Miscellaneous: Missive From My Deathbed

The title is pure hyperbole. A particularly intractable sinus infection has held me in its grippe for over two weeks. I feel like I can only muster a few hours of concentration per day, and those are needed for the paying gigs.

Example: Just now I was unable to think of the word hyperbole. I wandered into the other room and asked Rosemarie, “Isn’t there a term that means the use of exaggeration as a literary device?” I really ought to go back to watching baseball highlights, but with the Mets’ season going the way it is and my delicate condition, I could trigger something.

Still, I want to give. So I’ll say that I devoted my Independence Day ration of cogent hours to Michael Mann’s Public Enemies and was glad I did. I’ll also say that I’ve added Donna Moore’s Big Beat from Badsville to the links page, and you should be checking it out regularly.

Here’s how addlebrained I am. I almost tied together three articles I read today – Cass Sunstein’s exploration of how association with like-minded individuals breeds extremism; Roger Ebert’s levelheaded response to those who disagreed with his review of the Transformers sequel; and an analysis of how porn is abandoning plot and going fuck scenes only – with the Bing advertising campaign that gives me night sweats in an epic post about our mile-wide, inch-deep, instant-gratification culture. Then I remembered I was me and said to hell with it.

So instead, here’s Slate’s article on stuntmen’s favorite stunt movies. Along with one in its entirety, Claude Lelouch’s blistering Rendezvous. Watch to the end. It’s tres French.