Additional dialogue: W. Shakespeare.

Pop-cultural Polaroids from my weekend:

• When I started Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, he tricked me into thinking he wasn't one of those McSweeney assholes. I think it's because he managed to create a sympathetic narrator with a unique voice (not exactly a trait of Eggers and co.) and then he dropped the typographical stunts and the TV stills and the chapter that has red proof-reading marks all over it. It's turning into a chore to finish the thing.
  
  
• My Own Private Idaho: perhaps the greatest adaptation of Henry IV ever set in the modern Pacific Northwest with a narcoleptic man-whore as its hero. Glibness aside, it's brilliant. Gus Van Sant is at his absolute best/fearless as he recklessly interweaves docudrama confessionals, Shakespearian bombast, grainy 8mm movies, and abstract images into an aching puzzle of longing and identity and home.
  
  
• Sad realization: hoverboards or no, Back to the Future Part II sucks. I was actually kind of excited to watch it, as it's been years and years since I'd last seen the thing. I remember loving all the little futuristic details, zany hijinks, etc. Yeah, well, not so much anymore. It's a leaden, arrhythmic, dead-behind-the-eyes piece of cinematic product placement. It still kind of stings.
  
  
• Maybe it's Shane MacGowan's tragic issues d'orthodonture, but I can't keep a straight face when I listen to The Pogues. Even when they're singing about whoredom.