Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Month: June 2004

  • Misty Beethoven is Now a Musical!

    Ok, I guarantee you that this post is worksafe, but I have just found out that Veronica Hart and husband have remade Radley Metzger’s classic Opening of Misty Beethoven into a musical. Apparently HBO is going to do a behind-the-scenes show about the film, and I predict that someday a softcore version of it is…

  • Email Bankruptcy

    Why Larry Lessig hasn’t responded to my email.

  • Blogad and Politics

    Chuck Kuffner summarizes a salon.com article and various discussions about blogads. He writes: Losing candidates, whether they intend to run again later or were just running this time to “get their ideas out there”, can similarly maintain a microphone and an audience. They may not get a paid pundit deal like Howard Dean has done,…

  • 25 Things to Know About Edating

    Here’s a piece I wrote for my love/relationship blog: 25 Things to Know About Edating. Actually, I bought unsolvedheart.com domain, so this URL may not work for very long.

  • What Future SUV’s Will Look Like

    Paris and London consider a ban on SUV’s. Says a Green Party activist: “They’re polluters, they’re space-occupiers, they’re dangerous for pedestrians and other road users. They’re a caricature of a car.” Here’s some great ideas for future SUV’s.

  • Supreme Court mp3’s

    Mp3’s of old Supreme Court cases.

  • Bloggers of Cumae Debate Immortality

    Mark Sarvas blogs about Book Expo and the usual suspects. Nice summary. While making a literary allusion on a blog comment, I discovered to my delight that I truly didn’t appreciate the full background of the legendary Sybil of Cumae. Here’s a great summary : Some facts I did not know: St. Augustine and some…

  • Ronald Reagan and the Sound of Music

    Dave Weinberger and Scott Kirsner blog the Boston Ideas Conference . John Perry on Structured Procrastination. Anthony Lane on old Ingmar Bergman films (thanks, Greencine). Dave Weinberger chides Rob Glaser for Real Players’ unusability Top 10 Internet Fads David Gergen Reminiscing about Ronald Reagan: …the G-7 summit conference in Williamsburg that he was hosting, and…

  • The New Fascist

    Here is a list of rightwing media attacks against George Soros. Outrageous! Full disclosure: I wrote commentary about George Soros’s support of Democratic causes for a political journal in which I expressed some ambivalence about Soros’s getting involved in US politics. But this stuff goes beyond the pale. I usually try to guard against using…

  • A Man Escaped–for a Dollar!

    Recently I have been shocked and delighted to find how many books are available on amazon for $.01! Just today I found: A first novel, Younger Than Springtime, by Greg Williams (a writing colleague in my JHU writing workshop), Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars for 97 cents, Dreams of My Summers by Andrew Mackine for…

  • Film Metacriticism

    The problem with most film reviews is that we never see a response. A critic might legitimately love (or hate) a film without the reader having the chance to see alternate reviews. Richard Corliss is my god, and he is never wrong, but truthfully, I’d like to see people who do disagree violently with his…

  • Overwrought Film Criticism

    Robert Castle’s remarks about two favorite films, Being There and King of Comedy It’s impossible to argue with Chauncey just as you can?t argue with television. One reason is that he sort of makes sense in the broadest fashion; secondly, if you suspect he doesn?t make sense, he still appears harmless if not a little…

  • Great Soundbite and SUV’s

    From a CNN article about a lawsuit about SUV rollovers. After receiving a damages award totaling 246 million dollars, the plaintiff ” Buell-Wilson, a 49-year-old mother of two, offered to knock $100 million off the damage award if Ford would fix the design problems in the Explorer that left her permanently paralyzed from the waist…

  • Sara Hickman’s Funniest Moments

    Sara Hickman is not only a great singer, she’s a great weblogger and probably one of the funniest women I’ve read. She has been writing her 20 Biggest Highlights from her Musical Past (most of which involve something embarrassing). Now it looks like she hasn’t updated her site to reflect the latest moment. Click more…

  • Dumb Repetition

    I didn’t try to do it, but I came across the videoclip of the spelling bee boy winning with the word “autochthonous” 6 times. (Update: Number 7 and Counting!) That is what we have today: the trivialization of news reporting by dumb repetition.

  • Thrilling Book Reviews

    Here’s a lot of book reviews I enjoyed recently: Kenneth Champeon writes (in my opinion) book reviews that sparkle with insight, witticism and sympathetic judgment. He is an expat living in Thailand and just seems to review anything remotely related to Asia. I’ve been reading his criticism for more than a year now, and his…