Eric Rohmer, the Balzac of the French New Wave (and founding editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma), has died at the age of 89.

“Thanks for 20 wonderful years. Now stay tuned for three Seth MacFarlane shows.”

Oh joy! The New York Times is reporting that Sarah Palin “will host an occasional series” on Fox News. Details are sketchy, but the show-which I hope they call “Sarah Palin Is Making Sense,” because how great would that be-is apparently part of a multi-year deal with the network, since if there’s one thing we know about Sarah Palin it’s that she is totally great at fulfilling multi-year obligations.

If you would like to “focus on the trivial and superficial while the nation remains at war and teeters on the edge of an economic recession,” go here! Otherwise, stick around.

Before the Internet, there was plenty of hate mail-there was just no place to print your hate mail. Editors kept it in a file called “Hilarious/Crazy/Scary” and never would it appear in a magazine. Nowadays, praise be, we can see the grand range of human emotion and grammar all throughout the tubes of the webs. Let’s take a look back at what used to pass for acceptable hate mail, in the form of letters to Life about that terrible housewife, Joan Didion.

Why, oh why, is she not more sunshiney.

Back to the kitchen, etc.

Here, for a palate cleanser, you can read 1950 Was More Than 20 Years Ago.

Here is a conversation with an anonymous Facebook employee that makes me very happy I am not on Facebook.

Names of Television Shows and Movies that Resonated With Me, While Channel Surfing on Sunday Between the Hours of 12–8 PM in an Empty House on the East End of Long Island, Drinking Bourbon and Contemplating the Dissolution of a Two-Year Relationship (Mostly My Fault)

by Neel Shah

“Doubt,” Starz
“On Edge,” ABC
“The Heartbreak Kid,” TBS
“The Soloist,” HBO
“Someone Like You,” HB02
“You Kill Me,” HBO Zone
“State of the Union,” CNN
“Road to Perdition,” TNT
“Living Hell,” Syfy
“The Debrief,” NBC
“The Terminator,” CW
“Female Forces,” The Biography Channel
“Storm Stories,” The Weather Channel
“Six Feet Under,” Universal HD
“Raw,” WNJU
“Girlfriends,” Women’s Entertainment Network
“Tough Love,” VH-1
“Ax Men,” The History Channel
“The Incident,” Hallmark Movie Channel
“Are We Alone?” The Discovery Channel
“Life (Part 2),” PBS

Neel Shah has regrets.

Here’s a pretty fascinating piece about treating alcoholism with pharmaceutical drugs. While a successful pharmacological cure does not yet exist, drug companies are starting to realize that there’s money to be made, and it seems like a matter of time before a magic bullet is discovered or created. The possibility of this kind of treatment engenders controversy: Is it appropriate to battle a chemical addiction with another chemical? Won’t the pharmaceutical companies “define alcoholism down” in an attempt to get the broadest possible consumer base for their products? Is life really worth living if you’re sober all the time?

My interest in this subject is more than academic. I am, obviously, someone who falls into the category of “functional alcoholic.” I drink a great deal. It has been several years since a day went by where I voluntarily went without at least one drink. In fact, it has been several years since a day went by where I voluntarily went without several drinks. This is slightly troubling for a couple of reasons, the very least of which is the nagging concern that I may be doing some sort of irreparable physical damage. There’s a terrifying passage in Andy Beckett’s When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies where Beckett talks with Joe Stone, who served as Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s GP. By the time of his final term in office, Wilson’s drinking was having a very noticeable effect. Says Stone:

Heavy drinking cuts off one layer of your thinking. You lose sharpness, facts, precision. And it’s the sign of someone who’s burning out.

I feel this. It is perhaps the most motivating factor I might have to cut back on my consumption; the idea of losing whatever small functional edge I have mentally horrifies me.

One of the arguments against a medicine-based treatment of alcoholism is that while it may certainly curtail the physical addiction it does nothing to address the underlying reasons why someone might choose to drink-anxiety, depression, an unwillingness to be in the world without some kind of sedating agent to take the edge off of existence. It is rather disturbing to think that the same edge one uses alcohol to blunt in life is the edge that is removed, bit by bit, through the constant consumption of alcohol.

On the other hand, I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that a certain amount of drinking is just fine. I know plenty of folks who drink almost as much as I do and manage to keep it all together. Why castigate their actions or make them think they need “treatment” for what could be considered just another lifestyle choice? I tend to dismiss my own worries about my drinking with a combination of compensatory humor and uncertain reassurances that when the time comes I will have no problem in cutting back, but that’s just me: There are many people who are nowhere near needing any assistance. Who are we to tell them different?

This is not meant to read as some kind of cry for help or monologue delivered at a meeting. Concerns aside, I am pretty sure I will continue to drink at the same clip I currently consume until something severe forces me to confront whatever issues I’m avoiding at present. And those of us who do drink know that there is almost nothing in this world so satisfying as the warming sense of satiation that slowly seeps through your body when that first rye Manhattan slips into your bloodstream and lets you know that everything is going to be okay. I guess, though, if there’s an option for some kind of pill-based treatment, I’d like for it to be on the table. It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but there you are. Cheers.

Today’s Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research paper on U.S. banks is five kinds of fascinating-spelling out as it does that banks are currently cash-rich, yet still fairly lending-averse. (Consumer loans were, however, up slightly in December, which is a yearly bump.) While sitting on $1.2 trillion in cash-$1.2 trillion is also the total value of China’s exports in 2009, by the way!-GS notes that, in the fourth quarter, “Loans were down slightly after 3Q’s 4% decline.” How are they filling this big kiddie pool up with cash? A good chunk of it is your card use fees, various “late” and service fees, and, natch, that old standby, credit card interest. In case you speak bank, then you can understand this, and can translate in the comments: “Credit card early delinquencies have turned, and consumer is 40% of provisions for large banks. We think the next product to turn in 2010 will be commercial (C&I;) with improving corporate defaults.”

Very bad Jersey Mayhem last night-a Jersey City police officer shot 18-year-old high school senior Kwadir Felton “through the eye.” Felton survived and is recovering at the hospital. The undercover officer was in a pickup truck, which Felton approached, and he shot the teen through the window of the car, according to the police. I suppose it’s just space-filling when the AP closes their report with “the officer, who was working undercover, was not hurt.”