Daily Blague

For some crazy reason, it's Monday and yet I'm feeling pretty good! We watched a hugely funny movie last night, one that seems to have been lost in the post 9/11 commotion, Barry Sonnenfeld's Big Trouble. Is Zooey Deschanel the Eve Arden of our times or what?

The Metropolitan Diary is very good today. I especially liked the story about little Ella and the lady in the "garbage room." Kids say the darnedest things. And it was about two sentences before the actual announcement that I realized that columnist Joyce Purnick was bidding adieu to Metro Matters, her somewhat jaundiced but appealingly blog-like review of matters great and small.

But what is with the coverage of Renzo Piano's utterly banal addition to the Morgan Library? I can't believe my eyes! It looks like a bank in Podunk - a discount bank, too cheap to buy a sign. The interior shots suggest something with promise, but the exterior, at least in the Times photograph, is totally not "dazzling." And what's with the street furniture in front, while we're talking?

If I hear any more about the invasion of Iran, I'm coming out for impeachment. These people in the White House are crazy, and I for one don't want to be blown up because of their lunacy. I completely agree with Paul Krugman: don't expect W to act rationally. (I never have, not for a minute.)

And thanks to Ms NOLA for directing my attention to Ben and Alice, which in turn alerted me to the dustup about last Monday's Times crossword puzzle. Writing out "scumbag," it seems, in answer to a clue, bothered a lot of readers who remember what the word was supposed to mean when it entered the language in the Sixties. Younger readers, however - and I hope that would be you - just think it means "despicable person." Jesse Sheidlower's story is at Slate.

Have I outlined my own policy about vulgarity? Unlike the Times, I will quote anything. But I try to avoid the musky words myself. In my speech, they are signs of impatience or contempt (same difference?), and I often wish I didn't know them.