The LA Times last week ran an article on the old Al Pacino movie "Scarface" because there's a new print of it in theatres right now, but I couldn't read it because the darn LA Times is now charging about $40 a year to read their Calendar Live articles. I love the LA Times, but I don't know if I love them enough to pay $40 a year to read one of their sections.

I'd never seen "Scarface", so I went out and rented the movie. It was a great movie, and definitely a classic.

Now the NY Times also followed suit and wrote an article about "Scarface", 'Scarface,' a Foul Mouth With a Following. The article says it's now an underground classic among hip-hop fans and how college students are throwing "Scarface" parties.

Brian De Palma directed the movie, and Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay. Al Pacino has a really bad cuban accent, but his performance is so over top and great, that it makes up for the fact that his accent is more italian than cuban.

A DVD is being released by Universal which will include prominent rappers talking about how influential "Scarface" is to them. P. Diddy says he saw the movie 63 times.

I really loved the movie up until the very end, when the Tony Montana character started to just make me mad. The end of "Scarface" reminded me of an F. Scott Fitgerald novel I hated so much because of the ending that I've blocked memories of the novel from my mind. I hated that Fitgerald novel so much, the experience made me think Fitzgerald only wrote great short stories and wrote awful novels.

I really should reread that Fitgerald novel again, if I can remember which one it was, just to see if it makes me crazy again. I read the novel sometime during college, and my values were definitely different then.

If you haven't seen "Scarface", or it's been awhile, watch it again because it really is a great movie classic and showcases a young Pacino at this best.

NY Times columnist and middle east specialist Thomas Friedman was interviewed on KGO AM this morning. His insights are so great, and he had some interesting comments about the war in Iraq and politics in general.

Below are a few of his gems but I'm paraphrasing what he said:

France wants us to fail in Iraq, and won't help us and will do everything to insure we fail. They are not an ally, they are our enemy.

To my liberal friends, some things are true even if George Bush says them.

To politicians - Never put yourself in a political position where when you succeed the US fails.

I still stand behind my position that the US was right to go to war with Iraq, even though I had strong reservations.

There is freedom of speech in the arab world, but there is no freedom of after speech in the arab world, and that's why I supported the US led war in Iraq.

It's good to be a baseball fan in the SF Bay Area. Both my boys, my teams - the SF Giants and Oakland A's, won their divisions.

Already dreams of a Bay Bridge World Series are going thorugh people's head.

It's good that baseball is good here, because both the football teams are sucking the big ones right now!

It looks like the Raiders may have missed their window of opportunity for a Superbowl with the current roster. And the 49ers ... okay you have a new coach but there's no excuse for the mistakes they've been making on the field.

So I'm flipping through this Sunday's SF Chron Book Review, and I see a familiar face and name.

Some guy I went to college with wrote a book on russian history, and his book was being reviewed. So weird. From his picture, the guy hasn't changed at all.

The guy lived in my college house for awhile, and we even had a brief flingie. His girlfriend moved into the house later, and we became really good friends. The review said the guy is a historian and a former professor of history at Harvard.

As I remember, the guy was really smart, studied constantly, was constantly in writing lab for his papers, is very tall and hails from Kansas of all places.

He's the first person I know from college who wrote a book that's been reviewed in my local paper.

Is it a small world or what?