Boston Legal: junk like a turtle

►► Boston Legal TV Show Unofficial fan site: James Spader, John Larroquette, William Shatner, Candice Bergen, Tara Summers, Christian Clemenson, Gary Anthony Williams, Saffron Burrows, Rene Auberjonois, Mark Valley -- Thank goodness we got the heads up from the kids down in Knoxville about the season's premiere of my one and only TV show. Find out what Denny's talking about, at 10 PM tonight, on Boston Legal, Season 5, Episode 1, "Smoke Signals", when he says:

"It's receded - like a turtle too ashamed to come out of its shell!"

Julia Child & The OSS: Oh, So Social

Julia Child, international spy - THE WEEK -- In the late '60s in Boston, I would see Julia on her way to and from work. She rode the bus.

At the link is an eye-opening recounting of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services and precursor of the CIA. Follow the links in the article itself. Go deep. Here's a taste:

Julia Child: celebrity chef by day, superspy by night,” said Judy Berman in Salon’s Broadsheet blog. She was already a national treasure for having “pretty much single-handedly introduced fresh, high-quality ingredients to midcentury American tables,” but a “mind-blowingly cool” double life, too? “You can’t get more awesome than that, right?”

True, she was “secretly more awesome than you already thought,” said Ryan Tate in Gawker, but actually her work in an “administrative capacity” at the OSS was already known. It’s “interesting to get confirmation,” though, and there are some great new details, like that she said on her OSS application that “her weakness was that she was ‘impulsive,’ because she quit a department store job once.”

Certainly “there was nothing covert about Julia,” said Robert Stein in his blog Connecting.the.Dots. In fact she “reveled” in telling confidantes about “her most dramatic exploit,” cooking up a shark repellant for underwater mines aimed at German U-boats. Her delight in that makes you wistful for “that innocent time when secretly working for your country was a source of pride.”

Child isn’t the only high-profile OSS member already identified as an operative, said Nick Gillespie in Reason’s Hit & Run blog. The “main takeaway” from these new documents appears to be the sheer size of the OSS. People previously thought maybe there were 13,000 employees.

The number of “notables” was also kind of surprising, said Andrea Stone and Emily Bazar in USA Today. The list of OSS agents “resembles a cocktail party guest list rather than a spy network.” With so many “actors, financiers, and socialites,” the internal joke was that OSS stood for “Oh So Social.”

B movie of the week: The Boondock Saints

Netflix downloads are becoming a staple of our weekend. B movies have taken the place of drinking through the wee hours. Earlier this morning, The Boondock Saints graced our screen. Gloria thinks it may set some sort of record for the most gratuitous use of the F-word, but I think it may have been surpassed by another early-morning Netflix download about a post-nuclear Elvis impersonator and samurai on his way across the wasteland to Las Vegas, Six String Samurai.

Such comparisons aside, The Boondock Saints is some good entertainment. I guess there's an active argument going on as to whether it qualifies as a cult classic, but that misses the point: The film's a hoot. The two brothers McManus, Billy Connolly as Il Duce, who turns out the be their long-lost dad, Willem Dafoe camping and then in drag, it's all just too incredible. The film walks a thin line and bounces between horror and humor. The Wikipedia write-up covers a lot of ground.

Download it tonight, out of earshot of the little ones.

Drew Gilpin Faust: wisdom comes early

In Faust, early bold streak - The Boston Globe -- here's a good personal-interest article giving a good recounting of the background of a remarkable lady who's recently assumed leadership at Harvard. There are lots of life lessons here, and a glimpse into the study of character.

People who knew Faust as a down-to-earth young woman were amazed to hear that she would become the first female president of Harvard. Yet they are not surprised to see her embrace the challenge.

"She was always looking ahead and reaching as high as she could. She was an amazingly strong kid," said Mendenhall . "She was smart enough to see opportunities and brave enough to seize those opportunities in a quiet sort of way."

Rev. Robert Drinan, former head of BC Law, dies at 86

Congressman priest dies at 86 - Politics - MSNBC.com--Here's a story about one of those Jesuits who helped change the community dialogue and form our nascent social consciousness in Boston in the '60s. It's priests like him, on the front lines, who lent their ideas and influence to the movement that helped form such tax-credit-oriented development firms as Boston Capital and The Community Builders. Here's the middle of the article:

An internationally known human-rights advocate, Drinan was elected on an anti-war platform and represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House for 10 years during the turbulent 1970s.

He stepped down only after a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding public office.

During his Congressional tenure, Drinan continued to dress in the robes of his clerical order and lived in a simple room in the Jesuit community at Georgetown.

But he wore his liberal views more prominently. He opposed the draft, worked to abolish mandatory retirement and raised eyebrows with his more moderate views on abortion and birth control.

“Father Drinan’s commitment to human rights and justice will have a lasting legacy here at Georgetown University and across the globe,” said Georgetown President John J. Degioia.

“Few have accomplished as much as Father Drinan and fewer still have done so much to make the world a better place,” said Alex Aleinikoff, dean of the George University Law Center.

Drinan, dean of the Boston College Law School from 1956 to 1970, called for the desegregation of Boston public schools during the 1960s and challenged Boston College students to become involved in civil rights issues.

“He’ll be remembered in the country for his advocacy for the poor and underprivileged,” said John Garvey, the Boston law school’s current dean.

how James Brown kept Boston from burning

Features : Radar Online--by David Gates, an event I'd forgotten about, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, in which James Brown saves Boston. These were some intense times. Check out the link ( James Brown, Boston Garden, April 5, 1968) in the Gates story to the recent Boston Globe article , as well.