A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.
Books
READ: Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass, trans. by Michael Henry Heim ["Nor could I bear to come out with things long lurking within me: the questions I had failed to ask...my petrified faith...the Hitler Youth campfires...my desire to die a hero's death like Lieutenant Captain Prien of the submarines--and as a volunteer...the Labor Serviceman we called Wedontdothat...how Fate had saved the Fuhrer...the Waffen SS oath of allegiance in the jangling cold: 'If Others Prove Untrue, Yet We Shall Steadfast Be'...And the Stalin organ and all the deaths it caused, mostly among the young and unprepared like me...the song I sang out of terror in the woods until an answer came...the Pfc who saved me but lost both legs to a Russian grenade while I was spared...my belief in the final victory to the bitter end...the lightly wounded soldier's feverish dreams of a girl with black braids...the gnawing hunger...a game of dice...the disbelief at the pictures of Bergen-Belsen, at the piles of corpses--look at them, go ahead look at them, don't turn away, just because--to put it mildly--it is beyond description..."].
COMING UP: Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates.
Movies
SAW: I Wish.
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: Carol Channing: Larger Than Life.
KITO'S: Private Romeo [take it away, Men on Film!].
NEXT WEEK'S THEME: Notorious Women in History.
Current Interests
The presidential campaign, books, prisons, faith, musicals, food, the closet, LGBT youth, country music, The Wire, fashion, movies, my new apartment, Game of Thrones, New York, Madonna, Kito, Chicago history, journalism, the weather, the BFF, the Internet.
Fool's Four
MY FAVORITE HYMNS:
1. "I'll Fly Away."
2. "Amazing Grace."
3. "Blest Be the Tie That Binds."
4. The theme song for Amen [see Glitter, below, to refresh your memory].
Flashbacks
FOUR YEARS AGO: "Meryl Streep spreads eagle."
FIVE YEARS AGO: "Nothing says 'I love you' like dispassionate deductive reasoning."
Glitter
ELSEWHERE:
My review of Collaboraction's Sketchbook: Reincarnate is in this week's Chicago Reader.
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