Please note that the simplified URL for this site is:
http://www.groundhogdaythemovie.com

The Number of Days Phil Was Stuck
In Feb. 2011, Tom Lasusa found this blog post about how many days Bill Murray was stuck.

The issue of the number of days Phil was stuck is a hardy perennial. In May 2011, Mike Burtner sent along this link to speculation on the subject (and much much more) by a star of the film: In Depth With Groundhog Day’s Ned Ryerson, Actor Stephen Tobolowsky

British Groundhog Day Trivia
On Sept. 11, 2010, a friend passed along this Bill Murray 60th Birthday Facts link from the Guardian. Of particular interest to this site are the amusing, if of dubious provenance, items 53 and 54:

53 In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray repeated the same day countless times in order to win Andie MacDowell’s heart. To this day, it remains the most amount of effort that any film character has expended for such a comparatively meagre reward.

54 During the filming of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray was asked to hire an assistant to act as a buffer between him and the studio. He deliberately hired a deaf mute who could only communicate in Native American sign language.

I have my doubts about 54.

Picked As One Of Ten Best Films Ever
On January 4, 2009, NY Times Blogger Stanley Fish named Groundhog Day one of the 10 best American Movies Ever.

Sondheim No Longer Interested

This from my friend and former editor, Joe Brancatelli in January 2007:

So I’m flipping the dial last night and TBS is showing Groundhog Day. Hadn’t seen it for a while. Good movie. Not as good as King Ralph, of course, but not bad…

Actually, though, I’m dropping a line because I meant to tell you this a year or so ago and it just slipped away. The New York Times Sunday magazine did a cover story on the 75th birthday of Sondheim. His most interesting comment: The one idea he wished he’d had was Groundhog Day. And, if you know anything about Sondheim, this would be the PERFECT project for him… One wonders why he hasn’t tried to adapt it to the stage anyway…

Sondheim was on the record as being interested; his interest has since waned.

On March 11, 2008, aboutthecomposer.com reported:

Sondheim has very recently abandoned the idea of adapting the film Ground
Hog Day into a musical, to the disappointment of many

On May 6, Sondheim had this exchange with broadwayworld.com:

Q: What are the chances of us seeing your rumored musical version of Groundhog Day, and what drew you to Groundhog Day as a musical?

Stephen_Sondheim: Groundhog Day is in my opinion a first-rate movie and it lends itself so clearly to musical treatment. I’m not the first person who’s thought of it. Many have. To make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to guild the lilly. It cannot be improved, it’s perfect the way it is. I don’t want to touch it, because it’s perfect. Pretentious as that sounds.

***

Groundhog Day in Popular Culture

This Modern World provides one of the many pop culture references in which Groundhog Day has become synonymous with “time loop.”

***

Interesting Groundhog Day Thought

Like me, Stephen Segall is a Top Five contributor. He writes:

I was glancing at your site regarding Groundhog Day. I couldn’t agree more. That story is reminiscent of Robin Williams’ character in The Fisher King, which, incidentally, I liked very much because it’s one of several movies that portray the same life lived different ways and what that teaches: Groundhog Day, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Regarding Henry also come to mind. Or, similarly, movies that feature a parallel or alternate reality that become difficult to distinguish from ordinary reality such as 24 Hours and Total Recall. Competing realities.

The thing is, I never made those comparisons, but I think he’s right. While I still think Groundhog Day is unique, even on this list, for the intellectual breadth and moral underpinnings of its basic trope, it is more similar to these movies than to your average American film.

***

Groundhog Day Casting

Regular correspondent Kent Peterman checks in with a web site full of movie scripts (Copyright violation much?) and a great deal of fun at notstarring.com, the opposite of that Jeopardy category “Actors and Their Roles.” In this case, it’s actors who were considered for parts they didn’t get. Checked out my personal favorite movie, and I am sure you will agree with me that Tom Hanks would not have been as good as Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The film might still be a classic, but wouldn’t be as good as it is with Murray–as proven by the Italian version. Also, how would Tori Amos have worked in the Andie MacDowell role? Not so well, I think.

On NPR’s Fresh Air broadcast of Oct. 3, 2012, actor Stephen Tobolowsky  was talking about his memoir, The Dangerous Animals Club. In it, he mentions that his friend and fellow character actor Kurt Fuller (you’ll recognize him if you look him up) was already set to play Ned Ryerson, but that Tobolowsky snatched the role away. Fuller, at the Groundhog Day premier, was a good sport.

***

Briefs

• Groundhog Day Economics from D.W. MacKenzie at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
• Movie Moron’s Top 10 Facts about Groundhog Day
• I dislike and distrust Wikipedia because of the enormous amount of bad information in contains, but I have to admit its Groundhog Day Article is not the worst on the Internet–although it manages not to include a link to this site.

***

AFI Underrates The Film

AFI’s 10 Top 10, which resulted from a poll of 1,500 people in the movie industry, placed Groundhog Day was in the fantasy category, where it placed 8th (Wizard of Oz took the category; is it fair for these two to compete?) It placed 34th on AFI’s list of the top 100 films.

This is what they said during the show, as aired on CBS on June 17, 2008 (NOT a precise transcript; paraphrase…)

[Clip from film: clock clicks to 6am. “Put your little hand in mine…” Murray smashes the clock on the floor.]

Ramis: Murray is having this mysterious, unexplained, existential experience. Bill Murray plays a self-centered weatherman who starts living the same day over and over again, ad infinitum.

[Clip from film: Phil and Rita in the hotel bar: “What should we drink to.” He proposed the groundhog, she drinks to world peace. He winces as he swallows the sweet vermouth on the rocks. The scene repeats; “I always say a prayer and drink to world peace,” says Murray]

MacDowell: A great fantasy film has to have a sense of reality. The dialog has to feel real. You have to believe these people. Even if the situation is impossible, there is something so genuine you believe these people.

***

Prof. Franz Metcalf (http://mind2mind.net), author of Just Add Buddha and Buddha in your Backpack, has sent me an exclusive commentary on Groundhog Day.

***

The Dharma Talk column of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle which appeared in the Summer 2003 issue is by Ezra Bayda, and is excerpted from his book, At Home In The Muddy Water. The article is a very interesting analysis, but it is opening anecdote which concerns us here:

In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character wakes up every morning in the exact same place, at the exact same time, always having to repeat the same day–Groundhog Day. No matter what he experiences, he still wakes up having to repeat the day. No matter what he does, he can’t get what he wants, which in this case is the sexual conquest of his female colleague. Although he tries all of the other classic strategies of escape, nothing works; he still wakes up the next day to the same mess.

In the meantime, another part of him is growing. He starts moving from just trying to fulfill his own desires to doing things for other people. For example, every day he saves the same child from falling out of the same tree at the same time. He even starts using his once ego-driven accomplishments, such as playing the piano, to entertain others, not just to serve himself. Finally, not through purposeful effort or even awareness, he becomes more and more life-centered, less and less self-centered. And in typical Hollywood fashion, he gets the girl. However, his real success lies in breaking free from the repeating patterns of his personality.”

Bayda goes on to make some excellent points about Buddhist practice. I recommend his book.

***

I gave an interview to the Philadelphia Inquirer, of which exactly one quote made the paper on Feb. 1, 2007 (I teach in California, not Oregon, by the way):

In The New Yorker dated Nov. 10, 2003, on p. 48, Charles Murray, the neoconservative author of Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 is asked which artistic accomplishments after 1950 might make one of his top 20 lists:

“The movie Groundhog Day,” he immediately offered. “It is a brilliant moral fable, offering an Aristotelian view of the world.”

In April 2004, The New Yorker profiled Harold Ramis, who directed Groundhog Day. Check out the section of the profile that dealt with the film. ***

Don’t miss this great New York Times feature story, from December, 2003, when GHD was featured in a religious film festival put on by the MOMA in New York City, or the Mario Sesti essay in the festival’s catalog.

December 7, 2003
New York Times
Groundhog Almighty
By ALEX KUCZYNSKI

A NEW movie series from the Museum of Modern Art, “The Hidden God: Film and Faith,” features some pretty brooding stuff. There’s a 1955 Danish movie about a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ, an Ingmar Bergman pastiche about a tormented pastor, a Roberto Rossellini movie about monks. These are, of course, the “intellectual with a capital I” films that audiences might expect at a religious-theme retrospective organized by a major museum. Subtitles and all that fancy stuff.

With one exception. On Thursday, the opening-night feature at the Gramercy Theater, where the series is being presented, was “Groundhog Day,” the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray as a sarcastic television weatherman forced by a twist of fate and magic to relive one day of his life, Feb. 2, over and over.

***

From the San Francisco Chronicle
A Buddhist on good, evil and Gibson
Laurel Wellman

An interview with Robert Thurman, author of “Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well,” who was the first Westerner ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk and one of Time magazine’s 25 Most Influential People in 1997.

Here’s the nut graf, as far as I am concerned:

“My new guru in life is Bill Murray, because actually the best metaphor for the infinite life, the reincarnation thing, is ‘Groundhog Day.’ You keep coming back until you get it right. When you get it right, then you have a really great time. Nirvana means you live with other beings in a really happy way. “And we all could, in the 21st century — if we used our brains a little better.”

***

Also of interest is an excerpt from The Force Is With You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives by Stephen Simon.

Harvard professor and film critic Stanley Cavell contributed to a New York Times Magazine article on September 29, 1996 (the hundredth anniversary of the Magazine), in which he was asked to identify a film since 1971 that would last a century. He selected Groundhog Day:

A small film that lives off its wits and tells a deeply wonderful story of love. It creates a vision of the question I ask here — of what will endure. Its vision is to ask how, surrounded by conventions we do not exactly believe in, we sometimes find it in ourselves to enter into what Emerson thought of as a new day.

I asked Prof. Cavell to elaborate in February 2006:

I too am a fan of Groundhog Day…. I wrote…a 50-word epitome of the film in response to a request from the New York Times Magazine to (I quote from memory) “pick one film made after 1971 [I may have the date slightly wrong] that you think will still be appreciated in a hundred years and write 50 words about it”. It is obviously a challenge to be taken with some grain of wit — if you start thinking seriously of the wonderful films made in the past three decades that you are truly grateful for, you could not choose one against the rest without feeling nutty — so I looked for a small film (not, for example, The Godfather) that was both serious and witty and that it would be a welcome challenge to try to capture in a long sentence. No film really came to mind that satisfied me that it was really serious and witty enough to put forward, and also that came together with my philosophical taste. When at the last moment Groundhog Day presented itself, and I thought of its Emersonianism or Thoreavianism (or just say its transcendentalism, which is the way I would characterize its attempt to escape the fatality of time), the choice made itself.

While I have published 17 or 18 books, I think I may have received more pleasant acknowledgments of my little notice of Groundhog Day, and certainly from more unpredictable places, than about any other piece I have published. I include among what I call “pleasant acknowledgments” the one that took me to task for being preposterous in choosing Groundhog Day over so many other really serious works.

***

This is another interesting article:

Revisiting ‘Groundhog Day’s’ spiritual side 15 years later
Bill Murray and philosophical fodder mean there’s still plenty to mine in the 1993 film.
By Dennis Lim, Special to The Times
February 3, 2008
Fifteen years after its release, “Groundhog Day” (Sony, $19.94) seems as strange and singular as ever: a Hollywood romantic comedy that could double as a Zen koan or an existential nightmare, depending on how you look at it. Harold Ramis’ high-concept classic, reissued in an anniversary edition last week, is a movie premised on relentless repetition and is itself surprisingly well-suited to multiple viewings.

Reel To Real: Buddhism and Film

Welcome to one of the most wide-ranging Groundhog Day fan sites, containing a number of explorations of the Buddhist nature of the film and the mechanics of the film itself, as well as links to articles praising it.

See content changes listed at the bottom of this page.

Why The Loop?

There  is one question that has come up several times that I feel I must answer at the top of this tribute site. One of the early drafts of the script explained that Phil was trapped in the loop because of a curse, placed by a jilted girlfriend. Fortunately for the world, director Harold Ramis and writer Danny Rubin decided to drop the explanation, which is one of the major contributing factors to this being a perfect film.

Finding This Site

Please note that the simplified URL for this site is:
http://www.groundhogdaythemovie.com

A Buddhist Introduction To The Film

I went to a showing of Groundhog Day sponsored by the San Francisco Zen Center on Friday, Aug. 10, 2001, held in the Trustees’ Auditorium of the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park (relocating in October 2002 to the old SF Main library in the civic center).

Judging from a quick Google search of the Internet, the connection between this movie and Buddhism is not particularly profound, but it was news to me, and the nuances were explored in a particularly exciting fashion during this presentation.

I saved the results of my search and annotated them. You’ll find links and meta links at the bottom of this essay which, if I do say so myself, are so brilliant in their scope that they will soon sweep all the other GHD links pages off the map.

I regret that these notes are partial and unprofessional. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that I am a professional journalist (check out my home page or my weekly personal column). Alas, on this occasion, I considered myself off duty. But halfway through the audience discussion which followed the film, I realized I was going to want some of this preserved for posterity. I can tell you who was there, but I can’t reliably tell who said what, and I certainly can’t call this a complete record of the fascinating evening. If you have a better or different recollection, by all means, write me and I will post it.

The showing of Groundhog Day, to a full house audience of 300, was introduced by Dairyu Michael Wenger, dean of Buddhist studies at the San Francisco Zen Center.

You can read his unfiltered opinion here; he has posted his own Groundhog Day Lecture.

The main speaker was Reb Anderson, Tenshin Roshi, a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition.

Reb Anderson made brief but amusing remarks prior to the film; several people left when the showing was over. That was too bad, because a lively and informative conversation ensued.

One of the first questions was “who wrote this.” As it happened, I knew, from writing about Danny Rubin and from owning a copy of the original script, so I raised my hand and informed the audience. Michael Wenger said he had heard that Danny Rubin was influenced by George Gurdjief, a Western mystic with some Buddhist ideas in common particularly around practice which they call the work.

I asked what the Reb thought was the turning point in the film. After watching it for the ninth or tenth time specifically to find where the third act begins, I concluded that it begins 4/5 of the way into the 103 minute film, at about the 80 minute mark. Phil is throwing cards into the hat, and Rita points out that the eternally repeating day doesn’t have to be a curse.

Reb Anderson disagreed. He thought the turning point came later, when Phil found he was unable to save the old man’s life. Only here, he said, did Phil realize “It’s not me, it is the universe, I am just the vessel.”

One member of the audience was troubled because Phil was too successful at the end, and was given too much credit. This was chalked up, by the audience, to the requirements of Hollywood film-making.

As I have noted before in my column, there has been much speculation as to how many times Phil repeated the loop. There are a few websites that speculate it was fewer than 30. I say to learn how to ice sculpt and play piano like that he repeated the day hundreds if not thousands of times. There was a desultory question about this subject. Reb Anderson agrees with me: thousands of repeats.

“Get away from seeing time. Give up the future and the past. That brings you to the moment,” was a comment.

“When you have been slapped enough times, you find a relaxed approach,” was another.

There was an exchange about doing the right thing for the wrong reason and the wrong thing for the right reason. Reb Anderson commented, “but you still think it is you that is doing it.”

“The right thing happens for the right reasons,” he concluded.

The movie illustrates the power of practice. When you practice, change happens. Phil unleashed his creativity by selflessness.

There was much more. I wish I had taken more and better notes, but I was swept up in the discussion. Someday, I’d like to hold a Groundhog Day, The Movie Festival. Invite Rubin, Ramis and Murray. Discuss the editing, the script, the screenplay, the Buddhism, the music. Dream on, Paul.

To get Wenger’s unfiltered view, look at his Groundhog Day Lecture.

Groundhog Day The Musical

In January 2020, Groundhog Day The Musical came to San Francisco, where I saw it with my family. It is funny and clever and overall a worthwhile adaptation of the material, created with the help of the original screenwriter, Danny Rubin. Bill Murray is a tough act to follow, but in San Francisco anyway, the cast acquitted themselves well.

Groundhog Day the TV Show

The ever-informative Daniel Dern passes this on from Gizmodo in 2020 (as of 2023 nothing has come of it):

“Appearing as a guest on The Production Meeting podcast, Stephen Tobolowsky revealed he’s agreed to reprise his role as Ned Ryerson in a television series based on the 1993 time loop movie, Groundhog Day, set thirty years in the future.

There’s talk about a Groundhog Day series in the works. One of the producers – I was working on The Goldbergs or Schooled, one of those shows over on the Sony lot, and one of them saw me and goes, ‘Oh, Stephen! Stephen! We’re working on a Groundhog Day TV show. Could you be Ned for the TV show?’ I go, ‘Sure. Yeah. No problem’… But it’s Ned thirty years later. What has his life become?”

Real Groundhog Day

In 2018, I actually went to Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day The Commercial

Bill Murray reprises his role as Phil Connors in a 2020 Super Bowl commercial for Jeep

Best Groundhog Day Ever–Feb. 2, 2006

David Miller, senior producer of Open Source, a PRI (Public Radio International) radio program which originates at WGBH, Boston, was thinking of doing a Groundhog Day show. Host Christopher Lydon loved the film, but wondered if there was an hour’s worth of material.

When you enter “Groundhog Day” and “Movie” and “Buddhism” into Google, my site is on the first page of results. So he called and e-mailed, and I helped convince him and others on the staff it was worth doing the show. I also guided them towards other guests and Internet resources. Thursday at noon the e-mail came: would I be a guest? Could I get over to UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall, where there is a remote studio? Would I? Could I? You bet I could. As a former producer, I pointed out that I might sound better from a remote studio than on a telephone line. Miller agreed.

Mr. S., the principal at my middle school, agreed to take the last 20 minutes of my last class so I could get to Berkeley on time. I am unfamiliar with the Cal campus, but managed to find both a parking place and the unmarked studio quickly. It is really a TV studio, but it is also usable for remote radio broadcasting. It was a very plain studio with a great Electrovoice microphone and a wonderful pair of Sony headsets. I settled in, nuzzled the wind guard on the microphone and tried to relax my voice to its lowest range.

At 3:45 pacific, the host still hadn’t pre-recorded the one-minute opening description of the broadcast–the windup. What I could hear of master control at WGBH sounded like barely controlled chaos, and my voice was still being echoed back to me on a three-quarter second delay. If you’ve ever had that happen to you, you know it makes it almost impossible to talk.

Four O’Clock, the show starts. A minute later, a five minute wait for news at the top of the hour. Then host Christopher Lydon sets up the show, again, and introduces me. We talk for six or seven minutes, then he brings on the other guests one by one, including, most notably, the screenwriter of the movie, Danny Rubin. I am in awe. That’s expectable, I suppose, since I think Rubin wrote the best motion picture ever.

My wife and several friends who have heard the program believe I acquitted myself well. I am inclined to agree with them. It was a thrilling hour, and should widen both my fame and the film’s stature.

Here is the rundown of Open Source‘s Groundhog Day broadcast. It includes a description, some related links, and the downloadable MP3 of the program itself.

Live-Action Short Subject Homage
Time Freak, nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for best live-action short subject (it lost) is an homage to Groundhog Day; it uses the exact same trope, of a character who repeats the day, with variations, in an effort to get things right with his girlfriend. There are variations; time goes on for everyone else, and he is causing the loop on purpose but many commentators saw the connection, as I did. At this point, you can Google “Time Freak” “Groundhog Day” and get as many links as I can, or more.

The Groundhog Day Trope
A website called Television Tropes and Idioms has a list of the substantial number of shows which contain Groundhog Day Loops.

The Romantic Aspect
A New York Times online opinion piece explores the romantic aspects of Groundhog Day in illuminating detail:
OPINION   | February 26, 2012
The Stone: Love and Death
By TODD MAY
Romantic love needs the promise of a future to survive. But that future must have an end.

An AFI GHD Quiz
Kent Peterman found a Groundhog Day quiz at the AFI web site.

Interesting Facts
My nephew Paul found a collection of interesting facts.

Article in The Atlantic
An interesting meditation on Groundhog Day appeared in the March 2013 issue of The Atlantic and was brought to my attention by a friend.

Danny Rubin Book
Groundhog Day 2012: Danny Rubin, the writer of Groundhog Day, has a new book out!  Check out my review How To Write Groundhog Day. Short answer: I loved it!

Cut Pool Hustler Scene
Groundhog Day 2021: Thank you Dave Sims, for pointing me at Groundhog Day deleted scene: Phil the Pool Hustler.

Groundhog Day Redux

In the better late than never department, my long-time musical associate George March added some new instances of GHD-type plots:

–start list–

“Defending your Life” (1991), and “Heaven Can Wait” (1978).

James P Hogan’s book “Thrice Upon a Time“

The made for 2006 TV movie “12:01“

and a more recent film: “Source Code“

as well as the various TV shows that have done episodes with that theme.

–end list–

Slight Variation
Still Time, an Italian film, is sort of a time loop movie, in the sense that the protagonist begins by waking up at a long-ago birthday party, then hops to another birthday, five years later. Lovely, touching film. No one says “This is just like Groundhog Day.”

Various New Time Loops
Groundhog Day 2021: Thank you Daniel Dern, for a helpful list of new Time Loop resources.

Reasonably Good Time Loop Movie
See my review of a reasonably inventive Time Loop movie which I gave 3.5 stars out of five: Boss Level.

Fine Two-Person Loop
4.5-star two-person loop with explanation: Palm Springs.

Other material. This is a chronological “blog” of new Groundhog Day material as it accumulates; much of it once resided on the home page, but that page had become too large.

Commentary from Prof. Franz Metcalf, (http://mind2mind.net), author of Just Add Buddha and Buddha in your Backpack

The name Ned Ryerson

New York Times Feature Story on Groundhog Day, The Movie

Boston Globe Anniversary Appreciation

French (Jaques Brel) in the restaurant and Walter Scott (The Wretch) in the Diner

Paul Schindler’s Blog Comments On Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day Links and Metalinks

Groundhog Day Script Writer Danny Rubin

Groundhog Day Star Bill Murray

Groundhog Day Director Harold Ramis

New Yorker Profile of Groundhog Day Director Harold Ramis

Groundhog Day essay in Stephen Simon’s book, The Force Is With You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives

Groundhog Day essay by Mario Sesti in the Museum of Modern Art catalog for, The Hidden God: Film and Faith

Groundhog Day by Ryan Gilbey, published by the British Film Institute and the University of California Press.

The Italian remake of Groundhog Day .

Boston Globe Anniversary Appreciation

Content Changes

2023.03.30  Moved all pages into Typepad
2021.03.09 Added Daniel Dern, Boss Level, Palm Springs
2021.02.26 Added George March
2021.02.18 Added cut pool hustler scene
2019.01.15 Added reference to musical and my actual trip
2014.01.31 Added a clearer introductory paragraph
2013.03.04 Added Atlantic article
2013.02.05 Added AFI quiz and interesting facts
2012.02.28 Moved Picked As One Of Ten Best Films Ever, British Groundhog Day Trivia, The Number of Days Phil Was Stuck to “other material,” added Live-Action Short Subject Homage, The Groundhog Day Trope, The Romantic Aspect
2011.05.15 Added Mike Burtner link to Stephen Tobolowsky article
2011.02.05 Added Tom Lasusa link to calculation of number of days Phil Connor repeats
2010.09.11 Added Guardian’s 60 facts for Bill Murray’s 60th birthday
2009.01.04 Added Stanley Fish designation of film as one of the 10 best
2008.06.20 Created “other” page, moved most miscellaneous observations from this page to that one
2008.02.03 Added LA Times commentary
2007.10.11 Added Prof. Franz Metcalf commentary
2006.03.07 Added 2007 Groundhog Day article in Philadelphia Inquirer, removed dead link to Bing! contest
2006.02.06 Added 2006 Groundhog Day material
2006.01.07 Added Sir Walter Scott poem
2005.08.19 *Added discussion of the naming of Ned Ryerson
2004.6.30 Stephen Simon essay added
2004.6.28 Harold Ramis New Yorker Profile added
2004.6.01 An Italian adaptation!
2004.04.11 Danny Rubin corrects the French quotation
2004.03.18 Thurman quote from SF Chronicle
2004.02.27 Updated Danny Rubin page with information about (almost certainly false) claims of idea swiping.
2004.01.22 Added IMDB links page
2003.11.07 Added Charles Murray comment
2003.08.12 Added another review, Bayda commentary, Boston Globe appreciation, split page up
2003.07.12 Adding comments on French poetry scene
2001.08.26 Correcting spelling of Wenger throughout, adding links from Gary Gach.
2001.08.18 Correcting Gurdjief reference by Wenger

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Now Posted Here

List of Lists
From Semi-Rad:  list of lists of lists on Wikipedia
…
If We Treated Teachers Like Pro Athletes
Key & Peele. Thank you fellow retired teacher Kent Peterman.
…
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe Humor
Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit: A quiz
…
Teaching The Truth About the Civil War
Thank you Michael Dortch for starting this discussion: Some Of Us Actually Taught Actual U.S. History. Also: My Proposed Lesson On White Privilege.
…
Janet Malcom Dies
Famed New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm died this week.She was describing herself when she wrote: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.” —The Journalist and the Murderer, 1990 (from my journalism quotes page)
…

IQ Median
I knew the average IQ score was 100, but I wondered about the median score: the score where half the people are above, half below. It turns out 100 is the mean and median both, according to the Internet. Chilling. Half the population has an IQ under 100.

Dress like Bill Murray
Here’s your chance to dress like Bill Murray and take a New Years Day Polar Bear Plunge in South Carolina. Sign up for 2021. Thanks, Kent Peterman.
…
Humor: Dreading the Office?
Here’s a new casual (as they call them at the New Yorker) from Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe: Dreading….or dreaming? Do you want to go back to your office?

If you’re willing to write for what I pay ($0.00), feel free to submit a casual humorous essay any time.
…
Suggested Web Page
Here's a page full of pointers to my writing about journalism
…
Suggested Book
I cannot recommend too highly Beth Karpf’s suggestion: Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink. A long but gripping story about the difficulties of being female in 17th century England, and in American Academia in the 21^st.
…
Suggested Documentary
Heal on Netflix is moving; much of it was in line with my spiritual experience of 2020. “Stories from spiritual leaders, physicians and those with chronic illnesses reveal the powerful connection between the human psyche and physical health.”
…
Suggested Movie
The New Yorker suggested streaming 1949's A Letter to Three Wives. I loved it. Well, it is a little sappy in places, but it makes up for it (in my opinion) by being snappy and proto-feminist in others. And Kirk Douglas' screed about commercial radio is worth the price of admission if you're interested in writing. A professor posted an excellent set of Three Wives film notes.
…
Funny Take on Copy Editing
Robert Malchman sent me a link to this New York Times article: Because of an Editing Error: Blunders, gaffes and terrible math skills, written in permanent ink.
…
Love, Weddings & Other Disasters
Available on Amazon, featuring Diane Keaton and Jeremy Irons. Funny, clever, heart-warming: everything you could ask for in a rom-com.
…
This Week's Events
I will let Randy Rainbow express my opinion of this week's events.

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…

My recent contributions to HumorLabs:
And the Number One Way Life Would Be Different If Everyday Was 4/20…
Everyone in Congress would sit around all day doing nothing. Oh wait…

The Number Seven reward for contributing to the Catch a Predator kickstarter:
$100: A show credit for "Lambada services provided by."

The Number Six sign that "You aren't You"
The face in the mirror doesn't terrify you.

The Number Seven Thing Overheard During the Signing of Indiana's Religious Freedom Act…
"That felt good. Let's turn the clocks back literally as well, and restore standard time."

* * *
My former ensemble, the Contra Costa Wind Symphony, has a concert May 17 at the Lesher Theater in Walnut Creek. After 35 years at the helm, Dr. Duane Carroll is hanging up his baton. I played with the band 13 years myself.

***
Two infographics from friends:
Kent Peterman passes along:
25 maps that explain the English language

From Jerry Pournelle:
The disposable income of people in every country of the world in one fantastic infographic

As usual, I expect  new material for my Groundhog Day The Movie website from my avid readers. Fire away if you have something you don't see here.

Welcome to another perennial item. I run this one (nearly) every year in conjunction with Groundhog Day. The Bill Murray movie of the same name is the 34th funniest American film of all time, according to the American Film Institute. It is also my favorite movie of all times. This is the ninth time I've run this item!

I went to a showing of Groundhog Day sponsored by the San Francisco Zen Center on Friday, Aug. 10, 2001, held in the Trustees' Auditorium of the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park (relocated in October 2002 to the old SF Main library in the civic center).

I have so much to say about this exciting, exhilarating, eye-opening experience that it is now a subsite titled Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me, which includes a description of that seminal showing, commentary, and links to other sites that deal with the connection. While noticing the connection between this movie and Buddhism is not particularly profound, it was news to me, and the nuances were explored in a particularly exciting fashion during the Zen Center presentation. My site is rapidly gaining ground as the authoritative center for GHD/Buddhism commentary on the web. I brush it up and add new material regularly, so if you haven't been there in a while, take a look.

If you love the work of GHD writer Danny Rubin as much as I do, check out his web site which includes a bio, a list of his works in progress (exciting) and a list of his sold films (also exciting). I have been privileged to share a radio show with him. He has been nice enough to correspond now and then with me via e-mail. He's written a great e-book, How to Write Groundhog Day, which I  thoroughly enjoyed. Go out and buy your own copy!

Also, the University of California has published a Groundhog Day book, by Ryan Gilbey.

I finally bought the book The Magic Of Groundhog Day by Paul Hannam. Danny Rubin who wrote the foreword. You can find out more at Hannam's website (check out his blog!). Hannam wrote me that he "did a book group on my book and several readers said that they could not believe how great the movie was after learning about its profound spiritual and psychological meaning. Even at Oxford 90% of the students thought it was just a Bill Murray comedy!"

Robert Malchman found a New York Daily News Where Are They Now feature

Bob Nilsson checks in:

I stumbled upon this clip of Stephen Tobolowsky explaining Bill Murray's pain in stepping into the puddle during Groundhog Day. Looks like there are many clips at YouTube about the movie.

Kent Peterman found a Groundhog Day quiz. My nephew Paul found a collection of interesting facts.
Turns out there is a spiritual analysis of an obsession with movies. A friend writes:

An interesting meditation on my favorite film, Grounhog Day appeared in the March 2013 issue of The Atlantic and was brought to my attention by a friend.

The friend of a friend has started a health
and fitness blog that looks promising. Give it a glance!

My friend Kent Peterman sent along some thoughts on Jewish Buddhism.
They are all over the net, so I'll just point you to them here
and offer a sample: If there is no self,
whose arthritis is this? Be here
now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

The critical analysis of the stupid Verizon propoganda the New York Times
obligingly ran is improving and growing in quantity: Comcast,
Verizon Editorials Distort True Picture of U.S. Internet Service,
Experts Say

Long-time colleague Richard Dalton checks in with this article on High-Resolution
Displays by my former boss, Mike Elgan, and adds:

As usual, I got new material for my Groundhog Day The Movie website
from my avid readers. Kent Peterman found a Groundhog
Day quiz. My nephew Paul found a collection of interesting
facts.

Turns out there is a spiritual analysis of an obsession with movies. A
friend writes: