I first met the Zodiac Killer in the fall of 1970 at a dinner party given for him by Grace Malley and her husband, Yezny Finkelblatt, head of Motion Picture Studio’s security cameras deivision. My wife of the moment, Corrida Mexia, was seated next to a lovely young co-ed who …
It would be a shame if the legacy of Future of the Left’s terrific new album, The Plot Against Common Sense, were reduced to the pissing contest that resulted when a Pitchfork critic gave it a facile and ignorant review, to which bandleader Andy Falkous responded on his own blog with …
Ladies and gentleman of the American public; friends, supporters, well-wishers, and all gathered members of the press: As the 2012 election draws ever closer, we find ourselves facing what may well be the most important decision of our lives — and perhaps the most important decision in the life our …
“I’m not going on about any law. You’re no good, is all.” (Cristi) True irony is a very difficult thing to pull off in cinema. Literature allows an artist the freedom to draw out language in order to create and sustain the proper atmosphere for the gap between what is …
FIVE SCENES FROM THE OLD SCHOOL 1. March, 1985. I am in my bedroom at my dad’s rented house in Irving, Texas. I have recently acquired Run-D.M.C.’s second album, King of Rock — the album that begins my lifelong obsession with hip-hop. I move the speakers from the living room and …
It continues to amaze me every day how completely and thoroughly we fail to understand our own culture. It’s especially baffling considering that this country, really, only has pop culture going for it; having given up on the Supermanly troika of truth, justice, and the American Way, and having shipped …
There seems to be an audience that demands everything be explained to them; that everything be easy. And I don’t think that’s doing us any good as a culture. The ease with which we can accomplish or conjure any possible scenario imaginable through CGI is almost directly proportionate to how …
“What matters is not the enclosure of the work within a harmonious figure, but the centrifugal force produced by it — a plurality of language as a guarantee of a truth that is not merely partial.” (Italo Calvino) Hip-hop is dead. So say half the Internet heads who think the …
Hello, readers! Things are tough all over, and no mistake. But they’d be a little less tough here at leonardpierce.com if you’d consider buying one of the many products and services I have to offer at the moment. If you’re reading this site, it’s presumably because you like what I do; and …
Regina Spektor’s reputation — around these parts, anyway — is that of a Tori Amos who avoided, by dint of growing up in Reagan-era Soviet Russia, a youthful overdose on self-impressed whimsy. The comparison’s not entirely fair; aside from being attractive quasi-redheads with an affection for piano and theatricality, the …
I like baseball. One might even say that I love baseball, although it is a love, much like that of the love I bear for my imaginary spouse of twelve years Uma Thurman, that is almost entirely one-sided. The point is, even when my beloved White Sox are not playing, …
5 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S WORST TREATMENT and still this slave kept working! From the rugged lands of the Pacific Northwest comes this remarkable story of a slave who never stopped slaving! “It was in 2014,” writes Dr. Henry K. Pachinko, now of Cairo, IL, “that my wife purchased this …
As you may have heard from the non-giant-squid-related portions of the Internet, the E3 show has just wrapped up in Los Angeles. E3, which is an abbreviation of convenience for “Electrical Amusements Jamboree and Fun Fair”, is best described as similar to the Consumer Electronics Show, only all the prostitutes …
“Now look, baby, ‘union’ is spelled with five letters. It is not a four-letter-word.” (Dorothy Parker) For anyone who believes in progress, equality, or the idea that America’s greatness expresses itself in ways other than the accumulation of wealth and power by the bosses, last night’s recall vote in Wisconsin …
“Walk in my footsteps. It’ll be easier.” François Truffaut’s conundrum about the impossibility of making an anti-war film has been reheated and turned over until it’s become inedible; a fresher tidbit for us to chew on is how national cinemas portray war based on their own experiences of it. In …
