup bucks for their complete Get Smart I have to say I definitely got my money's worth. They've got someone on their packaging design team who's the DVD equivalent of Chip Kidd. Oh, and the DVDs are a treat, too -- terrific color restoration, especially.

Posted by: Whisky Prajer on October 11, 2007 9:51 AM

RE: Borges on Finnegan's Wake
I got through Ulysses, and enjoyed it, but as for Finnigan's Wake, I believe I'll wait for the English translation. Joyce presumes too much upon the reader there, I'm afraid.

RE: Gia
I put it on my list of "chick flicks" here:
http://manwhoisthursday.blogspot.com/2007/02/chick-flicks.html

Posted by: Thursday on October 11, 2007 9:51 AM

RE: Gia...that movie really surprised the hell out of me. Here was a film starring Angelina and she spent most of the movie naked, making out with chicks or naked and making out with chicks...and I fell asleep. It takes one hell of a script to turn an Angelina-lesbian-skin flick into a snoozer, but they managed it. I think the last movie before that I fell asleep during was "Benji" when I was five.

Posted by: Upstate Guy on October 11, 2007 10:26 AM

You fell asleep during Benji?!

BTW, that has been my blanket comment with almost all HBO-generated shows and movies - they're usually pretty dull. Shows like Sex in the City and the Sopranos spiced things up with softcore, but you watch any of those with the R-rated content gone, and they're a snooze.

Posted by: yahmdallah on October 11, 2007 11:13 AM

Thanks for the link to the Julia Vitullo-Martin essay on Jane Jacobs on the Manhattan Institute website. I wasn't aware of it, and it's very good -- the best of her four recent essays on Jacobs. (The other three that I'm aware of were done for the "New York Sun" and are accesible, at least for a little while longer, for free via the on-line newspaper's archives search box. You can also find Francis Morrone's essay on Jacobs there and an review of the Jacobs exhibit done by the paper's architectural critic -- whose name escapes me at the moment.)

Posted by: Benjamin Hemric on October 11, 2007 11:24 AM

Does anyone see anything in Angelina Jolie other than the fact that she has very good bone structure? I don't. Other than her being beautiful I get no vibe from her, none at all. I just don't see the basis of the fascination with her. There's no personality there, no warmth, no acting chops, no nothing. I don't get it. Do you?

Posted by: ricpic on October 11, 2007 4:21 PM

ricpic:

I agree with you about Jolie. She leaves me cold.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on October 11, 2007 5:48 PM

yahmdallah: yeah, but it had been the third time I'd seen it. :)

ricpic: Agreed, she's eye-candy, nothing more. Only reason she's on my "List of Celebrity Five My Wife Would Let Me Sleep With" is because she's also on my wife's. ;-)

Posted by: Upstate Guy on October 12, 2007 7:33 AM

I liked Angelina in her first couple of movies, including "Gia." Insolence, calm, rock-star confidence and mischief. And then overnight it froze, or something. Anyway, that was it. That was all she had to give. Couldn't care less about her now.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on October 12, 2007 10:36 PM

That collection of comments from Borges are terrificly entertaining. Although I think "Crime and Punishment" is a great title.

Posted by: jult52 on October 18, 2007 6:24 AM

I'll just second Jult...I wish I'd read Borges on Joyce and Welles years ago! Those are certainly among the very best reviews I've ever read.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on October 18, 2007 2:38 PM






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