Archive for 'The Offical Record' Category
BOOK REVIEW: WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA? (2002) * * * * (4 stars out of 4).
13 March 2003While I don’t agree with everything in this book, I did enjoy it thoroughly. Written by Dinesh D’Souza, the author of Illiberal Education argues against multi-culturalism in ways that are difficult to dismiss. He gives lots of examples of inconsistent and absurd results that would be achieved by true fidelity to the principles of multi-culturalism, […]
MOVIE REVIEW: CHICAGO (2002) * 1/2 (1 and a half star out of 4).
13 March 2003I finally saw Chicago with Andy M. and Sophie W.. The movie makes me want to see the play, but it does not translate well to the screen. All the little things that seem like they’d have been clever on stage (like using handkerchiefs to simulate blood), seem completely to avoid exploring the medium of […]
CLUBBING.
12 March 2003When I first got to New York, I used to go to night clubs a lot. It always seemed like a fun, exciting thing to do, and the variety of them here is overwhelming. But, after about a year, I realized that they are overpriced, obnoxiously loud, and run by psychotically rude people. So I […]
SOLO.
11 March 2003Jill Z. and I broke up. The reason was because she is religious and I am not, and we both want to have children and to raise them to be like ourselves in this regard.
MOVIE REVIEW: ONE HOUR PHOTO (2002) * * (2 stars out of 4).
11 March 2003I didn’t hate this movie, but I definitely didn’t love it. It seemed both predictable and absurd, which is always a terrible combination. But there were some moments of genuine tension and compelling creepiness.
MOVIE REVIEW: DAREDEVIL (2003) * * (2 stars out of 4).
10 March 2003Daredevil the Movie tries to do too much. Your typical comic-book superhero movie retells the origin story and follows one adventure. I’m not saying I demand that every movie in the genre follow some formula. But this successful formula does give a good sense of what can easily be accomplished without the story feeling to […]
BOOK REVIEW: BART SIMPSON’S GUIDE TO LIFE (1993) * * * (3 stars out of 4).
10 March 2003I really enjoyed this book. It reminded me a lot of Matt Groening’s “Life is Hell” books that I loved so much, years before the Simpsons was on TV. It had a lot less of the zaniness into which Simpsons has evolved (or devolved, as the case may be), and more of the honest realism […]
BOOK REVIEW: THE MATRIX AND PHILOSOPHY (2002) * (1 star out of 4).
10 March 2003This book was a huge disappointment. I’ll sum it up for you, so you don’t need to buy it. 1) How do we know that we’re not really just a brain in a vat, like the people in the matrix are? Descartes posed this question hundreds of years ago, and no one has ever come […]
LIVING LIKE A ROCKEFELLER.
6 March 2003I was looking at the directory for my building, and saw that there is an “S. A. Rockefeller” living here, directly above me– that is, their floor is my ceiling. I asked at the front desk if our Rockefeller was related to John D. Rockefeller, and the desk person said that S. A. Rockefeller is […]
SICK AS A DOG.
5 March 2003I am quite very ill. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that as a result I did not go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras this year, even though I’d pre-paid for a hotel. I changed my flight, though, to a two-week trip to San Francisco in May.
LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING.
4 March 2003Do you seriously think that this is a rhetorical question?
REFRESHING CANDOR FROM TYCO.
28 February 2003Normally, corporate annual reports are very upbeat, even when times are bad. The 162+ page annual report for the beleaguered Tyco International (NYSE:TYC), of which I am a stockholder, begins this way. To Our Shareholders: The past year was terrible for Tyco, its investors and its employees. The Company experienced a net loss of over […]
“PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT” JUST JUMPED THE SHARK.
27 February 2003I’d been really enjoying the new Showtime show “Penn & Teller: Bullshit“, and, in fact, I only subscribed to Showtime in order to see this show. But they argued so poorly for their thesis that laws outlawing public smoking are “bullshit” that it casts doubt on everything else they’ve said. Their first three episodes impressively […]
DAILY SHOW SCHIZOPHRENIA, PART III or HOW BIG IS THEIR GIANT DICK?
27 February 2003At the beginning of the month, I pointed out that Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show arbitrarily bleeped out the word “bush” when used by Rosie Perez to refer to her own genitalia, but not the word “pussy” when used by Lawrence Fishburne to refer to female genitalia, even though “Bush” is the name of the […]
DO ALL TIVO SUBSCRIBERS HAVE ME TO THANK?
26 February 2003I was one of the first Tivo customers, and early on, I answered their request for suggestions for improving their service. They never replied, but they implemented almost all of my suggestions. Actually, even back in 1999, these ideas seemed pretty obvious, I thought. Then again, maybe, if it weren’t for me, they’d never have […]
SPAM KILLS.
25 February 2003Have you ever seen one of those spams that says that the deposed leader of Nigeria wants to pay you millions of dollars to help move some money out of the country? Well, some Czech person who got taken in by the scam just assassinated the Nigerian consul to the Czech Republic after being taken […]
I’M BACK!
25 February 2003I got back last night from San Francisco. Here’s what I did while I was away. Wednesday, I arrived and had dinner at my cousin Diana‘s apartment with her husband, Adam, and her brother, mother, and father, who are, respectively, my cousin, aunt, and uncle. Then I went to Sean S.‘s and Dav C.‘s place, […]
AND I’M OFF.
19 February 2003I’m going tomorrow to San Francisco, because my cousin Neil B. and his wife Beth just had twins, Jonathan and David. David is named after my and Neil’s grandfather, David R., for whom I was also named. I’ll be back Wednesday night.
THE 100TH INTERNATIONAL TOY FAIR.
19 February 2003Jill Z. and I went to the 100th annual International Toy Fair yesterday. It was so fun. There were thousands of exhibitors showing toys ranging from old classics of years past to innovative new things. Some of my favorites were moldable scented soap with the consistency of play-dough, screened in butterfly houses, a Jesus action […]
THE STORM OF THE CENTURY (SO FAR).
19 February 2003It’s really bugging me how the media keeps calling this “the blizzard of 2003”. Like, if they just said, “the blizzard”, I’d be all like “What blizzard? Do you mean the blizzard of ’69?” I appreciate that they’re trying to make it seem historic, and I’m sure that history will come to call it that […]
TV IS TOTALLY PHONEY.
19 February 2003I recently saw tapings of both Chapelle’s Show and The Ricki Lake show. There’s a lot of pretending to cheer for no reason and even pretending to laugh at jokes you already heard in an earlier take.
THEATER REVIEW: SCATTERGOOD * * * 1/2 (3 and a half stars out of 4).
19 February 2003This great play is smart, funny, and ultimately very dark.
THEATER REVIEW: IMAGINARY FRIENDS * * * (3 stars out of 4).
19 February 2003This soon-to-close musical about the real-life literary feud between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman was quite entertaining. It was funny and smart and witty and sometimes powerful. I don’t think it should have been a musical, though. The play is somewhat surreal, and the music lends to that surrealism, yet it also distracts from the […]
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY.
19 February 2003My girlfriend, Jill Z. came to visit for Valentine’s Day weekend! We had a really wonderful weekend exploring the city. She hadn’t been to New York in many, many years, and I was showing her around. She also had seen snow only twice before, and got to be snowed in here for the biggest blizzard […]
DAILY SHOW SCHIZOPHRENIA, PART II or MORE FUN WITH BUSH AND DICK.
13 February 2003A couple weeks ago, I pointed out that Comedy Central‘s the Daily Show with Jon Stewart bleeped out the word “bush” used to refer to female genitalia, but not the word “pussy” used to refer to female genitalia, which seemed pretty arbitrary to me, particularly considering that “Bush” is the name of the unelected President […]