I went to see SiCKO last night, and I have to say I have mixed feelings. The movie wasn’t particularly good. I didn’t have the same sense of rage I had after Fahrenheit 911. I just basically felt depressed.

On the one hand it does make me start to think about what life would be like without $9000 in insurance bills out of pocket each year, plus the $300 membership to the Chamber of Commerce. Or without the pressure to put thousands away for my kids for college. It makes me want to take a much closer look at how tax revenues are actually apportioned in this country (highways over rail, for example, or farm subsidies, corporate welfare, defense spending irregularities, and various pork projects).

I’m also pretty pissed about the plight of the three 911 rescue workers depicted, and the many more who are suffering.

However, I have to say I’m tired of Moore’s mug onscreen, and irritated by the more clearly self-serving gestures, like taking credit for bailing out the owner of Moorewatch.com with an “anonymous” check. And tales of how fabulous things are in Cuba are pretty suspect.

Overall, I’m glad I went, but it makes me less likely to see the next one, if there is to be another.

Coincidentally, the Independent has a story on Roger Moore this morning, and the NYT has a front page story on what the 2008 Candidates are proposing for Health Care.

I discovered this excellent documentary on Bill Mollison available on YouTube. The movie is about an hour, broken up into 6 segments. The date is 1989. The theme I keep coming up against this week (Hansen, Mollison, Rickover) is why we’ve taken so damn long to understand what these people have been saying for decades.

I’m reading Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf and I’m about two thirds of the way through. He’s just off to deal with the newly awakened dragon who is pissed because someone snagged a goblet. Beowulf has been king for 50 years after having defeated Grendel and his ma. More and more over the last several years I’ve been interested in quest stories, particularly medieval works like Parsifal and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Quest, the Hero’s Journey. In fact I’ve always been attracted to this type of work, from Star Wars to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Last Wednesday I was babysitting my two girls and two other kids. The weather looked like it was going to be crappy so I rented Eight Below. When I got home, Y cringed and said D had taken her son to see it and they were both very upset by it, that dogs died in a terrible manner and so on. So I watched it myself last weekend and despite the Frank Marshall - Disney schmaltziness moments it was pretty good. And not that different from Beowulf, actually in that it comprised two separate hero journey’s: one by the main character and one by one of the dogs.

The hero has comrades but has to leave them and wander alone for a while. Then something or someone unexpected shows up (the sword which Beowulf uses to slay Grendel’s Mother is found, the old man who tells the main character the story about his father in Eight Below) to put the hero back on the path. In the end the hero must observe correct protocol (presentation of gifts to his king in Beowulf, asking the question in Parsifal, acknowledging Coopers girlfriend in the picture in Eight Below). This last part is like a restoration of balance after the quest and critical.

Today’s question: will the electric power grid go down with the heatwave hitting the East Coast? Yesterday, when I got home it was 89° F inside my house.

So what do you need to know to cope in this new world? Well, here’s a proposed movie list:

• Bridge on the River Kwai- “Madness! Madness!!”
• Gallipoli
• I (heart) Huckabees
• Brazil- “Triplets? How time flies!”
• Shawshank Redemption
• Die Hard
• Clockwork Orange
• Total Recall
• Syriana
• Waking Life
• Stalker- Tarkovsky
• Fitzcaraldo
• Office Space- “ahh, yeah.”
• Limbo

… and books

• Vineland, Crying of Lot 49- Thomas Pynchon
• The Trial- Franz Kafka
• Earthly Powers- Anthony Burgess
• Moby Dick- Herman Melville
• Naked Lunch- William S. Burroughs
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- Hunter S. Thompson
• Catch-22- Joseph Heller
• Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe
• Lanark- Alistair Gray
• Lord of the Flies- William Golding
• Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut