Yesterday the New York Times Magazine had one of their year-end thingees in which they asked wide-ranging and head-scratching whozits (Ken Layne; Starlee Kline) to comment upon their favorite wide-ranging and plugged-in yadda yaddas (“7 Things”; Grand Theft Auto IV) of 2008. The world is getting away from us, or from them, and this is an attempt to both bring it all together and show that the New York Times Magazine is still hip. It somehow has the opposite effect.

One bit I liked: author Ann Pachett's take on James Marsh's documentary about Philippe Petit, “Man on Wire,” which I wrote about here and here. You can read Ann here, about halfway down.

I never did get around to writing about the doc myself, which I saw in August. Conventions got in the way, then campaigns, then elections. In Minnesota, they're still getting in the way.

Not much to add to Ms. Patchett. I like her comment about the intersection of recklessness and precision. Put another way: to be gloriously reckless you have to be precise. These guys were. Petit was.

What a time. Imagine a group of foreigners huddled together, plotting and scheming for months and years, and bringing in their equipment from foreign lands in order to do something to the Word Trade Center. In their case it was to celebrate it. Petit loved it at its birth. We only got there at its death.

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