Some addenda to the last entry:

Via Kottke, articles in the Times and Slate about "Killer of Sheep", a student film made in 1977 by Charles Burnett that has received many accolades, such as being added to the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, named one of the 100 essential films of all time by the National Society of Film Critics, and getting a MacArthur Foundation grant for Burnett, but has never been officially released because no distributor thought it could make more money than it would cost to secure the rights to the music used in the film. It ended up costing $150,000, but one song at the end of the film had to be replaced. Now it is finally being shown in theaters (at the IFC Center in New York) and will be released on DVD in the fall.

This reminded me of the stories about "Mad Hot Ballroom" and the trouble they had paying for music licensing. This article from the Times tells some of it, and also discusses "Tarnation," but I had been thinking of another story, which I now find here, though I don't remember where I originally read it. While they were filming, a young boy spontaneously shouted "everybody dance now!" without any of the melody or rhythm of the song. It would have cost $10,000 to include it in the movie, and they decided to cut the scene.

I was also reminded of that while watching an episode of American Idol (not exactly by choice). The controversial contestant Sanjaya had just finished 'singing' his song, "Bathwater" by No Doubt, and getting the judges feedback, and in the course of some banter started singing another No Doubt song. Ryan Seacrest instantly cut him off, saying, "No, don't sing it or we'll have to pay for it!"

It says something either about the vastness of NYC, or about myself, that even after actively keeping up on the restaurant scene for several months, I still regularly have moments like this: I find out from Eater that a restaurant has closed, and it's the first time I've heard of the restaurant, and it turns out it's a restaurant that I would have loved to eat at. The only consolation in this case is that I probably wouldn't have been able to afford more than a light lunch at said restaurant. The place was called Chikubu, and according to Eater and others, served extremely authentic Japanese fare, including ramen lunch on Fridays and Saturdays that turned the place into a madhouse of transplanted salarimen, and at dinner, "a wide and weird array of incredibly expensive seafood delicacies flown in from Japan." Check out some of their appetizers:

• Fresh sea urchin
• Marinated "Hotaru" squid
• Jellyfish with vinegar sauce
• Salted entrails of the trepang (aka sea cucumber)
• Sweet young bee with honey soy sauce

You can see the rest at Menupages, though it won't do you much good at this point. The rest of the menu is mostly more familiar selections, but it all sounds awesome. The lack of California rolls, or any other fancy-named ones, tells me that this must indeed have been one of the more authentic Japanese restaurants in the city. I'm very sad to see it go, particularly without having tried it. For now I'll have to set my sights on Rosanjin instead.

Today Jason Kottke linked to an article in Reason Magazine advocating a reduction or elimination of the federal minimum drinking age. He pulled this quote from it:

The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink.

Is it just me, or is this an extremely odd argument? I read it over, trying to figure out how even the author intended it to be interpreted. Finally I guessed that they meant this statistic indicates that after being prohibited from it for too long, people turning 21 binge irresponsibly for three years. But much of the rest of the essay complains that people under 21 drink more irresponsibly because it's illegal, drinking "furtively and dangerously" rather than in social settings. In any case, to me the far more obvious reading of the statistic is that people of these ages cannot handle drinking and driving, that is, without doing them at the same time.

Now I am hardly advocating that the drinking age be increased to 24. But imagine if it were reduced to 18, and then you heard this statistic with the most deadly ages being 18, 19, and 20. Would you take it as a sign that the age should be further reduced to 15?