You Think You’re So Smart: How Fat? Fat Like a Cow?

Humans are the only animals that can make metaphors or moral judgments.  Unfortunately, we make far too few of the former and far too many of the latter.  The appealing thing about placing social problems in a moral context is that it allows you to start ignoring the problem; if …

Read a Book, Why Don’t You: Under the Dome

I want to like Stephen King.  I really, really do. He’s undeniably an important writer, at least insofar as he’s written a ton of books that have sold enormously well, and become virtually synonymous with “contemporary American novelist”.  He’s managed to remain successful even in a terrible downtime for fiction, …

You Think You’re So Smart: Critical Failure

“I never met anybody,” Richard Pryor once pointed out, “who said when they were a kid:  I wanna grow up and be a critic.”  Did he ever meet anyone who said ‘I wanna grow up and watch movies and listen to music and read books all day’?  That will remain …

The Sandwich Century: #1 – The American Sandwich

After a half-century of perceived American cultural hegemony, Europeans feel the need to get back at us in any way that they can.  You really can’t blame them; after endless decades of ruling the world, here we come with our fat loudmouthed tourists and our Big Macs, ruining everything, and …

You Think You’re So Smart: The Good Old Dais

I’ve always taken a special displeasure in the ‘things were better before’ approach to culture.  While it’s undeniable that taste is taste, it strikes me as a particularly lazy way to come at the world around you to simply let your tastes calcify without protest.  Sure, it’s hard to keep …

Where Comedy Goes To Die: Your Drunk Friend Explains How To Make IBA Cocktails On New Year’s Eve

MANHATTAN. “Okay this one is easy.  It’s what you call a basic, a basic cocktail.  You take a whiskey, a rye whiskey, and vermouth, and a cherry.  And there you ugh!  Sorry, there you go!  It’s easy!  It was named after the Manhattan cocktail.  I mean, the Manhattan Hotel.  In …

The Most Beautiful Fraud: Nightmare Alley

Judging a movie by its potential is probably skirting the edge of fairness, but the creepy 1947 carnival-noir Nightmare Alley tempts pretty strongly in that direction.  The feeling it finally leaves you with is an unsatisfying one, both in the way it frequently opens up possibilities it doesn’t quite live …

The Sandwich Century: Prelimiwow

Along with all the other exciting and annoying content to hit this site in 2011, I am getting ready to kick off a special feature called The Sandwich Century.  Over the course of the year, I will prepare, consume, and document a hundred different sandwiches, and you will follow it …

You Think You’re So Smart: Greetings from America’s Second-Dumbest City

The other day, which by my reckoning could have been anywhere between last Thursday and Thanksgiving of 2004, I was talking with a good friend about the Daily Beast’s annual ranking of the smartest cities in America.  Although my stomping grounds of San Antonio ranked 54th out of 55, that …

B List: How to Hate Music in Five Steps Or Less, First Lesson

1.  A popular band makes it a point while on tour to stick with performing material familiar to their fans, reckoning that this is what they most want to hear.  Detractors cite this as a reason the band is unadventurous, predictable, and dull. 2.  One night, the bandleader, deciding to …

Hello The Internet I Love You: Helpful Netflix User Reviews, #001

From “Peter9827″‘s review of Blues Brothers 2000: Alright Here is my review of Blues Brothers 2000 the sequel to the 1980 Classic the Blues Brothers Which was one of my favorites this also one of my favorites too.But Before I begin this review this movie has nothing to do with …