Reading Update...

Bill Kauffman's Bye Bye Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, And Their Underdog Crusades To Redraw American's Political Map (2010).

Sample quote: "The American Empire is dead. That gathering murmur you hear is not sobbing: Good riddance to the damn monster. Rather, the noise is the sweet hum of revolution, of subjects learning how to be citizens, of people shaking off (or flipping off) their Wall Street and Pentagon overlords and taking charge of their lives once more, whether as members of verdant countryside or the sodality of the city neighborhood."

Movie Update...

Firefly (TV series, 2002)

Sample quote from Captain Mal Reynolds: "It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another."

By the way, I did not watch every episode of this series. I watched about four episodes.

Reading Update...

The Freedom Manifesto: How To Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, Work, and Waste by Tom Hodgkinson (2006)

Sample quote from the chapter titled 'Forget Government:' "Then there is the spectacle of a general election. Every five years or so, the people, who have been more or less ignored by the politicians since the previous election, are suddenly bombarded with the notion that voting is very important. ... I suppose that the whole thing can be enjoyed for a few moments as a piece of entertainment. The mistake is to think that it has the slightest meaning or relevance to our everyday lives whatsoever."

Movie Update...

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's London Calling Live In Hyde Park (2010).

Best tracks: "Racing In The Street" and "Jungleland."

If you enjoy blogs with posted music, then you should check out this blog...

"Some Local Loser"

http://somelocalloser.blogspot.com/

Reading Update...

American Splendor: Unsung Hero by Harvey Pekar and David Collier (2003)

Reading Update...

Runaway American Dream: Listening To Bruce Springsteen (2005) by Jimmy Guterman

Sample quote: “The rock ‘n’ roll era ended some time between the release of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Ragged Glory and the death of Kurt Cobain, roughly around the same time ‘hot topic’ changed from something exciting to talk about to the name of a retail chain in shopping malls that specialized in goth and metal fashion. When someone in purple hair, covered with tattoos and sporting a safety -pin-pierced cheek smiles at you in a Hot Topic store and asks, ‘How may I help you, sir?”, the co-option of rock ‘n’ roll culture by commercial culture is pretty much complete.”

Reading Update...

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres (2005)

Scheeres attended my high school (Harrison High School in West Lafayette, IN) five years before I started there. Part of this memoir is about her time at Harrison H.S. "Weird" is the best word that I can think of to describe the experience of reading a book written by a person that attended my high school at almost the same time that I did. "Weird" and that is for sure.

Music Update...

Ringo Starr's Y Not (2010)

Best Song: "Can't Do It Wrong"

Reading Update...

The Sorrow Of War: A Novel Of North Vietnam by Bao Ninh (1993)

This novel is written by a veteran of the Vietnam War that fought with the North Vietnamese Army.

Sample quote: "He wrote, cruelly reviving the images of his comrades, of the mortal combat in the jungle that became the Screaming Souls, where his battalion had met its tragic end. He wrote with hands numbed by the cold, trembling with the fury of his endeavor, his lungs suffocating with cigarette smoke, his mouth dry and his breath foul, as all around him the men fought and fell, one by one, with loud painful screams, amidst loud exploding shells, among thunderclaps from the rockets pouring down from the helicopter gunships."

Movie Update...

Strange Brew (1983)

I read that this film is supposed to be based on Hamlet.

Reading Update...

Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006)

Sample quote: "He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."

Reading Update...

War Is Boring: Bored Stiff, Scared To Death In The World's Worst War Zones by David Axe and Matt Bors (2010)

Sample qoute: "We are a world at war, sometimes quietly often not. We are the cleverest monsters, and we deserve everything we've got coming."

Christmas Card

This is the scan of the front of a Christmas card that my sister-in-law, Kama, made from one of her paintings.

Reading Update...

Bret Easton Ellis's Imperial Bedrooms (2010)

This novel is the sequel to Ellis's novel Less Than Zero.

Sample quote: "I go into my office without turning on the lights. I check e-mails from all of the accounts: reminder of a dinner with the Germans financing a script, another director meeting, my TV agent asking if I've finished the Sony pilot yet, a couple of young actors wanting to know what's happening with The Listeners, a series of invites to various Christmas parties, my trainer at Equinox--having heard from another client that I'm back--wondering if I'd like to book any sessions. I take an Ambien to get to sleep since there's not enough vodka."

Scary Drawing from a Three Year Old Child

Music Update...

Cheap Trick's Sgt. Pepper Live (2009)

This CD was a lot better than I expected. Cheap Trick does the songs from the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper straightforward and in order. Cheap Trick covers the Abbey Road 'medley' at the end of the CD. I recommend this CD to Cheap Trick fans.