If you go here and scroll down to “9/11 Video Galleries,” you can watch excerpts of NBC’s coverage of 9/11 as it originally unfolded. (Internet Explorer required – or, if you use Firefox, you can download the IE Tab extension.)

Classic old-school episodes of “Sesame Street” are coming to DVD next month. My mom will tell you that “Sesame Street” was my lifeblood as a toddler (I watched it two or three times a day, whenever it was on), so I’m definitely going to have to buy this Netflix this.

I wonder if the DVDs will include the animated chicken sketch. When I was little, there was apparently this sketch on the show with an animated chicken crossing a road, and apparently the first time I saw it I started screaming and crying in terror. I don’t remember this, but my mom says it happened, so I want to see it, just so I can relive a childhood trauma. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Here’s an all-purpose answer to the New Yorker’s weekly cartoon caption contest. [via]

Karl Rove’s father was gay.

One of my all-time favorite film directors is Alfred Hitchcock. He flawlessly combines suspense, innovation and wit in an exhilarating mix. One of my life’s goals is to see all of his movies. I’ve crossed a couple more off my list lately – Lifeboat and Dial “M” for Murder. (Thanks, Netflix!)

I thought I’d come pretty far along in reaching my goal, but after looking at Hitchcock’s filmography, it turns out I’ve only seen about a third of the movies he directed – 17 out of 53. Of those I’ve seen, my favorite is definitely Rear Window – it’s just brilliant. Up there too are Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Rebecca, the latter for its pure creepiness factor.

At some point I want to read this massive biography of the man.

Here’s the list of full-length films he directed. The first nine are silent. The ones I’ve seen are in bold, although I’ve also seen snippets of a couple of others (such as The Birds).

Silent:
The Pleasure Garden (1925)
The Mountain Eagle (1927)
The Lodger (1927)
Downhill (1927)
Easy Virtue (1927)
The Ring (1927)
Champagne (1928)
The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
The Manxman (1929)

Talkies:
Blackmail (1929)
Juno and the Paycock (1930)
Murder! (1930)
The Skin Game (1931)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Rich and Strange (1932)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Waltzes From Vienna (1934)
The 39 Steps (1935)
Sabotage (1936)
Secret Agent (1936)
Young and Innocent (1937)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Rebecca (1940)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Saboteur (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Lifeboat (1944)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
The Paradine Case (1948)
Rope (1948)
Under Capricorn (1949)
Stage Fright (1950)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
I Confess (1953)
Dial “M” for Murder (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Trouble with Harry (1955)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
The Wrong Man (1956)
Vertigo (1958)
North by Northwest (1959)
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)
Marnie (1964)
Torn Curtain (1966)
Topaz (1969)
Frenzy (1972)
Family Plot (1976)

TVNewser, a MediaBistro blog, has tons of coverage of Katie Couric’s debut tonight on the CBS Evening News.

From that blog, here’s a link to an interview with composer James Horner, of “Titanic” and “A Beautiful Mind,” who’s written the new CBS Evening News theme that makes its debut with Katie tonight. It’s hard to write 10 seconds of music…

Recent realization:

This year’s crop of freshmen are members of the Class of 2010.

*faints*

Here’s a fun article on the evolution of brunch.

Quotes:

“[T]here’s an argument that [Sunday brunch] owes a great deal to American Jewry. Brunch, Gary Greengrass acknowledges, was a kind of Jewish alternative to church. Jewish families, with nothing much to do on Sunday mornings, would take a long, leisurely meal, with traditional foods like bagels, lox, and blintzes. Occasionally, they would take that meal out.”

“As far as I can tell, the essential quality of an Upper West Side brunch seems to consist of milling in a large group outside of a restaurant for over an hour.”

“Brunch often has a distinctly post-coital vibe. Either one is brunching with one’s romantic partner from the previous evening, in which case a louche afterglow hangs in the air, or one is brunching with friends, in which case one is wondering aloud why a louche afterglow isn’t hanging in the air.”

I don’t know if brunch has a “post-coital vibe” – it sounds a bit too chick-lit to be true – but it’s fun to think about anyway.

Bush gave a speech today in which he said, “The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq.”

Fred Kaplan of Slate calls him out:

Here’s the question: Does anybody believe this? If you do, then you must ask the president why he hasn’t reactivated the draft, printed war bonds, doubled the military budget, and strenuously rallied allies to the cause.

If, as he said in this speech, the war in Iraq really is the front line in “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century”; if our foes there are the “successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists”; if victory is “as important” as it was in Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal—then those are just some of the steps that a committed president would feel justified in demanding.

If, as he also said, terrorism takes hold in hotbeds of stagnation and despair, then you must also ask the president why he hasn’t requested tens or hundreds of billions of dollars for aid and investment in the Middle East to promote hope and livelihoods.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some Democrats talk about this in the fall campaign. Run to Bush’s right, as it were – although that’s really the wrong way to put it. This shouldn’t be a right-wing position; it should be a common-sense position.

If Iraq is important, if we need to “win,” then we need to do what it takes to do that. If we can’t “win,” or if being there isn’t accomplishing anything, then we need to leave.

We need to shit or get off the pot.

The world’s oldest person has died at age 116.

Nobody has yet broken the record of Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122 and died in 1997.

This led me to some related links on Wikipedia:

– Oldest people – a list of various people who have at one time held the title of the world’s oldest living person.

– The still-living veterans of World War I.

– The last veteran to die of every U.S. war.

I seem to be on a fiction-reading kick, which hasn’t been the norm for me in the past couple of years; I’ve tended to read more non-fiction. But the other day I finished reading a new novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (it has a fun website, but don’t click on too many objects if you prefer going into a novel cold). And last night I picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I thought about reading it last year, but I wasn’t in the mood; now I seem to be. I’ve read the first 20 pages and I’m already hooked.

It’s loooooong, so it should keep me entertained for a while.

My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.

Trivia tidbit of the day:

From January 20 to June 22, 1993, there were eight former or present first ladies alive at the same time: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalyn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Hillary Clinton.

That’s a lot. And it’s more than the highest number of presidents who have been alive at any one time, which I think is six (first while Lincoln was president – Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln – and again during Bill Clinton’s first 15 months as president until Nixon died – Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton).

Useless trivia for a Friday. Why not.

Sez Pluto: “I’m here. I’m a sphere. Get used to it.”

Britain/Great Britain/United Kingdom &c: Some Common Confusions. For anyone confused about the difference between England, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and so on.

Pluto is officially no longer a planet. This makes me happy, because it creates a nice, neat definition of a planet and corrects an astronomical error – even though Pluto must be sad.

On the other hand, isn’t it wrong to allow an unelected body to redefine the word “planet” for all of us? Shouldn’t we let the people decide?

Oh, wait, I was thinking of “marriage.” Sorry. Wrong debate.

Well, this has been a learning experience, perhaps an overdue one: people are dicks. It’s actually not a new lesson, but one I keep having to re-learn, because I tend to be pollyana-ish about these things.

My piece in the Blade was far from the best thing I’ve written. It had flaws. If people want to criticize the piece, go for it. Criticize the reasoning I use, criticize the metaphors, criticize the tone, criticize the word choice. A couple of people have done that and I fully embrace it.

But don’t fucking attack me personally. Don’t lay me out on a couch and try to analyze me, someone you don’t even know. Because, trust me – you don’t know me at all. What a pompous thing to do. It also exhibits a total lack of respect for my personhood and for personal boundaries.

Because I want everyone to like me, I tend to dwell unnecessarily on those who don’t. But there’s a saying: “What you think of me is none of my business.” I need to remember that more often.

I also need to develop a thicker skin.

One blogger has weighed in on my piece and also clarifies some of what had me confused about Farmboyz’s post.

Update: Meanwhile, a few other people have commented at Farmboyz’s post and are reacting as if I’m telling people how to live their lives. Where the hell in my piece are they getting this from? Have some gay men become so overly sensitive and defensive that they see offense when there isn’t any?

Someone named Gordon describes me in a comment on this post: “Not as bright as he imagines himself to be.” What are you, Gordon, my fifth-grade teacher? What a smarmy, smug thing to say. Way to psychoanalyze me based on one 800-word opinion piece. You have no idea how bright I don’t imagine myself to be sometimes.

As for the actual post itself, Farmboyz has it all wrong.

1) Once again: I love sex. And anonymous sex can be lots of fun. Guess what? I’ve had lots of it. It can be quite a rush. But at least three different people so far have come to exactly the opposite conclusion after reading my piece, which means either that I should have thought harder about how my words would be read and revised the piece accordingly, or that some people equate criticism of repeated unprotected sex with prudery. All I can guess is that some people are so bitter about the outrageous criticism of the religious right and Anita Bryant clones – at least 30 years’ worth of criticism – that they lump any questioning of the 1970s way of life into that same category. This, despite the fact that I specifically wrote in the piece that my original feeling of scorn was wrong.

As I also wrote in my piece, sex in itself is not inherently dangerous, and there’s a difference between anonymous sex and unprotected sex. As far as physical health is concerned, whom you have sex with is less important than the precautions you take with that person. That’s more or less a direct quote.

2) As for meeting Farmboyz: I do remember meeting him at Pieces during a Christopher Street blogger bar crawl, and he’s right: whatever dissing or judging he imagines is completely in his head. I’ve only read his blog once before, actually, and it was because Joe (I think it was Joe) linked to a multi-part piece he wrote about something that happened a long time ago. I thought it was amazingly well-written. No idea where he came up with the feeling that I was judging him.

It’s true that I was uncomfortable that night. I was flattered that Joe invited me, but I get shy when I’m in a large, unfamiliar group of people who all know each other. Makes me feel like the odd one out. All I can guess is that my discomfort must have been visible on my face and he misinterpreted it.

I don’t get where the hostility toward me is coming from, but then again I don’t know Farmboyz or his blog very well.