BuzzMachine is wicked on the Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston Middle East peace initiative, tossing off a pair of sentences I desperately wish I’d written:
That’s what the Middle East needs: a laughtrack.
And that’s the wonderful thing about stars: They have no idea how stupid they are and they have no one to tell them.
(He really should have spelled Aniston’s last name right, though, even though the original story doesn’t.)
Lileks, whom I wish would write about cultural stuff more often, knocks it way out of the park with today’s fugitive essay on Fantasia:
When I look at the great animation of the past, I have the same reaction I have when I see a skyscraper from the end of the Jazz Age boom. Magnificent, utterly American – and for all the machinery involved, it all comes down to the movement of the human hand.
The hand behind the mouse creates something different than the hand behind the pen. Better and worse and worse and better. Classical animation is dead, I think. Frescos, meet oil.
I know he’s right. I wish he weren’t.
Finally, don’t read this story about “earworms” (the technical term for songs that get stuck in your head) unless you want to have your whole day ruined.
You’re tempted now, aren’t you?