The Intelligence Estimate

I gave my two weeks notice at work today. Wow. It feels almost as good to type that as it did to actually do it. Let me try again. I gave my two weeks notice at work today. WOO-HOO! MAN, that feels GOOD!

I will begin working at the Blue Man Group on Oct 25. My last day at my current position is Oct 23.

I went to a movie tonight. It was the first of the movies that I plan on seeing for the Chicago International Film Festival. Let's just say I chose poorly. I love documentaries, but this was really not good. It was called "The Protocols of Zion" and it was really misguided and self-congratulatory. The narrative was very muddled and the interviewer was very self-righteous.

The "story" was about the book published in the early 1900s called "The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion." That book purported to be the transcript of a meeting of Jewish leaders who hatched a devious plot to take over the world. The book is false. It was propaganda placed by the Russian Czars, but it keeps popping up again and again claiming to be true. The film maker used his father, personal history and a bunch of ham-fisted and belligerent interviews with opposing view points to try to advance the premise...but there WAS NO PREMISE! It was just 2 hours of the film maker provoking fights and preaching his self-righteousness. He mocks skinheads and Arabs for being close-minded and not presenting any facts to back up their prejudices, and then he makes a film where his side is presented with no more proof than to say "Nuh-uh!" He never tells you WHY the book is false, he simply tells you that it was debunked. I found the film lazily researched and sloppily presented. Which is a shame because it was an interesting topic.

I hope the rest of the fest is more appealing. The next film I'm scheduled to see (well, the next one I have tickets for anyway) is an old Errol Morris film called "Gates of Heaven." Wish me luck!