LeonardPierce.com will be taking the next few days off to celebrate the coming of the new year. Have a happy holiday, wherever and whoever you are, and I hope to see you here the first week of 2014 for some dad-blasted new content and other surprises. Cheers!
“Coach Ryan, if you want to fight me on this, I’m absolutely prepared to go over your head.” “Jennifer, I can assure you, it’s…” “Remember, you’re just the athletic director. If you think I’m not willing to talk to the president of the university, you’re sadly mistaken.” “I just don’t …
Joe — Sorry so long in getting back to you. I’ve been absolutely swamped these days. I’ve got an ox-cart driver who’s all wound up in this no-fault insurance business, I got a guy who says he got typhus from that crazy bastard out in Jordan who dunks people underwater, …
“Hello?” “Merry Christmas, mom!” “Robert! Oh, thank you, son! I didn’t think you’d have time to call me today.” “No, it’s cool. I’m on my break. Even up here, we get OSHA.” “So you’re still working for that man.” “Yes, mom.” “You haven’t thought about going back to school.” “To …
MERRY CHRISTMAS Yes, the holidays are approaching, the time when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We wish you all the best of seasons, and hope you will celebrate in a devout and solemn manner, as opposed to the drunken revels of the hated Saxon. …
Darling, I know that you said you didn’t want to see me, or hear from me. But I think this card complies fully with the court’s order of protection, provided I do not hand-deliver it to you. I know it just looks like a cheap 89-cent greeting card manufactured in …
In 2013, the ‘death of the critic’ bell that has been sounding since the birth of the internet finally reached a fevered, Chuck-Berry-style ding-a-ling. Film critics were especially hard-hit by algorithms, aggregators, and amateurism, the so-called “Five As” referred to by badly educated but enthusiastic bloggers. Stripped of the need …
This is, of course, the time that we — and by we, I mean the fraternity (am I right, fellas?) of culture critics, publicly self-disgraced and privately self-abased, look back on the year that was and present, once and for all, our picks for the objectively greatest music and films …
ED “SCUPPER” HELMOND, VICE-PRESIDENT, BAKERSFIELD CHAPTER, SATAN’S SERVANTS M.C.: “Well, I’ll be honest with you, man. We didn’t used to be called Satan’s Servants. Before this, we were the Rough Riders, and before that, back in ’49 when the club was first founded, we were actually called the Rosedale Rollin’ …
Welcome to Rapsylvania! I’m your tour guide, Sharon, and I’ll be sharin’ with you — ha ha — some of the sights, sounds and stories of this, the palatial mansion of Spin-L.P., the biggest-selling recording artist in the history of hip-hop. There is no food or drink on the tour, …
1. The Maltese Falcon (Warner Bros., October 3, 1941; John Huston, dir.) 2. This Gun for Hire (Paramount, May 13, 1942; Frank Tuttle, dir.) 3. Double Indemnity (Paramount, September 6, 1944; Billy Wilder, dir.) 4. Laura (20th Century FOX, October 11, 1944; Otto Preminger, dir.) 5. Murder, My Sweet (RKO Radio …
Clifford Odets had a curious, and tragic, Hollywood career. Younger critics may know him less for his Hollywood product than for the savage parody of him assayed by the Coen Brothers in Barton Fink; there, they focused on the highfalutin young socialist-realist that he was, and not the embittered cynic he …
It seems sort of obligatory to write these Thanksgiving entries, but that’s no reason not to do it. We need a few more obligations in life. Americans could definitely use a stern father figure to tell us “You’ll do it or you’re in big trouble, mister,” at least when it …
It’s not such a bad life, being a tiki god outside the Tahiti-Fa’aa International Airport in Papeete. Nobody really worships me anymore, but the hepcat money just rolls in. And I get to watch the planes come in. I wonder who’s president in America now. It’s probably not still that …
You wake up one morning and go out on the back porch for a smoke (the wife doesn’t like you smoking indoors, or at all, but most certainly not indoors, not with the kid in the house for sure, never indoors) and there it is, fully formed in your mind: …
