The Pop Culture Essentials

by Andrea Burke

November 1- 7:

1. The Men Who Stare at Goats.  This movie looks hilarious to me. I can’t really explain why, part of it may be that I love George Clooney and Ewan McGregor

2. Strict Joy- The Swell Season. If you have seen the excellent movie Once, you know how awesome this pair is. They released a new album last week! Go buy it!

3. Ricky Gervais, the man who created The Office, Extras, and wrote/directed and starred in The Invention of Lying, will be on David Letterman Friday.

4. Michael Bublé – Haven’t Met You Yet. I can’t get this song out of my head.

5. It’s a new month, so Amazon has a new batch of 50 mp3 albums for $5.00, including albums from the Black Eyed Peas, Owl City, The Avett bros, The Decemberists, Tim McGraw, Ben Harper, and Johnny Cash.

6. Classic of the week: High Noon starring Gary Cooper. This is one of the best movies ever. It comes on TCM Thursday at 6:00.

7. Travel Writing by Peter Ferry

8. The Office Music video. ‘Nard dog steals the show in my opinion.

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Too Much Information

I can’t resist putting this video up.  With Letterman telling me things I don’t want to hear about his personal life, it reminds me of Jon Stewart’s take on Mark Sanford’s oversharing.

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Letterman’s confession

by Andrea Burke

Last night, Letterman confessed to sexual affairs.

Letterman is obviously trying to get ahead of the story, so that when the extortionist was caught and charged, the newspapers wouldn’t be able to reveal anything Letterman hadn’t already revealed himself.

I don’t watch Letterman (or Leno) because I don’t think they are particularly funny. But If I did watch Letterman and loved his show, I wouldn’t turn my back on him because I’m not sure how much his affairs effect his ability to host his show. I wouldn’t (don’t) want to even know about his sex life. He’s really old.

But it raises an interesting question to me- how much do you think we should know about entertainers? Is there a line between public and private or does an entertainer sacrifice a right to make mistakes when he or she attains fame?

If an entertainer is corrupt, should the world boycott their music, movies, books, etc? Or can great art still come from someone completely messed up?