Sun+Night+Jess

youngmanhattanite:

I would ask, “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me the Foo Fighters covered Kiss The Bottle?” but I suppose I was lucky enough to have avoided it till now. It’s just not the same song without Blake’s gravelly touch.

(no additional commentary, really, just—why didn’t anyone ever tell me? I even have that ridiculous cover album where they change “parkas” to “golf shirts” (shoes??) and “Zepplin” to “Maiden”… :-/)

(because he was hobbling around on crutches for quite some time you see)

ANYway, SKIP GATES WAS ARRESTED. for “disorderly conduct.” as you probably know. maybe from the twitter. anyway, he was arrested for yelling, which i found interesting because skip gates usually saves yelling for a situation involving a podium. the comment repeated in both the officers’ reports (the main one by sgt. crowley and the supplement by figueroa) is that prof gates yelled “this is what happens to black men in america!” now, i totally believe he said that, but that’s probably not all he said. the fact that they select this comment to highlight in the police report kind of leads me to believe that these are the kinds of comments they choose to include in police reports: comments that are stand-ins for “he provoked me” or “he deserved it.”  because i doubt most white cops get angry/indignant at the thought of being called a racist; i think the button-pushing comes from their anger at the very thought that simply playing the race card would trump their word/authority as The Police.  kind of a “muthafukka, i don’t enforce the law, i AM the law” mentality.

also, if the harvard police were RIGHT THERE then why wasn’t this just handed off to HUPD?? isn’t that why they exist? because they know how to deal with delicate, tempremental academics? and because said academics shouldn’t have to deal with police officers who might not find your status as a tenured harvard professor quite so winning and deserving of special attention? so many unanswered questions!

6/17/09 Speaking of Faith: TV and Parables of Our Time.  I was happy to wake up to this episode, all about the commentary/insight on religion that good tv has to offer us with a USC prof who teaches a class on tv and religion.  they mostly pulled from BSG and Lost but also others.  I dunno. I think this is the first time i actually miss college: I would be very happy to take this class.

lizgoodwin:

I watched the Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility for the first time the other day. This movie is excellent because

a) Willoughby is actually played by a very attractive actor. All too often filmmakers fall into the trap of casting ok-looking WIlloughbys and Wickhams who are good “actors” or whatever—this is always a mistake. These characters must be pure sex. Nothing else works, because they are both sort of lame people, and it needs to be believable that the cool heroine could be duped by either of them.

b) Lucy Steele is a total passive aggressive bitch. If she and Elenor had communicated over email instead of in whispers in sitting rooms, she would have ended each gloating sentence about Edward with a smiley face. “We’ve been secretly engaged all this time! I feel I can confide in you since he thinks of you as a sister! =)” It’s very important that Lucy be a horrible person or else you start to feel sorry for her and wonder what the difference between she and Elenor really amounts to except that Lucy grabbed for what she wanted while Elenor suffered in (sanctimonious?) silence.

c) Marianne is just annoying enough in her romanticism. You kind of want to smack her sometimes, but you can still see why everyone loves her. Kate Winslet is a good choice, too, because she’s very pretty and sort of confused looking.

it’s true. it’s totally excellent. and not only because of emma thompson (although she is, as usual, absolutely wonderful). i have 2 copies of this movie (TWO! i don’t even have one copy of most movies! impressive!) because i got copies for both my sisters, forgot and tried to get a copy for one of them again. also because target sells them for $5 and you simply can’t say no to that.

Why is it called the Pacific Northwest, but not the Pacific Southwest, or the Atlantic Northeast, etc etc?

Crate and Barrel informs me that my wedding is 100 days away.

I just walked past Aimee Mann!

I’m watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off right now, and a) it’s basically just as good as I remember, and b) if it was made today, it would be a radically different movie, right? Would people really want to watch a movie about the charming, universally beloved guy who (to conflate things) Can’t Lose?

Wouldn’t it obviously be told from Jeanie Bueller’s perspective?

Mr. +J and I are headed there tonight—I’ve never been before. Anything in particular we should see/do?

marielk:

When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

o m [she’s a] g