Too long; do not read.
Decide was, for many years, the Old Faithful of Florida death metal. While other bands would come and go, form and re-form, expand their sound into tech-death or prog-jazz or contract it by way of ‘getting back to the basics’, Glenn Benton and his not-so-merry men could be counted on …
It’s pretty presumptuous — not to mention trite — for a critic to talk about the movie a filmmaker should have made instead of the one they made. But it’s also a suggestion that’s inescapable after watching a movie like The King’s Speech. Here you have a concatenation of massive …
In the Sandwich Century’s first clash with the authenticity problem, I found myself approaching this one — a south-of-the-equator version of the standard steak sammy — at something of a loss. Australian food culture, with its Thirst-flavored Life Savers and its Vegemite, has always struck me as something like a …
Despite precedent, and with the exception of some future installments of Lots o’ Soda, I normally drink diet pop. The reason for this is that (a) I am addicted to soda and (b) I weigh six thousand pounds, so in order to extend my life beyond the time it takes …
David Brion Davis’ Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World is one of those rare books that manages to draw information from dozens, if not hundreds, of varying sources about an enormously complex subject and streamline them into a work that is incredibly readable and …
Having been to the Conservative Political Action Conference before, I can testify firsthand that even at the best of times, it’s a non-stop Ronald Reagan strokefest. But this year, being what would have been Reagan’s 100th birthday had Alzheimer’s disease not finished the job that stupidity started, it’s a downright …
Even in the wicked world of chanson, where a borderline pedophile like Serge Gainsbourg or an accused Nazi collaborator like Maurice Chevalier can become a massive international superstar, Georges Brassens was an odd duck. Born in the beach town of Sète (which he remembered fondly in song his entire life), …
First of all, how about that title, eh? The movie could be a heap of shit and it would still win points for the title, which sounds like some lost French new wave picture. Éclat de Silence, avec Alain Delon. But no, it’s an American film noir, albeit a pretty …
After a half-century of perceived American cultural hegemony, Europeans feel the need to get back at us in any way that they can. You really can’t blame them; after endless decades of ruling the world, here we come with our fat loudmouthed tourists and our Big Macs, ruining everything, and …
Advertising is pretty evil, and it gets even more evil the more abstract and detached from its subject it gets. But it reaches a certain point of abstraction where it transcends its sinister purposes and can go one of two ways: it can become art, or it can be so …
So Andy Gray, the voice of Sky Sports for two decades and one of the most familiar announcers in soccer, has been sacked. He takes with him his hench-creature Richard Keys, along with any pretense that soccer announcers are any less cretinous than the voices of American sporting events. Gray …
I’ve always taken a special displeasure in the ‘things were better before’ approach to culture. While it’s undeniable that taste is taste, it strikes me as a particularly lazy way to come at the world around you to simply let your tastes calcify without protest. Sure, it’s hard to keep …
Everybody likes being right, but sometimes being right is a lot more like a severe depressant than an ego boost. Such is the case with today’s look at the world’s widest web: I have always maintained that, even in comparison with such internet sewers as IMDB and YouTube, the comments …
Judging a movie by its potential is probably skirting the edge of fairness, but the creepy 1947 carnival-noir Nightmare Alley tempts pretty strongly in that direction. The feeling it finally leaves you with is an unsatisfying one, both in the way it frequently opens up possibilities it doesn’t quite live …
The other day, which by my reckoning could have been anywhere between last Thursday and Thanksgiving of 2004, I was talking with a good friend about the Daily Beast’s annual ranking of the smartest cities in America. Although my stomping grounds of San Antonio ranked 54th out of 55, that …
