Tuesday, January 27, 2009

REACTIONS TO THE NEWS

My first experience with John Updike was the short story "A&P" that Dude and I read for Momberger's class. It was on the strength of the short story that I eventually read the four Rabbit novels. The main character is a kind of lazy slobby lothario and yet you kind of root for him just the same. Baseball fans should enjoy his piece on Ted Williams. I read that a few years ago.

I'm not sure why I stopped with the Rabbit novels. It may have been the shock of seeing him kill off Rabbit in the last book. I think the main reason is that the descriptions of his other novels didn't seem all that interesting. But then again, the Rabbit novels didn't seems to interesting either until I read them. I have some more short stories sitting around and I wonder if it will be motivation to read them or if Updike will just drift away in my consciousness. Rick Rookhiser has a few suggestions.

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James Taranto likes to point out how the media loves to identify Republicans in ethics violations while ignoring the party when the person is a Democrat. Recent example has the Chicago Sun Times identifying a busted Prostitute as a Registered Republican while comparing the case with Governor Elliot Spitzer, a man with no party.

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Glenn Reynolds has some fun with this one:

HOPE AND CHANGE? New, Transparent WhiteHouse.gov Forgoes Press Briefing Transcripts? The obvious explanation: Bush wanted transcripts online because he expected the press to filter what he said. Obama doesn’t want transcripts online . . . because he expects the press to filter what he says.


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This takes a little more time to read, but it explains why the proposed stimulus is not a good idea.

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Joe Torre's revenge book comes out Tuesday. Here is the NYT review. Am I alone in thinking that a tell-all book is a little unbecoming a guy like Torre? I understand that he is angry and I agree that the Yankees were foolish to treat him so poorly, but what about George Steinbrenner's biography made Torre think that he would be different? George fired Yogi Berra the first month into a season.

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UPDATE: An Item that will interest Steve. Asimov's Foundation series is coming to the big screen.
The studio plans to develop the film for Roland Emmerich, the director of the cataclysmic sci-fi movies “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”

2 comments:

Sir said...

I was excited about the Foundation series coming to the big screen until you said it was Roland Emmerich. That's pretty sad as his movie characters tend to be pretty one dimensional and Amimov's series is a sweeping, complex, and very broad Universe, I just hope he doesn't screw it up!

E said...

Torre: "You didn't want to put up the extra $2m a year to keep me in New York? Well, you bastages, I'll make it this way, at your freakin expense!" Not good for his legacy, maybe, but I might take the $millions over a pristine legacy too, esp. if I still had time to work on the legacy after cashing the checks. Besides which, the excerpts that are getting so much play seem pretty tame to me. If that's the red meat, the book as a whole must be pretty mild. What about steroids?

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