Dan Grobstein takes note of the Washington Post moving out of its longtime headquarters. My hometown newspaper, The Oregonian (sucessor to my one-time employer, The Oregon Journal) moved out of its beautiful, too-expensive post-war headquarters last year. The only surprise was that the semi-daily newspaper didn't just rent a phone booth for its pitiful staff remnant.

I have reviewed Spotlight on the IJPC.org website. It is fair to say I really liked it.You can also check my reviews of Truth and my belated review of Man of Steel.

By the way, I have long thought it would be a great idea to create a website that compared movies "based on a true story" to the true story. Turns out History Vs. Hollywood already exists!

Finally, Dan Grobstein sent along  An eighth-grade boy's 'outrageous' class schedule from The Washington Post.
.

Spiritual advice from a good friend: "God is incredibly grateful to you each time you look at Him, are grateful to Him, think about Him.  What an upwelling of Joy and Wholeness comes as we think about God thinking about us, and us being Glad of Him, and Him being Glad of us, and around and around it goes.  This is full Consciousness. This enables all else."

Dan Grobstein Links
"Happy Birthday" Lawsuit: "Smoking Gun" Emerges in Bid to Free World's Most Popular Song. It has always struck me as weird that this song is still under copyright. As a boy, I watched Heck Harper on KGW-TV. When he sang Happy Birthday on his children's show, it was a song of his own devising. Heck is gone, but I might live to see the day when radio, TV and movies no longer have to pay for a public domain song that was mistakenly copyrighted.
    And a mess of Trump links:
21 Questions for Donald Trump
Documentary Trump Suppressed: Free at Last 
Trump Humbug
Donald Trump – Man of War

Three  from Daniel Dern: A Personal Take on Go Set a Watchman by Ursula K. Le Guin
and
Best Political Video ever. Watch including through the final credits.
and
Robert Vaughn, the man behind the Man from UNCLE

Apparently, if you ask Siri on your iPhone to divide 0 by 0, she has a very snarky answer.

Jerry Pournelle's daughter has written a book set in Jerry's Mote universe called Outies. If you liked The Mote in God's Eye, you might enjoy this one as well.

A friend writes: Clickhole is a funny site. Very po-mo–didn't know whether to slap my forehead or my thigh with this chestnut about towels.

Several items via Daniel Dern:

• A wire recording (!) of a show written and performed by Tom Lehrer while he was at Harvard.
• 110 new Mark Twain stories discovered in digitized newspapers.
• The adorable short that played before The Hunger Games
• Must-see fan trailer: Avengers of Oz: Age of Tin Man
• Trailer for Oct 2015 PAN movie
• Joe Phillips Silver Screen Heroes Imagines an Old Hollywood Take on Superhero Movies
• Muppet Show promo: Worth watching the whole thing. Cameos include Topher Grace halfway thru.

And a few from Dan Grobstein

• Netflix funny take on Groundhog Day
• Writers! Behind on that deadline? Need to tell your editor? Let Dorothy Parker show you how it's done. 

Kent Peterman passed along this link: Chattanooga Shooting: American Violence Never Ends

I made the HumorLab list again–almost number one!
And the Number Two Ant-Man Pet Peeve.. I'm ignored by clerks at the DMV. Oh wait…

It has come to this: not even a mini-review, just a piece of advice. I loved the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a story of retirees stretching their money in a dilapidated Indian hotel. There's now a sequel, the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. No more Tom Wilkinson, whose character died in the first film; instead we get Richard Gere. What happened? How can Richard Gere be playing an old guy? Anyway, the advice is: see it if it is still around where you are. Or, since this advice is so late, see it on Netflix.

Humor Labs: We're Number 3:
The Top 11 Things Overheard at the 87th Annual Academy Awards
* "It was sweet of the Academy to pay tribute to 'Boyhood' by having the ceremony last 12 years."

And no. 8:
The Top 11 Surprises in the Newly Discovered Dr. Seuss Books
* The Food and Drug Administration wants to know why the eggs and ham are green.

And No. 5 (combining two of my favorite Top 5 list words)
The Top 12 Signs You're Not Sticking With Your New Year's Resolution

* Your daily half-hour of Lambada has deteriorated to a daily half hour of Macarena.

Daniel Dern found a link that asks, What if Toy Story was a gritty action picture?

Dan Grobstein offered up a New York Times article about the length of time between a person's first mention in the newspaper and their attainment of the presidency: Hillary Clinton, and Names Fit to Print – NYTimes.com

Stephen Coquet writes:

Sometime after reading your take on Groundhog Day for the first time, I saw Run Lola Run (but being a Snob, I watched it in German, with subtitles). It occurred to me almost immediately that, thematically, this seemed to be a Buddhist film.  Just now I did a Google search, and it seems I wasn’t the only one to notice. Not only that, but some are saying the same thing about The Matrix also.

Just as I never realized Groundhog Day was Buddhist until it was pointed out to me, I saw Lola but did not perceive its similar themes. Now that they are pointed out to me, I see the point.

Why not try a Free Personality Test.

Dan Grobstein agrees with Vox that You'd Be Amazed How Much Music Is Disappearing.

Dan Grobstein passes along an article from The Guardian: French town tries to save first world war soldier’s room for posterity

Daniel Dern comments on my contention about my own work: But otherwise, no, what you see is pretty much the first draft, and 90% of the time I am proud of it and happy with it.

I just updated my Edwin
Diamond tribute with some corrected information about the job
Edwin was screwed out of in 1969.

I like a good dry Chenin Blanc wine. My wife V and my daughter M found
one at a restaurant.
L’Ecole No. 41 2013 Chenin Blanc. Its 0.5% sugar looks pretty
dry to me. I learned years ago from my friend Clark Smith, who was
winemaker for a dry Chenin Blanc from R.H. Phillips, and from the
winery that made Chard-No-Way (I rue they day they stopped making it)
that a Chenin Blanc, fermented dry, is better than a chardonnay. Dry
Riesling is better than regular Riesling too, I must say.

I really enjoy Slate’s podcasts, so much that I joined Slate Plus so I
could get them without commercials. I recommend all of them except the
sports podcast; you can find them on iTunes. Last week something
unusual happened; both the Double X (feminist) and Political Gabfests
(as slate calls their podcasts) dealt with Valerie Jarret, the
president’s closest adviser. I suggest you listen to both podcasts for
the details, but here are the links from the Slate Political Gabfest
show page:

• Noam Scheiber recently wrote a lengthy piece
  in the New Republic that detailed Valerie
  Jarrett’s rise to power within the Obama administration.
• A few days before the New Republic
  published Scheiber’s in-depth piece, Carol Felthensal opined
  in Politico about Jarrett’s weakness and how she
  is responsible for some of Obama’s worst governing decisions.
• Thomas “Mack” Mclarty played
  a similar role to Jarrett in the Clinton administration,
  serving as the president’s alter ego and sounding board.
• Matt Yglesias argues
  that Washington insiders don’t like Jarrett because she wields an
  enormous amount of influence over the president without being a part of
  any party establishment.

***

Unsurprisingly, MIT has declared its innocence in the death of Aaron
Swartz. MIT is
wrong:

Bobbi Fox found this on the Doonesbury Slate news page:

    Dan Grobstein File

• Op-Ed
  Contributor
  Open
  Season on History
  By TAFT KISER
  Archaeologists do not hunt objects. We hunt lost worlds. Sadly, those
  worlds are slipping away under the relic-hunter?s shovel, all for the
  sake of a few bucks.

• NYTimes: Its
  Viewers Are Graying, but Their Passion Pays for Fox News
   The median age of a Fox News viewer is over 65, which could
  be a
  cause for concern given that advertisers aim for the 25-to-54 age
  bracket.

• Madison
  Square Garden Is Told to Move