May 2012
-
…but I expect this is the funniest thing I'll read today: The Prez could go seal-clubbing and much of the media would see it as a new epoch for winter sports. From the Telegraph, on President Obama's distinctly unsurprising endorsement of same-sex marriage.
-
The "super-moon" stuff from last weekend–a full moon at the moon's closest approach of the year (or for some number of years, I think)–was a little overdone, with many pictures of the moon looking truly enormous. But if you actually looked at the actual moon, you saw it looking pretty much like it always does…
-
Vegemite losing its appeal to young Australians.
-
So I went to see the Metropolitan Opera's Rheingold tonight, as I had said I would, unless I didn't. And I'm glad I did. I greatly enjoyed it. Visually and sonically it was very impressive, although opera singers were never meant to be seen in movie-style closeup, the way video productions show them, and it's occasionally…
-
Presumably you've heard about this. Conservatives have been having trouble deciding whether they're more amused or appalled by it. I'm very much in agreement with Ross Douthat's view. A lot of people have attacked it, quite correctly, for its weird vision of the heroine Julia as a sort of social atom whose chief relationship is…
-
Images and Sounds I haven't posted any pictures here (my own pictures, that is) for a while. The reason is partly that I haven't been taking very many, and partly that I haven't sorted through the ones I have taken over the past months. And the reason for both those things is lack of time.…
-
I've just been browsing in the most recent issue of The New Criterion, which is a memorial issue for Hilton Kramer, the magazine's founder, who died recently. During the time I've been reading TNC–a little over ten years–Kramer hasn't appeared very often in its pages, and so I really don't know that much about him,…
-
Weekend Music Yeah, ok, I can't resist starting this up again, mainly because there's always something I want to share. This is one of the bands of the early '90s for whom the term "shoegazer" was coined. Originally it referred to peforming mannerisms: standing still, looking down. Now it means…well, stuff that sounds something like…
-
Sometimes advertising actually tells you something you wanted to know. Yesterday I saw an ad, I think on National Review, for an encore presentation of the Metropolitan Opera's Wagner cycle, which was shown in theaters in some sort of broadcast arrangement at intervals over several months, last fall I think, and maybe into the winter.…
-
This Polish movie is a biography of Saint Faustina Kowalska, the recipient of the revelations that became the Divine Mercy devotion. It came recommended by my friend Robert right around Divine Mercy Sunday with the note "Not perfect, but it has a good deal going for it. Likely the best film about a Christian mystic…
Light On Dark Water 