Saw a couple of movies this weekend:

Julie and I rented The Goonies, which I had last seen when I was in junior high or so. I remember it being a much better movie back then- but, as an eighth grader, I also thought Mötley Crüe opus Shout At The Devil was pretty rad as well.

Speaking of the Crüe: Nikki Sixx apparently keeps an online journal as well. You can read about his vasectomy here.

More Eighties, this time in the form of a joke: Q: What has seven arms and sucks? A: Def Leppard.

The other flick I saw this weekend was Michael Moore's new documentary Bowling for Columbine.I can't say enough good things about this movie. I'll probably catch it again next weekend.

A timely reading (from The Quaker Reader, ed. J. West):

The morality of the nations must be as the morality of the individual writ large, therefore,

I. The State shall not exalt the false gods of national glory, national pride, national greed, for the Lord God is a jealous God, visiting the disobedience of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those that neglect Him, and showing mercy unto thousands of those that love Him and keep His commandments.

II. Every State shall acknowledge that all men are equally the children of God, and recognize the brotherhood of all men and the rights of primitive peoples.

III. The State shall not bear false witness against its neighbours, for Christ has said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you."

IV. The State shall do no murder, nor order its subjects to kill.

V. The State shall not steal, nor keep what it gains by force, for Christ has said "It is more blessed to give that to receive." "Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over."

VI. The State shall not covet its neighbours' wealth, nor its neighbours' territory, nor anything that is theirs.

VII. The State shall not judge in its own case, for too often we fail to see the beam in our own eye, looking only for the mote in our brother's eye.

VIII. The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and no State shall fear the prosperity of another, but rather rejoice in it.

IX. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, and thy neighbour State as thine own country.

X. The State shall not seek its own life, for whosoever would save his life, shall lose it.

LOVE IS THE LAW OF LIFE. FOR GOD IS LOVE.
(by A. Ruth Fry)

You Shall Know Our Velocity, the new book by Dave Eggers, rocked me like a hurricane. If you can find it, pick it up.

More McSweeney's goodness: Proof that all those Saturdays I spent rolling twenty-sided dice as a teenager weren't wasted.

Props to Woody Harrelson.

I finally got around to seeing Moulin Rouge! last weekend- and I hated it. What a mess.

I remember reading a statement in an orchestration textbook that went something like, "If your melodic ideas or sense of musical structure are weak, good orchestration won't change that." This applies to all of the arts. The creators of MR took a predictable story, dressed it up with garish cinemetography and costuming, added those oh-so-precious anachronistic songs, and seemed to think the stylistic elements would somehow make it less dull. Most people I know, conditioned by MTV, swallowed it- but I found the movie totally pedestrian. I mean, geez, the whole song anachronism thing was done much more effectively in frigging "Knight's Tale" of all things, simply because they didn't beat you over the head with it (well, not much anyway). If it weren't for the fish-out-of-water tunes, this movie would have sunk into the morass of obscurity it deserves.