Too long; do not read.
If you need a sign of how far our country’s political system has fallen in the last three decades, you need look no further than the attempt to reclaim the Reagan legacy…by liberals. Reagan, a former Democrat, union boss (albeit one who used the position to snitch out commies), and advocate …
Every time an election rolls around, we are told by some high-minded pundit or another that it isn’t merely about choosing one party and its values, or about the issues at stake at any given time; it is about profound philosophical differences. I’m not sure why this observation is supposed …
Jose Ortega y Gasset called the metaphor “the most fertile power possessed by mankind”. He compared its potential to reshape the world to that of magic, a divine implement somehow handed down to mere humanity. Indeed, one could argue that the metaphor is humanity; it combines two of our most unique …
The Fourth of July used to be one of my favorite holidays. Its location midway through the summer was a nice kick, and it was a good occasion for grilling before the money dried up and it got too hot to go outside. But beyond that, I had the idealist’s …
As soon as we see Edward G. Robinson in The Woman in the Window, we know there’s going to be trouble. He’ a professor of psychology (a fact that is helpfully driven home by the name “SIGMUND FREUD” on the chalkboard behind him, even though nothing he’s saying has anything …
Derek Raymond didn’t just write about crime; he did something about it. Born to a wealthy London family and raised in the countryside near Kent, Raymond (born Robert Cook) showed a gift for downward mobility as soon as he left Eton: unable to stand the pressure of working for the …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
For someone who has written an exciting new collection of short humor that you should buy immediately, I’ve never been particularly adept at writing, or even telling, jokes. Jokes are rigidly formalist and require a kind of ingenuity in the telling that I’ve never quite been able to master. You’ll …
I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does, attacking infection, enveloping and destroying those malignancies that would otherwise consume us. (Tim O’Brien) On Veteran’s Day, we are told only to honor those who have served this …
Well, I guess I am a rather interesting man — refined, intelligent. But that stomach, that stomach! (Baron Cefalù) You never know what caprice will keep you away from a movie, and what whim will draw you in. Even during the last few years, when I’ve finally gotten around to educating …
