alt.-37 And Blue Man's Group

Reviewing "Watchmen" in the New York Times, as a public service A. O. Scott notes the use of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during a sex scene and beseeches filmmakers:

[C]an we please have a moratorium on the use of this song in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don’t want to hear it again. Do you?

Amen and (with apologies to my Lenten brethren and sistren) alleluia.

Several "Watchmen" reviews, including Scott's, have persuaded me to watch for the DVD, if only to restrict the gushing blood, cracking bones, and exploding bodies to a smaller screen.

Having missed the graphic novel phenom entirely, I did buy a copy of the book and am about halfway through. Reading a comic book at 54, I feel self-conscious, even though it's strictly for research purposes. President Nixon, of course, is in his fifth term, having sent a big blue superman called Dr. Manhattan to defeat the Viet Cong, enabling the U.S. to win the war. That's alt.-37 above, anxiously contemplating the possible loss of the entire Eastern establishment in a hypothetical nuclear exchange. It's now the mid-1980s. The Soviets have invaded Afghanistan and plunged into Pakistan. But the blue man has broken up with his girlfriend and been accused of giving everyone cancer. He's gone to Mars to sulk and so isn't available to RN to blunt the invasion.

The reflections of another from "Watchman"'s band of troubled superheroes on the meaninglessness of the universe and the pivotal role played by chance in our lives reminded me of one of Woody Allen's best movies. A ring decides a character's fate in Allen's "Match Point," a broken watch in "Watchmen." The book has also been giving me weird dreams. Its looming apocalypse resonates discomfitingly with our all-too-real economic crisis.