Xclamation

I first encountered Philip Roth through a film and lit course I took my sophomore year. We read his novella “Goodbye Columbus” and then watched the movie. I read a lot, but am not usually moved or touched or anything so middle America cliche as that, but this one got to me. It was just such a depressing take on love (and at such a young age), but it didn’t feel depressing for the sake of being depressing, it was earned.
So far, I’ve read “Goodbye Columbus”, “The Human Stain” and am quickly making my way through “The Plot Against America”. After that I’m going to go back and try to read his work in sequential order.

I want to put 500 DVDs in my Netflix queue, because, well, why not? I pay the same no matter how many films are in the queue, and I’m fairly certain there’s a limit of 500 discs, so I may as well maximize my investment.
Part of the problem is that movies keep moving off my queue and into my house (one at a time mind you. I have the 3 disc at a time plan, but I share it with my girlfriend and our roommate. More accurately, my girlfriend shares her three discs with us). The other, larger problem is that I don’t like movies. I don’t think they’re a very good medium for telling a story. You know why action films do so well? Because they acknwoledge that a 90 minute movie just can’t get the audience very deeply into the head of the characters. I like documentaries just fine, but a lot of them are just boring.
So far I’m up to 306 DVDs, I could have more if I put every season of every show I want to see, but I’m limiting myself to one season per show at a time. Why you ask? Because I like a challenge.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like 100 years ago (hell, even just 50 years ago) not a day went by without someone, somewhere, saying something witty and catchy. Everyone went around quoting pithy, clever little turns of phrase that tickled your ears and caught your eye when printed. Nowadays, we’re lucky if we can get a politician to zing us a pun. I mean, the closest we’ve had is Leona Helmsley’s 17 year old chestnut “Only little people pay taxes.” I mean, come on. Seriously people, 20 years from now, when people look at the 2006 edition of Bartlett’s, what are they going to see? A pretty damn flat coaster.