This is a link from AndrewSullivan.com but it’s so outrageous it needs to be reposted again and again.
In an article by Loren Jenkins, now at NPR, the writer argues in this Salon piece in 1998 that Osama bin Laden is just a harmless renegade. Look, I know hindsight is 20/20 but this little article reads like a schoolmarm’s aspirations to Journalism. Is this an argument for ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq? I don’t know.

In college I was in a band with a bunch of fellows who I still sometimes see. The band was called Mendesfraü, which was supposed to be a pseudo-menacing name built to attract an audience — any audience. The band was terrible and I think I was the worst part of it — I had a very nice set of white Pearl drums that I couldn’t play for the life of me. Well, I could keep a beat but that was about it. I didn’t even look right on the “throne,” which I always thought was such a great drummer’s name for a “swivel stool.”
Anyway, I saw the videotape that a friend made of us at the time (1989 or so) and I got to witness all my pre-grunge worship of the Pixies, Sonic Youth, and the Swans all over again. I was young, the band was bad, but it was fun. Long live youth.

I noted a few days ago that I saw Éloge de l’amour (2001), also known as In Praise of Love, at BAM Rose Cinemas.
What is incredible about this latest film by Jean-Luc Godard, the granddaddy of French and now American cinema, is that it completely captures the difficulty of knowing where we stand in history’s great unfolding. Godard eloquently examines how we live our lives in modern cities (e.g. Paris) only to consistently misunderstand our place in history, how we got her, and where we are going. We go day-by-day, waiting for the next catastrophe or the next war and, in the interim, try to love and be faithful and hopeful.
Godard’s project is one of disorientation — he shows us our frailties and how we rattle around from one thing to the next with expectations that rarely get fulfilled. In the movie, a French director is eager to make a film about the three stages of life: youth, adulthood, and seniorhood. What he makes clear, through moving the film backwards in time, is that only adulthood really counts and that the rest are only preludes to non-existence.
I took slight umbrance at his silly anti-Americanism that reads like 60s agitprop. But really, he’s only remarking about how the rest of the world sees the U.S. — removed from history, blundering onward, essentially just, and in a blind way that the rest of the world strongly desires.

What is up with this mini-triumph?
The Ring
fear dot com
One Hour Photo
From what I can tell, these recent movie releases have the following things in common:
1. Expensive Flash Web sites (1HP is the nicest), which is good because at least there are a few Web developers getting highly paid
2. Death stalks everywhere as if Armageddon was really in the wings.
3. They all feature one sad actor who needs a comeback but probably won’t get one like John Travolta did 10 years ago.
4. They all look pretty fascinating thanks to their high production values, but also their focus on death and old, sad actors that I used to like.

I see that the Brooklyn Museum of Art is showing the inimitable Judy Chicago in just a few days.
I can hardly wait. I’ve always thought that Ms. Chicago is one of the least talented, self-centered, and directionless artists living today. Her most well-known piece, The Dinner Party, has supposedly been seen by over 1 million hapless souls. It consists of “women’s art” – china, ceramics, etc. – on a huge table set for many people and it’s kind of ugly. It’s without any personality and pays poor tribute to the women it is intended to honor.
As for why I really don’t like Ms. Chicago, take a look at her so-called “Holocaust Project,” which she completed in 1993. This project is about as facile as they come and has absolutely nothing to do with the real issues or studies of the Holocaust. Here is the first line of her Holocaust Project Web site description: “The Holocaust Project is an art exhibit which casts the Holocaust as a reference point for an exploration of profound issues that relate to the human condition – past, present and future.” In the book that I saw by her in the Albany State Museum about ten years ago, there were terrible paintings of wretched people (victims) clutching at blue striped cloth.
Ugh. I hope that there are protests outside the Brooklyn Museum this weekend.

Hi. My titles are not working right now. I’ll try to figure it all out but I’m sorry if for some reason the monologue makes no sense without the title appearing at the top of each entry.
In case you need it, 9/15’s post was titled Monitor, 9/12 Contemporary Art Project, 9/10 Presence, and 9/9 The Good Girl. I’ll leave the rest to the fine technical folks at Blogger.com, who I honestly am beggining to think have gotten too big for their britches. Granted, I only pay $35 per year for using their online software to post this here Web log. But their technical support and customer service is essentially nonexistent and their help pages are terrible, terrible.
So for $35, the system kind of works better and I don’t have to put a button on my page and there’s spellchecking, though I don’t need these tooooo often. I know it’s against the First Commandment of blogging to light a fire under Blogger.com, the first and finest source for Web logging software, but, honestly, they should get their act together.

I spend a lot of time in front of this little 22 inch monitor, which seems to be going the way of all things. Unfortunately so. Lines upon lines.
It’s also almost Yom Kippur, a time that seeing and looking and envisioning comes into play more than at any other time in the religion. I imagine that these two things are remotely connected and in fact they are. I saw Godard’s most recent film last night at BAM and thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it was difficult and arcane. I’ll write more after the holiday.

I found this Web site, Contemporary Art Project, inadvertantly today and, while the site itself could use some re-tooling, it features some very strong work by artists that I know and respect.
The idea behind the Web site is also quite unique. A small group of art collectors in Seattle promote the work of youngish artists and gift their artwork to museums. Where were these people when I needed them (joke)? I hope this group is still extant but the site’s copyright date makes this look doubtful.

In honor of those who passed away in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Afghanistan, I’m not posting anything tomorrow.
I generally don’t believe in those morally ambivalent commemorations like “Day without Art,” as I don’t know what is provided by giving up something that exists. Why destroy what you love in order to remember? I honestly don’t get it. I also do not understand this craze to re-picture that day in near every media vehicle.
But I’d like my personal reflections to be nonpublic tomorrow, a day that feels like yesterday when I saw those buildings burning and the sky was falling.

I had serious trepidations about The Good Girl, starring Friend Jennifer Aniston and the acting oddballs Tim Blake Nelson and John C. Reilly.
But it was very much worth seeing – a film about convenience, confession, cuckolds, confidence, and confidentiality. I really enjoyed seeing Ms. Aniston stretch every emotional tendon in her brain to make sure that the audience understood the complexity of her character and know the tortuous decisions she is forced to make in the narrative. The film is very well written, and if a bit shrink-wrapped, I highly recommend it.
Final word: it’s a bit of a cross between American Beauty, with its suburban angst and relationship hells, and Magnolia, with its casualness about difficult and real human relationships.