Every serial killer biography begins with a kid in the forest torturing squirrels.
When I was 13 and 14, I would go to the Poconos with my friend Eric, his older sister, and their parents. They had a house. We’d usually stay for two nights. [Read more →]
June 30, 2008
I dream I am in graduate school doing a class presentation on an elaborate circus set. I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I make it all very obtuse and ironic as I swing from one piece of apparatus to another. There is a competitor who is swinging, but his irony is not as good as mine. Later on, I am teaching a seventh grade class in which I insist that all lessons are to be taught while singing. My teaching assistant, Kevin Cooney, is not thrilled with my edict, but he acquits himself well. I find that the kids are getting overly excited. [Read more →]
We are pleased to announce that Mean Martin Manning, a novel by our very own Scott Stein, was reviewed yesterday by the American Spectator:
Crafting a breezily subversive, funny narrative out of a barely hyperbolized modern American zeitgeist, Stein spins perhaps a bit too-timely-for-comfort cautionary tale.
Read the whole thing.
I had an opportunity, recently, to reflect on the nature of man’s search for unique ways to express his creative drive in socially acceptable fashion.
My, that sounded pretentious, didn’t it? The truth is that I got frustrated and didn’t have a clue why. This led to one of those moments I, like most people, avoid like the plague.
Self-evaluation. [Read more →]
(Warning: Plot spoilers ahead)
Paula: The movie Hancock, starring Will Smith, recently opened in theaters to excellent reviews. Smith plays a surly superhero who gets “reformed” through the intervention of a good-hearted PR guy played by Jason Bateman. Bateman is married to preternaturally blonde Charlize Theron, who it turns out has been keeping under wraps the fact that she is a superhero, too. Most of the hype and resulting reviews claim the movie is no ordinary superhero movie but a kind of allegory about the problem of being human. I’m frankly puzzled. The movie struck me as an unsettling and unsatisfying amalgam of possibly racist motifs. [Read more →]
Plenty has been written about humans bonding with dogs (Old Yeller, The Call of the Wild, The Voice of Bugle Ann) or with horses (National Velvet, The Black Stallion), but not much about humans bonding with birds. Which seems strange, since falconry certainly has an ancient pedigree (the earliest evidence of it dates to the eighth century B.C.).
Nowadays birds are pretty popular. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, nearly 48 million Americans have taken up bird-watching as a hobby. Throughout the pleasanter months of the year a good many of those millions will take to field, forest and wetland to renew their acquaintance with the feathered flocks.
Most will engage in just looking at them, hoping to add another name to the list of those they’ve seen. But avian encounters can prove a good deal more profound than that, as two books in the outstanding NYRB Classics series conclusively demonstrate. [Read more →]
August 25, 2006
I dream I am with my father in some combination of Vegas, Niagara Falls, and a theme park. We go to see the Penn and Teller show in a futuristic auditorium, which suddenly divides itself into 8 or 10 separate areas. A young woman I don’t know who seems to be sweet on me is sitting in front of me and I dribble chewed up peanuts into her hair. My dad would like a soda, but all they have are expensive beverages in souvenir glasses with umbrellas. I commiserate with the girl’s mother and reminisce about the good old days in Vegas when you sat at a dime slot machine and buxom women served free drinks.
Robert: I tell you, this election season has been fun. I cannot remember having anything like this amount of fun four years ago when John Kerry was challenging George W. Bush. Was it that Kerry was boring? That Bush was also boring? Is it that the Hillary-Obama contest made following this race so interesting? Or is it fun because I’m a Democrat and the Democrats are clearly on the upswing in the polls with a Republican president at a 20-percent approval rating? The media environment is changing at warp-speed and I wonder if the further advance of the Internet has added to the fun of following campaigns.
Paula: I suppose it depends upon what your definition of fun is, to borrow some phrasing from the master of fun. Yes, I have been more stimulated to talk about this campaign than in the past, and it’s true that lunch and dinner conversations have been a lot more lively. But I wonder if there isn’t something sort of macabre, creepy really, about having so much fun parsing, comparing, teasing out meanings as they pertain to the candidates. [Read more →]
Get bigger.
No, I’m not some sort of freaky Obama girl with inside information, I’m a voter. I’m a damn Obama voter and I need for him to get BIGGER. By that I mean, get higher.
Okay, this isn’t working. I need for Barack Obama to stop feeling and reacting to all the tiny Lilliputian arrows — the Bernie Mac jokes, the New Yorker cartoonist, the Wright sermons, the McCain snarks. Don’t go to freaking Kabul because McBush tweaked your nose, don’t chide Bernie for being naughty, just get out of reaction mode and delegate that shit! Appoint a High Chief Offendee who can get all hurt and outraged for you and then get bigger. Set the tone, act, be the cowbells, I don’t care — I don’t even want to be telling you this. You don’t know how much I don’t want to be telling you this.
Getting offended is over. Getting offended is for those goofballs who are still boycotting Denmark. Ignore negative behavior, stop acting like a scold, set your terms, stop talking about God, and start talking about how John McCain still cashes his $1900 social security check every month instead of donating it to Cindy’s favorite charity — Guccis for the Ghetto. Talk about the video of McCain choking on the fact that he voted against requiring insurance companies to cover birth control! Dude, there’s lots to talk about. Big stuff.
Barack, we’re there for you baby, but you gotta put on your big suit and get some height. We can’t see you down there in the snake pit shaking your finger at the snakes.
My cousin will graduate from the nursing program at Ball State University today. Last night I went to the pinning ceremony and was the first to stand in ovation when the audience was invited to acknowledge the accomplishments of the 2008 baccalaureates. I stood because she is one of the dearest people in my life. I stood because she has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, and despite all, she has achieved her dream. I stood because she is graduating with honors at the top of her class.
Other than those attending with me, applauding our particular graduate, I don’t know why everyone else stood up when I did. [Read more →]
