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Continue reading →: “I am an American, and you are not”
Months of reading and I’m still not sure what distinguishes the “Tea Party” from almost every GOP member elected to office in my lifetime. If they’re not nervous, they exploit nervousness. If they don’t like gays, they stoke anti-gay hysteria. Glenn Greenwald doesn’t either: For as long as I can…
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Continue reading →: Gusto and polyurethane cuteness: Me & Orson Welles
Were it not for a sickly ending involving a pigeon trapped in the Museum of Natural History and a bogus moment in which The Great Stentorian Ham (Christian McKay) confesses to Richard (Zac Efron) that actors perform because Deep Down they’re scared of Being Themselves, Me & Orson Welles would…
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Continue reading →: All a-gaga
Camille Paglia is such a genius that she turn ire into desire. Thanks to this truculent essay, I’m ready to anoint Gaga my Captain Fantastic. Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette…
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Continue reading →: Singles 9/9
We took a break this week, but I managed to review one of the year’s best singles, performed by a synth-pop duo so beholden to eighties signifiers that they probably programmed their metronomes with a Swatch. Scores are on a ten-point scale, with ten the highest. Click on links for…
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Continue reading →: Michael Douglas: Wonder Boy, meet Solitary Man
In Solitary Man, Michael Douglas plays a car salesman unable to cobble his life into coherence after the threat of a prison sentence and the consequences of serial philandering. What an odd camera object Douglas is: an impressive swath of greying red hair, ghoulish mandible, obviously capped teeth, and terrific…
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Continue reading →: “The Great Divergence”
Slate’s Timothy Noah does an invaluable service expounding on the economic inequality of which American society is composed, stretching back at least thirty years. Socialism for the rich, democracy for the poor, and lectures for the middle class. Ick: It’s generally understood that we live in a time of growing…
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Continue reading →: A grin, a paunch, and reserve: Charles Boyer
Without Charles Boyer, Pepe Le Pew wouldn’t have existed. Neither would Tom The Cat’s renditions of velvet-voiced French urbanity. What distinguished Boyer from other romantic smoothies is the sense in which courtship becomes an extension of a private performance: self-amused and ironic. This is a man, I think, who could…
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Continue reading →: Howards End: Stolid and solid
Remember when Merchant Ivory movies set the hearts of grandmas and critics aflutter? The release of Howards End in a handsome Criterion edition reminded of a time in my life when all it took for a film to move me was to remind me of the great literature I read.…
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Continue reading →: Sinead O’Connor: Just like we said it would be
Relistening to the only two essential Sinead O’Connor albums this weekend, I was tempted to peg The Lion and the Cobra over its megaplatinum successor I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Recorded when she was barely out of her teens, TLATC is guided by a teenager’s tastes and…
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Humanizing The Vacuum 