Kermit and Fozzy: Movin’ right along, footloose and fancy free.

Fozzy: You’re ready for the blogwatch!

Kermit: Is it ready for me?

Church of the Masses: Rave review of “Big Fish,” and a question: Why are the good movies lately all wet?

Permanent Damage: Interesting column on the difference between reviewing and criticism. Obviously, the lines are much blurrier than this, but his basic distinction interests me: “The purpose of reviews is to tell the consumer how to spend their money. …The way the reviewer gets and keeps an audience is by dressing this three-word-max up with as clever (or pithy, if it’s clever-pithy) a song and dance as possible, so that, ideally, even if you never agree with the reviewer’s conclusions, you still return each review for the sheer enjoyment of watching the reviewer dance the steps.

“…Critics, on the other hand, are supposed to examine, deconstruct, draw connections and disconnections, and generally place a text (we’ll use the word in this instance to refer to any artistic ‘product’) in a greater context, whether historical, aesthetic or whatever, to draw out the meaning of importance of a text, a body of work or school of thought. …Good criticism is always an exploration, an invitation to others to join in on the process. (I guess a short, snide version would be that reviews tell people what to think, and criticism tells them how to think.)” read the rest!

People interested in issues of marriage, gender and parenting, and (specifically) same-sex marriage, really should be reading MarriageMovement.org and MarriageDebate.com (and not just because I edit the latter site!). MM.org features the thoughtful stylin’s of Elizabeth Marquardt and David Blankenhorn; MD.com is more narrowly focused on the SSM debate, is wilder and woollier, and is specifically intended to provide about a 50/50 split between supporters and opponents of SSM. End of plug.

My parents’ new cable package includes not only an all-’80s music channel, but a separate all-New Wave music channel. I was in hog heaven. I could listen to that New Wave channel pretty much endlessly.