Too long; do not read.
I don’t wanna be a burden on nobody. Here these things are if you want to read them. 1. It drives me near madhouse when someone says they have lived a life without regrets. It’s a good thing to keep moving and all, and we all like that song by …
I am not religious, and I never will be. But, just as I have been shown grace and kindness by Christians and Jews whose faith I cannot share, I have had the privilege of knowing a number of Muslims whose beliefs inspire me even though I will never follow them …
The latest from the comedic mind of Tina Fey (and her less media-friendly writing partner, Robert Carlock), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt made its Netflix debut this week, inviting fans missing the golden days of 30 Rock to binge-watch its 13-episode first season. Unfortunately, I was not among the 30 Rock faithful; I thought it was …
NBC’s The Slap is based on a very important novel, and if you weren’t aware of that already, you will be within two minutes of the first episode. The ponderous voice-over — by Victor Garber, no less! — drops with a thud, delivering lines like “For a moment, Hector luxuriated in …
It’s only March and already the handicapping of the 2016 elections seems impossibly dreadful. We are still ten months away from the first presidential primary, and yet it seems as if the whole obese, god-awful thing has been going on for ages; the prospect of another year and a half of …
Few people have begun the preliminary notes for their autobiographies on the back of a Donuts on the Freeway flyer; I am one of those people. NOTES OF AN ALIENATED CRYPTO-SOUTHERN HALF-ARAB PUNK ROCK BIG BOY. SUGGESTED TITLES FOR MY MEMOIRS #1 (in a series): LIKE A BLACK PANTHER, BUT FOR …
No television program currently on the air has likely suffered more invidious discrimination than Comedy Central’s Broad City. Now in the early goings of its second season, the show follows the hapless misadventures of two directionless New York twenty-something women (Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, playing not even slightly veiled …
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the creators of Shaun of the Dead, had the rare distinction for a writer/director team of having made the greatest film of its genre. Of course, at the time of it’s debut, they’d also made the only film of its genre. Though it’s since been …
It’s been over a year since Breaking Bad went off the air with a breathless finale that had the whole world — or at least that noisy part of it that has opinions about television shows — watching. There’s no question at this point that, for better or for worse, the story …
Race relations seem to be at the forefront of the current plan to drag America kicking and screaming back to the mid-19th century, so this sort of thing is fascinating to me. Clemson’s black students have long complained that the university underfunds their programs, fails to hear their grievances, doesn’t …
It isn’t easy, being a god. This website was founded on the principle that we, as gods, are facing a world where being an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity is a very different thing than it used to be. In a time where civil rights, social justice, feminism, and diversity rule …
It’s hard to know what to think of things like this. There’s something to be said, I suppose, for being reminded that Seattle, where I live, is indeed a liberal bubble, its progressive policies and forward-thinking politics an aberration even in the left-leaning Pacific Northwest, and that much of the …
Quickly, now: name one good filmmaker who started out making music videos. Not bad, not bad. Now, just as quickly: name one good filmmaker who, after making it in feature films, went back and made more music videos. Wasn’t as easy, was it? And if you’re looking for a reason …
Goodness knows our society has long mistaken the exhortation to kill its idols for an invitation to shit on its most talented members, but sometimes it seems that comics fandom in particular is determined to isolate the best and brightest of their chosen medium’s creators and relentlessly heap bile on them …
Yermek Shinarbayev’s Revenge had, to put it mildly, a bit of a struggle facing its path to cinematic glory. For one thing, the world wasn’t exactly focused on Kazakh cinema at the time (not that that world has seen fit to alter that lack of focus today), and the Soviet Union was …
