The Big List #12

• CLICK THIS QUICK!

If you want to read this article in last week’s issue of The New Yorker. It’s an article on the late novelist Richard Yates and his very excellent novel Revolutionary Road, the film version of which opens in select cities later this month (and at your local Mainstream Art House in mid-January). I’ve written on numerous occasions about how good Yates was at his craft, and about how good this novel is - and there’s nothing new to add here. I just feel compelled to mention it again whenever I run across an article about the late writer or his work. I say click on it quick because it’s from last week’s issue, and who knows how long they keep links for old stories live before they archive them for subscribers only?

• The Religious Case For Gay Marriage

From last week’s issue of Newsweek, an excellent article on how religious people can do a better job of interpreting the Bible with respect to the issue of gay marriage. It’s illegal for the state to ban gay marriage based on any Biblical argument because that is a blatant violation of the First Amendment; but churches - which are exclusionary by nature - have the prerogative to allow or disallow gay marriage. There are no valid arguments against gay marriage, and hopefully churches will begin to understand this as more and more of their individual congregants start to get the idea.

• Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association

Another best picture award for Slumdog Millionaire, which brings its total to at least two. And yes, I know I’ve been flogging the award winners more than is my usual wont this year - but I’ve actually gotten into the habit of watching preview screenings at work again, and there has been a solid string of movies out since late summer that have piqued my interest. Also, the Best Picture field (and overall field of award contenders) this year is as strong as I can ever recall it being. There are easily 12-15 pictures that I would not at all be surprised to see up for Best Picture when the Oscar noms are announced. And while I understand that the Oscars are a self-congratulatory orgy of excess, I’ve enjoyed watching the show, and rooting for this or that movie to win, since I saw Rain Man as a kid and it cleaned up at the 1988 Oscars.

• The Dome Of The Rubble

The Hoosier Dome will be (mostly) imploded this coming Saturday at around nine in the morning. A security perimeter will be set up around the dome, bounded by Maryland Street to the north, West Street to the west, Illinois Street to the east, and Merrill Street to the south; but there should still be plenty of places to park yourself to watch that thing go down. I have to work that morning, but I may try to get downtown before I go in - and I’m thinking that the top level of the Circle Centre parking garage might be a really good place to watch the implosion. Even better would be to park well afield, then walk to the garage - so as not to get trapped by all the other people who might use the garage to watch the implosion and then decide to go home (never mind how many holiday shoppers are going to be out at that hour).

And finally...

• You Kids Noticing All This Plight?

The Audubon Court apartments - you know, that giant hunk of plight on the southeast corner of Audubon Road and east Washington Street (right there at the eastern edge of what some of us refer to tongue-in-cheekily as “downtown Irvington” - have been bought by a developer who wants to turn the place into a yuppie enclave, with wall-mounted 42” flat-panel TVs and a “24-hour fitness studio” on the premises. On the one hand, I’m glad to hear that they’re going to do something with those historic old apartments; but on the other hand...a 24-hour fitness studio? I get the sinking suspicion that this will be a place that fills up with people who think Judd Apatow is a genius.