The things I do for money.
When one mask comes off, others start to follow, and in quick order. America’s rightward turn, its fascist lean, is finding allies everywhere; if they are not necessarily ideological allies, they are at least opportunistic ones. So it is that many of the country’s biggest and most rapacious corporations have …
Let us say, just for the sake of argumentation, that you find yourself on the editorial staff of a large national men’s fashion or entertainment magazine. This is nothing to be ashamed of; certainly, it is humiliating and embarrassing, but we all must make a living. Should you wake up …
Spring is in the air, and a young man’s heart turns to thoughts of love. I am not a young man, however, so while the rest of you are out enjoying sunshine and greenery and doing your grotesque courting rituals, I am inside basking in the warming glow of a …
I don’t really listen to much new music anymore. Partly this is because no one pays me to do it anymore, and partly it’s because I have other things to do, but mostly it’s just because I’m old, and nobody needs another white guy in his mid-40s telling them what …
As campaign season rolls on, we are being treated to the usual colorful fall display of Republicans showing off their economic policies. Well, it’s actually not all that colorful; in fact, it’s downright monochromatic. The G.O.P. doesn’t like to talk about economic policy very much, because they don’t really have …
The internet has been aflame this week following a lengthy article in the New York Times about the corporate culture at Amazon. (A follow-up on Gawker, arguing that tech money in general, but Amazon in particular, has helped render Seattle unlivable, made some good points, but was undercut by having …
The minimum wage went up in San Francisco and, blaming the cost of doing business, the overrated burrito hucksters at Chipotle hiked up their prices. Predictably, conservatives popped their collective gaskets, and everyone on the right started screaming “ENJOY THE BITTER FRUITS OF YOUR COMMUNIST WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION, LIBTARDS”, as if …
And so it was jail again: he could tell, before he had sight, from the smell. Shit and piss and standing water and stale-peach body funk. He clenched his eyelids against torch-light and let his mind wander along his body: his jaw was fat and sore, his lower back had …
David Carradine came from one of Hollywood’s most legendary families. His father John, his brothers Keith, Robert and Michael Bowen, and his niece Martha Plimpton were all actors, but he was no doubt the best-known – for critically acclaimed performances like his role as Woody Guthrie in Bound for Glory, popular and …
The average cable provider, desperate to compete with the entertainment-dollar encroachment of the internet, brings literally hundreds of channels into the homes of its subscribers, most of them running 24 hours a day. That means, in an average week, there are upwards of ten thousand shows being broadcast. Somebody’s got …
Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, was the second collaboration between an innovative director widely celebrated for his groundbreaking music videos and a man occupying the unusual position of being a famous screenwriter. It’s an amazing film, as inventive and complex as the duo’s previous …
Hi there! If you’re reading this site, that means you enjoy the writing you find here on a regular basis. Or you got here by accident. Or you’re a hate-reader. Whatever the case, it’s wonderful to have you, and I’d like to take a moment to ask you to support …
Hello, dearest readers of Leonard Pierce dot com: Perhaps you thought I was deceased. Perhaps you thought that this blog was as dead as Jacob Marley, as passé as Bob Marley, as irrelevant as Marley Marl. Nothing could be further from the truth. I, Leonard Pierce, for whom Leonard Pierce …
It is a complicated world, and today’s worker, student, and/or working student intern has to memorize more data points than ever to prove useful to his instructor/employer. In the internet age, when all data is instantly accessible to everyone at all times, you might think that rote memorization would be …
I’m a guy who likes his meat. I figure I have incisors for a reason, and if there’s a dead animal I wouldn’t enjoy eating, I haven’t encountered it yet. More than that, though, I love to cook. A vegetarian diet – or even, may the fishmongers of Seattle forgive …
