The first half of Pathwas beautiful, though grueling.

When I think of the ad revenue ABC forfeited by running it without commercials, it occurs to me that they paid off dems such as Sandy Berger to attack the production, to make sure that the buzz would justify taking that loss. Insty live-blogged it a bit, and links a few reactions, sharing a few thoughts of his own.

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is being mischaracterized. And he'd prove it, if only those exculpatory documents hadn't been stolen.

Both the Clinton Administration and the Bush '43 Administration made mistakes in the War on Terror. If The Path to 9/11 makes 'em both look bad, it's probably balanced in that regard.

Insty's right, though. Berger, at least, should STFU.

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We saw the movie today. I believe Oliver Stone may have tripped and accidentally made a pro-American film.

It was well-done. At least, parts of it I were: I have a phobia about entombment, so while Attila the Hub watched the movie, I watched his shoulder. He was wearing the green Hawaiian shirt with the white flowers. Good choice, well-crafted. Durable weave.

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A week from this coming Sunday ABC will air the first of its two installments of The Path to 9/11. The conclusion will follow the next night, on the anniversary of the attack.

Govindini Murty of Libertas praises the production for its fidelity to the actual course of events that took us from the 1993 bombing of the WTC to the destruction of 9/11.

Please spread the word; this will be a watershed event.

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There are just layers upon layers, aren't there?

Is it a vegetarian anthem?

Does it compare, in its fly's-world-view, the eating of meat with the consuming of fecal matter?

Is it a commentary on the psychological arteriosclerosis of life in a whitebread trailer park?

Or is it yet another adolescent explosion of testosterone?—not that there's anything wrong with that.

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Who knew she was a 'head? Well, my friend Mikal knew. Apparently, so did Taylor Hill at jambands.com.

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1 Fake! AC can't even name a favorite album or concert date. Really seems like she's trying to connect to something she really has no idea about. Even so, the dead were the world's worst excuse for a band. Had she said she was a Nick Cave groupie, well...

Posted by: Pete Moss at June 27, 2006 04:19 PM (W1KqT)

2 She knows! That's a JOKE (hint:secondhand smoke from burning "unknown" substances at Dead concerts and it's effects on memory). She's posted pictures of herself at G-D concerts(including a 1990 concert in Germany) on her website before. She's even talked about it at length in the past.

Posted by: Darrell at June 27, 2006 09:06 PM (8TYF5)

3 No way Pete. She named her favorite songs, and they are by and large the Dead's best songs, although not the ones that a non-fan would have chosen (they aren't the most popular). The fact that she knows how horrible the 'space' thing is to those of us not on acid is the clincher. She's a dead head. Dead-head conservatives are not all that uncommon. We just don't take a lot of acid, so we don't stick out as much

Posted by: Kevin at June 28, 2006 03:26 AM (++0ve)

4 I'm pretty soft-core myself, though I do own a Stoney the Bear doll, and I am wearing a GD T-shirt (I use 'em as sleepwear).

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 28, 2006 07:59 AM (4IuF2)

5 Hah! I haven't purposefuilly listened to the Dead in probably a year. Ever since your post, I have listened to nothing but. Row, Jimmy. Row. Man, that song makes me pine for the days of high school. And weed. Weird that we outgrew one, and not the other

Posted by: Kevin at June 28, 2006 07:10 PM (++0ve)

6 Can a person even get decent acid these days? I suppose that's a dumb question for me since I've never had the opportunity to try it, and wouldn't know good from bad. Not that after my "fungal" experience I'd be terribly inclined to try it in the first place.

Posted by: Desert Cat at June 29, 2006 10:26 PM (xdX36)

7 Well, the advantage of LSD over shrooms—as I understand it—is that with acid one can control the dosage a bit better, and of course that's important with something as intense as tripping. I've never done shrooms, but my rules with acid were: 1) only when you're in a good mood; 2) have someone around who isn't doing it—to order food, interface with the outside world, handle medical emergencies, etc. I had nothing but pleasant experiences, and I've got zero desire to ever do it again.

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 30, 2006 10:23 AM (4IuF2)

8 one can control the dosage a bit better jiminy christmas did you hit the nail on the head! It was fascinating and quite incredible, but I never want to go there again.

Posted by: Desert Cat at June 30, 2006 07:18 PM (xdX36)

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Fucking amazing. I just saw Jesus Is Magic with Attila the Hub, and it was vicious, simply inhuman . . . and insanely funny. It's your basic standup routine, sandwiched by a silly story line. But this chick is beyond edgy&mdashedgy is eating her dust.

The title, in case you were wondering, is not particularly representative of the movie: she's got no issues with Christians. I'm a little concerned, however, that she might be a bit anti-Semitic. And the show is obscene. Yet it's funny, funny, funny.

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. . . on Tom Cat:

"Celebrity isn't an entitlement."

Indeed.

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Does one traditionally shake a Polaroid picture? And why? Is it supposed to make the image show up faster?—and what would youngsters today know about that?

The whole thing sounds suspicious to me.

And I'm shakin' nothing.

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Ted Nugent, or Alice Cooper? (I'll take plenty of each, please.)

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The movie.

I know some people think it's "too soon," five years after the fact. But if that's your perspective, you might want to take a look at this:

It wouldn't be there if the passengers of Flight 93 hadn't taken action. (And the White House wouldn't be there if it were easier to spot from the air: instead, our friends from AQ had to settle for the Pentagon.)

Ed Driscoll has more on United 93, via Insty.

And it's nice to know that someone in the entertainment industry has neurons that actually fire now and again. Other than Lionel Chetwynd, of course.

Please, guys: we want to see this addressed. We want to see victory over the terrorists. The victories can be symbolic some of the time, though the terrorists are very real. And this particular victory is about as real and basic as it gets.

Via Insty, Jim Garaghty's got some great thoughts on the film, including the fact that a few ignorant lefties refuse to admit that this incident even took place: Garaghty quotes one moonbat who maintains that the 9/11 Commission Report dismissed the idea of a passenger uprising on United 93. Naturally, Jim gives us the relevant passages from the Report that show the passenger assault did, in fact, occur.

Judith Weiss of KesherTalk discusses the movie's prospects: she foresees it doing moderately well in theatres, and then becoming a cult classic among those who really don't want us ever to forget what happened that day. I think it might do exceedingly well: one has to consider the effects of pent-up demand. I don't want to compare this movie to The Passion of the Christ, but I guess I must. After all, once more with Flight 93 there is a whole arena of human experience that we don't see addressed in the entertainment world very often. So when it is addressed, people will flock to see it. There are millions of people in this country who are profoundly grateful to the folks on Flight 93 for saving the Capitol Building. And I'll bet each of those people has $20 for a movie. As with watching The Passion of the Christ, it will be a deeply moving experience, and possibly a spiritual one.

The Kesher Talk posting has a great recollection of the passenger assault on the hijackers from the point of view of a surviving spouse, who was in contact with her husband by cell phone as the uprising began. It's sad and stirring.

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If you haven't seen The Right Brothers' new video yet, here's your chance.

Hm. The right hasn't really had an anthem band for some time—IIRC, not since Oingo Boingo. (No: my favorite wasn't "Only a Lad" nor even "Ain't This the Life." It's a bit politically incorrect, but I adored "I Want To Make Violent Love to You." Naturally, I never bought any of their albums, because they were such horrible reactionaries. And I only listened to them with the windows closed and the shades down, so I'm sure it was okay.)

Apparently, the Right Brothers have two albums out, and they have a new song, "What About the Issues?" that addresses a lot of their hate mail:

Whatcha gonna do to fight three chords and the truth?—
Just ignore the issues?

You can download it for free here, though there's no video just yet.

Hat tip: everyone, but I saw it first by linking from Hackbarth's site.

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The husband and I definitely argue like writers. James Thurber once pointed out that the typical way in which writers agree tends to go like this: "you're right; you're absolutely right. The problem is, you don't have the faintest idea why you're right."

We each had squabbles with the way evangelicals were portrayed on this week's episode, though for very different reasons. Attila the Hub thought Catholics were getting smeared alongside Protestants, though I thought this week's Catholic-baiting was pretty mild; after all, how can one top Christopher helping to bury Ralphie's head—encased in a bowling ball bag, after Chris himself had dismembered the body—and crossing himself as the earth is placed atop it? That incident, several seasons ago, was the Catholic-baiting apogee.

The fact that evangelical support for Israel is mentioned, and then qualified by another Jewish person who feels cautious about Christian support is not at all contrary to my experience: there are some old-school Jews out there who are skeptical about Christianity, given the little incidents there have been over the centuries. (One friend and I have at least annual arguments about whether the Nazis could be considered even nominal, surface-level Christians. Once one grants that, it is all over, and one has to concede his premise that Christians are essentially out to get Jews. Which I feel is a few centuries behind the times.)

The spouse felt that Tony's conversion to "what the bleep" spirituality this week came about as a result of a stacked-deck comparison between Catholics/Evengelicals and this more "woowey" approach to spirituality. ("Woowey" is my Tai Chi teacher's self-description. It fits, you know.)

I thought the portrayal of evangelicals worked rather well, given that it was a cartoon, with my usual caveat that pro-abortion writers never seem to get this nuance: Protestants don't have issues with birth control methods they don't consider abortifacients. Their argument is not with artificial birth-control per se, but rather with anything that might kill a fetus, embryo, or pre-embryo. This distinction is often obscured by those who either wish to proclaim that all pro-lifers are out to get their birth-control, or are simply intellectual slatterns. Not that there's anything wrong with being an intellectual slattern, of course.

The Catholic subplot? Not related to Tony's new "what the bleep" philosophy at all: it's simply a way of explaining Paulie's increasing willingness to take chances for rather stupid reasons. We're supposed to wonder if he's going to get caught. And I do.

The "what the bleep" business will very likely fall by the wayside in coming weeks: we know that Tony is able to excise any tendancy toward soft-heartedness/humanity when his "business" is on the line.

Let's review:

Attila Girl = right right right
Attila the Hub = wrong wrong wrong, unless we agree, in which case he's likely right for entirely the wrong reasons

Honey, do you need me to put this on a 3x5 card and place it on your desk as a reminder?

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People whom I supposedly have a few points of agreement with can be just as childish, shallow and stupid as the silliest people in Hollywood.

I'm just about to burst with pride.

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I really thought they were going to leave you-know-who entirely indisposed all season. Did someone lose their nerve? I thought this latest season would be about AJ, but we're stuck with his dad's point of view. Along for the ride, as usual.

And I still like the dream sequences, so there.

Kev-Infinity. It took me a while. Sheesh: I'm getting slow in middle age.

And: To what degree does the desire to watch The Sopranos betray not just our wistfulness about not being able to act on our animal desires, but genuine fear that we've lost track of those desires, and don't even really know what they are any more?

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To: Spike Lee

From: Joy Whittemore

Re: Inside Man

NYPD detectives aren't going to be assigned to bank robberies. That's a Federal thing, my man.

I know where you can get yourself a superb fact-checker. She works cheap, and she has experience looking at scripts. FYI.

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The writers thereof are making some wild calls. Taking chances.

I can't get the movie Apt Pupil off my mind. Tell me why.

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I did like the Big Love premiere, and not just because I think Bill Paxton's cute and Tom Hanks is a sharp producer. I'm not the only one.

It's essentially a nonviolent (so far, though that could easily change) version of The Sopranos: a guy lives half in the shadows, and half in Suburbia, and gets bounced like a pinball between his nuclear family and his extended family and his secrets and the modern world and the forces of darkness. Except that Bill is a good deal more likeable as a character vs. Tony Soprano.

It's all good.

I'm sorry some Mormons are upset, but the show does make the sharp division clear between mainstream Mormonism and the various polygamous cults that are tied to that church's roots. In fact, most people who study counter-cultures agree that the majority of the polygamous sects live elsewhere in the West, rather than in Utah. The show only needs to be set in Salt Lake City in order to create tension between cultists and mainstream Mormons.

In real life, of course, they'd live in New Mexico or Arizona, but we need to see Respectable Mormons recoiling from polygamy, and I imagine that we will. (At least, the first episode sets such a situation up.)

The show also captures the real moral problem in these sects: the "marriages" of young girls who haven't yet reached the age of consent to grown men.

I would love to see prosecutions for polygamy strictly confined to sects that prey on young women. That would, as I see it, be a much better use of law-enforcement dollars.

My husband's line on polygamous quasi-Mormon sects: "three wives, but no coffee? No thanks." Of course, I get the impression that he thinks one wife is an awful lot sometimes. Of course, he is, um, taking the graduate course in marriage.

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That's the real reason I don't watch "enough television." When I get hooked, I really get hooked. And when my husband and I get hooked together, it's ugly.

I love this picture: there's so much in it. The symbolism is so layered. And nearly everyone is looking over his/her shoulder. Wonder why.

The video of the trailer is at the official site, here.

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Because I have work to do tomorrow, and because—let's face it—there's too much of them these days.

However, PJ Media covered it. So I was able to read their entries over and kind of glean the highlights: which dresses showed off the most cleavage, how offensive the political commentary was. You know.

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