Friday, March 18, 2005

 
THEATER REVIEW: THE MARIJUANALOGUES * * 1/2 (2 and a half stars out of 4).
External link: http://www.marijuanalogues.com/

This show is funny and cute and clever with just the right blend of outrage and self-effacing humor, though some of the jokes do fall a little flat. It's worth seeing before it closes on March 27.

This is The Official Record. 6:32 PM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2005/03/theater-review-marijuanalogues-12-2.html

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BOOK REVIEW: WHERE THE RIGHT WENT WRONG * * * 1/2 (3 and a half stars out of 4).
External link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312341164/ref=lpr_g_1/102-9610666-0600944?v=glance&s=books

I'd never been a fan of anything Patrick Buchanan had to say. But his latest book, Where the Right Went Wrong : How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency was gripping and insightful. We've all heard the criticisms of the Iraq war from the liberal point of view. But Buchanan very eloquently and devastatingly critiques it from the right, pointing out that it is not in any way "conservative" to start a war with a country that posed no threat to us and did not want war with us, and that by lying in order to do so, we have made enemies of all the peoples of the Middle East, except for Israel.

Where I was sure that I would part ways with the pro-life, anti-gay, anti-affirmative-action Buchanan was the second half of the book, when he discusses social policy. Instead, I was captivated and captured by his well-reasoned arguments against the policy-making decisions of the Supreme Court over the last 50 years. His well-taken point is that it started with the 9-0 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This case, outlawing racial segregation in schools, was so hard to argue with on policy grounds, that people have been reluctant to point out that the Court exceeded its power in that case. And over the years, the court has gotten more and more bold and more and more specific in inventing rules out of thin air, notably in Roe v. Wade, in which the Court made very specific legislative rules regarding what can be done in which trimester-- the sort of policy decisions that we expect to come from a legislature.

I don't agree with Buchanan's politics at all. But his book is very interesting and persuasive.

This is The Official Record. 6:12 PM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2005/03/book-review-where-right-went-wrong-12.html

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Sunday, March 13, 2005

 
WE HAVE LEARNED NOTHING.
External link: http://maxpages.com/implants

I remember when I was in high school, and we learned that in Victorian times, standards of beauty were so insane, and women were so obsessed with their apearance and so screwed up in their heads and so subjugated by men, that they would have their lowest ribs removed, so that they could have a slimmer waist. Some even died in the procedure, we were told. I remember that my classmates and I were all aghast at this sick, barbaric practice.

That was right around when breast implants started to become popular.

This is The Official Record. 11:54 AM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2005/03/we-have-learned-nothing.html

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MOVIE REVIEW: CRAZY LEGS CONTI: ZEN AND THE ART OF COMPETITIVE EATING * * * (3 stars out of 4).
External link: http://www.crazylegsconti.com/

This funny and smart documentary about competitive eating contests maintains just the right mix of reverence and whimsy for the sport. We follow narrator Crazy Legs Conti, holder of a world record for eating the most number of oysters in a single sitting, as he pursues his dream of qualifying for the Fourth of July Nathan's hot dog eating contest.

I think my favorite moment in the movie was when he Conti meets 131-pound Takeru Kobayashi, who has dominated the Nathan's contest for the last few years. Conti says that to compare Kobayashi to Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods is an insult to Kobayashi, because Jordan isn't scoring twice as many points as the next leading scorer in the NBA, and Tiger Woods isn't finishing tournaments with twice as many shots below par, but Kobayashi is eating 50 hot dogs at the Nathan's contest, and the second place finisher is only eating about 25.

This is The Official Record. 11:34 AM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2005/03/movie-review-crazy-legs-conti-zen-and.html

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