Mary Pulpfictions

CBS News, December 18, 2013, "Pulp Fiction," "Mary Poppins" added to National Film Registry, by David Morgan.

I'll have a lot more to say in the new year. I really should go see "Saving Mr. Banks" if I want to take this blog seriously, I suppose.

"You don't get Fawlty Towers, Morrissey and Martin Amis from a nation that likes itself."

Oh, I've been keeping up this blog so well!

 The Observer, April 6, 2013 , "George Osborne, gawd bless yer" by Victoria Coren

Arriving at the elegant, members-only gaming club, awed by its glittering chandeliers and sweeping staircase, I heard myself say to the top-hatted doorman: "Hellair, we're har for the game upstars." Transformed, by a mere doorway, from Dick Van Dyke to the Duchess of Devonshire.

I really liked this paragraph about British self-loathing.

The British are supposed to be self-doubting rather than self-righteous – since the dissolution of empire, anyway. It's one of the things I'm most patriotic about. From our awkwardness and embarrassment has sprung a complexity of literature, comedy and pop music that no other country can touch, for all their sunny weather and expressive street carnivals. You don't get Fawlty Towers, Morrissey and Martin Amis from a nation that likes itself.