Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to watch an Oscar nominee today. Lilo and Stitch is in the mail, though, so hopefully the series can resume tomorrow or Wednesday.

But I did just finish a really good book. Pattern Recognition is William Gibson’s most recent book, and it’s also his first that is set in the present and isn’t really sci-fi at all. I haven’t read much Gibson other than Neuromancer which I re-read a couple weeks ago after reading a review of the new book. It was better than I’d remembered.

In Pattern Recognition Cayce Pollard hunts the globe for what is cool, helping capitalism comodify it. She receives a strange assignment: find the maker of a series of mysterious film clips that have a thriving cult of fandom on the Internet. People all over the world wait for the next film clip while analyzing the last one. They get in raging battles over little details, form camps and alliances, and engage in childish flame wars. Hmmm, sound anything like blogging?

If I say anything else about the plot, I’ll be revealing too much. Suffice to say that the book is wonderful. The plot is absorbing, and unlike much of sci-fi, the characters are fully developed and likeable. I’m looking forward to reading more of Gibson’s books now.

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Damn, why didn’t I think of this.

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Max has been getting quite a bit of criticism lately, and I just can’t help piling on. He manages to refer, with a straight face, to the U.N. as a democratic body. Max, just because voting is going on doesn’t make something democratic.

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What great leap forward are you talking about, Marc? You finally gonna get that unsightly boil lanced?

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I haven’t written much about politics or current-events lately. The reason I quit blogging was because I’d always see my same argument laid out with much more knowledge than I could muster on some other blog before I had a chance to write about it. Well, fuck knowledge! I’ve got something to say.

We must take out Saddam now, yesterday if possible. Whether he has any attachment to 9/11 is really immaterial. If we are not rid of him posthaste, he will have a connection to the next 9/11, and it won’t be pretty.

Saddam has gassed some of his own people, tortured and killed some of the others, and driven many of the rest into exile. One million dead, four million running. This is an amazing total, and I can’t believe that the peaceniks in this country are willing to overlook these numbers just because George W. Bush won the election when he may have been a few thousand votes behind in Florida. Key word there is “may,” because all the responsible studies I’ve seen say that Bush would have won Florida, hanging chad or no, in the event of a recount.

Saddam has attempted to build nuclear weapons in the past, we have those “Nazi” Israelies to thank that he didn’t manage it. He is attempting to build nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons today, and if you don’t believe that then you haven’t been listening.

As to the argument of thousands of civilians dying, well, I don’t think that is going to happen. We’ll launch several hundred cruise missles at purely militaristic targets, then send in the troops, and hopefully all of Saddam’s forces will give themselves and Saddam up. Victory will be quick and relatively bloodless. Then the Iraqis will begin dancing in the streets, to the amazement of their “supporters” in the West.

Also, all those that argue that we’ll create as many anti-Western soldiers as we destroy in this war, I don’t buy it. How many will want to stand against America once they see her full might and force? Much of the 9/11 following of Osama was based on our running away from Somalia with eighteen dead. Eighteen dead because we resfused to send in armor, and wouldn’t allow the full might of the American military to be brought to force against the various warlords. This will be nothing like that fight, and it will not result in humiliation. All the Muslim cowards who think America is weak will learn differently.

In short, I think that our victory over the tyranny that is Iraq will result in the best case scenario. Those Arabs that believe that we are good and strong will be emboldened, and those that believe we are weak and without spine will be crushed and will reconsider. This will be our finest hour.

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I treated myself to a dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. Mmmm, it was yummy, and filling to the point of making me pass out. I’m even getting used to the really annoying waiter I’ve had the last couple of times I’ve been.

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Finally got into a showing of Catch Me if You Can. I really liked it, but I went into the theater a little worried. My post about Chicago at Blogcritics elecited a bad review for Catch Me if You Can:

be glad you missed CMIYC. i saw it over the weekend and it was god awful; insanely long, dry, and drawn out. i have a feeling that if you read the book, you’d feel like they didn’t leave a single thing out of the movie.

That was from Meredith, and I have to agree with her that the movie was a bit long, and a little dry. But that doesn’t cancel out the film’s charms, either.

Both the major stars of the film, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, were excellent. This is the kind of part that Leo was born to play, and I knew it from the moment he began pretending to be the substitute teacher for his French class. Hanks displayed a credible Boston (I think) accent, and was very effective as the no nonsense FBI agent charged with catching Abagnale. Christopher Walken was also very good in the small role of Abagnale’s father. He had just the right touch of the defeated man, proud of his son for sticking it to the government.

After reading several reviews of the movie I expected the Abagnale character to actually become a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. For the most part, though, he just put on the uniform and bluffed his way out of any work. That felt quite a bit more realistic to me.

I’m not sure that the movie will win either of the awards it’s nominated for. Walken has some pretty stiff competition for Best Supporting Actor, I’m not going to make a prediction until I at least see Chris Cooper in Adaptation, because that looks like a particurally fun part. The score, on the other hand, was excellent, and so far from anything else I’ve heard John Williams do. I never would have guessed it was him behind the wheel on this one.

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The teenager who got a heart and lung of the wrong blood-type has died.

Also, if you drink more than eight cups of coffee a day, you may be endangering your baby. Eight cups?!

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Yep, I just finished watching Unfaithful. Why didn’t someone warn me this had Richard Gere in it? Sure, it wasn’t the all-singing, all-dancing Richard Gere, but I’ve now seen two Gere movies in three days, and that’s my limit. Are there any other movies up for Oscars with Gere in them? If so, I may just not make my pledge of watching all these movies.

Diane Lane plays a wife and mother who is seduced/seduces a young French book dealer who lives in an oh-so-romantic Soho apartment that is just loaded with sexy, sexy books. An employee of her husband sees them together, and murderous complications ensue.

Lane is great in this role. She hot, but she’s a realistically older-woman hot. She’s got wrinkles, and that harried suburban Mom look, but her body’s still a ten, and she remembers that incredible in-the-city sex.

Most of Adrien Lyne’s films are actually very moral. Good people do bad things, and get punished for them. But in this one, the only one really punished is the most innocent, the French playboy with nothing to lose. Everyone else gets away with it, except for the psychological torment, which doesn’t seem all that oppressive.

Will Lane win the Oscar for Best Actress? I think she stands a damn good chance. She was quite a bit better than the other nominee I’ve seen so far, Rene Zellweger. I’ll really need to see Kidman and Moore in their roles first, but for now we have a front-runner.

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I laid around, never getting more dressed than my bathrobe until about thirty minutes ago. And that was just because I was out of beer. But I read The New Yorker, and tried to read some of William Gibson’s latest, Pattern Recognition. It’s taking a bit long to get started.

I just found my Netflix copy of Unfaithful in my mailbox, so I’ll be watching that soon. Other than that, it’s snowing here (yay!), and it doesn’t look like the war has started yet (boo!), and I don’t have the hotpager this weekend, so I can get good and drunk.

On that war front, I’ve been vaguely considering enlisting, at least in the reserves or the National Guard. I’m pretty sure I’d be able to do what I know best, which is computer communications, since I’ve got a ton of experience at that and I’d ace whatever tests they wanted me to take. So what do you think? Would they take an out-of-shape twenty-six year old?

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