Plan 9 from Outer Space is now available on blu-ray. That is all.
Anyone else get a kick out of what a huge fail Jeb Bush’s endorsement of Romney turned out to be?
As I mentioned earlier, the whole endorsement already had a certain ‘day late and a dollar short’ aspect to it – right before Super Tuesday, it could have been a big deal. A few days before Louisiana (where polls have Mitt getting spanked) is kind of not a big deal.
But then the Romney campaign inflicted the whole Etch-A-Sketch debacle on itself and their big endorsement sank with nary a ripple across the media universe. Which probably suits Jeb just fine.
Also, anyone else wonder if Jeb is counting on the Mitt campaign being such a huge disaster that it torpedoes the career of whoever Mitt picks as his running mate? Because that would explain Jeb’s support of Marco Rubio for the veep nod – kill two birds with one stone by watching Obama win re-election, thereby leaving the White House open for himself in 2016, while Rubio’s brand gets prematurely poisoned by both the increased media scrutiny and association with Romney.
Maybe that’s a stretch, but it’s gives me chuckles to think about it.
Kind of embarrassing. Wednesday was World Poetry Day and I had no idea. None. Didn’t celebrate it all. It’s the sort of thing I expect myself to be up on.
Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of Casablanca‘s release. Like any cultured raconteur worth his or her salt, I took a beautiful woman to a see in a theater in Arlington where it was playing for one night only, regaling her with witticisms about my great affection for this movie (she had never seen it in its entirety).
I love the film, but seeing it in crowded theater makes one realize how jaded one is towards objects of such broad cultural relevance. One sees them as cultural touchstones, but not as the things in and of themselves (I’m not trying to get all Heideggerian or Sartrean here, so don’t try to read too much rigor into my phraseology).
For example, there are a lot of very funny lines in Casablanca but when was the last time you laughed while watching it? Or were literally misty-eyed while watching the most moving scenes? It’s probably been a while. And maybe never.
But in a crowded theater, with one’s emotions heightened and feeding off the emotions of one’s fellow human beings, everyone (I included) laughed at the jokes and funny parts and got quiet and teary at Rick’s heartbroken depression and the final good bye.
The film even took on a sort of realism. Not ‘realism’ in the sense of a Mike Leigh film, but in seeing the characters as real people as well as iconic figures of culture, rather than almost exclusively as iconic cultural figures.
I still say that Jeb wants to be president. I still say that Jeb understands that he can’t be president if a Republican wins in 2012 (because his last chance to run is probably 2016, so he needs an open seat). Therefore, Jeb doesn’t want a Romney to win.
In other words, all men are mortal, Socrates is man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
If Jeb had jumped in earlier, he would have given Romney real credibility among strong conservatives (as well as given Romney enough of a boost in Florida to raise him over 50%).
But what happened is that Jeb waited to jump in until after Romney’s inevitability had become clear. But, he also waited until after the situation had reached the point where Mitt would have no choice but continue on a long, painful, slog that will at least last until June and could very continue right up until the convention.
Had Jeb decided to jump in before Super Tuesday or at least before the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, he could have done some real good for the Romney campaign. But he didn’t.
He waited until his endorsement wouldn’t mean much.
Why? Because Socrates is a man.
Publishers still believe in print. Maybe.
The Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery began on this day in 1965.
I lived in Montgomery, Alabama for a number of years and actually have fond memories of that city – the museum of fine art was free, the state archives interesting (if poorly curated and documented), and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (you can bet I took full advantage of the student rush tickets, just ten dollars starting thirty minutes before curtain). Plus, a one-time pornographic theater turned venue for independent and foreign films. I have never seen so many movies as I did then, catching nearly every film (there was only a single screen, so it was a movie a week, basically) that played there.
You also could not escape the history of the civil rights movement there, nor could the cultured veneer cover up extant inequalities.
The picture attached is of the Civil Rights Memorial outside the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was designed by Maya Lin, the same sculptor who also designed the Vietnam War Memorial. By the way, the white haired woman just left of center (next Roy Blunt) is my old boss, Congresswoman Grace Napolitano.
The memorial lists important events in the Civil Rights movement, as well as a quote from the Book of the Prophet Amos: ‘Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.‘
We celebrate the birthday of (arguably) the most important composer in classical music canon – Johnan Sebastian Bach.
My fondest memory of him is lying down in my dorm room, thinking of some girl, and listening to his Passion of Saint Matthew (though for some reason, the CD of it I owned used the French title, Pasion de Saint-Mathieu). It is still the most epic of his works and the one which shows best his ability to match sweeping works like Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies.
the coffee philosopher 