Rather than try to fashion a narrative that might tie all these things together, I will just list them in brief and provide links to things that are linkable. But these are the things that are on my mind today:

-Even distinguished theater critic, Ben Brantley, cannot resist the spell of Julia Roberts, and writes a pretty interesting and starstruck review of her performance.

-There is a really interesting profile of Werner Herzog in this week's New Yorker that isn't up online, but is well worth reading, because it provides more crazy antecdotes about Herzog, and because the conflict of shooting his latest movie is pretty entertaining. He is shooting a studio retelling of his documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Rescue Dawn. So much of the crew trash talk Herzog. The crew hired by the studio purposely shoots shots that Herzog doesn’t want shot, and they shoot it in secretive ways, hiding the camera behind banana leaves. It is rather absurd sounding, but Herzog recognizes stuff shot by the second unit during editing and doesn’t use it. The conflict between the studio’s vision and Herzog’s is pretty funny.

-I became worried about The Village Voice a long time ago, a year or so ago when Richard Goldstein was sacked. Now, with the new ownership, I am even more worried. They have gutted most of the paper, sacking most institutional figures, including James Ridgeway and Tony Schelsinger’s brilliantly offbeat “Shelter” column. They are firing long time music writers, which I see as a good sign because The Voice’s music coverage has been way late to catching up on trends and reviews boring, major label bands too often. The music section is too often left covering the musical tastes that Pitchfork established months earlier, and in a far less interesting style.

But still, the way they are going about gutting the paper is pretty scary and I have no clue what the owners are doing and am wondering if they even know, if they have a vision that they are working toward. This article in The New York Observer discusses these changes.

-In the comments section of Dennis Cooper’s blog, someone mentions the controversy surrounding this young porn star, Brent Corrigan. Apparently, he did some videos for Cobra Video when he was seventeen, claiming to be eighteen, and has now, at the age of nineteen, came forward about this so that Corbra would stop selling the videos. Cobra is pissed and countersuing and all of that is boring in comparison to the boy, and on Corrigan’s blog he posts pictures of himself, and holy hell, this boy is fucking gorgeous. Surely, so much of it is the cute haircut, that without it he would just be another pretty porn star, but his haircut makes him a gorgeous porn star. I am sort of in love with looking at these Corrigan pictures, check out the brown hair and brown eyes and tell me you are not in love: So, so, so - fucking - dreamy!

Other things on my mind:
-thoughts about getting a job
-thoughts about John Adams by David McCullough, which I am reading now.
-the weather
-and as always, other things.