• Four out of five badgers recommend AlterBadger to their friends.  Or they would, if badgers had friends, instead of mortal enemies.
• Franz Kafka's 1917 novel The Trial is something we're lucky to have today.  When Kafka died a few years later, he left instructions asking that all of his novels be burned.  Fortunately, this novel and two others were saved, and though none of them were ever finished by Kafka, what we have is still great literature.  The Trial has a pretty simple plot:  Joseph K. is approached in his home one morning by two men who tell him that he is under arrest.  But they can't tell him what he's under arrest for, and they're not actually going to take him to prison right then.  He's free to go about his life until the day they come back for him, and in the meantime the Court will be conducting his trial in secret.  K. decides to fight the Court... but first he has to find it.  Taken in a straightforward way, this plays to Kafka's usual themes of helplessness in the face of unknowable circumstances, and critics of the 1950s and 60s saw it as a cousin of 1984, a dark condemnation of shadow governments and secret Stalinist trials (which would have been an impressive feat indeed for a man writing in Czechoslovakia prior to the Russian Revolution).  But as the book progresses, it becomes very clear that Kafka is working with an entirely different metaphor:  what if our court system actually operated like the Heavenly Court which we're all supposed to face when we die?  Taking it further, could such a Court really claim to be fair, to have come from a compassionate creator?  There's a lot of really interesting stuff in here,  critiques of both the Catholic and Protestant views of salvation.  As a story the novel is far from perfect (it wasn't finished, after all, though it does have an ending), and the narrative jumps around a bit, feeling more episodic than a cohesive novel should.  But it's such a work of art, its imperfections are forgivable.  
• The final DVD boxed set of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was released recently, and as unexpected as this may sound to anyone who hasn't seen it, it was probably one of the best sitcoms ever produced.  The first season was pretty conventional single-girl-in-the-city kind of stuff, lots of dating and inoffensive good times with other single friends.  But the very first episode of the second season announced a bold departure:  they talked about sex.  In 1971.  And that soon became the kind of thing the show was known for, dealing with adult problems (infidelity, impotence, unemployment, inequality, absent fathers, death...) in an adult fashion.  As one Time article put it, the show's creators never talked down to us.  And a lot of shows DO talk to adults like they're children, they either make everything cute and funny, or they skirt right up to the edge of a serious issue and then jump back (Dick Van Dyke did it in the 60s, Modern Family does it today...).  The Mary Tyler Moore Show was fearless:  I remember an episode where Mary actually ends up in prison, another earlier one where a man asks to spend the night with her and she shoves him away, then spends the rest of the night wondering if she's become a frigid person. Her friend suspects her husband of cheating on her... and he actually is.  Her boss's wife threatens to leave him... and she actually does.  It's a show that very easily could have been worthless, years of vapid dating adventures and handsome male guest stars stretching into infinity.  But instead we got a thoughtful and genuinely adult series (not to say there weren't some stupid episodes, this is television after all), which ran for seven years and won an Emmy for best comedy series each of the last three consecutive years of its run.  Most series squander their potential as they age and die of cancellation; The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a rare series that became better with each season.
• Angels in America: Millennium Approaches is playing once again on Broadway in a new revival, which reminded me that I had actually never read this play.  Author Tony Kushner described his play as "a gay fantasia on national themes," and that's probably the best way to describe it.  The plot is mainly concerned with four gay men, two of whom are dying of AIDS, the other two reeling with the guilt of abandoning their partners in a time of need.  In their pain and grief, these characters say some terrible things to each other, and their negativity makes them seem more human.  We usually insist that our terminal patients in fiction act saintly and wisely loving, but this is more authentic.  So that's the "gay" part of the equation; "fantasia" is a musical term that describes a series of motifs that each tell their own story, but when taken all together as a group do not make a story (think Disney's "Fantasia," which is an excellent representation).  Angels in America functions as a Fantasia, a series of scenes and characters that do not always come together to form a complete forward-moving plot, but are tied thematically.  And that's where the "national themes" part comes in.  The play is concerned with all the intricacies of faith, religious visions (there's a nice scene where a woman having a drug-fueled hallucination and a man having a prophetic dream find themselves in the same vision), death, politics, oppression, abandonment... all of the scenes tie together thematically.  The plot resists adherence to traditional structure, though it still progresses clearly and at a good pace, and the thematic ties hold the play together well in places where the plot wanders.  The ending did feel abrupt, but Millennium Approaches is only the first part of the story; another play called Perestroika completes the cycle.  Of course I read the play and didn't see it performed, but apparently it utilizes some interesting staging:  the actors all play multiple roles, even crossing the gender line to show that what we think of as clear differences between men and women are actually quite a bit more hazy.  The special effects are also performed with an intentional theatricality (wires showing, etc), presumably to cast doubt on their authenticity within the story.  Overall, this is a unique and famously good play that you fortunately don't have to go to New York to see; HBO produced a highly-acclaimed miniseries in 2003 (which does contain BOTH plays of the cycle), and stars Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson.  Netflix has the DVD, and that's on my queue now so I can see the rest of it without having to hunt the book stores for a copy of Perestroika.
•  American Film Badger:  Looking at the two AFI Top 100 lists this week, I find an interesting thing:  Casablanca was number 2 on the 1998 list, and number 3 on the 2007 list, while The Godfather was number 3 on the 1998 list, and number 2 on the 2007 list.  It's been a while since I've seen Casablanca, I do of course remember really liking it but how could you not?  The Godfather I remember very well (I own the DVDs of Part I and Part II) (what Part III, what are you talking about?  they never made a Part III, you crazy person.  doesn't exist.  nope.), and it's no exaggeration to say that this dark, complex, well-acted and well-shot film is very nearly perfect.  And Part II's even better. 
• This week's reading:  Finished The Trial, read Millenium Approaches... today I'll start on William Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom!, and this being Faulkner I hope I'm in the mood to pay attention.  Won't have time to do one of these write-ups next week, as I'll have company for most of the week.  What will you do without me?  I'd be terrified if I had to do without me.