I AM THE ANTIWALT

Since several of my LJ pals are enjoying the plasticine charms of Walt Disney World as of this morning, I feel it is my civic duty to remind everyone of what Richard Schickel said of Uncle Walt in his 1968 book The Disney Version: that he was "a kind of rallying point for the subliterates of our society... [Disney] has placed a Mickey Mouse hat on every little developing personality in America. As capitalism, it is a work of genius; as culture, it is mostly a horror."

In praise of Anthony Lane

I Amazoned and am now commute-reading Nobody's Perfect, a collection of reviews and essays by Anthony Lane, film critic for The New Yorker since 1993—I was a subscriber at the time, BTW—and, it has increasingly seemed to me over the years, one of the best humorists of his generation—perhaps of any. I don't have time now to supply, for your delectation and as grounds for Mr. Lane's canonization, the range of excerpts I have begun noting (by page and paragraph numbers, in another book), but I certainly shall if the current proposal does not kill me.