Occasionally, I’d like to share somewhat longer excerpts from things I’ve read and been impressed by than my usual slender quote-of-the-day offerings. Here’s the first, from Hannah Arendt’s Essays in Understanding 1930-1954: “In trying to understand what were the real motives which caused people to act as cogs in the …
So, there’s this: And there’s nothing inherently wrong with the argument that big dumb summer blockbusters should be held to different critical standards than art films. The thing is, though, the video short-circuits that argument, calling you a snobby effete hipster jackoff with a funny haircut for daring to equivocate …
1. Playing competitive basketball 2. Attending the University of Hawaii 3. Attending Hawaii Pacific University 4. Attending North Idaho College 5. Competing in beauty pageants 6. Attending Matanuska-Susitna College 7. Working as a sports reporter 8. Working as a sports broadcaster 9. Serving on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation …
Nobody has suffered today like I have suffered today, unless they also read the entirety of the shitty Libertarian webcomic Roswell, Texas by L. Neil Smith. Allow me to share with you some of its insouciant crappiness in the form of a list. 1. The comic is set in an …
Leave it to Dave fucking Eggers on Grant-fucking-land to write the ultimate paean to the horseshit “Who cares if the Cubs suck forever and ever, Wrigley Field is TOTALLY SO MUCH FUN” mentality. The thing is so reeking of sensa-wunda excrement that the not-true-since-at-least-2005 accusation that White Sox Park is …
Since I’ve been unemployed, I buy all my books at Wal-Mart. They only offer three kinds of books (religious, self-help, and monster-based romance), none of which I enjoy, so it keeps me from spending too much money. Today, I was up at the Wal-Mart on the Austin Highway, and I …
Hi, publicists! You know I love you. You’re the reason I don’t pay for music. You help me make a living, sort of. But you don’t like wasting your time any more than I do, so here are a couple of tips that will save us both precious seconds we …
Yes, that’s right: there is a brand new Wasted Words podcast for your enjoyment. What happens? I’ll tell you what happens, why don’t I. RJ White: becomes flustered. Tony Zaret: has his lunch made the subject of guesswork. Andrew Lin: thinks his baby is more important than getting drunk. Olivia …
There is a brand-new Wasted Words podcast, featuring myself along with host RJ White, Shek Baker, Stephen Levinson, and Andrew Lin. RJ hated this one, probably because I was super drunk and punchy and forced everyone to talk about pornography, but I think it is a very fine episode of …
Terence Malick’s new film, Treee of Life, has debuted at Cannes, and as is drearily predictable, it’s already causing waves of controversy. Booing, walkouts, endless vitriol, critics and viewers exchanging invective — the only difference between this and his other films is that now people are having the arguments on …
Spring is here, and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. I am not a young man, nor lovable neither, so my fancy once again turns to all that is fraudulent, disinformed, and cozened in the world of criticism. We’ve spoken of this before, and I suppose nothing …
“I understand that about twenty years ago, you were interested in trainspotting.” “Well, what’s that got to do with my bloody music?” Trainspotting turned up in a pile of undiscarded DVDs the other day, and I gave it another whirl. It’s hard to imagine it’s been 15 years since …
And now, Ludic Live’s first-ever reader poll: who’s the greatest femme fatale in film noir?
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn’t understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language; but rather at someone who tampers with their own language. The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition — always new books, new programs, new …
Osama bin-Laden is dead. Everyone is supposed to have an opinion about every aspect of how that sentence came to awarded the status of truth, and I guess I do, but I’ll be damned if I can sort it out into anything worth saying. Mostly, I feel a combination of …
