Too long; do not read.
It is often said by those in the business of making dire predictions about our current political system that the goal of the current generation of Republican radicals is the reduction of the American working population to the status of serfs. With all due respect to the thinkers who have …
Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, a documentary (well, actually, a film essay, but why should we split hairs?), has recently come to Netflix Instant after a run on the festival circuit that generated a noisy buzz. Ascher’s film concerns itself with a number of convoluted, complicated, possibly brilliant and definitely insane theories …
The best examples of social progress are always those who are themselves a living testament to the change they wish to make. When Frederick Douglass electrified the nation with his righteous speeches about the horrors of slavery, many in the South doubted that he was ever a slave, because no …
As I write this, America is creaking under the third day of a shutdown of the federal government, forced by as low a group of petulant time-serving cretins as ever bore the title of elected official. It’s a dark time for anyone who believes in the high-school-civics conception of good …
What may be the first truly crucial aesthetic argument of the 21st century – the proper place of video games in the pantheon of the arts – came to a head last week in a fairly spectacular fashion with the release of Grand Theft Auto V. The newest installment in …
MY N.F.L. PICKS FOR THE 2013-2014 SEASON (IN ASCENDING ORDER OF FINISH) 32. Cleveland Browns. Frankly, this is just confusing. Is it the color brown? If so, it’s too conceptual to win. Is it a person named Brown? If so, it all depends on if he’s closer to Jim than …
Charles Mingus is wrong, you see. Mingus is the first (and the greatest, though he’ll have some stiff competition) jazz musician we see, idly coaxing some low mournful notes out of his upright bass in the spacious London loft of jazz aficionado Rod Hamilton (played with maximum glad-handing by Richard …
Let us say that you are an average American consumer, and you have taken it on yourself to purchase a combination shotgun/rod and reel so that you can recreationally kill two kinds of wildlife at once. During a commercial break near the end of the evening’s episode of Law & Order: …
Recently, a number of seemingly unconnected cultural conversations took place which seemed to me to have a common thread running through them. While I don’t necessarily think they add up to any grand indictment of the Way We Live Today (I’m always distrustful of anyone who cherry-picks a few isolated …
So swollen with contempt and pride is our current political body that it is fairly assured, if the Democrats pointed out that the sun rises in the east, the Republicans would instantly counter that it actually rises in the West, and accuse the left of Chinese Communist sympathies for their …
I first got into it when I was in third grade. There was this one older kid, Paulie Troward, who would always get the merry-go-round spinning really fast and then push me off of it. Once I landed on my back? And it knocked all the wind out of me? …
I know it’s hard. I know how hard it is. And I know how easy it would be not to try, because that’s the way the world is built: for you not to try. For you to give up. The world will always give you a million reasons not to …
Dear Mr. Pierce, This letter is to inform you that you must immediately cease & desist all production on your musical theater project, Tracksuit American. This so-called ‘musical comedy revue’ infringes on a number of Burger King Holdings, Inc.’s registered trademarks, which are fully protected under United States intellectual property …
Coming this fall from FOX — the smallest reality show ever will also be the biggest! From the producers of Zero-Sum Dating, Slut-Shame Mansion and World’s Most Abusive Husbands comes the series that everyone said we couldn’t do. Too daring, said the suits. Too risky, said the censors. Too clearly …
“Tell me again about the flying machines.” “Do I have to?” “Oh, yes, Margaret-Mary! That I do long to hear.” “Could you at least call me Maggie?” “Maggie is undiginified, darling. A woman should always carry herself with the utmost bearing. Margaret-Mary has weight to it. Maggie is what one …
