Rebel posts that don’t fit the mold.
When I was thirty-two and still living alone in the rented house near the river, I found myself in conflict with the radio announcer. Nowadays I need quiet to write; I cannot abide even the softest music, or the flicker of the television with the sound off. But then I …
I’m beginning to think that my beard and I are going to have to part ways — not just for now, but for good. I have, in recent years, wanted to grow a big-ass, menacing beard. (This has less to do with any hipster tendencies on my part than with …
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 …
Advertising is pretty evil, and it gets even more evil the more abstract and detached from its subject it gets. But it reaches a certain point of abstraction where it transcends its sinister purposes and can go one of two ways: it can become art, or it can be so …
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 …
Crime is perennially at the top of polls regarding what voters worry about the most. With the upsurge in terrorism, the advent of cyber-crime, and organized crime taking on a new international flavor, people are not only concerned about crime, but they seem to have new crimes to worry about …
Everybody likes being right, but sometimes being right is a lot more like a severe depressant than an ego boost. Such is the case with today’s look at the world’s widest web: I have always maintained that, even in comparison with such internet sewers as IMDB and YouTube, the comments …
I drink a lot of soda, because I am a doomed consumerist pawn. Occasionally I will review them in this space. And what better place to start than with Coca-Cola, the Platonic ideal of non-alcoholic beverages? The descendant of Georgia druggist John Stith Pemberton’s formulation for French Wine Coca is …
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 …
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 …
In the most recent episode of the PetardCast, I am joined by the hard-working Mr. Hayden Childs of North Kakalacka. We will discuss the Trail of Tears, America’s kill-craziest presidents, and the genius of Richard Thompson. Hayden also engages in a skit where he gives Richard Nixon his werewolfiest imitation …
Ben Shapiro, once America’s dumbest young right-wing pundit, is now America’s dumbest movie critic: no one will hire him as a lawyer, so lately he’s been bumming around Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood site pretending to be a movie critic. His latest column is a seen-it-a-million-times rant about how there are …
My contributions to the most recent Comics Panel at the AVC: Metalocalypse: Dethklok #1, JLA/The 99 #1, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking; and Genius Isolated: The Art and Life of Alex Toth. Stick around for a headache-inducing argument about Stan Lee in the comments section! …
That ever-clever Trevor, Mr. Fengi, brought to my attention an article from Kiplinger’s containing ‘advice’ from people who became millionaires in their teens. Obviously, these people are successful, because not only are they rich, but they got rich at a time when the rest of us were busy smoking weed …
“I am.” “You’re not.” “I am too.” “You are not too.” “People do it all the time.” “No, no one does it all the time. No one has ever lived forever. Everyone dies. It’s a human constant.” “Dracula never died.” “Dracula is a fictional character.” “Isn’t.” “Well, all right, he …
