Too long; do not read.
My idyll with the supermodel Veronica began as nothing more than a murky daydream, an absurd fantast’s scenario which replayed fitfully in my head like a picture-show for some weeks after first being introduced to her at a ‘mixer’ sponsored by the alumni club. I became bewitched in the way …
2004: VIENNA, Austria – Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the U.S.-led war was justified because it eliminated the threat that Saddam Hussein might again resort to “evil chemistry and evil biology,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday. Saddam’s willingness to use such weapons was …
As I’ve discussed before in this space, I am not one for New Year’s resolutions. They are, like most last-minute life-changing decisions, made in haste and repented in leisure. They generally set their sights unrealistically high, which is an easy and delicious recipe for chicken-fried failure, or they’re so easily …
It is only recently I’ve been able to talk about this. While I have nothing but good things to say about the people at the MacArthur Foundation — who were not only forward-looking enough to choose me for their prestigious Fellowship, but also possessed of enough integrity to stand by …
Even if you’d never heard of him before, you’d know from seeing Spike Jonze’s latest, Her, that he isn’t a first-time director. Visually speaking, it’s powerfully effective, verging on masterful; he manages to set up almost every shot, even relatively inconsequential place-setting ones, in the most precise manner to deliver whatever …
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, …
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. …
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’ …
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 …
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: …
“That darned crazy Jack,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. “I wonder where in the world he can be. He ought to know I’d come in some place like this and wait for him.” “He probably had an accident,” she said. “In fact, I think I read something …
Let me tell you a little something about myself. Today, I am a fat, out-of-shape, and devoutly unathletic middle-aged man. But once, in my youth, I was a fat, out-of-shape, but modestly athletic teenager; and during that time, I played football (as a nose tackle for my high school team) …
