Wowsies.

60% of NBA players are bankrupt by five years after their retirement.
(h/t: Marginal Revolution)

Reminds me of a quote from the first couple of pages from the book I'm reading now: Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth. Basically, the main character, Zuckerman - a novelist has just released a bestseller and has heaps of money coming his way.

Gone were the days when Zuckerman had only to worry about Zuckerman making money: henceforth he would have to worry about his money making money.

Top Movie of 2010?

I'm going to make a bold useless prediction right now. The Yiddish Policemen's Union is going to be the best movie of 2010.

Fresh off watching the awesome No Country For Old Men, I was reading up on the Coen Brother's next film: Burn After Reading (trailer below - looks promising) when I found out that a couple of projects down the line, the Coen Brothers intend to adapt Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union which I'm in the middle of reading. I must say, that this is a match made in heaven - I was thinking as I was reading how perfect it will be if the Coen Brothers made a movie from it - it's scheduled to be released in 2010 but knowing reality will probably be delayed - especially as two of their movies will be released before we get to see this. This is one project I'm excited about.

My Favourite Paragrah of the Moment.

I would have just said, "the man was fat" but I guess that's why I'm not a novelist.

Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined dessert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man. They clumped the dough of his arms and legs to the dough of his body, then jammed his head down on top. A millionaire could cover a Rolls-Royce with the fine black silk-and-velvet expanse of the rebbe's frock coat and trousers. It would require the brain strength of the eighteen greatest sages in history to reason through the arguments against and in favor of classifying the rebbe's massive bottom as either a creature of the deep, a man-made structure, or an unavoidable act of God. If he stands up, or if he sits down, it doesn't make any difference in what you see.

From Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. A book I picked up at the library randomly based solely on the cover. I hadn't even heard of Michael Chabon at the time. I was then further convinced by all the praise and the crazy sounding plot.

I've been very impressed so far.

Review: Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

When I said at the start of the year that I should more Russian authors I don't think I meant this.

Nevertheless, I've found myself addicted to the Watch series since last year when I watched the Night Watch movie followed up by the Day Watch movie earlier this year. I got out the books from the library and promptly read them and now just finished Twilight Watch - the third book in the series. If you're into a mixture of magician/vampire/detective novels with a little satire on bureaucracy and some musing on modern Russia then this is will be right down your alley. If not, read War and Peace or something.

Admittedly, this book is not as good as the the first two but has it moments. Lukyanenko keeps up his annoying habit of putting heaps of lyrics in the prose. I don't let Thomas Pynchon do that and Lukyanenko gets the same treatment. What's the point? I don't even bother reading them.

There is a movie called Twilight Watch scheducled for release in 2009 but the setting has been changed from Russia to the States and it will feature American actors rather than Russians. A obviously disapointing movie with the only bright spot being that they've retained the director Timur Bekmambetov. So it should be interesting, the books and the movies are two different beasts with the movies going in a completely diffferent direction to the books. We'll just have to wait and see.

Selection Effects

Tyler Cowen writes...

When it comes to Roman literature there is also a significant selection effect, namely what later manuscript collectors thought was worth preserving and protecting. Many novels were written during Roman times, but not many of them have come down to us and thus the average quality of Roman literature may look artificially high, just as the average quality of today's literary menagerie looks artificially low.

Whenever someone claims to me that movies today are crap (commonly either snobs or oddly people who actually never watch old films and only watch contemporary films anyway - especially the most stale of today's genre - the romantic comedy) I normally spout out something like that. Though I replace "roman literature" with "old movies" and "manuscript collectors" with "those people who preserved film prints". This effect is magnified with old movies, especially silent films since these movies were filmed on Nitrate film stock which without proper care would degenerate into goo. Provided it hadn't blown up first.

But the market also does this work as well, more films were made back in the pre-television days than now but only a handful of them actually survive. With the digital age upon us, it increases the chances that films will survive into the future. But not all of them, the market will sweep aside those films that were picked up by neither the mass consumer or the critic. With the bad movies gone the average quality of these movies goes up.

The same thing happens with all form of culture - music, books, whatever else there is...