The thing about pre-history, apparently, is that

no one wrote anything down. I've just been reading a blurb about a new theory that the White Horse of Uffington might be a dog. Other theorists suggest a feline configuration.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

How odd to be entering my sixty-fifth year.

I watched "The Men Who Stare at Goats" last night

on the recommendation of a pal. Not that it needed a recommendation, with George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges at the top of the bill. Somehow I'd never heard of it - apparently it didn't get a lot of ballyhoo in the places whence I get my movie ballyhoo. It was a fun movie, but a little unsettling. The underlying notion is nothing surprising (or unknown) to most of us - that the military has been investigating applications of the paranormal for quite some time. At least since the hippie days and it hasn't stopped. The "basis" for the movie was a supposedly "factual" piece of investigative journalism (a book bearing the same name as the film) from a few years ago. The main revelation that reached public eyes & ears was the fact that insurgents/terrorists/whoever-the-bad-guys-du-jour were at the time were being subjected to long stretches of Barney the Dinosaur. So big deal, I snicker. But the movie (I don't know about the book) paints a pretty unnerving picture of just how loony some of those involved in such an initiative might have been. That said, the movie is clearly playing Clooney's, Spacey's, and The Dude's characters for laffs; these guys are clearly nuts, and it's very hard indeed to sort out how far into its cheek the movie has its tongue thrust.

Anyway, there are indeed some laughs, if no real knee-slappers, and the performances of the three focal-point actors are all very creditable, if indeed they echoed some "Canned" characterizations the relevant actors have more or less patented. I can't think they got involved for any reason other than it promised some quick bucks and the script looked like fun. Ewan MacGregor was in it too, in more or less the lead role. Someone was VERY cagey in not letting him complete with Clooney, Bridges, and Spacey. He was Dr Watson all the way, telling the story from an arm's length, and doing it very plausibly. I liked the movie, it was fun, but scary, a little, too, making one wonder how many real loonies are in similar positions (not unlike Generals Turgidson & Ripper, and Col Bat Guano and their ilk from decades ago, but in new & refreshing ways).

A while back, Comcast decided to bundled Turner Classic Movies

with some furshlugginer sports package, and I lost about the only premium channel I thought was worth a damn (it wasn't worth paying for sports to get it). More recently, my Chief Negotiator, in the process of the annual wrangle with the cable/internet/phone provider at our house, managed to get TCM "thrown in" as we "upgraded" to more service fo less money (introductory rate of course, to be wrangled over again in six or nine or twelve months). TCM has the insufferable Robert Osborne pontificating over their presentations, but that's fair penance for getting their library broadcast without commercial interruptions. So I've been checking regularly, and put TCM on my favorites list of course, and finally last night hit paydirt - The Big Sleep, 1946, Bogie & Bacall and Faulkner and Chandler, lacking only John Huston directing to have made it perfection. Hawks is a classic director, but his work doesn't move me the way Huston's and Billy Wilder's do. I think I've seen The Big Sleep half a dozen times, so it's in the "evergreen" category for me, up there with Double Indemnity and The Stranger and The Third Man, and of course The Maltese Falcon. But I haven't seen it in a few years, so it was fun knowing vaguely that poor Elisha Cook Jr ("Jonesy") was gonna get it but not remembering exactly how until the last minute. And stuff like that. I will say though that the movie would have been improved by omitting Bacall's singing. I'd love to know how much of the final dialog was actually Faulkner's work.

So I've signed up for PubIt (or however it's capitalized & punctuated)

and in the course of perusing around the B&N website, where I've had an account for practically as long as there's been a B&N website, I see that it's changed a great deal in the last year or two. Maybe it's been longer since I've been there but I don't think so, really. But my point is that B&N have jumped with both feet (all four feet?) into the digitalization of literature. Between eBooks, and their proprietary e-Reader "Nook" and the free Nook apps for all sorts of devices including PC, they are wholeheartedly embracing where words are going, and making it very clear that they intend to be a presence there (wherever "there" is when it comes to digitalized literature). What strikes me is the proliferation of "meta-literature" that's aggregating on the relevant site/portals/whatever-they-are. All the author chat that used to take place face-to-face in one bookstore at a time is now - more or less - available on demand. You can click to get access to anything from Billy Collins reading his stuff accompanied by cute animations, to Jeff Foxworthy yakking about why he likes writing poetry for kids. And with the advent of "PubIt" B&N is inviting everyone into the game. A brilliant recognition of the so-called "democratization" of writing (if not literature - yet) that's been going on for a few years with blogs and comments from the plain folk on new stories and columns/blogs. Now folks who used to holler at the idiots on their TVs can have their golden opinions immortalized in the digital ether by appending a comment to the words of anyone from Henry Louis Gates to Sgt. Crowley. The frightening thing though is that there are actually folks who think all opinions are equal. But I digress.

So Barnes & Noble has opened the gates to the riffraff & hoi-polloi, and I suspect that sooner rather than later I will publish an e-book "just because I can." God only knows what I'll do if anyone actually coughs up cash for a copy.

Went to see Gordon Lightfoot tonight, in Concord

I feel like a heel saying it but he was bloody awful. His voice is shot to hell and what little of it's left is not really under his control. We bolted at the break between the sets. I was uncomfortable for the guy. Others seemed not to mind the fact that what they were hearing bore little resemblance to the quite serviceable baritone of yore, most of the audience (or at least a sizable chunk of it) applauded and cheered enthusiastically. I have to suppose it was recognition of it being done, rather than it being done well. I truly hope it was just the way he was tonight rather than the way he's gotten to be entirely. If that's what he's routinely like, he really needs to stop booking shows.