We just received the first "edition" of Very Short List, IAC head Barry Diller's newest attempt to console himself over losing out on the purchase of Daily Candy. (Not even the CollegeHumor deal cushions that sting.) VSL, still in double-super-secret test format, is in fact a Daily Candy for the "smart set," specifically the smart set that doesn't have time to, you know, read reviews to figure out what book or movie they need to pretend to have seen or read. Among its contributors VSL includes "godfather of snark" Kurt Andersen, which makes sense when you consider that the newsletter is under the supervision launch-editorial consultancy of Simon Dumenco, whom Andersen still owes big time for that whole Bennetton magazine thing. The e-mail itself is fairly concise, if unexciting; this project might work. But what about those of us who are too busy to even read e-mail? Maybe at the end of the month they can take all the stuff they've recommended, stick it in a box, and mail it out. Someone would pay money for that, right?

Content after the jump.

We've had our fill lately of documentaries that breathlessly tell us things we already knew — global warming is scary, fast food is unhealthy, and so on. Which is why we approached /Jesus Camp/ — a doc about an Evangelical summer camp that trains kids to be soldiers in "God's Army" — expecting to be bored.

But by going deep into the lives of preteens Levi, Rachel, and Tory,
both before and during their attendance at Pastor Becky Fisher's "Kids
on Fire" camp in North Dakota, the filmmakers present an absolutely
riveting, intensely personal view of the Christian Right.

There are many, many gasp-inducing scenes, including one of a church
filled with little kids crying and speaking in tongues as they cluster
around a life-sized cardboard cut-out of President Bush, who is
presented by camp counselors as a savior who is helping "take back
America for Christ."

And yet, for all that, it's a nuanced portrait of the subculture, much
more Fred Weisman than Michael Moore.

Website [VSL]
Earlier: Barry Diller Officially Penetrates Boys of CollegeHumor
Colors: In the Hood