Random thoughts

Celebrity Death Pool: Walter Cronkite Edition. It says a lot about America that we define "trust" as "believing in a guy who can read a script believably." There's actually a word for that in the dictionary, and it ain't "newscaster." It's "actor." As in pretending to be what you're not. I have no idea what Walter Cronkite was like when he wasn't reading a script from a teleprompter, but because he played the Reliable Narrator, I do know one thing about him that I didn't read once in any of his obituaries. He was to network news what Ronald Reagan was to politics: a performer elevated to a position of power and influence purely because of the way he could sell a story.

Reliving my childhood.



Hey kids -- comics! And wonder of wonders -- comics reviewed in the Books section of the daily New York Times!

My kind of girl.

Haven't read Asterios Polyp yet, but The Hunter is just as good as can be, and the Gaiman Batman is just as Gaiman as can be, which means that it's basically a story about telling stories, which is what Gaiman can do in his sleep.

Speaking of sleep? Last night I had this weird dream where I bumped into an old friend I haven't seen in over 10 years, and she freaked out because she thought I was dead. "You changed your e-mail? You got a cellphone? You moved out of that apartment you shared with Georgia? I didn't know any of that -- I thought you were dead!" At which point I woke up at 1 AM and tossed and turned till my alarm went off at 5. I'm still trying to understand what that was all about. Was it the universe telling me I should get back in touch with her? Was it some inner psychic warning that I'm going to bump into her in the next couple of days? Was it all that meditating-on-death crap bubbling up out of my subconscious?

Or was it just this?



I saw Thirst Saturday afternoon. Saying it's a vampire movie would be like saying Oldboy is a revenge flick; there's so much else going on that it's impossible to describe except to say that it's like a Zola novel with bloodsucking. (No lie -- the credits say it's loosely based on Therese Raquin. Accent egue on the loosely.) There are characters in it you so want to like who turn into real shits. There are nervous laughs, creepy tense scenes, and gory gross outs galore, and (thank you, God) in the end, this is actually a vampire movie that equates vampirism with losing your soul. You know, like in the original Dracula and not the romantic neck-rippers where being an undead male means you have just one more emotional issue for women to deal with. In the end, this movie is about love and evil, and why they are not anagrams for each other. Go see it.