Remotely Queued Fear and Loathing in America, Hunter S. Thompson A Confederacy of Dunces,
John Kennedy Toole
Recently Processed Endymion,
Dan Simmons The Fall of Hyperion,
Dan Simmons Hyperion,
Dan Simmons The Journey from Here,
Bill Bradley The Lexus and the Olive Tree,
Thomas Friedman
Don't call it a comeback. William Greider examines the post-election fortunes of Ralph Nader and discovers that, despite talk of a Democratic freeze-out, he's still holding all the right cards for 2002. Kudos to Dick Gephardt for engaging Nader after the election rather than sulkily condemning him like the Gore crowd. "Nader and Gephardt talked about the missed opportunities last year. It would be helpful, the two agreed, to consult more closely in the future."
Forgot to mention this earlier, but Sunday was Berkeley's first (seventh?) birthday. He got some bones. As a coming of age, I'm contemplating letting him have the run of the house while I'm at work (instead of just the kitchen), but he still appears to have a hankering for my CD's (particularly, and inexplicably, the works of John Coltrane - he's chewed up three albums in Trane's oeuvre.)
Also haven't noted here that I picked up a Playstation 2 last week, along with NBA and NHL Live 2001. (My Playstation 1 died about six months ago, and I figured, might as well upgrade.) Still haven't found the killer app yet, although SSX, FIFA 2001, and Starfighter were all great fun to play (Thank you, Blockbuster Video.)
R.E.M. premieres the look of their new album, Reveal, and announces the first single will be "Imitation of Life." In semi-related news, Depeche Mode played their new single, "Dream On", on KROQ last week, and naturally it's now all over Napster (look for the 3:40 version, it's the best quality.)
Apparently, Robert Reich, Janet Reno, and George Stephanopoulos all make the Clinton shitlist, at least according to Bob Kerrey and The New Yorker.
Congrats and best wishes to Steve and Lyn, who announced at the blogger gathering this past Friday that they are getting married. Who knew PJ was such a matchmaker?
2/22/01 - "I saw 'Traffic' with my 16-year-old daughter," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told me, "and it had a very powerful effect. It's caused me to rethink our policies and priorities." Arianna Huffington examines the political impact of this Oscar contender on the current drug war morass.
Jacob Weisberg's Geography of Shame - where to go for your Second Act after a royal public screwup.
The new Episode 2 Select is online, featuring Temuera Morrison as [Spoiler] bounty hunter Jango Fett, sharing a special moment with his son [clone?] Boba.
And so ended the Age of Trilobites. Scientists uncover evidence of a previously unknown pre-Dinosaur mass extinction.
Now it gets interesting. Dikembe Mutombo is traded to the Sixers for Theo Ratliff and Toni Kukoc. I wonder if this will propel the Knicks toward acquiring the Glove...Update: Nope, but they did pick up Mark Jackson and Muggsey Bogues for Chris Childs and a draft pick. Interesting choice...Jackson is slow as molasses, but he commands double teams and can dish the ball, preferably to Spree, Houston, or Rice around the perimeter. Good trade.
As expected, Lucasfilm has disavowed the two Episode II speculative titles listed here yesterday.
Dikembe Mutombo for Marcus Camby and Glen Rice? Gary Payton for Allan Houston and Chris Childs? 24 hours before the deadline, trade winds blow fast and furious for the Knicks. While I don't much like Rice, I'd say the first deal is garbage. The second...I think I'd have to pull the trigger on that one.
The Russian Massacre: it seems bearish times aren't restricted to the online world. The Boston Ballet lays off almost a third of its dancers, including possibly one of their more famous ballerinas, Jennifer Gelfand.
The Case Against Oscar No. 3 for Tom Hanks. Not very nice, I suppose, but there's some truth here.
Former President Carter calls the Rich pardon "disgraceful." Wow. This ex-Presidential pile-up is almost getting ritualistic...nobody's missing a chance to whale on Clinton right now. Tick off a lot of people over the course of eight years, I guess. It seems like everybody's starting to lose the forest for the trees here. Rich's pardon was disgraceful, but it was also clearly politics as usual. How do you think Big Radio and the NAB managed to kill the low-power FM program? How do you think civilians ended up piloting the nuclear sub that inadvertently destroyed the Japanese fishing boat? Money buys access, access buys influence. Now's about the time the politicians of both parties and the press should let President Clinton slink into Chappaqua chagrined and focus on revamping our campaign finance system. Is that going to happen? Um...no.
Meanwhile, our new President is a uniter, not a divider...unless you're talking about John McCain, who's being frozen out of the discussion on a Patient's Bill of Rights.
The Globe issues a retraction to a story blogged here, the tale of the presumed marital infidelity behind the murder of two Dartmouth professors.
Episode 2: The Shadow Falls? According to Harry, that's the most recent title rumor, but since other folks have bought up the URLs, I suspect that's not correct. Other reports today have it called Rise Forth the Rebellion, but to me that sounds as lame as...well...The Phantom Menace.
Miami Heat PG Timmy Hardaway offers his assessment of Knicks fans: "If you're in Zimbabwe and you see a Knick fan, he's gonna tell you about it - 'I'm a Knick fan, I'm proud to be a Knick fan and y'all not gonna ever beat the Knicks.' The Knicks could be 0-32, and they could say that they're gonna win a championship. And that's a Knick fan for real. So I like the Knicks fans because they're loyal." Did I mention the Knicks are going to beat the Heat tonight?
The cads at Time play off one of their own memorable covers of the early Clinton years. Typical. They excoriate the former President for "not going away" while desperately following him around looking for a cover story and sundry other juicy printable tidbits. You can blame him for a shady pardon (explained in his own words here, via Medley), but you can't blame him (yet) for being a post-Presidential media hound.
Well, it was a long, tiring weekend for yours truly. GitM has never been a very personal blog as they go, but I suppose I'd be remiss in not mentioning a recent depressing development in my life. To get to the point, Elaine and I have decided to separate. Well, more to the point, she has decided to separate, since this wasn't really my choice and was presented to me as a fait accompli. I don't want to get into the details here, suffice to say that the decision involves, among other things, her being accepted to a graduate school in a city we as a couple had already taken off the table. I suppose she evaluated her present satisfaction against her possible future and chose to stake her fortunes on the latter. At any rate, this all began about a month ago, but since yesterday was the day she removed her stuff from the apartment, it seems we have now finally achieved some semblance of closure.
So, anyways, the parting was as amicable as it could be, I guess, and after having a month to come to grips with this particular reality I suppose I'm doing ok. Don't really feel like commenting on the situation any further here, other than to wish Eleni the very best of luck, so I'll let Messrs. Dylan, Stipe, and Costello take you to commercial. (It's for situations like this that God kindly gave us Blood on the Tracks.)
2/27/01 - Wellington, New Zealand considers 
