Stuck in Arizona with the Memphis Blues Again

on Feb 14 in Essays & Reviews by

Actually, it beats being home in Philadelphia being pelted with ice. UsAirways decided to dissuade passengers from flying east yesterday by offering to change reservations for free, so I moved my return to Friday and drove up to Sedona, land of red rocks, spas, restaurants and cheerful tourists. What an amazing drive it is from Phoenix to Sedona!

I’m in a inexpensive motel that offers continental bkfst in a room with a TV, copies of USA today and said tourists, whose arguing and bathing I listened to for a few hours last night. I might also have made a mistake by going to see the Last King of Scotland at 4PM with Forest Whitaker. It was a disturbing film, with good acting, without really achieving much either as a statement of any kind of redemption.

I’m developing an allergy to only-moderately decent art depicting really bad things. It’s tabloidy and exploitive in a way – this art. Put another way, it does nothing to enhance the human experience. I had the same feeling about Munich, the movie about terrorists taking and killing Israeli’s in the 70s. It isn’t exciting, it isn’t informative, it isn’t particularly well-spun. It isn’t anything really, except sensational and upsetting.

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