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With the likes of Douglas Coupland, George Walden and Stephen Hawking as fans, taking The Simpsons seriously is no longer outre but de rigeur.
It is, quite simply, one of the greatest cultural artefacts of our age. So great, in fact, that it not only reflects and plays with philosophical ideas, it actually does real philosophy, and does it well.
Like many of you, most likely, I'll never forget discovering the work of Dashiell Hammett, who was born on this day 112 years ago. The first book of his I read wasn't The Maltese Falcon but Red Harvest. The Continental Op immediately became one of my heroes. I don't have anything to add to what others have said again and again about Hammett. If you haven't read him, why not? And if you have, isn't it time to read something of his again?
Mystery surrounds the coming biographical film on Dylan by director Todd Haynes, . . . .
Now he is recruiting an all-star cast for his Dylan film "I'm Not There", in which six or seven actors will play the star to show different facets of his life and personality. Dylan has agreed to let Haynes film his biography.
Between 1972 and 1983, Johnny Cash made some recordings at his home studio, apparently just for himself. He put the tapes away in a room where he kept things that meant a lot to him, and nobody even knew the tapes existed. They weren't found until after his death, when the family was going through his things. This new CD has nearly 50 tracks of mostly old songs that had some kind of personal meaning for Cash. Before he sings some of them, he tells a story about them (I like the stories as much as the songs). He even recites "The Cremation of Sam Magee." 
Probably everyone's read this by now. A very funny look at the familiar noir tale of a man who's in love with a younger woman and who decides to have his wife murdered. You know going in that things will go wrong and there will be some double-dealing along the way, but with Starr and Bruen, you can never be sure just what surprises they'll spring on you. The title has multiple meanings, and just about every one you can think of applies. The book's full of jokes and in-jokes, but that doesn't distract from the seriousness of the goings-on in the least. This one's a real keeper, another Hard Case Crime triumph. Check it out.
I finally caught up with this one through Netflix, and it was highly entertaining. I read that some reviewers had trouble following the plot, but I had none at all, proving that I've read too many crime novels, I guess. There are three or four or five interconnected stories, and I had their intersections pretty much figured out before they occurred, which was a good thing, because I did have a little trouble understanding some of the dialogue.
At noir night, Steve Brewer said that he thought the cover of Whipsaw might be a little "too Austin Powers." Not that there's anything wrong with that, or the fact that the cover has very, very little to do with anything that happens in the book.
