(from The Talent Show)

from The Movie Blog: John Woo is Bringing Us He-Man!

Lots of listening & watching these past few days:

• Bought the new Arcade Fire disc Funeral (metacritic | pitchfork). It’s as good as all the hype would suggest. I’d say it’s somewhere between A Silver Mt. Zion and The Fiery Furnaces, and that ain’t a bad place to be at all. Certainly it’s different enough to warrant the interest it’s getting, and it’ll likely never be on the radio which gives it some extra zippity-zing in my book.
• Also bought the new Black Keys and Mark Lanegan discs a while back. Both’re chock full of bluesy goodness.
• Picked up the Daily Show book, America: The Book (Amazon). It’s…huge. There’s too much there for me to go through anytime soon since I’m reading nothing but global finance textbooks these days, but it’s really funny so far. I’d expect nothing less from the funniest show on TV.
• We watched two movies from Zip this weekend: Matchstick Men and The Crossing Guard. Neither of them great, but neither of them bad either.

I’ve been having tremendous fun with this. It got “grain silo” and “laser pointer”, but I stumped it with “cymbal”. It disagreed with me on how I defined it, but whatever. I was a drummer fer chrissakes, I should know.

Well, I should think so.

From the New York Times: Judge Strikes Down Section of Patriot Act Allowing Secret Subpoenas of Internet Data

A few nights ago I watched Don’t Look Back (imdb | rotten tomatoes), the documentary by D.A. Pennebaker about Bob Dylan. I’d watched parts of it before, but this time, watching it all the way through, I was reminded of two things:

1. Bob Dylan was angry. A few months ago I would have said he was a jackass, but I’m no longer so certain. Of course he was conceited, given how much adulation he was being given, but knowing what we know now about how Bob felt (his recent memoirs have revealed that he didn’t understand the fans who wanted him to be a folk hero, who saw him as the spearpoint of a revolution) I get the feeling that it wasn’t superiority or arrogance coming spewing out of him so much as it was frustration and exasperation. This gave me a completely different view of him. Nearly a tragic figure, except that he seemed to take a fair bit of pleasure in berating the journalists and fans.
2. Bob Dylan was a genius.

After watching the movie I had to put on the Royal Albert Hall CD and listen to “Desolation Row”, then I put in Time Out Of Mind and listened to “Highlands”. After that I put in the DVD of The Last Waltz and listened to “Baby Let Me Follow You Down”.

From CBC: New $20 bill goes into circulation. I got one of these this morning from a bank machine at First Canadian Place.

Natalie Merchant‘s cover of the Horseflies song “Sally Ann”.

I love how Bob Harris over on This Modern World is now referring to George Bush as “Delusional Monkey”.

“Just came across the actual rider signed by the John Kerry and Delusional Monkey campaigns in arranging their upcoming ‘debate,’ which will actually be (like most U.S. ‘debates’) more of a joint press conference.”

Normally I’d post politics stuff over on the other blog, but this is about the debates (and, therefore, has little to do with politics or news and everything to do with infomercials).

The platinum edition of Return Of The King is over 4 hours long.