An Arts and Leisure Update

It's been a busy month so blogging has been light. The weather finally turned sping-like after a stubborn late winter. My magazine is thisclose to putting its June issue to bed -- all 92 pages, which is huge for us. (I edited half of it -- all grid and high performance computing panel sessions!) The kids can smell their summer vacation and camp-vacation and frankly so can I. I even polished the cobwebs off my bike. It's time to tackle the spare tire -- the one hovering over my jeans.

So, what have I been reading, viewing and thinking? Let's take a look:

Children of Men: No more babies means plenty of chaos for England of the near future. The not so green and unpleasant land is tearing itself apart because the planet is infertile and human life has become truly cheap. I haven't read the novel but the dystopia film version is riveting. I usually avoid movies with a strong political agenda but the horror here feels real. The production designer includes stacked nude bodies and a hooded figure on a crate -- Abu Ghraib chic. It's thoroughly depressing but envigorating. And it has one of the best chase scenes ever -- James Cameron and Steven Speilberg couldn't have done better.

Definitely check out the 'bonus' feature -- a documentary against globalization that would make the editorials of The Nation read like The National Review. All I wanted was a featurette on the making of the film, not an interview with Naomi Klein. Ugh.

Little Children: I meant to sneak off to the movies to see the film version of the novel I rather liked but I never got around to it. The movie is a smart and faithful adaptation of Tom Perotta's book about two parents who have an affair after meeting on the playground. I love the story because it shows adults who seem to have found themselves in lives that are quite different from what they expected. How did I end up here, they seem to ask themselves. The suburban setting is at the height of summer with deep green grass, lush trees and air that holds the hint of a major cleansing thunderstorm. Kate Winslet is luminous as the outsider mother trying to connect with her lover, a failed law student and night-time athelete. The fact that he is maried to the gorgeous Jennifer Connelly makes his afair all the more poignent. He is tired of his perfect wife.

Then We Came To the End. It's so odd that the shelf of serious novels about Americans at work is so bare. Really, can you name any serious fiction where a person is shown working for an extended persiod? Maybe American Pastoral, where the hero shows a young woman through his glove factory and makes her a fresh pair of women's gloves. Updike's Rabbit selling Toyotas to a young girl who just might be is daughter? This debut novel covers a year of layoffs at a Chicago advertising firm where people bet who will be the next to get the ax, whose chair and stapler can be stolen, and the petty tricks and seething animosity workers share with one another. A novel about work -- why bother? Definitely check it out.

Live from Austin TX: A Guided By Voices concert disk -- and it's good. Considering how drunk singer Robert Pollard is at the beginning of the show and his steady trek to out and out soused-ness at the end, this is a very sober record. The musicians are at the top of their form especially guitarist Doug Gillard and drummer Kevin March. Adding to the sobriety is the CD design -- no cut out collage work from Pollard -- just a tsraght forward triptych of concert stills. Peter Frampton or Rush would be proud. Bonus points: If you can listen to Glad Girls without laughing, you're a better GBV fan than me.