And On A Lighter Note....

Life is for the living, so I'm going to tell you how I'm living, specifically what I'm reading, what I'm listening to, what I'm watching:

Movie: Broken Flowers
Went to the Angelika Cinema on Houston (Manhattan, that is) today to see an indy flick. I've been doing this for about a decade; makes me feel urbane and sophisticated. (Ha, ha.) Also allows me to forget about life for a few hours. This indy flick, directed by Jim Jarmusch (of "Ghost Dog" fame, with Forrest Whittaker), is your typical slow-moving, dialogue driven indy. Not bad by any means, mind you. (It takes a certain amount of practice and continued watching of indy flicks to get the pace down to the point of where it doesn't bother you and it becomes rather enjoyable.) Bill Murray plays an affluent, lonely bachelor who gets an anonymous note from one of his former girlfriends that claims that he's a father of a 19 year old boy, and that the boy is coming to find him. The note is anonymous. His subsequent quest to find out which one of his former girlfriends is the mother leads to several strange encounters, some pleasant, some not. Worth seeing if you're into indies.

Show: Rome-HBO
I got hooked into this about three weeks ago. A historically accurate telling of the fall of the Roman republic to Julius Caeser. Always worth recounting, these historical stories. They remind us all of how delicate democracy is, and how men with guns can destroy civilian, democratic rule. Mao didn't say "power grows out of the barrel of a gun" for nothin'. Well acted, well scripted, well costumed, and a pretty convincing faux Roman buildings.

Music: The Nice-Hold On To A Dream
Keith Emerson's first big band, pre-dating Emerson, Lake & Palmer, did some groundbreaking music. This compilation of The Nice's "best of" material is fun to listen to, even though it sounds very dated, very 60's. (Titles like "Flower King Of Flies" and "Diamond Blue Hard Apples Of The Moon" smack of that weirdly psychedelic 60's, LSD driven lyricism.) The production on most of it isn't very good, but it is awfully entertaining. Emerson was really one of the first rockers to incorporate classical, jazz, ragtime, and hard rock into pop music. He also beat the living crap out of his Hammond organ, coaxing all kinds of weird and wild sounds out of it. (He used to stick knives into the keys of his L-100 Hammond.) Emerson clearly was heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix at this point, which makes perfect sense, as The Nice did several British gigs with Hendrix. Never big in the States, The Nice are a good listen, despite the technical shortcomings of bassist/vocalist Lee Jackson. (Who, though interesting vocally, certainly was no Greg Lake.)

Mildly Embarrassing Moment Of The Week:
A security guard at Barnes and Noble spying me looking at a Teen Beat magazine Hilary Duff exclusive.

Currently Reading: A History Of The American People, by Paul Johnson
Not to be confused with Howard Zinn's America-hating, agit-prop tome, this comprehensive 1000 page history is quite honest, exceptionally researched, and extraordinarily incisive. It also forces one to continually rethink and re-evaluate how we arrived at this point in American history. It also has reminded me of how thoroughly deficient American history is taught in schools.