Hitch

One more reason to like him. The dead are not spared under his skeptical eye.

The Good Shepherd

Robert DeNiro directed this CIA thriller. A tad long at 2hr 40min, it is more about the inscrutable lead character's issues with trust than a violent action film. Interesting to see Keir Dullea in a minor role looking like he did in the last sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey (i.e. old).
And why did they cast the son with lips bigger than his mother (A. Jolie)? They both look freakish and distracting.

Mixed metaphors

From Iowa:
KCCI political analyst Dennis Goldford said that Edwards left himself well-positioned from the caucuses. "Barack Obama is the rock star of the moment. What's interesting is Vilsack is ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa," he said.

Obama is not a rock star. THIS is a rock star dammit:

Flowers for the holiday

Merry Christmas

Bread and wine are customary. Here's some kickass bread. I did not make these rolls, but I did consume some.

NYC

Visiting Manhattan last weekend, I became enamored with the Edward Hopper exhibition at the Whitney Museum. I even bought stuff in the gift shop, which I almost never do. I'm reading "The Essential Edward Hopper" right now.

Early Sunday Morning
1930
Oil on canvas
35 x 60 in.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The Holiday

Wanna sit through a 150 minute chick flick? Be my guest. This is the prototype. Sheez. What a cringe-fest.

However, there was one shining standout episode when Jude Law's character reveals he has two daughters as a widower. Normally, children are either awful actors or exploited for the cute factor, but here, the whole sequence works. Finally, more than half way through the film is an "out-of-body" series of scenes where all 4 actors (Law, Diaz and the cheer-dren) are present to the scene, not hamming it up and the saccharine abates momentarily as they lay in a bedroom tent side-by-side. It's a magnificent sequence in an otherwise dippy movie.

Smell the Horse

The new Neil Young release is old: live from 1970. With the late Danny Whitten on vocals and guitar in the earliest incarnation of Crazy Horse, Neil's longtime and occasional backup band, the music crackles with dueling guitars and shared vocals. Whitten seems to push Neil in the vocal area, challenging him non-offensively to jump hurdles with confidence. This CD really captures a tight performance. These renditions sound similar to the studio versions, a good thing, unlike later versions throughout the years where form and content receive updates.



The six songs:
1. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
A galloping rock sing-a-long. Fantastic opener. "I gotta get out of this day to day runnin' around".

2. Winterlong
The studio version is hard to beat but this live version gives a fresh perspective in the vocals. Sounds like Whitten on lead vocal and Neil pushing his limits on the harmony track. "You seem to be where I belong".

3. Down By The River
12' 22" of heaven. Of a pair with Cowgirl, written in the same bout of fever. Like its sister, this one features a major-minor 2-chord background for some Crazy Horse jamming. Every two-bit guitarist like me has played along with this one for hours. The crunchy chords in the lead guitar are full of fiber and substance.

4. Wonderin'
Nice.

5. Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown
High energy. Great vocals.

6. Cowgirl In The Sand
15 minutes of more 2-chord jams. The guitar tone is identical to the studio version but we get the "liberty" of open-ended jamming. Doesn't matter where you rate Neil Young in the pantheon of electric rock guitarists, try again, you're too low.

I love this

For Your Consideration

This latest Christopher Guest film is a bit over the top but it is still enjoyable to see this ensemble interact. The parody of entertainment shows is spot on. Michael McKean seems to be the best actor in the whole bunch by far. The daffy producer is hilariously moronic.

The best scenes are when the 3 actors don't receive their Oscar nominations. Each is home alone at 5 a.m. to suffer the indignity of dashed hope. It's a genuinely dramatic sequence in a comedy film. The fact that the least likely actor sleeps through his nomination-notifying phone call is telling.

All in all, it's worth seeing but not great.

From George Will...

Washington’s “famous gift of silence” was particularly employed regarding religion. But his behavior spoke. He would not kneel to pray, and when his pastor rebuked him for setting a bad example by leaving services before communion, Washington mended his ways in his austere manner: he stayed away from church on communion Sundays. He acknowledged Christianity’s “benign influence” on society, but no ministers were present and no prayers were uttered as he died a Stoic’s death.

Adams declared that “phylosophy looks with an impartial Eye on all terrestrial religions,” and told a correspondent that if they had been on Mount Sinai with Moses and had been told the doctrine of the Trinity, “We might not have had courage to deny it, but We could not have believed it.” It is true that the longer he lived, the shorter grew his creed, and in the end his creed was Unitarianism.

Jefferson, writing as a laconic utilitarian, urged his nephew to inquire into the truthfulness of Christianity without fear of consequences: “If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comforts and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.”

Madison, always common-sensical, briskly explained — essentially, explained away — religion as an innate appetite: “The mind prefers at once the idea of a self-existing cause to that of an infinite series of cause & effect.” When Congress hired a chaplain, he said “it was not with my approbation.”

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation acknowledged “the Great Governor of the World,” but six years later the Constitution made no mention of God. When Hamilton was asked why, he jauntily said, “We forgot.” Ten years after the Constitutional Convention, the Senate unanimously ratified a treaty with Islamic Tripoli that declared the United States government “is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”