Web spoor
You know I'm busy when I don't even have time for a proper link dump, but here's what I got to tie you over for now.
• When I was a younger man and traipsing around hipster-infested Brooklyn neighborhoods late into the evening on a school night seemed like a pefectly reasonable thing to do, one of my favorite monthly events was John Hodgman's Little Gray Book lectures (for which I created the PowerPoint Anthology of Literature). Now non-New Yorkers and other people who, perhaps because they are too old and pathetic, are unable to attend in person can experience LGB through the miracle of podcasting.
• Thoroughly enjoyable thumbsucking about one of my favorite film genres [via Panopticist]
• Also via Panopticist (somebody stop that madman), the pirated pilot for the US remake of The Office. Haven't had time to watch it yet, but the buzz is not. Very not.
• There are heroes on both sides? No, George, Darth Zarqawi is not a hero, he's a murderer and terrorist. Why do you hate the Republic?
• If you haven't been following this you're missing the funniest political crusade on the Interweb this week. Be sure to follow his links to TPM, and see also: this, this, that, and most of all the other.
Comments
I couldn't get the Office thing (the The Office thing?) to work, but here's another mirror site that's working.
Posted by: Jim Treacher | January 28, 2005 8:35 AM
D'oh! Now suddenly that doesn't work either. Oh well, sounds like it stinks anyway. Too bad, I like Carrell.
Posted by: Jim Treacher | January 28, 2005 8:37 AM
I couldn't get it to work yesterday but today it did. Which is kind of a shame. I wonder, though, considering it's almost word-for-word if it wouldn't seem so bad to someone who hadn't seen the original.
Posted by: Didi Hylobates | January 28, 2005 11:30 AM
If you disregard the original - hard though that is to do - the US Office is really not bad. Carrell has an almost insurmountable task here, but very nearly pulls it off by not at all aping Gervais. The rest of the cast is lacklustre, but if this had been an original, it wouldn't be noticeable.
On its own merits, it's a 4-out-of-5, I gather, but comparing it to the real thing, it drops to a two. An ill-considered idea that ended up far better than it had any right to.
Posted by: John E Thelin | January 29, 2005 11:07 PM