Not to appear ungrateful for the spectacular weekend weather — on Saturday, I found myself sitting in blazing sunshine, watching the boats go by on the Detroit River, wearing sleeveless linen — but we could use some rain. A mulch-don’t-rake fall lawn-care strategy only works if there’s enough rain to beat down all those shredded oak leaves to the earthworms, for whom they’re intended. Otherwise it just looks like leaf confetti.
On the other hand, who’s going to argue with 75 degrees in October? Not too many, that’s for sure.
And what a weekend it was. Dinner with friends, drinks with a friend, enough exercise to feel non-slothful, a new haircut. Shorter, because why the hell not? I’m still figuring out what it really wants to look like, but it no longer wanted to be the length it was. Nothing like a new haircut to welcome the fall. If it ever stops being summer.
Oh, and the Tigers won. (EDIT: Also, they lost.) Almost forgot about that, although I can assure you, no one here did.
So. We watched “Room 237” Friday night, new to Netflix, and recommended, even though I think it’s a rather flawed film. It’s about a number of batshit fanboys (no women, interestingly) of “The Shining,” who are convinced the film contains layers upon layers of deeper meaning than what’s commonly understood. Some of these are reasonable (the film is about the Holocaust) and some are insane (the film is Stanley Kubrick’s confession that he used his talents to help NASA fake the moon landing) and all are, at the very least, interesting.
Alan had less patience with it than I did, but we both found it both amusing and exasperating, and — as long as we’re looking for deeper meanings than the obvious — to really be about internet culture, and how it’s taken so many things and turned them into a colossal waste of time.
The bit about the red and yellow Volkswagens was funny, though. I have to watch “The Shining” again, now.
Some quick bloggage before I run a couple errands in the last of the afternoon:
Chuck Klosterman on “Room 237.” Good stuff.
Thomas Frank on the creativity industry, which is not particularly creative, and is, in fact, almost entirely wrong. When I say “the creativity industry,” I’m talking about the talkers — the people who write books and give TED talks on what’s allegedly this incredible creativity renaissance we’re allegedly experiencing, at the same time we’re stripping income streams from actual creative people and making it harder to make a living. Being creative, that is.
The Affordable Care Act signup website is a disaster, or so the NYT says. Has anyone here used it? How did it go?
Oh, and speaking of: Neil Steinberg finds Dan Savage’s defense of the ACA to be most persuasive.
And let’s hope the week goes well for all of us.
