new smithsonian american art museum blog: eye level

the canary just killed itself. the only question is what took him so long?

Forget Saint Paul; forget Tim Leary: the West’s greatest embodiment of the conversion experience is Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The film/TV versions are all but endless, and due to the strength of the story, a lot of them are pretty good. Critical opinion agrees with what my father told me when I was a kid: the British Alastair Sim version is tops, but the tale is effective whether it’s Mr. Magoo’s musical version (now edited because the graveyard scene was too scary for kids) or Bill Murray’s Scrooged transposition. Tonight I’m watching one I haven’t seen since childhood, the 1938 Hollywood version with Reginald Owen, on TCM at 8 tonight.

WFMU will be featured on New York Noise -- the NYC-area local access cable video show. In addition to an hour's worth of cool videos, there'll be footage shot at the Record Fair, and cameos by a number of WFMU DJs. The WFMU feature will air on NYC cable channel 25 on November 19th at 10 PM, December 2nd at 9 PM, and December 4th at 10 PM. More info on New York Noise can be found here.

tape it tivo it watch it

as far as seasonal viewing, i almost always watch the nyc marathon but i prefer the womens race to the mens. then all the others: wheel chairs, the blind guy, the burrough champs, etc.

i also usually put on the macy parade in the background. made the mistake of putting the sound up. when did it turn into a review of bad broadway musicals. some pretty bad stuff here.

tom moody pictured here is secretly a mac lover. and those are just the ones hell show us!

we dont approve. gotta get those (36-40) states. go blue.

how do i subscribe to this page. shouldnt this be on the public masthead. also my subscriptions to dmt pages makes it run below the fold. can i reduce type size and or run a second column with page names aligned on the left rather than right?

whats the site that always has video of important news stories? id like to hear Jean Schmidt getting booed off the floor one more time.

also misquoted attributed source.

my weather bug monitor is reading a sultry 28 degrees. is god running out of oil? whats going on here?

and when we shot at the hotel with all the reporters, im sure that was just an accident.

documentary about the original king kong on thrice tonight on tcm, first one at eight. plus my name is earl on nbc at 9 is worth watching now while the concept is still mildly fresh.

NOLA photo link farm

Best Christmas lights ever. At least for some definition of the word 'best'. (.wmv file.)

i havent watched letterman in a few years but there was a running gag about getting oprah back on the show. well, shes finally relented. im sure it will be a letdown but ill rev the tivo up forit.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda [...]

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary. former fla sen bob graham (d)

Note, that classified NIE was not available to every congressperson. Just to members of the Senate and House committees on intelligence.

Graham asked Tenet to produce an unclassified version of the NIE. But what the CIA produced was a propaganda piece absent any of the reservations or caveats presented in the classified edition of the document. The vast majority of senators and congressment, much less the American people, did not see the full classified document.

Hence, Bush's claims that congressional Democrats had access to the same intelligence that the administration had is pure bullshit.

daily kos

harold lloyd comedies all night on tcm.

Nice resource, the series is over for the moment but the website has video interviews. Was checking out Elizabeth Murray, just saw her retrospective at MoMA.
http://www.pbs.org/art21/series/index.html

better concept than content - romeo and juliet in emoticons.

There have been many paintings since, plus a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2002, Leslie released The Cedar Bar, an orgy of appropriated film footage—Hollywood musicals, Holocaust documentaries, hardcore porn—combined with voice-overs from his reconstructed 1952 play about the legendary artists' watering hole and the eternal war between creators and critics. (The original manuscript went up in smoke in '66.) A sinister cabaret clown opens the show by gibbering, "Artists are a vulgar and stupid lot," followed by such stalwarts as de Kooning waxing insightfully on the meanings of art. Jackson Pollock's shade is summoned through an old Twilight Zone episode about a 19th-century cattle rustler transported to '50s New York—he can't cope, and you just know it's gonna come to a bad end.

joe wilson on woodward.

wayback spin ... remember back in August of 2002 when the adminsitration was ready to bypass Congress to go to war ... WH lawyers: Bush can order Iraq attack ... Bush Gets Legal Advice On Iraq

good times

In challenging war's critics, administration tinkers with truth
Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

seinfeld doc on tbs

ClarkLewis explores NYC.