catching up

As always, Anastasia Goodstein has a good read on the Facebook hullabaloo. Why, of course, it's not an issue of young people being uncomfortable with sharing private information (they do that every day -- to their parents' dismay). It's all about control.

Fred Phelps doesn't think Steven Colbert is as funny as I do. He thinks he's a "fag-enabling fool". Someone's mother didn't treat them very well. Someone got picked on too much on the playground.

I don't necessarily know why it thrills me so much, but I'm fascinated by the new Google News Archive. I think it's the timeline and the ability to go deeper and deeper to uncover the story. Sure, you need to pay to access the majority of the articles, but the headlines on their own tell a story. Because I've been drowning in nostalgia lately, check out the search that I chose to do, and this great article that I can still remember reading 20 years later -- that I didn't have to pay for because Time magazine just recently made all of their content -- going back as far as 1923 -- available for free.

Sean Penn, Jude Law, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins and, yes, Kate Winslet and Patricia Clarkson in one movie. It's the thinking woman's porn film. (I could lose Jude Law and still feel that way, but Mark Ruffalo is who seals the deal.) All the King's Men, which opens on September 22nd, could finally get me back in a movie theater. (Netflix has ruined me. What do I have at home now, you ask? Okay, you didn't, but I will tell you anyway. Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, Nick Cave: God is in the House and Transamerica.)

Finally, Cindy sent me this link to Kirsten Gillibrand's Congressional campaign site (NY, District 20). David Straitharn pulls out his Edward Murrow impersonation to challenge Gillibrand's opponent, Congressman John Sweeney, and challenges the rest of us in the process. Great stuff and it's getting people talking.