James Woods was just on CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. I'm not sure why he was there, but Deutsch, an annoying and abrasive New Yorker, got him to say a few things of interest:

1. Deutsch was asking Mr. Woods about his opinion of the ABC program, Desperate Housewives. Woods said something nice about the whole thing, and noted that although he hadn't dated Nicolette Sheridan, he liked "British chicks". James Woods, you just went up another notch in my estimation.

2. He repeated his story about seeing, on a flight earlier in 2001, some of the al-Qaeda operatives who would later pilot various aircraft into military and commercial targets inside the continental United States on 11 September 2001. I either had never heard that story, or had heard it so long ago that I had forgotten, and I found it somewhat amazing.

However, the people at Snopes have found this story credible, so go figure.

Lastly, Mr. Woods had the following points to say about mayors of New York City:

-Under David Dinkins, New York City was like Beirut in the 1970s.
-[Former Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani was/is a great leader who saved NYC, both on 11 September and in the time prior. Furthermore, he was a great statesman, etc. In addition, Giuliani will be a great President after 2008.

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Well, I'll say this: I think more of James Woods than I did prior to this interview, but I must disagree with him on Mr. Giuliani's Presidential prospects; I'll not vote for him in a primary. Social issues matter, Mr. Mayor, and you're on the wrong side of a couple of mine.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've tried for over a day now to come up with some coherent post on the death of Hunter S. Thompson.

Since you're not reading it, I have of course not produced what I was looking for. It wasn't going to be an attempt to ape the style of Thompson---sorry, my internal organs are more precious than that---but I did want to say something, since I cruised through several college courses (and at least one law school course) using some variant of his approach.

Not that I had the money for his kind of living; if I had, it would have been invested in computer games, record albums, and the like. It was college, and I was in a different world.

Despite his loathing for all things Republican and therefore by extension me at some level, I'll miss the mucker. Reading his inane ramblings from the late 1960s and early 1970s gave me an insight on the Other of American life, and that was somehow useful. He was also usually amusing, when his prose wasn't intractable or incompetent. The second volume of The Gonzo Papers was my favorite read of his, because it wasn't the over-the-top crap produced to do whatever it was he was aiming for.

I'll miss the coot.

Selah.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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