Calamity Physics (5.9)

Television
It’s getting harder and harder to watch the last act of The Sopranos. Tony’s downward spiral is not pretty. At the same time as he turns into mother, his son is turning into him. Like he said last night to Dr. Melfi, “ My rotten f---in genes have infected my kid’s soul. That’s my gift to my son.” And the irony is that it’s nurture rather than nature which has done the most damage. If you’re interested in taking a little walk down memory lane with The Sopranos, check out the “Seven Minute Sopranos.” You’ll be shocked at how much life (and death) Tony has lived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz_Ees_-kE4

Tonight, IFC is airing a documentary, The Bridge. The director trained a camera on The Golden Gate Bridge in order to capture suicides. He then interviewed the families of the victims to find out why.

Books
I absolutely fell in love with Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. When I saw that each chapter was named after a great books, I thought the book would be a clever, gimmicky, post modern take account of a precocious high school senior sparring with her professor father. But it ended up being a compelling, page turning murder mystery with a heart. It seemed to me a blend of Donna Tartt’s A Secret History, Lolita, and Hitchcock’s Vertigo. After I finished it, I picked it up and started rereading it (which I almost never do unless I have to write a paper)

Summer Movies
I’m not all that excited about Spiderman I’m definitely looking forward to some summer fun: Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (He was the man behind The Forty Year Old Virgin), The Bourne Ultimatum, Nancy Drew (I was such a big fan). Mr. Brooks (How can I resist seeing Kevin Costner playing a cold-blooded serial killer?), Paprika (Japanese anime about a dream guide) and The Order of the Phoenix. What movies do you think look good?

Music
In an article on reunion tours (Is anybody seeing The Police?), I read that a few years back, Wire had a cover band open for them which played their old songs while they played their new ones.

Ideas

A sheep herder in Northern California hires out some of his flock as lawn mowers. In his words: “500 sheep will turn 10 grassy acres into a golf course overnight.”

Roman aristocrats would travel with nomenclators, alert slaves whose duty it was to supply their masters with the names of acquaintances they encountered.

Did anyone read the NYT Magazine article on the current research into wisdom? There are some interesting ideas in it such as the theory that early exposure to adversity or failure may act as a vaccination of sorts (a “stress inoculation) so that people are better equipped later in life to wisely handle tragedy. But ultimately it ends by saying that although we seem to know wisdom when we see it, how we acquire it remains a mystery. If you’re interested in checking out just how wise you are, you can visit nytimes.com/magazine to answer a questionnaire by Dr. Monika Ardelt.

Quotes:
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” --William James