another towering literary achievement coming up i'm sure

So Lynne Cheney has decided to write a biography of James Madison, our fourth President and the only one of the Founding Fathers who hasn't had a recent popular biography written about him.

No word yet on whether Cheney's treatment of Madison will include a steamy lesbian love scene like her previous literary magnum opus, Sisters.

warning - indiana jones is not a REAL archaelogist!

Sometimes your belief system is shaken without warning. That happened today as I read the Post's Outlook section and saw this column by a guy called Neil Asher Silberman. Silberman, who says he is an archaeologist, claims Indiana Jones is not a real archaelogist.

Well, I'm stunned. I thought the Indiana Jones movies were documentaries, I really did. Unusually well-done and exciting ones, but nevertheless there were enough true elements - like Nazi Germans and short Chinese kids, which I am pretty sure DID exist - to the movies that I thought they must be real.

So it was with some rising hope that I read Tom Shales' review of "Recount," hoping that perhaps I had gotten it wrong for the last seven-and-a-half years.

No such luck. Bush is selected as the de facto President in "Recount," too. Drag.

go, speed racer

So I'm not following Hollywood as closely as I, an American and therefore presumably a celebrity- and entertainment-crazed person, apparently should be. So the news that they are releasing a movie based on the cheesy 1960s TV comic "Speed Racer" was a complete surprise to me.

A.O. Scott doesn't like it - at over 2 hours, it sounds like too much time spent on too little substance.

I haven't even seen it and I don't like it. I don't like it because it's another unoriginal idea from Hollywood.

I remember the "Speed Racer" animated TV show. It frankly wasn't that good. It certainly didn't seem like the sort of thing that deserved to be revived 40 years later. But revived it is, as a live-action movie no less.

Why? Because it is easier and more cost-effective to plunder past products than it is to come up with an original thought. That is most obviously true for sequels (Is Bruce Willis up to "Die Hard XVI: Clawing at the Coffin Lid" yet?). But it is also very much true for this sort of thing.

Frequently, the quality of a revival of this sort is based in large part on the quality of the original TV show, movie, comic, book, whatever. Not often is the movie better. "The Brady Bunch" movie for example was pretty awful - it was only bearable perhaps if you had watched the TV series as a kid and allowed the movie to take you back.

And I suspect that will be the case with "Speed Racer." Go, Speed Racer - please get off the screens soon.

But of course, we largely have ourselves to blame. If fewer of us would watch this derivative crap, less of it would be made.

give will smith a break

OK, Will Smith's comment about Hitler is all over the internet tubes. But no, contrary to some press reports, Smith didn't say Hitler was "good."

Look at the quote closely - Smith didn't use many big words, we should all be able to understand them. He said, "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'"

That is absolutely true, and blindingly obvious. Hitler was obviously a dangerous and bad man, and if "evil" can be applied to a human being, Hitler would seem the obvious candidate. But Hitler did NOT see himself as evil. He thought the stuff he was doing was GOOD.

Now, you and I and a whole bunch of European Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, and almost everybody else outside of Nazi and neo-Nazi circles disagree. Will Smith disagrees, too (and he is rightly angry about how his statement has been mischaracterized). But he was right - Hitler did not see himself as evil.

That is completely different than saying Hitler was good. Judging from the reactions to Smith's comment, you'd think he was the Democratic nominee for the Presidency.

no, this is not a joke

Some news items really just make me go "what the fuck?" No, not ones like another illegal grab for power by the de facto Bush Administration, or about MegaLo Corporation laying off 10,000 people - I don't LIKE those stories, but I understand the radical venality of the Republicans, and the short-sighted drive to raise the stock price by 2 cents for the average American corporation.

No, stories like this are WTF stories - a beauty pageant in the rebellious region of southern Sudan.

It features much of what other beauty pageants feature - attractive women strutting their stuff, contestants wishing for world peace (of particular concern in Juba, which suffered thru a long civil war). And people saying how the beauty pageant is somehow an uplifting event.

Well, it isn't. It's a meat market. Women strip down and show off their tits and ass in various costumes, walking around in absurd hooker-brand high heels to arch their back and thrust their ass out just that little bit more, while drooling men ogle them and the organizers pretend it's about scholarships and presenting a good role model for the children.

They are gross. Hey, I like leering at I mean seeing attractive women as much as 95% of my fellow males (the other 5% or so prefer Mr. America). But these mass cattle calls really leave me cold, and perpetuate a stereotype of womanhood being embodied by a certain look - which in the United States at least involves helmet hair, teeth buffed to a shine with some sort of wax, and a commitment to baton twirling that goes well beyond the normal range.

I've always said they should just judge them by letting them perform certain acts upon the male judges - that would be more intellectually honest.

lame

I read this article about people who will run errands for you - you know, things like changing the TV channel while you are at work so your dog won't see the "disturbing" shows on Animal Planet. Or shopping for a used car for your teenager. Or helping you remember birthdays. And I find myself thinking "lame."

Not about the people offering the services - hey, they can make some decent money doing it, more power to them.

No, I mean their CUSTOMERS are lame. "Lifestyle management" is a euphemism for "taking care of the lazy and disorganized types who have enough money to afford an easy crutch rather than getting a little discipline in their lives."

Lame. Now, I think I'll call out for a pizza - making dinner is such a hassle.

welcome to the machine

The voices are no longer just in your head - things are talking to you more and more. I particularly like the one that says "the moving walkway is ending" at the airport. I have visions of people tumbling over at the end if the voice didn't warn them. (Yes, I know it is helpful for blind people.)

The voices are just the audio component of the machine that we speak to and interact with more and more and more. You know, the automated taxi reservation system, customer service, all the rest - it's more and more rare to get to an actual human being who has more brainpower than the computer program and might actually be able to help you with your problem.

But humans - even humans in India - cost more than a piece of software and a few taped messages. So get used to the voices, and welcome to the machines.

pavarotti

Opera great Luciano Pavarotti has died, as I'm sure you know. I was just watching CNN which had the story, including a little summary of his career.

It's a shame, of course, when somebody dies. But I guess it's kind of lost on me. They kept on playing clips of various operas that Pavarotti had performed, and of his later career with the Three Tenors. And it all sounded the same to me! I guess that makes me a low-brow philistine. Oh well.

radio, radio

Marc Fisher's Washington Post column on radio is consistently interesting. This week, he writes about the battle between some recording artists and radio stations over whether the stations should pay royalties directly to artists for airing their songs - the way they do, in the form of 2% of their revenues, to song writers and composers.

I've got to come down on the side of the radio people here. Although somewhat diminished nowadays, no question radio play for songs is also a form of advertising. I still buy albums* by groups I had never heard of off of the strength of hearing a tune on the radio.

And as much as I am sympathetic to musicians trying to make up for declining revenues from CD sales, the fact is radio isn't in such great shape either. Add another $450 million in payments - that's what the 2% of revenues equals - and how many stations will quit playing music altogether to join in the cheaper and tremendously profitable talk-radio format?

*Yeah, yeah, I'm oldfashioned and don't just download stuff onto an iPod. So sue me.