Passing Over

Chag Semeach, Stroock's Books readers. Passover tonight. Prep well under way. Mrs. Stroock's relatives arriving later this afternoon. 

And so begins another week of awaiting events in Israel. The Jerusalem Post says Netanyahu 'hinted' at an upcoming attack on Rafah. Let us hope so. Our own sense is that after the Israeli military aid bill passed the US House, Israel is in for a bad week, politically. Just a hunch. We also fear a horrible terrorist attack, in Israel, in Europe, even here in the United States. We will see an increase in anti-Jewish pogroms on campus for Passover. 

The New York Post tells us that the anti-Jewish pogrom at Columbia University is intensifying, 'Columbia University canceled all in-person classes Monday after anti-Israel protests inundated campus this weekend, erecting an encampment and resulting in the arrest of over 100 protesters.' Good. These protests are expected to spread to other campuses. Double plus good.* Columbia's president is a woman named Minouche Shafik? Anyone care to guess what kind of name that is? No wonder she's been putting up with Juden hass on campus. Shafik probably thinks Egypt won the 1973 War. 

As for endeavors this week, we're returning to War Night and Other Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975. We wait for Debbie to send us the edited World War 1990: Norway MS. Meanwhile we have multiple people reading over the MS to tell us everything that is wrong with it. We await with bated breath to hear back from the publisher about Standoff at San Miguel. 

What Will's Watching, Dune Part II. We saw Dune Part II was available to rent for 25 bucks or quid. So we watched it Saturday night and then we watched it again Sunday night so that we could assure Mrs. Stroock that we got our money's worth. We did not love this movie as much as reviewers like Chris Gore and The Critical Drinker. For us, the crusade and Paul's reaching messiah status came together too quickly. But we liked Dune Part II a lot. A beautiful film to look at. Epic in some spots, understated in others. We saw some great performances. Zendaya was fine, as was Florence Pugh. Critics are raving about Austin Butler as Feyd, but we think Javier Bardem deserves the best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of Stilgar as a believer waiting for the Mahdi. It looks like we'll see a Dune Part III. Good. Screw it, 4/4 despite a few criticisms. 

Monday Metal...We listened to Def Leppard's Hysteria at the gym last week. This is our desert island album.** Hysteria gets better with age and thirty-five years later, we can still pick out new things. As the band and producer Mutt Lange said during production, 'All killer. No filler.' Every damn song could have been a single. We didn't buy Hysteria till the fourth single, Poor Some Sugar on Me. To this day we feel the most underrated song on the album is Women, which was the first release and kind of a flop. But it's a heavy song with a great video concept:

*Man we're not sure we want Oldest Daughter going away to school.  

**This blog had an Adrenalize week, right?