Slings and Arrows is a little-known Canadian comedy show about a Shakespeare troupe filled with goodies for fans of the immortal bard. Like most viewers, I first experienced Slings and Arrows after its cancellation.  The series ran from 2003 to 2006, three seasons of six episodes each. Each season covered a different tragedy, all but Othello, as well as a smattering of theater jokes and general love interest/banter. 

[Read more →]

Tags: fan boy says, television // Add Comment »

Saturday is the Fourth of July. For most Americans, it is a day to barbecue and watch fireworks. For me it is a chance to watch the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Championship on Coney Island, sandwiched by a Twilight Zone marathon. Whatever the tradition, some Americans, including our President, have become almost apologetic for America over the last decade. They have  no problem confessing our imperfections to others around the world… and yes, we do have a lot of them. Other Americans are downright adamant about being American. They say that we are the best country in the world, and they are biased against other countries. But do they know what they are proud of? [Read more →]

Tags: race & culture // Add Comment »

We at PWSBKTW are all about starting your holiday weekend with sunshine. And rainbows.

For four days, 17-month-old Nicholas Miller was in pain with a badly broken back, which made it difficult for the toddler to walk or even breathe. His brain was bleeding, and he had other wounds.

He got no medical help.

Tylar Hokanson, Nicholas’s stepfather, has confessed to shaking Nicholas. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week // 1 Comment »

I’ve never experienced “Radioactive Cats,” Sandy Skoglund’s 1981 installation, in person, but I love the photographs I’ve seen of it: a gray kitchen, with an old man and woman, and everywhere, cats, painted neon green, crawling, writhing, looking lanky and predatory and anything but cute. Skoglund likes to take the things that seem tame and comfortable to us and render them in ways that make us squirm. Lately I’ve begun to think that “Radioactive Cats” suitably predicted the status of the feline on the Internet.

If the Internet is a collective unconscious, we are in big trouble, and I don’t think you have to find sites by child-molesters or terrorists to prove the point. When child-molesters are few, cats will do.

[Read more →]

Tags: animals, stone age memes, technology // Add Comment »

I’m going to try to keep today’s post light, but it is with a somewhat heavy heart that I write today. My grandmother (Baba, as she is known to us) fell down the stairs the other night and is in the hospital with broken ribs, bruises from head to toe and the looming fear of pneumonia. She suffers from dementia and so she often goes in and out of lucidity. The fact that she mainly speaks Yiddish makes for an interesting dynamic between her, the doctors and the nurses. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, going parental // 5 Comments »

Wed Him Before You Bed Him is book six in Sabrina Jeffries’ School For Heiresses series, and, I thought, the final book in the series. However, after reading the book, there are new characters and hints that there may be two more books, which is exciting because book six definitely lived up to the hype. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, romancing history // Add Comment »

It has been a tragic week for the families, friends, and fans of many popular American icons. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Karl Malden have each been taken from us long before their* times and I can’t be the only one wondering why. Their deaths are senseless and the toll they have taken is massive and widespread. The question needs to be asked: How many more celebrities have to die before the implementation of universal health care? 

[Read more →]

Tags: Kelly Conaboy saves the world, health & medical // 1 Comment »

I was going to write about Michael Jackson’s passing, but that topic seems fairly well covered so instead I’ll address the man who made it all possible: his father Joe. This last week has seen Joe officially establish himself as the ultimate stage parent. He raised a boy so famous he crashed the Internet. Surely this is the dream of every mother or father forcing their child to go through that choreography just one more time so it’s perfect. Yes, Joe was tough on Michael and his brothers (indeed, some might say abusive), but in the end it was all worth it because his little boy turned out just… [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment // 1 Comment »

March 12, 2009
I dream I have a top secret government job and I push an enormous gun on wheels into a gymnasium. There is a banner stretched across poles and when I shoot it the banner disintegrates. I bring one of my underlings to the gym and I have her push the gun into position and shoot at another banner. This time the gun shoots, but the banner is invulnerable. She shoots again. The bad guys have come up with a new fortified banner.

[Read more →]

Tags: Fred's dreams // Add Comment »

Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David) argues that since parents send their children to sports camps, magic camps and other specialty camps, they should instead send their children to concentration camps.  At least concentration camps would provide valuable life lessons. Although part of the humor is in the delivery, your reaction to this line is probably a good predictor of whether you will enjoy Whatever Works. Woody Allen’s latest effort takes him back to New York, with an old screenplay originally written for Zero Mostel. I am not yet sure where Whatever Works ranks in the panoply of Allen’s films, but Woody’s words in the mouths of this excellent cast elicited hearty laughter from the depths of my neurotic Jewish soul. [Read more →]

Tags: Gail sees a movie, movies // 2 Comments »

If you’re a fan of “what the heck is going on in Space” movies, then Moon is right up your alley.

While I hesitate to call it a science fiction film because there isn’t too much science going on, it does fall under that category. The premise of the movie is one that has been trotted out there before — a person spends too long in one place and starts to hallucinate. The place, in this case, is the Moon, where Sam Rockwell’s character of Sam Bell is closing out a multi-year stint mining for helium-3, a substance vital to Earth’s energy supply. [Read more →]

Tags: movies // Add Comment »

If you are having company this weekend and you don’t know what to cook, I wrote this for you. An easy three-course meal that won’t stress you out.

[Read more →]

Tags: easy weeknight dinners, recipes & food // Add Comment »

Who is your God?  Is your God a man?  A woman?  A transvestite?  Does your God have a skin pigment that matches your own?  Does your God have long hair?  A mohawk?  Does your God even evince anthropomorphic characteristics at all?  What is your God’s opinion of homosexuals?  Sexual intercourse before marriage?  What of divorce?  Stem cell research?  Does your God approve of the ongoing resistance movement in Iran?  Is your God a vegetarian? [Read more →]

Tags: religion & philosophy // Add Comment »

The Road is bleak and forbidding and utterly beautiful. You know from early on that no happy ending is possible in this desolate future world. Everything is burned to ash, there is little sunlight, nothing growing, only a few desperate souls left alive. And yet, a father keeps going for the sake of his son, born in the aftermath of whatever catastrophe brought down the world: [Read more →]

Tags: Lisa Reads, books & writing // Add Comment »

Last night was meet-the-family night on The Bachelorette. Family night always reveals a lot about the guys and last night was no different. Sometimes the families help the guys’ chances and sometimes they hurt. Here’s how it went in my eyes… [Read more →]

Tags: Lauren Likes TV, television // 3 Comments »

I read somewhere that the average age of a video gamer is approximately 30.  At 276, I’m still on the young side of life, but I can remember the days of 8-bit heroes and light guns.  (I kept all of mine, even the bad ones.)

[Read more →]

Tags: games // Add Comment »

A quick post from vacationland. Every year for more than a decade, when driving through southern Michigan, I play for my family one of the best songs of the 90’s: “Hindu Rodeo” by the Minneapolis band of the same name. Their eponymous album has two incredible songs, “Blue Sky” and “Hindu Rodeo.” The latter, though, at over 7 minutes, is what I call a “kitchen sink song”. It has everything. [Read more →]

Tags: music // Add Comment »

Now read this! is taking a brief vacation, because I am! Last week I wrote about my favorite novel of all time. Now it’s your turn. Leave a brief comment about your favorite novel of all time and we’ll see if any of us agree. Until next week!

Tags: books & writing, now read this! // 1 Comment »

I mentioned last week that I was on my way to Disney with my family. We spent the whole week down there, and returned Sunday evening. I really didn’t get to follow much in the way of sports, aside from a bit of fantasy baseball. The only TVs I encountered seemed to have nothing but Michael Jackson coverage. So the only sports I can discuss this week involve the challenging task of not being injured by the omnipresent strollers and motorized carts that you find all over Walt Disney World. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports, travel & foreign lands // Add Comment »

10. Every night: free back rubs.

9. The prison laundry offers one-hour Martinizing.

8. His inmate number will be unlisted.
[Read more →]

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd // Add Comment »

I read about Michael Jackson’s death this morning, about ten minutes before leaving for the last day of my TEFL course. On the bus I reflected that death may have come as a relief to the man; the casting away of a life that was both public and secretive; luridly broadcast and darkly cloistered. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment // Add Comment »

We’re drowning in an ocean of forced sentimentalism. The current’s too strong to swim against. So let’s acquiesce. Let’s take a little moonwalk on the Sea of Neverland and pay tribute to Jacko with a fun little When Falls the Coliseum sing-along. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment // Add Comment »

Cause of death: exposure.

Tags: art & entertainment // Add Comment »

I saw Transformers: Rise of the Fallen, aka Transformers 2, in IMAX on Wednesday night. Oh, My Fuck! This movie is terrible, so terrible that it’s good in a bad way. I have tons of problems with the film. However, like Speed Racer, a film that totally embraced the “so bad it’s good genre,” Transformers: Rise of the Fallen is fun to watch.

[Read more →]

Tags: fan boy says, movies // 5 Comments »

“Curtis Jason Powell was arraigned Tuesday on two counts of murder for the shooting deaths of two sisters in an Oakland motel room last week.” We won’t say that having two first names was reason enough to arrest him. But we will say that having two first names was reason enough to keep a close eye on him.

In addition to being charged with two counts of murder for the deaths of Geraldine Latchison, 23, and Angel Latchison, 20, at the Value Inn at 370 W. MacArthur Blvd. on June 15, Powell, 28, is charged with being an ex-felon in possession of a gun and having a prior conviction for mayhem.

Mayhem?  [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week // 8 Comments »

Monkey See is a charming and satirical examination of the question: “what would happen if monkeys could talk, and they had their own 401(k)s?”

It is also a love story, an etiquette manual for talking apes, parenting help for said primates, and a demented “how-to” guide for the aspiring evil scientist. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, technology // Add Comment »

Although I was sorry to hear of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday at 50, and I sympathize with his family, I can’t forgive the damage he has caused to untold innocent children over the years.

Yes, he was found innocent of child abuse, but O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake were found innocent of murder. It’s good to have money and fame.

[Read more →]

Tags: music // 10 Comments »

As a devoted fan of Michael Jackson, it’s very hard for me to comprehend that he is no longer with us. I never thought Michael would live a long life, but I wasn’t prepared for him to leave us today. I’ve never felt such sorrow following the death of a famous figure or someone I didn’t know, but while remembering Michael, I find it hard to hold back tears and emotion. It’s extremely difficult to write a tribute to the King of Pop. I won’t even attempt it. However, I will remember Michael only through his music and dance. It’s difficult to narrow down to my favorites, but my heart is set on the following: [Read more →]

Tags: music // 3 Comments »

As a child of the 80’s, I’m a great fan of Michael Jackson’s music. Whenever I hear “Thriller” or “Billie Jean”, I still crank up the volume. He was just a brilliant musician, and his music resonates with millions of people. However, I’ve never been too keen on Michael Jackson as a person. The plastic surgery was odd enough, but the sleepovers at Neverland Ranch and sips of “Jesus juice” were beyond creepy. Still, it’s shocking and sad when someone passes so suddenly. [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, music // Add Comment »

While never a great fan of Michael Jackson, I always appreciated his talent.  Just to watch his music videos was to see a performer doing what he was born to do.  The flexibility of his movements, all in perfect sync with the music.

While we may have envied his talent and the success which he achieved, in large part because of that talent, we with smaller talents and much less material success, may well have found more happiness in our lives than did the late King of Pop.  Yes, Jackson enjoyed a level of success that none have since equaled and few could even imagine, but happiness seemed to elude him. [Read more →]

Tags: music // 4 Comments »