While we're complaining about reviews we don't agree with on the front page of the NYT's arts section on 11/20, allow me to chime in on their hack job on the new Pynchon.  Which is clearly an awesome book, but the NYT hates on it mercilessly. That same page ALSO had an interview with one of the best living writers today in any medium I think, David Milch the tv guy.  I've come to think of Milch as a living god working in the medium of his day, but in the NTY's story about his new upcoming HBO 'surf noir' drama, Milch at one point wanders into a wingnutty riff about aliens and how he thinks he "is an instrument of powers I do not fully understand... I am meant to tell stories that will have an impact on us as a species."  Leading me to wonder if my favorite tv writer is using drugs again, or just fundamentally going off into the berkeley of the mind that is schizophrenia... <div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> I�m happy to report that the NY Times has finally outdone itself, with news coverage which is truly worse than the run-up of the invasion of Iraq. Difficult to believe, I know, but here it is � an article trashing Sony�s sleek, stylish PS3: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/arts/20game.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/arts/20game.html </a> If you don�t follow the next-gen consoles, you might think he has a point. Don�t be fooled. This guy makes Thomas �I-Married-a-Millionaire� Friedman look like Antonio Gramsci. </blockquote></div>