2009 Reading

1. Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy. Portrait of Kathy Boudin--Vietnam-era radical, member of the Weather Underground, convicted for her role in a 1980 Brink's truck robbery where two police officers and a guard were killed--and her family, particularly Leonard Boudin--constitutional lawyer extraordinaire, notably during the McCarthy era. Well-written for the most part, aside from occasional structural stutters, but handicapped by a weirdly passive-aggressive desire to lay the blame for Kathy's behavior on her relationship with her father. Braudy was a college classmate of Kathy's, and manages to be simultaneously too close to her subjects and unable to evoke empathy for them. For me the most useful (this is research) and interesting part of the book was the glimpse into the family dynamic, something lacking from other books by and about radicals who went underground.

Bruce Lee Week Day One

"An intelligent mind is an INQUIRING mind. It is not satisfied with explanations, with conclusions; nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion."

- From Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living.

Dorothy Parker and Bruce Lee teamed up to beat the crap out of Richard Nixon once. You could look it up.

I Have Seen the Future and It Creeps Me the F&%$ Out

I don't know if I'm squeamish or what, but there are two recent commercials in heavy rotation that I can't watch; I mean that I literally have to look away until they are over, or change the channel. The first is that AT&T commercial where the texting thumbs have FACES on them. Right, because the world would be better if our fingers were able to carry on conversations that our mouths are too busy to have. AGH! It makes my thumbnails itch, it is so damn wrong.

The other commercials are the XBox 360 commercials where they pan around the people's heads to show that the back of them have been blown open to become a stage, etc. Man, I'm sure glad that special effects have progressed this far, but if the future means that I'll be watching movies on the inside of the guy's skull in front of me on the bus, I'm heading back to the fourteenth century. In the fetal position.