But We Earned That Cigar

This should consitute some kind of lazy half-done culture report, as filtered through fall 2004 political discourse:

Osama. A fine way of saying how banal, tedious, and downright silly the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan was. Hard to see what kind of peace and order the people urging accomodation with the regime were hoping for. But we must confess that we missed various key plot twists. Floating through our head, the line from Blackadder, however flippant it might be:

"That's the worst female impersonation since Tarzan went into Jane's handbag and ate her lipstick!"

Anchorman. Nowhere near as amusing as Will Ferell's other recent efforts, and that's even following Osama. We sort of ambled off to bed for a bit and came back, and he was still making slightly off-colour remarks about females. Boldly attempting to recreate the time in the 1970s when local news readers were minor deities, which is worth doing only because it gives movie reviewers the chance to show how early in life they were watching the news on TV. Well we remember Brian Hanrahan on the Falklands aircraft carrier. Which both dates us and makes us look pur-etty precocious, yuh-huh.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. More seventies detritus, redolent of the 1970s along the Mediterranean, all Speedos and Campari. That, as well as cheesy synths, makes one keep loooking round the corner for Alain Delon to arrive. A fond, though fairly sharp, take on the whole Cousteau industry, it is our new favourite Wes Anderson film.

Politics. We're currently working through James Wolcott's Media Poodles, and Bulworth, both of which seem to suggest that political journalists and politicians are trapped and mutually entangled in this vortex of greed and vanity from which only the most brilliant and inspired can escape. Depressing stuff. Maybe we should be more smug that we mostly write about power stations.

We also caught the Razorlight show at the Bowery, but have promised a review to an upcoming web publication. Will plug when it appears. But we would like to say that the gig was one of the few ones where we've been genuinely intimidated by the sheer number of Beautiful People on display. I'll grant you that we weren't at a Brought Low show, but we hope this was a one-off, and they'll go back to Bungalow 8 or something. Sorry to be indie, but it's really hard to get a drink round these people.