Mokka mit Schlag » Pop Culture

Reflecting back on my recent trip to Beijing (more on that still to come as I get time to write up my thoughts) one of the most striking things was the contrast between personal, day-to-day freedom in Beijing and the United States (especially NYC/Los Angeles/Orange County). I’m not talking about political representation or freedom to read whatever I felt like, but just the simple ability to go whereever I felt like going without being hassled. To my surprise, by that measure Beijing came off way better than the United States does these days, and that doesn’t speak well for the U.S.
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Can someone explain to me why John Updike doesn’t have the Nobel Prize yet? I just got around to reading Bech: A Book, and was once again transfixed by Updike’s command of the English language. There may well be authors in other languages who deserve the Nobel in Literature more than he does, but I can’t think of one still alive and writing in English.

The man’s pushing 80. He may not have that many years left. Can’t we get him one before it’s too late? Surely if Nobels can go to Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, there’s room for an Updike?

Wow. What a disappointment. I was looking forward to this one for months, but I guess I should have known Hollywood couldn’t do this book justice. I just had no idea how badly they’d fail. I mean, I knew they were going to water down the anti-religious message. (The Golden Compass was flat-out heretical. The Subtle Knife was actively blasphemous, and by the time the third book arrived, the series was bordering on satanism. No way Hollywood was going to follow that plot line.) However, I didn’t know they were going to open with massive spoilers.
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The Brooklyn Public Library allows unlimited renewals as long as no one requests a specific book. That means books tend to pile up in one’s living room since you never have time to read everything that’s worth reading. However, before moving to California next week I have to bring all these back. This is to remind myself what I still have to get to:

The Golden Compass was sold out at our local movie theater last night, which proved fortuitous since it meant we saw Juno instead. Wonderful movie! By all means, go see it. The dialog was extremely clever, even verging on Whedonesque. The basic story is about 16-year old Juno getting pregnant (after what seemed like her first time, though I don’t think that was definitively established) and then giving the baby up for adoption. I do wonder a little about a girl as intelligent and strong-willed as Juno not figuring out how to use reliable birth control, but I guess that was necessary to get the plot moving.

Of course, the movie had the obligatory, girl-goes-to-abortion-clinic-but-decides-not-to-go-through-with-it-at-the-last-minute scene. Otherwise it mostly avoided clichés. At least it didn’t go with the usual television cop-out of Juno magically discovering she wasn’t pregnant after all.

Still, just once I’d like to see a movie about a teenage girl who gets knocked up, has an abortion, and lives happily ever after, just like thousands of real teenagers do every year. (more…)

I’m trying to transfer my Blockbuster Queue to my new Netflix queue but I’m runnign into a couple of problems:

1. There’s no way to import a list of movies. I have to add each one individually. That’s a pain for 700+ movies.
2. Every time I add a movie, Netflix creates an annoying popup window. Anyway to turn that off? The popup blocker doesn’t seem to stop it.

Anyone know of a solution for either of these?