My Love Affair With Newspapers

I'll probably be one of the last humans to read newspapers - daily. I love them. This summer it's been such a pleasure to read The Star Tribune - unlike my hometown paper, "The Orlando Sentinel" that has shrunk to a pitifully few pages.

Yesterday we went to the discount movie theater to see "State of Play." It came out about the same time as "The Soloist" but we missed it first time around. Both movies glorify news reporters. Other than that, they're very different.

"State of Play" stars Russell Crow as the reporter. Aside from wishing - throughout the entire movie - that he'd wash his hair and clean his apartment, he was great. The movie's a good political mystery.

I didn't realize the it had six other fine and well know actors: Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman - and one of our most underrated, Jeff Daniels.

Well, maybe they're not all fine....

As you know, one of my favorite parts of the newspaper is the comics. "Pooch Cafe" has had a running plot for a few days. The dog is searching for the plank of wood that comforted him as a puppy. He calls it his plankie.

In yesterday's strip he was describing the plank to a police sketch artist: "Lets see, he's about six feet, sort of flat, wooden, stoic, bland..."

The sketch artist soon holds up a drawing of Ben Affleck.


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