Dear Mr. Lancho:
You chickenshit motherfucker. The bull got one horn into you and you just lay there in the dirt. The bull didn’t do that, even after he’d been stabbed and stuck with swords and spears by your faithful little picadors, your sycophants on horseback. [Read more →]
Our fellow WFTC writer Michael Antman has just published a fine essay on the digitalization of our culture at the popular culture website PopMatters.com. Entitled “The Future is an Empty Room,” the piece explores the impact that digital progress has had and is likely to have on everything from music and books, to the very nature of living spaces in the future. Needless to say, I completely agree with him, and there’s only a few points I’d like to add. [Read more →]
Panicked by the possible legalization of gay marriage in New York State, the National Organization for Marriage went all out with a local TV spot. The load-bearing line in the spot is: “The rights of people who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman will no longer matter.”
What rights are these? [Read more →]
Obviously I take my movie watching somewhat seriously. I mean, I write a blog about it, and that’s a bit above and beyond where most people go with their movie watching. I try and walk a fine line between movie snob and movie goer, but there is one place where I seem to be the movie snob asshole guy, and that’s AT THE MOVIES! [Read more →]
Willie Heath Neal plays country music. That’s what I’d call it, that’s what he calls it. If you listen to popular country radio then you will disagree. You will call his songs “alt-country rockabilly” or “cowpunk” or “outlaw country” or “hillbilly” or “psychobilly.” Really, there seem to be endless ways to describe him by tacking “billy” onto the end of a word. But what really matters as we hash it all out is that he knows how to write a good song. That’s all I care about, and that is exactly what matters when you are in Ybor City on a rainy Tuesday night at Crowbar to see Willie and his gang play. I don’t ordinarily listen to country music (I adore The Old 97′s, but here again, they don’t seem to count), so I had no idea what I was getting into, but I loved every minute of it. [Read more →]
Dear Ruby,
I work for a large company and I’ve gotten friendly with a woman in another department who’s in the lunchroom when I am. I suspect she’s a lesbian and I’m a straight woman, so I want to let her know that a) her orientation is not a problem with me, and b) I’m not interested in romance but I am interested in having her be my friend. She has not said anything specifically so I am wondering how to bring it up. I think it’s a pretty friendly place to work for gay people so I’m not sure if she’s in the closet just to me or everyone. Any tips to break the ice?
Straight but not narrow
In Brewster’s Millions, Richard Pryor’s character Monty Brewster was given the challenge of spending $30 million in 30 days. If he was successful, he would get a $300 million inheritance from a long lost rich uncle. If he failed, he got nothing. The catch was that after 30 days, he could not have any possessions bought with the $30 million, and could return to the lawyers’ office with only the shirt on his back. (That shirt, coincidently enough, was a Chicago Cubs jersey.) The point, his deceased rich uncle told him via a pre-death recorded video, was to teach him to not squander money by making him so sick of spending money that he would think twice before doing it.
Apparently, the previous administration, as well as the current administration, have seen this movie and have subscribed to this method, hoping that if they spend enough money, a rich uncle — Sam? Mao? — will come up with the cash prize. [Read more →]
So Archie has chosen. And by choosing, he’s taking us down a dark path.
Not since Rene Descartes polished off a sixth bottle of wine and slurred the famous maxim, “I drink therefore I am,” has there been a more culturally critical dualism. I’m talking about the Betty and Veronica dichotomy that has shaped generations of youth — both male and female. [Read more →]
“They put Foley and the Cuban together in the backseat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County jail on Gun Club to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee,” my friend and former editor, Frank Wilson, read to the audience at the Central Library in Center City Philadelphia prior to introducing crime writer Elmore Leonard on May 14th.
Barack Obama has been talking about shaking up the Supreme Court by making his first appointment a non-judge. If he really wants to rattle Scalia’s cage, he’ll give the nod to Saul. Criminal attorney Saul Goodman boasts a haircut described as “business mullet” and works out of a New Mexico strip mall with an inflatable Statue of Liberty on its roof (his office is filled with similarly cheesy/ patriotic décor). Loud, flirtatious, and utterly smitten with himself, he’s a clown with a knack for getting what he wants. Oh, and he’s actually only pretending to be Jewish for the benefit of his largely Hispanic clientele: “My real name’s McGill. The Jew thing I just do for the homeboys.” [Read more →]
