Archive for 'The Offical Record' Category
MOVIE REVIEW: HEAD OF STATE (2003) * * * (3 stars out of 4).
4 April 2003This movie, co-written, directed by, and starring Chris Rock, was funny and clever. I know it’s totally supposed to be just a light-hearted, silly, absurd comedy, but I was, nonetheless, a little bothered by some of the things in it. For example, why would a black Democratic Presidential candidate be campaigning in Texas and Nevada? […]
GOTCHA!
1 April 2003This conversation took place about fifteen minutes ago, between me and my brother Greg D. over the phone when I called him. ME: Greg, are you watching the news? GREG: No. ME: Somebody just shot George W. Bush! GREG: Really? ME: Yeah, they think he’s going to be okay. He’s still conscious and talking. GREG: […]
BOOK REVIEW: ACCIDENTAL PLAYBOY: CAUGHT IN THE ULTIMATE MALE FANTASY (2002) * 1/2 (1 and a half stars out of 4).
1 April 2003The book chronicles nerve.com columnist Leif Ueland‘s experience after he was “accidentally” thrust by circumstance into the position of chronicling Playboy’s search for their year 2000 “playmate of the millennium” for the Playboy Web site. So, early on, the book promises to be something of an expose of the shallowness involved in the whole liking-people-for-their-looks […]
GREG AND RACHEL WEEKEND.
31 March 2003As I mentioned, my brother Greg and his fiance Rachel visited for the weekend. They came Thursday, and we had dinner at the Carnegie Deli. Friday, we got up early for a business meeting, the ostensible purpose of the trip. We went to Curry Hill (Lexington and 28th) to find an Indian restaurant for lunch, […]
THEATER REVIEW: KIMBERLY AKIMBO * * (2 stars out of 4).
31 March 2003As my sister-in-law to be, Rachel put it, Kimberly Akimbo has the feel of a mediocre Disney-Channel sit-com. I think the play, with its references to Holocaust denial and with its adult sexual themes, might not play so well on the Disney Channel, but it didn’t really work at all as a comedy. The dramatic […]
ANOTHER NAME CHANGE.
30 March 2003I used to call this blog “David’s Journal”. But I learned that there were about a thousand other blogs called “David’s Journal”, so I changed the name to “Delusions of Mediocrity”, after the line in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind where the Julia Roberts Character says that asylums are full of people who think that […]
VISITORS.
29 March 2003My brother Greg and his fiance Rachel are visiting me for the weekend. Every time they say or do anything, they mock me by asking, “Are you going to put that in your blog?”
MAYBE I MADE TOO MUCH OF THIS. OR IS IT A CONSPIRACY?
27 March 2003They did wind up taping Letterman last night, after all, but La Boheme had to cancel its Matinee yesterday. Maybe the explosion yesterday in Times Square was really no big deal. There was not one word about this on the news as far as I could tell, except for playbill.com announcing the La Boheme cancelling. […]
ON THE HOMEFRONT LINES.
26 March 2003There was just an explosion in Times Square, about 500 feet from my apartment. I’ve felt a little jumpy, lately, about living right at Times Square, an obvious terrorist target. Lately, I’ve been better about not jumping and checking out the window every time a garbage can gets rattled or some thunder strikes. But this […]
ME ME ME!
26 March 2003An article about blogging on japan-japan.com has picture of me in Tokyo! It’s about two thirds down the page in the center, with the caption, “Dav on the right and his friend Danzig in Akihabara.” The article extensively quotes Dav regarding his technical contributions to blogging.
BOOK REVIEW: THE MARTIAN CHRONOCLES (1950) * * (2 stars out of 4).
26 March 2003Ray Bradbury‘s classic collection of stories about Mars was very disappointing to me. The book, except for the very end, is set between 1999 and 2005. I usually really enjoy seeing how things like that hold up when the time comes. But this book did not hold up well at all, mainly because it is […]
I AM NOT AFRAID.
24 March 2003MORE ABOUT THE PROTEST.
23 March 2003I got a protest sign to bring with me to the protest yesterday, but I didn’t bring it with me, because it seemed unwieldy, and I wanted to be able to move back and forth between the march and the much faster-moving “civilians” on the sidewalk. But I was going to put a crazy nonsensical […]
I PROTEST.
22 March 2003I marched in the big protest in New York today. Police estimate the size of the crowd at about 200,000. The most entertaining part was a guy standing with a bullhorn, saying, “Your attention please. Your attention please. Do not panic. Everything is under control. Please go about your business as if nothing out of […]
MOVIE REVIEW: WILLARD (2003) * * * (3 stars out of 4).
22 March 2003This remake of the 1971 film by the same name has gotten quite a bit of criticism from reviewers for not being scary enough. But I think those critics miss the point. Willard is not supposed to be a scary movie. It’s supposed to be a creepy movie. And at that, it succeeds brilliantly, mostly […]
BOOK REVIEW: WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA (2003) * * * (3 stars out of 4).
22 March 2003This book, by Eric Alterman does a great job of disproving the myth that the media has a liberal bias, and demonstrating that the U.S. media actually has a conservative, pro-corporate bias. However, the book disappoints when it starts to try to prove the objectivity of liberal points of view. Specifically, any statement by a […]
BOOK REVIEW: AMERICAN: BEYOND OUR GRANDEST NOTIONS (2002) 1/2 (half a star out of 4).
22 March 2003MSNBC’s Hardball’s Chris Matthews’s New Book is just terrible. The whole time I was going through it, all I could think was “Was he drunk when he wrote this”? The book consists of a string of totally random and unconnected anecdotes about famous politicians and movie stars which are already extremely familiar to any American. […]
LET’S GO TEAM!
21 March 2003I just sent this email to ESPN-TV. Let’s see what happens. —– FORWARDED MESSAGE —– HOW TO MAKE SPORTS EASIER TO WATCH It would be a lot easier to watch sports, especially the college basketball tournament, if you’d make each team’s score be displayed the same color as that team’s uniform. For example, I just […]
“HE MURDERS HIS OWN PEOPLE.”
20 March 2003It seems so odd to me that so much is being made of the fact that Saddam Hussein has “gassed his own people”. Putting aside that this was long before the first Gulf War, what about President George W. Bush, who, as Governor of Texas, has overseen the execution of hundreds of Texas citizens? What’s […]
NYC: OVERRATED & UNDERRATED.
20 March 2003Sean S. sent me this article from Time Out New York (TONY), with the assurance that it was “your kinda shit,” which it is. It lists places and things in New York that the TONY editors consider to be overrated and those that they consider to be underrated. No surprise, practically all the overrated things […]
TOUGH CROWD.
20 March 2003I just got back from Florida, where I stealthily went for a huge surprise party for my mother Tuesday night. My brother Greg, his fiance Rachel, and I rented a ballroom, and had a big catered party with most all her friends. She was completely surprised, and even more surprised that I had come down […]
BECKS BEER: IT’S NOT A BUG, IT’S A FEATURE.
18 March 2003I just saw two ads for Becks Beer in a row. The first one shows a guy looking at an attractive woman from across a crowded bar while the announcer says, “Find something that scares you, then A) weep openly; B) begin making elaborate excuses; C) do it immediately. Life beckons, and you’re holding the […]
OUR NATION’S CAPTIAL.
18 March 2003I spent the weekend in Washington, D.C. visiting my friend David D. and protesting the imminent war with Iraq. There were some very clever placards, like “Bush & Dick: Make Love Not War” and “We need regime change in Washington” It seemed more light-hearted than angry or passionate, but it did get very venomous when […]
NYC RESTAURANT REVIEW: JEAN GEORGES * * * (3 stars out of 4).
14 March 2003After seeing this restaurant listed with an astonishingly high Zagat food rating of 28 out of 30, I was delighted to learn that they have a $20.03 prix fixe lunch special. But I was quite disappointed with the food, which was really quite ordinary.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
13 March 2003Sean S. writes in to say, “I purchased the book-on-tape of ‘Cryptonomicon,’ and on the cover, instead of ‘Abridged,’ it says ‘Unabridged Excerpts.’” War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is French. Abridged is Unabridged.