All about me.
“Hello?” “Merry Christmas, mom!” “Robert! Oh, thank you, son! I didn’t think you’d have time to call me today.” “No, it’s cool. I’m on my break. Even up here, we get OSHA.” “So you’re still working for that man.” “Yes, mom.” “You haven’t thought about going back to school.” “To …
Darling, I know that you said you didn’t want to see me, or hear from me. But I think this card complies fully with the court’s order of protection, provided I do not hand-deliver it to you. I know it just looks like a cheap 89-cent greeting card manufactured in …
Welcome to Rapsylvania! I’m your tour guide, Sharon, and I’ll be sharin’ with you — ha ha — some of the sights, sounds and stories of this, the palatial mansion of Spin-L.P., the biggest-selling recording artist in the history of hip-hop. There is no food or drink on the tour, …
1. The Maltese Falcon (Warner Bros., October 3, 1941; John Huston, dir.) 2. This Gun for Hire (Paramount, May 13, 1942; Frank Tuttle, dir.) 3. Double Indemnity (Paramount, September 6, 1944; Billy Wilder, dir.) 4. Laura (20th Century FOX, October 11, 1944; Otto Preminger, dir.) 5. Murder, My Sweet (RKO Radio …
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 …
“Janet, I’m not trying to tell you how to raise your child.” “Oh, really? Because that’s what it sounds like to me.” “I’m only telling you this because I love you. Because I want to help you.” “This is ridiculous.” “You know I’m right. If you would just look at …
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) …
Hello there, ell p dot com readers! Your stumblebum author, from whom the site derives its name, is working on a major writing project to which he will be devoting the cheetah’s share of his ‘free’ time to completing, so content will be light for the next few whenevers. The …
It is often said by those in the business of making dire predictions about our current political system that the goal of the current generation of Republican radicals is the reduction of the American working population to the status of serfs. With all due respect to the thinkers who have …
The best examples of social progress are always those who are themselves a living testament to the change they wish to make. When Frederick Douglass electrified the nation with his righteous speeches about the horrors of slavery, many in the South doubted that he was ever a slave, because no …
Dr. Grune came to the university in 1955. In this, as in all things, he was ahead of his time, as the great wave of visiting European professors did not otherwise begin until the early 1960s, but we had already heard great things about Dr. Grune. He was not a …
As I write this, America is creaking under the third day of a shutdown of the federal government, forced by as low a group of petulant time-serving cretins as ever bore the title of elected official. It’s a dark time for anyone who believes in the high-school-civics conception of good …
