Malkmus Sings "Maggie's Farm"

With an assist from John Medeski on organ.

From the "I'm Not There" soundtrack.

Good Bye, Lenin!

Last night, Ann and I watched Good Bye, Lenin!. It was an absolutely great movie. The perfect combination of humor and sentiment, along with a setting in probably one of the most interesting times in recent history.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the basic outline of the plot is that a woman in East Germany falls into a coma. She was a devoted patriot/communist, very involved in educating East German children in the ways of socialism. While she is in a coma, the Berlin wall comes down. When she wakes up, her doctor warns her son that any physical of psychological shocks could have dire health consequences. So the son decides to maintain the charade that East German communism is a strong as ever. This provides a great window into what life was like for East Germans during that first rush of capitalism, good and bad.

I vividly remember watching the Berlin wall come down, and the people partying on top of it, but I never really got a sense that this event was affecting individual people. I had a rudimentary understanding of the geopolitical implications (i.e. communism bad; freedom good), but the fact that a whole new world opened up for East Germans (particularly East Berliners) virtually overnight never occurred to me. Good Bye, Lenin! gets my highest recommendation.

Jack Black's Celebrity Playlist

Rolling Stone has Jack Black's celebrity playlist. What bums me out is that when you click to listen, you need to install some player, and then you don't even get to hear the World Saxophone Quartet. I was really looking forward to it!

The Tenacious D movie looks pretty damn funny (the website is great, too). If it is anything like "Butt Baby" (not safe for work) you know it will be good.

Borat

Ann and I went to see Borat on Wednesday. Oh my god. I haven't laughed that hard in a long, long time - I almost died during the wrestling scene. Highly recommended. His website is pretty great, too.