Hey it's Sunday. Happy Sunday. Here's some good stuff to check out:

www.AfterDowningStreet.org
My new favorite blog. In its own words, "After Downing Street is a nonpartisan coalition of over 200 veterans groups, peace groups, and political activist groups that has worked since May 2005 to pressure both Congress and the media to investigate whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The coalition takes its name from the emergence in May and June of 2005 of several documents that quickly came to be known as the Downing Street Memos."

"What Is the What" by Dave Eggers
I am astonished by this novel, the story of a Sudanese Lost Boy. Eggers spent years interviewing the boy, now a man, Valentino Achak Deng; which was just such a smart thing to do, because fiction is dead, in a way; "reality" has taken over; and whatever the real is is the thing for fiction to do right now, to engage; anyway; this novel is much more than a long transcription, it's a heartbreaking work of staggering genius (I didn't read Egger's first novel by that name, but now I will). It's really about America; after literally wandering through the desert, fighting off lions, the boy comes here and settles in the jungle of Atlanta. I was captured from the first sentence...

"Alpha Dog," directed by Nick Cassavetes
It got a lot of lukewarm reviews from critics who don't know what they're talking about, when it came out earlier this year; or maybe they were afraid to talk up a "teen" movie, but this isn't a teen movie at all. It's about violence, murder, and coming of age in America, with an amazing performance by Justin Timberlake; who knew? It's about American machismo (the alpha dog phenomenon) and how it leads to tragedy. It's about the tragedy of revenge exacted on an innocent...Iraq, anyone? I love the weird deep films of the director's father, John Cassavetes, especially "Husbands."

"Entourage"
It took me a while to be won over, but now I am, totally, the way you always are by a good-looking con man. "Entourage" is the other side of "Alpha Dog," in a way, asking what happens when American kids get money and power? It's about the fantasy life of the average red-blooded American man-child; the frankness of its amorality has an appeal. (What if George Bush just announced, "Yeah, I know I'm just a lucky stupid rich kid with no principles, and we're in Iraq for the money and oil"; we wouldn't like it any better, but the truth is always refreshing.) It's also shot in a lush neon style in LA., beautiful to look at, especially the face of Adrien Grenier. "Sex in the City" for men, yes, but oh what you can learn...

And for kids, "The Electric Company"
Now on dvd. The show premiered in 1971, when I was 7, just my daughter's age. I remember watching it every day, but I didn't realize at the time how goddamn groovy it was because---hey, baby, everything was just groovier back then. Check out Morgan Freeman as "Easy Reader" in his fringey Hendrix vests and bell-bottom pants. The U.S. government (which used to actually care about poor kids, even under Nixon) gave public tv a grant to develop a show to teach kids to read. There's never been a better one. Multi-culti before it was even a word, with great songs by the tuneful guys from Sesame Street and sketch comedy from the great comedians of the day...