media round-up

-thanks to a loan from the inimitable B, we watched "paths of glory" last night. not only did it help fill in my kubrick gaps so that i count myself a legitimate fan instead of a poser, but also? this movie, like so many other legitimately thoughtful meditations on war in general, got me all worked up about what a vile, unethical, willfully ignorant petty tyrant the current president is. he's like the opposite of everything i thought was the point of the good old US, and i am mystified and alienated by whatever cultural priorities elected him. but anyway, "paths of glory" was totally good, of course.

- (buffy the vampire slayer + nancy drew) x pretty in pink = veronica mars

-about two weeks ago, we finished the last of "the wire" that is available on DVD. so now we have to wait who-knows-how-long to have our suspicions about how the world works further confirmed in realistic and reality-based fictional terms. meanwhile, i'll hold onto those suspicions, and dream of a media world in which black people are just as complicated as white people (who knew?!).

-anti-smoking ads make me go apoplectic. number one, they are paid for by tobacco companies, and therefore have been deliberately created not to work. number two, the lie that smoking is only about individual choice, when decades' worth of work, billions and billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours have been spent figuring out how to bypass and manipulate individual choice, seems like one of the most perniciously evil disingenuities of our time. number three, you know what's A LOT more dangerous than smoking, statistically? driving. and also not having access to health care. the japanese have a longer life span than us and they smoke a great deal more than americans. these anti-smoking ads forward a seemingly quantitative way of thinking that is false, and there is a great deal at stake there.

-"my name is earl" ain't what it used to be.