Monday Moaning Miscellany
It dawned on me this weekend that July 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. No doubt the press will be all over it. If you give me modest odds (say, 3-to-1), I'll bet that Time Magazine makes it a cover story. It'll be something fair, like "The Catholic Church's Self-Inflicted Misery: Humanae Vitae 40 Years Later."
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A new movie looks good to you? Consider this interesting observation I ran across yesterday: "January is traditionally regarded as the dumping ground for studios."
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You really want to be a writer? Here's a highly practical how-to guide. It might work if you're childless and 25. For the rest of us, consider it a metaphor of what it takes.
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What's the largest city in Florida? Tampa Bay? Orlando? Miami? Nope, Jacksonville, at least according to this Wikipedia article. I'm no Florida expert (been there only once), but I never would've guessed Jacksonville, hence my (perhaps erroneous) belief that this nugget of information is worth posting.
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The gay and the cockroach:
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Everything you wanted to know about the Bee Gees but were afraid to ask (skip the first two paragraphs, which are perhaps the most tenuous introductory paragraphs to an article ever written). Excerpt:
The Bees Gees had now [early 1970s] become a lounge act for an audience too young to be frequenting lounges. Despite their attempts to create a neo-Liverpudlian aura, the eclectic Bee Gees, at least in their initial manifestation, lurked somewhere at the periphery of the progressive rock movement; they were not exactly rock, not exactly folk, not exactly pop. They were goofy-looking Australians whose parents hadn't gotten them to the orthodontist in time.
By 1972, it seemed that the Bee Gees had had it. Then . . . they changed locations (from England to Miami) and changed styles. Assimilating the disco beat that was seizing America by the throat, the Bee Gees sauntered into the realm of the miraculous, an era when they would sell more records than just about anyone that ever lived except Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, the Fab Four and maybe Abba. This era kicked off in 1975 with Jive Talkin' and reached its apogee two years later with Stayin' Alive.
