If I hadn’t seen Lady in the Water with Salma, I would have walked out. But since I didn’t walk out, the question is—when would I have given up hope? When Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) tells Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), “Thank you for letting me wear your beautiful shirt”? (When she could have stood to ask him for some pants, too?) When the writer (M. Night Shymalan) describes his current project as being his thoughts on “all the social problems”? (Could he maybe have named one? Poverty? Pollution?) When the crossword freak drops a meta dis on movie critics that . . .

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There are two periods in the history of hip-hop that fascinate me.  The first is the period in the late ’70s where various musical and cultural influences came together in the Bronx to create the stuff.  I read today (on Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt) that the New York blackout of ’77 hastened the spread of hip-hop from the Bronx because of all the looting:  kids who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford the equipment were able to boost turntables, microphones, and other gear that let them start running their own street parties.  It’s a . . .

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What with the move and all—thanks to Salma, Dan, Kris, and Sarah—I haven’t had a lot of time to write. (Summary of my new apartment: I really like living off the ground again.) So here’s a short post, a roundup of what I’ve been watching, reading, and listening to this week:

Merry Krismix: For which I have Kris to thank. This is Kris’s half of our mix CD exchange, and compared to mine, it has a lot more, you know, mix. The 16 Horsepower, Go Team!, Asha Bhosle, and Gorillaz songs are my favorites. Plus, “Rudie Can’t Fail” reminded me . . .

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What I hate about Jennifer Aniston is that she’s a moderately talented sitcom star whom celebrity magazines treat like the next Julia Roberts. If they gave such a break to, say, Maura Tierney, I wouldn’t complain. Tierney got her sitcom break on the underappreciated NewsRadio at around the same time Aniston landed Friends. They were originally known for doing comedy; both have tried to branch out. They even look a bit alike. But the similarity ends there, because Tierney is a phenomenal actress (she’s carried me through three or four otherwise unwatchable seasons of ER now), whereas Aniston is…a moderately . . .

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