The Simpsons: The Ten Commandments

Okay, it is only a few days until Easter, and around that time, you might want to enjoy a few Biblical movies. Even though I'm a Godless heathen, I do enjoy some of them, although not and I repeat never any that features Charlton Heston. Especially not that one. You know the one I'm referring to. Bombastic, arrogant, cheesy, pious nonsense which tries to hide its lack of intelligence with high production value. And this is why I always loved the parody The Simpsons made of it in Homer VS Lisa and the 8th Commandment. Pure comedy gold from back when they were funny. And far more entertaining than the source material, Biblical or cinematic.

"Better than a Turkish barber"

I recently received from Amazon a clipper to cut cut my hair. As we are stuck in confinement due to the pandemic and there is no way in Hell I will go see a barber any time soon, even if I could, I thought I better do my hair myself. Or have my wife do it for at least part of the job. So we cut my hair on Sunday. It was a bit stressful at first, but in the end, the result is not so different from something a professional barber would do. It is true that it is not difficult to give me a haircut: I like my hair short and that's it. My wife said about the ordeal: "I think I am better than a Turkish barber". This is because last time I went to a Turkish barber, he gave me a small cut shaving the back of my neck. So yes, at least she was better than this. And this deserves to be a new great unknown line. Once the pandemic is over, I might actually carry on using the clippers. It saves us money.

The Gutter and the Grave

I blogged about it recently, but as I finished it since then, I thought I could have it as today 's reading suggestion. I am talking of course about The Gutter and the Grave, by Ed McBain. Surprisingly it does not feature the detectives of the 87th Precinct, but ex private eye turned drunkard and bum Matt Cordell, who lost his license and everything else, including himself, when he beat up the lover of his wife. Narrated by Cordell himself, the story uses many tropes, some would say clichés, of hard-boiled crime fiction: an investigation on a minor crime (someone stealing from a cashier) quickly leads to one on a murder, then a second murder, there are femmes fatales a plenty and a good deal of shady characters, an oppressive heatwave, violence of all kinds. What makes the novel stand above other similar ones is the strength of McBain's writing: vivid imagery, sharp dialogues, genuine characters behind their archetypes. One cannot go wrong with Ed McBain.

Hitchens' Decalogue

Fellow blogger Prof Solitaire reminded me that Christopher Hitchens would have been 65 yesterday. As Easter is coming, I thought I would upload a video from this incredible mind, controversist extraordinaire and overall merciless, admirable intellectual, about the Decalogue, aka the Ten Commandments. The Commandments are maybe the most overrated, absurd, often amoral "moral" injunctions ever written and Hitchens deconstructs them beautifully, then makes his own, which are far better. Anyway, as the movie of the same name is probably playing everywhere around Easter and that I disliked that movie even when I was a good Catholic boy, I thought I would upload Hitchens' Decalogue. So enjoy. Hitchens is always enjoyable, especially now.