It’s the last audition round before we move on to Hollywood, and thank God for it. Speaking of God, this evening’s show comes to us from Oklahoma City, where Texas goes to die; the hopefuls are lined up by 5:18 AM, because there is nothing else to do there. The …
Oh, boy! Tonight is the San Antonio episode, and because I have psychic powers, I predict: (a) Alamo (b) Riverwalk (c) those giant boots at North Star Mall (d) cracks about how everything is bigger in Texas, possibly accompanying footage of a fat guy. Sure enough, all these things come …
Akira Kurosawa’s films have become something of a sticky wicket for me. He’s obviously one of the greats of cinema, and at his best he’s nearly untouchable, but with some of his most lionized films, familiarity has bred, if not contempt, at least discomfort. The more I watch them, the …
MEET THE DEFENDERS: Season 1, Week 1 *** #1: FAMILY TIES Panel 1: The Beast, Wasp, and Nighthawk are having coffee in the kitchen. Iceman enters through the rear door, taking off a heavy coat and scarf. NIGHTHAWK: Hey, Bobby! Is it cold out? Panel 2: Iceman pulls a stocking …
Expressing these class tentions, there was a tradition of plebeian anti-clericalism and irreligion. To go no further back, the Lollards carried a popular version of John Wyclif’s heresies into the sixteenth century. Lollard influence survived in a popular materialist skepticism which makes one feel appreciably nearer to the age of …
Parker, the amoral and ultra-efficient criminal featured in 24 novels by Donald Westlake, has been kicked around Hollywood almost as much as he’s been kicked around in his books. He was luckiest in his earliest and latest adaptations; Point Blank, the 1967 film that adapted Parker’s debut in The Hunter, was only …
This is the kind of entry I hate to write — not only because I know nobody’s listening, but because it’s about issues that I fear that there may be no solution to, or at least not the starkly delineated solution that people who think they’ve figured it out seem …
This evening poised quite a theological conundrum. On the one hand, American Idol is only an hour long, which seems to be evidence that God loves me and wants me to be happy. On the other hand, the reason American Idol is only an hour long is that Glee is …
Tonight promises to be a volatile episode of American Idol, if that combination of words makes sense in the English language, because this is the infamous Nicki Minaj Meltdown audition. Yes, we’re stranded in Charlotte-town, North Kakalaka, home of the North American Car Racing Car Sports Car Association. You can …
For reasons I don’t enjoy being yelled at enough to go into, the subject of violence has been much on the minds of my fellow Americans the last few months. The current way of thinking seems to be that certain types of violence exist as a sort of protected category, …
POOR-SELLING CELEBRITY COOKBOOKS 1. Jackie Mason’s Sculpting with Chopped Liver 2. Someone’s in the Kitchen with U.S. Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero 3. Vincent Gallo’s Cooking for Faggots 4. My Hands Hurt with Jennifer Aniston 5. Journey to the Center of John Madden’s Unthinkable Gullet …
Last night’s Idol premiere took place in New York, and for me, it didn’t illicit much in the way of sympathy. It was filmed too long ago to get any endearing post-Sandy sob stories, so my overall impression was one of schadenfreude whenever someone would get sent packing: yeah! Take …
Oh, my dearests. If I told you how excited I was about the season premiere of American Idol, would you think less of me? If I told you that I plan on blogging about it for the rest of the season, would you stop reading this site? If I said …
ON THE INTERNET To Do and Say TO THINK: “I have not been completely inundated with self-validation about _____.” TO SAY: “Am I the only person in the world who thinks _____?” TO THINK: “I am irrationally excited by the overly familiar.” TO SAY: “Squeeee“ TO THINK: “I …
Hey, folks. Do you know Fiasco? You should: Jason Morningstar‘s cleverly constructed, tonally perfect role-playing game (available from Bully Pulpit Games) is one of the greatest things going these days. Built for 3-5 players, with minimal dice-rolling, few rules, and no game-master, it’s perfect if you enjoy dark, cynical crime movies, film …
