This Recording

Links For Beautiful Boys and Girls

by Alex Carnevale

Grey’s Anatomy rolls on, unimpeded by the fact that its storylines are exhausted by the inevitability of everyone sleeping with everyone.

The World Series pregame and the start of Game 2 scored an 8.9/14 for FOX at 8 p.m. CBS, however, had the most total viewers for the hour with “Survivor: China,” 8.6/13. “Ugly Betty” drew a 6.8/11 for ABC. NBC was fourth with “My Name Is Earl” and “30 Rock.” The CW got a 2.8/4 from “Smallville.” ABC moved to the lead at 9 p.m. with “Grey’s Anatomy,” the night’s top show at 12.1/18. The World Series improved to 10.8/17 on FOX. CBS aired a “CSI” repeat but still pulled down a solid 9.4/14. “The Office,” 5.2/8, and the season premiere of “Scrubs,” 4.2/6, kept NBC in fourth, ahead of “Supernatural” on The CW.At 10 p.m., the World Series game reclaimed the top spot with a 10.7/17. “Without a Trace,” 8.3/14, took second for CBS. “ER” posted a 6.0/10 for NBC, beating out ABC’s “Big Shots” for third.

Some people are enjoying this season of Grey’s–good for them, but it’s been a disaster. This week’s episode featured Cali whining about the chick from Knocked Up sleeping with her BF, and dealing with it by giving Edward Herrman a stroke. They’ve brought back Brooke Smith as a foil for Sandra Oh…

…and they broke up Meredith and McDreamy, which was a needed move. Meredith’s sister is painfully bad, and none of the central characters are going through anything interesting. The Brooke Smith move is a nice one–this show needs only to appeal to its base, women, to keep going, and Smith is likeable and easy to root for.

It looks like they’ll deemphasize Heigl for the moment as she gets ready to get married and options a Jacqueline Sheehan book:

“Grey’s Anatomy” and “Knocked Up” star Katherine Heigl options film rights to “Lost & Found” by Jacqueline Sheehan, a novel about a psychologist reeling from her husband’s death who moves to Maine, where she finds friendship — and emotional strength — through her relationship with a Labrador retriever.

My idea to revive the show for them to compare surgery to lynching. All publicity is good publicity; we will compare anything to lynching, including the opprobious blackballing of Isaiah Washington because of his bigotry.

Also we promised Danish we would adopt his opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if he accepted ours on intellectual property, so on that note, Free Free Palestine?

Grey’s still has good music, check out the first track of this quartet.

“Get Well Soon” — The Perishers (mp3)

“Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)” — Beirut (mp3)

“Come Out of the Shade” — The Perishers (mp3)

“4th of July” — Aimee Mann (mp3)

Larry McMurtry on Diane Keaton’s taste in photographs. Newsday didn’t cover this quite as well.

Gregory Peck

Denise Richards scares us.

Germany bans Drunken Stepfather. The only thing more shocking than this is Jin from Lost getting caught in a DUI.

Exciting track from The Graves.

Mario and Luigi looking more badass than usual.

Our favorite circlejerker plus Pee Wee Herman got a tan and travelled back through time.

Some Velvet Blog brings you a weekend mixtape for the ages.

Interview with Terry Teachout. According to Terry, the New York Philharmonic is going to North Korea.

Sweet nature pics for the kiddies.

Schwarzenegger finds an enemy.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist who runs what I believe is a vineyard with his fam. His book on illegal immigration, Mexifornia, was an instant classic and his more historical stuff about Western military superiority is definitely of interest, too. I was looking back at the essay which inspired Mexifornia today:

It is a schizophrenic existence, living at illegal immigration’s intersection. Each week I pick up trash, dirty diapers, even sofas and old beds dumped in our orchard by illegal aliens—only to call a Mexican-American sheriff who empathizes when I show him the evidence of Spanish names and addresses on bills and letters scattered among the trash. So far I have caught more than 15 illegal dumpers, all Mexican, in the act. In the last 20 years, four cars piloted by intoxicated illegal aliens have veered off the road into our vineyard, causing thousands of dollars in unrecompensed damage. The drivers simply limped away and disappeared. The police sighed, “No license, no insurance, no registration” (“the three noes”), and towed out their cars.

Buy Mexifornia here.

Yet I also walk through vineyards at 7 AM in the fog and see whole families from Mexico, hard at work in the cold—while the native-born unemployed of all races will not—and cannot—prune a single vine. By natural selection, we are getting some of the most intelligent and industrious people in the world, people who have the courage to cross the border, the tenacity to stay—and, if not assimilated, the potential to cost the state far, far more than they can contribute.

Alex Belth on Don Mattingly.

How to understand Islam.

Enjoy early Polvo.

Rumsfeld gets charged for torture in France.

Cashing in on Oink.

If you’re in the mood for a Britney Spears remix.

New Sprint gadget apes the iPhone.

Xboxs keep getting sold, they also keep breaking.

The producers of Casino Royale should have thanked Quentin.

This Tarantino-Charlie Rose interview is legendary for so many reasons. Here’s a great interchange…

QUENTIN TARANTINO: If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn’t be writing screenplays. I’d be writing novels, all right. In fact, at one point when it looked like I could never get a film going, all right, I, I even considered, ‘You know what? Maybe I should just forget this because to be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.’
CHARLIE ROSE: But if you were a novelist and weren’t making films, what kind of novelist would you be? What kind of novels would-
QUENTIN TARANTINO: That, that’s, that’s really hard, you know, that’s a, that’s an answer that I don’t- that’s a question I don’t have an answer to. I mean, the one- I, I tried to write a novel at one point. I had read Larry McMurtry’s All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers-
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: -which is one of my favorite books, and it totally like made me want to write like a book about like my Video Archives years.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: All right, and this is way before I could ever get anything going and everything. And so I started writing- I wrote about two chapters in this book and ended up like spending like about like six months just rewriting those two chapters all the time because it was a whole new form that I was very excited about. But ultimately, you know, I’m a filmmaker, and I just like- you know what? If I’m going to put the work that really needs to be put into this, I’m going to be a novelist, and I, and I think I could get this published, and I don’t want to. I want to keep on the road of being a filmmaker. But the thing is with doing my own stuff as opposed to like somebody else doing it, or me doing somebody’s else’s script or something is what’s nice about doing my own stuff- one, I, I, I’m usually happy with my stuff.

Oh, Kim. Three songs we can’t get enough of:

“Condoleezza, Check Out My Posse” — The Majestic Twelve (mp3)

“Sightlines” — Rogue Wave (mp3)

“Samba de Benaco” — Bebel Gilberto (mp3)

See Kim Kardashian NSFW here.

James Q. Wilson on community life.

Will Wright’s God game, Spore, is coming out for the Wii.

BLOGS TO LIGHT THE DARK SPACES

Philadelphia Freedom.

The Late Greats

Nostalgia from Zeon’s music blog.

Nothing But Green Lights

Julia Allison’s Tumbrrr

Perm and Skullet.

Lines Through Lines.

Pasta Primavera.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

George Ducker is a man among men:

Sports Corner: Colossus

The First Sports Corner

George interviews Craig Zobel.

Godard & Co.