Sidebar Update

For some reason, I'm still not compelled to sit down and write a review longer than two sentences about any new TV show. Also, I've now seen Martin Scorsese's The Departed, and I'd love to rave about how freakin' incredible it is, how utterly brilliant Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio are, two standouts among a uniformly tremendous cast, but I just can't seem to work up the energy. Yet somehow, I find the time to change all the little pictures on my sidebar and update my template. Weird. Okay, here we go.

This week's Object of My Affection is the lovely and talented Hope Davis. I've been an infatuated fan since her beguiling turn in Next Stop Wonderland, and she's given a plethora of great performances in many other overlooked and underseen pictures, from The Daytrippers to Arlington Road to About Schmidt to The Secret Lives of Dentists to American Splendor to The Matador. And let's not forget one of my very favorite nobody's-seen-it-but-me movies, Mumford. I think that's where I really fell head over heels for her. It's such a sweet, wonderful little picture by one of our best screenwriters and directors, Lawrence Kasdan. (I'm pretending he didn't actually have anything to do with Dreamcatcher.) You should really go rent it. Currently, Hope is on TV, on Six Degrees, which is so bad, even she couldn't get me to watch a second episode. Pity.

Reading The Book of Jhereg, a compendium of the first three Vlad Taltos novels by Steven Brust. It's been a while since I've read a good, straightforward fantasy book. I'm midway through the first book in the collection, Jhereg. It's solid entertainment, if not especially outstanding in writing or plot. Takes me way back to my junior high school Dungeons & Dragons days, what with the dragons and the psionics and all. I'm led to believe the series gets better as it goes along.

I'm currently re-watching my Futurama season 3 DVDs. No special reason why I've decided to pull them out now; they're just somehow comforting to watch. Plus they're damn funny, of course.

Listening to The Who's first new studio album in 24 years, Endless Wire, which was just released today. Hooray for new Who music! Although at this point, they really should be calling themselves The Townshend/Daltrey Experience rather than The Who, what with half of The Who being dead and all. Some fine songs here, even if it doesn't sound much like The Who of yore. I have the feeling it's only going to grow on me more with repeated plays.

The Hating category was pretty much a no-brainer this week: I'm hating Rush Limbaugh. In a big way. Hating. Here's the deal: Michael J. Fox makes a political ad for a candidate in favor of stem cell research, which has the potential for medical breakthroughs in areas such as Parkinson's, from which Fox suffers. Then Limbaugh sees the ad and decides to attack Fox like the rabid little skunk he is, mimicking Fox's uncontrollable shaking (caused by his Parkinson's medication), accusing Fox of exaggerating or faking his condition, and calling Fox "shameless." What a scumbag. He's probably just jealous of Ann Coulter's position as America's #1 right-wing nutbag, and wants to reclaim the title for himself.

And the Lyric of the Week comes from The Who, naturally enough; it's from John Entwistle's classic "Boris the Spider." Apropos for this creepy, crawly Halloween night, no? Happy Halloween to you all, and hopefully I'll be back here again before too long.