Another day off

I'm crossing my fingers that the murder of Bhutto does not lead to WWIII.

Just finished Michael Palin's Diaries 1969-1979, a great book. As a teen, I would spend my late Saturday nights watching Saturday Night Live from 10pm to midnight and then catch Monty Python on PBS from midnight to whenever the showings ended. I loved Python, although I never became one of those annoying kids trying to mimic the accents or re-enact the bits over and over again. Of all the Pythons, I enjoyed the smarminess of Eric Idle and the everyman frustration of Palin the most.

I think Diaries 1969-1979 capture Palin's work ethic, his love of family, and his own amazement at times that he was actually earning a living by putting pen to paper. An entry late in the book, as Life of Brian was printing cash for the group, George Harrison pulls Palin aside to say that now Palin could own a mansion like George's. Palin's inner voice says, "but I like where I am now", a home in a somewhat conventional London suburb. You have to admire someone who is that famous staying so very rooted in the 'real' world.

Now, on to the Warren Zevon biography, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

William James, In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, will be attended to shortly. Damn heaving reading, that book.