The Clairvoyant Zoopraxiscope

Finding it difficult, given the obscene length of my vacation (longer, even, than when I was working at Farrar Straus and thinking to myself, "Hm... maybe I can make dinner out of three green beans and 45 grains of brown rice...hmmm... can't believe we get a whole week off at Christmas!"), to move. Read a lot of good stuff in the new Believer, a magazine which started as a hip prose dump site and has turned into a surprising, intelligent magazine. The dvd Wholphin # 1 is particularly good, including as it does a film of Al Gore at ease, something which I didn't see all that much of when he made a running jump at the presidency. There's also a short (and doubtless expensive) film about the frosty wastes inside Selma Blair's vagina. Wouldna suspected. The contract must have been very interesting for that project. Also: a brief animation by Brian Dewan, an illustration of an old fairy tale, really beautiful and odd and deadpan. Easily the least self-conscious thing on the dvd, although most of it is terrific and bite-size.