Dorrk Dot Com

James Lileks made a provocative quip today during his regular appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, discussing the Iraq election (paraphrasing):

“History is no long written by the winners; it’s written by history professors.”

If you accept that most current history professors tilt left politically, it would mean, then, that currently history is being written by the [...]

Lots of buzz this week about a 9-year-old Brazilian soccer prodigy named Jean Carlos Chera.
From the looks of this video, this kid is amazing in terms of his vision and skill, and from the date stamp on the video he’s as young as FIVE in some of these clips.
Keep in mind, however, that he’s playing [...]

…but I love them (as you can tell, I’m sucker for sappy ballads with mind-achingly bad lyrics):

“What about Me,” by Moving Pictures“I’ve Been to Paradise,” by Charlene.

Is there a worse top 10 song than Charlene’s ode to womanhood-gone-wrong? (Possible contender: Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby.”)

Scott wrote:

It sort of makes sense to me that Shyamalan fans would not like The Village while non-fans would like this one more than the others.

I guess I would classify it a little differently. I consider myself a fan of M.’s because I appreciate that his famous plot twists serve a greater purpose than simple [...]

I’m not queer about music from the 1980s like some people around here, but I recently borrowed compilations of the Top 100 songs for each year from 1980-1989, and I’ve been enjoying it immensely over the past couple of weeks.
A lot of it, naturally, didn’t make it to my final playlist, but I had forgotten [...]

Have you guys heard any of that music that is a collaboration between Jack White (of the White Stripes) and Loretta Lynn (Van Lear Rose)? I heard the song Portland, Oregon and enjoyed it very much.
Also the Chemical Brothers song Galvanize is super cool and has the creepiest video I think I’ve ever seen. [...]

I listened to the new U2 album again today.
It indisputably sucks. Now they’re going to go on tour playing songs from this and the last critically acclaimed album. Yawn. I’d be counting the minutes until the end. They need to just hang it up now.

It was weird being in the USA for such a short time–and in the small town of Walla Walla no less. It didn’t really feel like we were back in the USA..it felt like we were in some third location. Anyway, this was the quickest, strangest trip.
I really enjoyed Tokyo which is just [...]

It sort of makes sense to me that Shyamalan fans would not like The Village while non-fans would like this one more than the others. I myself am very much in the first camp. My reaction to The Village was that it was a good film but my least favorite of his 4 so far. [...]

I do like The Village. I just reviewed it for DVD Journal here.
I also think, though, that I understnad why the people that didn’t like it feel that way. People tend to go into M. Night Shyamalan movies expecting to be thrilled by crafty twists and turns, and I think the major twist in The [...]

Just got back from an unexpected trip to deal with the death of my wife’s grandmother. I’ve had email problems too..all worked out now..so sorry to those that may have had emails go unnoticed. I think we definitely lost some. Never got your’s dorrk and got M.E.’s just now. Anyway….
I have [...]

If you’re tiring of Bono as a songwriter, find his singing nowadays less than powerful, and determine his political instincts hopelessly naive, then perhaps you’ll enjoy his illustrations in this version of Peter and the Wolf.
Who knew?

I had a brief conversation yesterday with a client who runs a chamber orchestra, and one of their upcoming concerts will feature excerpts from movie scores. I asked him if there were any contemporary composers writing good orchestral music for stricly concert venues, and he drew a blank, noting that while he love John Williams’ [...]

PRN has been anticipating a review of the movie Team America on this blog. Amy and I finally saw that last night, with our moppet shacking up her grandparents’ house.
I had read a lot of heavily qualified reviews, so I didn’t expect it to be as funny as it was, but I laughed pretty much [...]

Amy and I shipped little Maggie off to her grandparents’ house yesterday to spend the night — her first night away from both of her parents — as a birthday present to my wife, who got to sleep in today for the first time in 14 months.
And now we have this ice storm that is [...]

If anybody reads this, sorry for the empty space of late. Dorrk.com has been busily working on a big self-improvement to be unveiled sometime in the next two or three years. I don’t know what every one else’s problem is. Is blogging too 2004?

Make sure the kids are not around. Then turn up the sound and watch this.

The U.N. has finally gotten around to appointing someone in charge of Tsunami disaster relief and that person will be going to see the stricken region…..for 2 days. In other words, it’s been over a week and the UN has virtually nothing on the ground.
Christian organizations and the Red Cross were fully functioning on [...]

The New Yorker takes its turn at covering the Dutch response to militants in their country. Money quote:
“It’s no coincidence that the first ritual slaughter happened here. We just let everybody in. There is no sense of urgency. The French intelligence people can’t believe how sloppy we are.” He reeled off names of people [...]

Here’s the M.E. review of Ocean’s Eleven which I enjoyed but did not fully read to avoid spoilers. I thought it was really well-written.
After having seen the movie, these are some of my impressions. Before going I told J that it is going to “to have forced attempts at duplicating that witty-repoire from [...]