postmark, needles

you'll be happy to hear, brendan, that erroll morris's new movie sounded interesting when he talked yesterday, saying he hoped the "the fog of war" (mentioned at the top of this item) would amend that slogan to read "those who don't study history are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility." morris says robert mcnamara apparently agreed to participate in the project ali g style--not knowing what he was getting in to and thinking it might be a good for the book promotion. but eventually mcnamara got wise and called to say he wanted to pull out, that it would be a bad idea, he had seen morrris' other work, knew that it would end in disaster--but that he would nevertheless say aight because he had agreed to (which morris points out is a big part of mcnamara's vietnam story and surprising ability to carry out plans he knows will be bad for him) ... in any case, can't wait to see the screen version of morris' complex, pessimistic storytelling applied to an already pretty well developed character.