The small(er) dot is the moon. The big(ger) dot is us.

I'm a teacher now. My kids are going to save the world.

So maybe this doesn't exactly fit my mood right now and maybe I've already blogged about this movie but when a clip like this shows up on your GoogleReader it's hard to ignore.

For sure I’m going to have the note framed. If there was a way of tattooing it on my back, I would. What amazes me is the gratuity of it. As you would know, there is a large measure of calculation in what public figures do. But here, what does he gain? I’m not a US citizen. In no way can I be of help to President Obama. Clearly he did it for personal reasons, as a reader and as a father. And in two lines, what an insightful analysis of Life of Pi. Bless him, bless him.

--Yann Martel, in response to a letter from Obama

LIKE IT MEANS SOMETHING

You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it's worth something. Well, let me tell 'ya, it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilities, and all he can do is whine.

--Nathaniel, Six Feet Under (via Ruth Boglebizer)


Six Feet Under is a good show, and the first show that I watched from beginning to end. During the finale, I wept and wept, and now it makes me think of Justin and Martin--no complaints there.

At age 28, ten years after dropping out, Franco decided to go back to college. He enrolled in a couple of UCLA extension courses (literature, creative writing) and found them so magically satisfying—so safe and pure compared with the world of acting—that he threw himself back into his education with crazy abandon. He persuaded his advisers to let him exceed the maximum course load, then proceeded to take 62 credits a quarter, roughly three times the normal limit. When he had to work—to fly to San Francisco, for instance, to film Milk—he’d ask classmates to record lectures for him, then listen to them at night in his trailer. He graduated in two years with a degree in English and a GPA over 3.5. He wrote a novel as his honors thesis.

--Sam Anderson, The James Franco Project

WHAT HE SAID

This should happen more often.