Knows When to Hold 'EmJames McManus on Barack Obama's poker history. Obama took up the game in the Illinois legislature apparently as a way to make connections. This is the third time or so I've heard he's a decent player, which makes me more inclined to vote for him. (I plan to drop this info at my next home game, which has members that lean too far rightward. That Obama's poker playing may switch votes says a lot about the fanaticism my group has for poker or the utter lack of enthusiasm many republicans have for their field.) McManus wrote Positively Fifth Street, about covering and playing in the 2000 World Series of Poker and the Binion murder trial. It's a decent book and he's supposedly at work on a book about the history of poker, which might be even better since the parts of Fifth Street that I didn't like were mostly autobiographical. (Link via Ghost in the Machine, which has become a nice clearinghouse for all things Obama.)
When Bill Clinton was running for President and the Gennifer Flowers story broke, it was Hillary Clinton who was fierce and ready to fight back and power forward.
During the Lewinsky saga, Clinton probably could have settled for a censure but he decided to fight. Clinton cared little for how embarrassing things might have been for him and his family. He decided to fight every inch of the way.
Reportedly, Clinton thought that Gore should have given up the noble approach and fought more during the Florida recount.
Now, I don't bring these things up to say the Clintons were in the wrong on any of these issues. They weren't. But I just don't think anyone should entertain the notion that the Clintons will step aside or back off anytime soon. There will be no "toning it down" or "stepping aside for the good of the party" so don't get your hopes up.
Someone figured out that exactly halfway between Foxborough and the Meadowlands lies my town of Durham, CT. (Go Google Earth.) HBO came to town yesterday to film a Patriots/Giants rally on the town green. When they air this, you can expect to hear the phrase "sleepy little town" at the beginning, middle and somewhere towards the end. I do take issue with the woman in the video who says this is the biggest thing to happen in Durham in a decade. I mean, that crowd wouldn't even make a decent morning line at the Durham Fair giant donut stand.
I remember way back in the day, I just about never saw another Patriots fan. Just as well, considering how ugly the old logo was. The fan base grew in the 90s. Toss in the bandwagon of the last few years with the sagging fortune of the Giants over the last few years and it is pretty much an even split around here.
Welcome to New England Brrr... It's cold now. And looks to be even colder Sunday for the Patriots-Chargers game.
I'm not sure what the advanced, technical rules of sportsmanship are anymore. Don't hit anyone during soccer. I get that. All the trash talk coming from the Chargers strikes me as poor sportsmanship, but also strange. Let me get this straight - Shawne Merriman likes to do a dance after a good play. Tackle someone, a little dance and taunt. Whatever. Now they have issues with the Patriots for doing the very same dance after a good play in last year's playoff game. What's the sportsmanship issue? Copying? You can do a dance, just not mine?
Another Hurt Husky Mel Thomas' torn ACL means the end of her UConn career. Sad and bad. Knicknamed "Baby Shea" early in her career for her tendency to hit the floor after loose balls, Mel was fun to watch and a great contributor. She finishes fourth in UConn history for three pointers and over 1,000 points for her career. The floor leadership, assists and hustle will also be missed.
A month ago it was like a sportswriting mandate that the phrase "national championship" had to appear in any article about UConn. They were blowing out quality teams by 40. Now, without Kalana Greene and Thomas and with Hunter's knee acting up more than usual, they get to be a #1 ranked underdog. First big test will be the annual Martin Luther King Day game. This year it's North Carolina. Catch it if you can. Thomas will be getting a ball for going over 1,000 points. Expect about a five minute (and well-deserved) standing O.
The Sarah Conner Chronicles has been good enough to keep me watching for a few more shows, certainly helped by the fact that there's nothing else on right about now. I still think the whole thing went downhill when someone decided they should have good terminators to fight the bad terminators. And Summer Glau may be miscast. Her out of place waif who kicks ass reminds me of her Firefly character. (I know, someone who doesn't like Firefly or T2. Unleash the fanboys!)
My favorite part was a bit of unintentional comedy in the first hour when Sarah shields herself from the terminator's hail of bullets with a reclining chair! It gave off the little squib explosions and everything. They recognized how goofy this was because in the next scene there's a throwaway line - obviously added later - about Kevlar in the chair. See? It all makes sense. You think if the chair were absorbing the force of the bullets it might have, you know, rocked or something. Still I won't write it off just yet.
This [review for There Will be Blood] is the worst movie review I have ever read (“A Guilt-Soaked Epic,” Jan. 2-8). Aspects of it lead me to believe that your reviewer [Armond White] is mentally deficient for failing to grasp painfully obvious plot elements, such as the “estranged brother” character, who is not an estranged brother at all, but a charlatan, which is where the gravitas of the Plainview character is fully manifest. He not only fails to recognize the best dramatic performance of the last 25 years, but his incessant name-dropping of irrelevant RELICS is not only obnoxious, but confuses even the most patient reader. This review, honestly, belongs in the SAT examination, as an object of boredom to be mocked and sworn at, representative of film criticism at its most masturbatory. This is the nadir of film criticism, and your reviewer is a blithering idiot.—Daniel Simon
Since reading White's "The Resistance," I've been on the lookout for his reviews and reactions he provokes. Kevin over at GiTM mentioned him in passing the other day as well. I'm standing by my Second-Best-Film-Critic vote until I borrow "Chuck and Larry" from JD and confirm my suspicion that it's a piece of crap.
Why Armond White is My New Favorite Movie Critic (After Filthy)
'"The Bubble,' featuring the year's best original screenplay, is one of the peaks of the gay cinema breakthroughs that critics pretended to welcome with the big-budget, name-star 'Brokeback Mountain' but then ignored as a matter of habit. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's symbolic situations, recognizable characters and nuanced dialog surpasses even the superb (and unfairly maligned) 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry' in realistic details. Fox's script isn't a satire but a political romance that dares give unprejudiced clarity to the inequities of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, global homophobia and middle-class privilege." -- Armond White [indieWIRE]
Is he brilliant or totally wack? I'm not sure, I guess I'd have to netflix ' ... Chuck and Larry' to find out, a step I can't bring myself to take; but, I like that I'm almost always surprised by his reviews.
6) The Saturdays, Elizabeth Enright - This is a reissued, nearly lost gem of a juvenile novel, first published in 1941. The four Melendy kids decide to pool their allowances so once a week one of them can have a forty cent adventure instead of each of them trying to have a ten cent adventure. As history, the book is fascinating. A six year old walking alone around New York City to get to the circus! There's something beautiful about Enright's vision of childhold here that probably makes The Saturdays more appealling to grownups than actual kids. (My seven year old read this but only once and didn't seem to like it as much as me and Mrs. BoneDaddy.) She romanticizes siblings and long afternoons with little to do, out of the way playrooms and "what I want to be" dreams. Adults probably like that stuff more than kids.
5) Gone, Baby, Gone, Dennis Lehane (1998) - I've had this book forever. Fear of spoilers surrounding the movie convinced me to finally pick it up. Lehane doesn't do anything great, but he does a lot of things well. His dialogue is good, but I didn't put this away with my Elmore Leonard or anything. The sense of place is strong, if one note - this is not a Boston novel, it's a south Boston novel. And the plot ... well, if you've seen the movie you know the plot. The resolution is sad, mostly earned and admirably unflinching. I did tear through this in a day, so it also works as a good, but not really great thriller.
4) The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta (2007) - For me it was a better year in non-fiction (with two giant exceptions coming), since I have to start talking about Perrotta's latest by saying it's not as good as either Election or Little Children. Ruth Ramsey accidentally tells the truth while teaching high school sex ed (oral sex - "some people enjoy it") and the Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth begins a crusade against the school, sex ed and Ruth. They insert in the classroom a Tracy Flick-ish co-teacher, who is the only part of The Abstinence Teacher to be truly satirical. Perrotta writes with a lot of sympathy for Tim - former addict, Tabernacle member, soccer coach for Ruth's daughter and other half of the novel's focus. I suspect this novel signals Perrotta stepping away from satire towards a contemporary Updike area. He is a master of suburban unhappiness - which is rarer than it sounds - but also great at comedy. A slightly unsatisfying finish keeps this from finishing higher on my list.
3) The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead (2000) - Imagine if the elevator were more important than the car and the computer. If Otis were better known than Ford and Edison. Then imagine the power a corrupt union of elevator inspectors could have over a city, if that city existed in some kind of Brazil-ian (the movie, not the country) non-time, non-place. That's odd enough. But what if a new way of inspecting elevators split the union into the traditionalists and the intuitionists, who can feel what an elevator will do? If one side wanted to discredit the other side, they could frame Lila Mae, the first black female elevator inspector and an Intuitionist to boot, right? (Racism, by the way, is rampant. And it's a sign of the maturity of Whitehead's vision that Lila is the second black elevator inspector and the first one hates her because he feels he paid all the dues for her and she's stirring up the trouble that had settled down.) Odd, dense and certainly not for everyone, but I liked it.
2) Watership Down, Richard Adams (1972) - Now we get to the reccomendations without reservations. There's a long list of movies I won't see because I loved the book. The list of books I wouldn't read because I loved the movie too much was one book long. Watership Down, the movie, probably isn't nearly as good as I remember it. When I was nine, this movie had more of an impact on me than Star Wars, not that I'd have ever admitted it.
So I refused to read the book for a few decades. I'm funny that way. To my surprise - I have read other Richard Adams books - Watership Down is a masterpiece. The heft of the book always made me think it was crammed full of naturalistic garbage and meandering nature writing in British and/or rabbit slang, but the book is terrifically paced. Ultimately it's as much an adventure novel as an allegory with the nature writing complementing the story.
Watership Down is filled with chill scenes, and I don't think it's entirely because certain quotes ("There's a dog loose in the woods...""Can you run, rabbit?") are indelibly marked on my brain. Bigwig in the tunnel was utterly gripping and people, we're talking about rabbits here.
1)Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling (2007) - My No Duh choice. The publishing event of the year was also the book of the year. Some of the nitpickers make some good points about the book. I have complaints here and there about other Potter books, but I'm also upping the degree of difficulty here. Rowling had to finish an epic story, tie up a bunch of loose ends, give many characters their due and tell a self-containted story for children and adults, all under a spotlight brighter than has ever been put on an author and Deathly Hallows got it done.
For me, the hype built up the experience. Because I partially experienced it all through the eyes of a seven year old I was reminded that story-telling is often a social activity. Round the campfire, in front of the TV, whatever. Stories and masses aren't enemies. The articles, the book discussions and yes, even the balloons in the Stop-n-Shop added to the fun but only because the book delivered. (Also helped that I managed to finish the book without encountering spoilers - even from my own house.) Harry walking through the woods surrounded by ghosts (you know what I'm talking about if you've read the book) is the quintessential moment of the series and it happens at the end. You don't get that often. And you get a fantasy like this probably once in a generation.
My honorable mention for 2007 goes to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954), not on the list because I'd read it before. It really holds up. I read it in preperation for the movie, then never saw the movie. Based on the reviews, I think I got a better experience. Dan Harrington's Harrington on Hold 'Embooks also almost made it onto my non-fiction list, but I figured that's kinda niche.
