In light of the debacle over a Republican shindig at a L.A. bondage club, and Democratic congressman Eric Massa’s recently disclosed penchant for giving staffers a tickle, the Daily Beast asks: Which party has more sex scandals?
And the Daily Beast answers. It’s the G.O.P by a landslide!
March 24, 2010
I dream I am working at a food court at the Coney Island boardwalk, and Bill Cosby is talking to a young man. I can’t hear exactly what they’re saying, but the young man appears skeptical. He doesn’t understand why Cosby is interested in him or why he wants to talk to him. Cosby is passionate, however, and he informs the young man that he loves him. The young man does not believe it.
Sometimes you sit in the dark and think, “Why can’t it always be like this?” Well, that is what happened to me when I watched the delightful gift that is City Island. This film is funny, smart, moving, packed with great performances and set in a fascinating place. [Read more →]
A month or so back via my connections in the nefarious literary underground I was offered a pre-publication copy of the first Lady Gaga biography, Behind the Fame by Emily Herbert. Not the kind of thing I usually read I must admit, but that’s why I wanted to read it, because there was no reason to read it. Follow me? [Read more →]
Julius Fromm was born in Russia in 1883; when he was 10 years old, his parents left Russia for Berlin. At the time, Berlin offered the hope of more economic opportunity and a better life. Fromm grew up feeling like a German, and a patriotic one at that. It all came to crushing end when Hitler came to power, because Fromm and his family — patriotic though they might be — were Jews.
Fromms: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis by Gotz Aly and Michael Sontheimer is a detailed account of how Julius Fromm built a condom empire during the sexually permissive-period after World War I. His name became synonymous with condoms in Europe, much the way Kleenex or Xerox became household names. But his wealth and status could not protect him or his family when the Nazis came to power. [Read more →]
One commonly writes about something because one is interested in it, and one commonly reads about something for the same reason. But the two lines of interest do not necessarily coincide: What I find interesting to write about you may not find interesting to read about. Write a weekly column and you’ll see what I mean.
Judging by the comments, the column I wrote last week garnered more interest than I expected it would. [Read more →]
That’s how the Democrats are responding to the critics who note that they just jammed Health Care Reform down our throats, in open defiance of the majority opposition, in a manner that was neither democratic, nor republican.
WFTC’s own Kelly Conaboy makes her movie debut. If you consider a self-edited and -produced short dialogue to be a movie debut. And we do. Because why not? And also because of how funny Kelly is.
How To Make It In America (Sunday, HBO, 10PM) – Is it me or is TV reeeeally boring right now? You haven’t heard from me in a while, mostly because I’ve been busy, but also because TV is just very uninspiring right now. American Idol is lame, the CW is worse than ever, and ABC is a complete snooze. The only exciting show on television lately has been Lost (and that’s because we dedicated the last 5 years of our lives to watching it and all it’s done for us is make us feel incompetent and stupid… apparently, the last 7 episodes will make us think we’re smart again), until a show called How To Make It in America came along. [Read more →]
The big news in the NFL this week involved the Philadelphia Eagles and Donovan McNabb. The team appears ready to trade its 11-year veteran quarterback and move on with young Kevin Kolb. According to Stephen A. Smith, this is apparently a crime of some sort. [Read more →]
Forrest Gump — 1994
“My mom always told me life was like chocolate. Chocolate box. Wait…no, that wasn’t it. What the heck did she say? It was a box… chocolate… uhm… hang on, let me call my mom.”
The Wizard Of Oz — 1939
“Toto… where the heck are we?”
Frankenstein — 1931
“Whoa… hang on… hey Igor… is that thing… wait… is that thing alive? That is so weird. [Read more →]
10. Instead of grass in your Easter basket, he uses poison ivy.
9. He claims he’s “as mad as a March hare” at you.
8. No Lindt. Just Hershey’s.
7. You wake up with the head of a baby chick under your blanket.
6. He’s always dissin’ your peeps.
5. He colors all your eggs using lead paint.
4. You get death threats signed simply “E.B.”
3. He hides twelve eggs and three land mines.
2. Instead of a basket, he uses a bedpan.
1. Those aren’t Raisinets.
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Pea shoots, asparagus, and dandelion! Sorrel, kale, and chives! Ramps, bok choy, and mesclun! Looks like we made it! Spring is here and I can mostly avoid the local supermarket for another 8 months. Our neighborhood Greenmarkets will get a lot greener in the coming weeks with bountiful produce (and pretty flowers too). This is where my year really begins and I fall in love with food all over again.
The teabaggers have crossed the line.
Just as “free speech” doesn’t entitle someone to scream “fire” in a theater, it doesn’t entitle them to scream “socialism” by the Capitol. The effusive hatred displayed toward those brave legislators who seized America’s health care system must come to an end. For, left unchecked, it can destroy our nation and its newly-interpreted principles. Congress must act — as the vanguard of the people — to wipe out this vermin from our body politic. And it can best do this by reestablishing the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). [Read more →]
Noel Sheppard wrote an interesting short piece for NewsBusters about the clever Mad magazine cover that has Alfred E. Neuman using a marker to add “ed” to his “I love Obama” t-shirt.
You can read the piece and check out the Mad magazine cover via the below link:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/03/24/shocking-mad-magazine-cover-i-loved-obama
Today I read Peggy Noonan’s regular piece in the Wall Street Journal, The Heat Is On. We May Get Burned. Normally I appreciate Ms. Noonan’s insightful and carefully crafted missives. However, today was one more straw on a camel’s back that’s about to break. Ms. Noonan, like so many others, refers to the people in the current administration, including the man at the top, as “so bright.” Ahem. I beg to differ. [Read more →]
First of all, check this out: Movie ticket prices are going up.
Many movie theaters across the country plan to raise ticket prices this weekend, particularly for premium-priced 3D tickets, The Wall Street Journal reported today (Thursday). It noted that 3D IMAX tickets in Boston for How to Train Your Dragon will rise to $14.50 versus $11.50, the price charged last weekend in the same theaters for Alice in Wonderland. Ticket prices for the 2D version of the movie will rise 3 to 4 percent.
Wow. That is a big jump. Three bucks for 3-D tickets. I’m not much of a mathematician, but that is at least, um, a 20% increase. This is coming at a time when movie studios are increasing their 3-D movie output. Warner Bros, for instance, is releasing all of its “tentpole” releases in 3-D. [Read more →]
A transgender student has been suspended from school in Fulton, Mississippi. I grew up in Queens, a big part of an even bigger city, and if a transgender teen came into my public high school in the late ’80s, people would have definitely turned to stare. Some would have wondered what that freaky kid was doing. Some would have made fun of him. Some might have threatened him (but more likely, they would have just been threatened by him). But certainly someone in the school would have accepted him. It probably wouldn’t have been the guys on the football team — but no one went to their games anyway. [Read more →]
I am currently digging Say Anything – the 1989 Cameron Crowe movie starring John Cusack. If you live under a rock and never saw it, surely you have seen the image of Cusack holding the boombox over his head. Cusack stars as Lloyd Dobler, the most unrealistically cool, laid back, and interesting teenage boy that ever lived. Since I was the heavyweight champion of having crushes on girls in high school, it’s good to see that Lloyd gets the girl. But beyond all that — the soundtrack is ridiculous. Cameron Crowe never goes wrong – Singles is in my opinion the best movie soundtrack ever, and even Elizabethtown is a rather legit soundtrack. I have been driving my girlfriend insane with all my Say Anything references and recently serenaded her Cusack-style and adapted to the times by holding my ipod over my head. She didn’t think it was as funny as I did.
The headline is “Death penalty for child rapists among bills OK’d.”
People obviously have different opinions about the death penalty, about whether or not it deters crime, whether or not it is acceptable to have it in a “civilized society,” whether or not anyone deserves to die for heinous crimes, whether or not it can be applied fairly and without bias, whether or not it is worth the risk of executing an innocent person, and on and on.
But Oklahoma has a death penalty. [Read more →]
If you’re like me, the time you spend on the toilet is sacred. You read. You think. You live a separate life in those five- to fifty-minute sojourns away from the public’s prying eyes. My favorite activity is reading, which is why I always keep the current issue of Poets and Writers as well as a short story collection next to the porcelain throne. My most recent conquest was Sex Dungeon for Sale by Patrick Wensink. [Read more →]
Perhaps up until this point I might have said nothing would surprise me. I mean, hell, we live in a crazy world where wild animals are at war with us, earthquakes are moving the Earth’s axis and God can speak to us through the Billboard top 100 chart. But then, on Sunday night what is commonly called Obamacare passed the US House of Representatives.
Currently I’m in Germany. I’m here on business and will be leaving soon. So I found it an apropos setting to write this missive. Being in Germany, you might think I am relatively removed from the fervor (good or bad) over the “historic” moment. Not so. [Read more →]
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In “Ab Aeterno,” Richard Alpert loses his faith after discovering that the plan he’s dedicated so much of his life to, may in fact, not exist. From the very same episode, some Lost fans began feeling the same. For six years, Lost viewers with an insatiable hunger for answers have anxiously waited to find out what the mysterious island actually is. At the writer’s strike a couple years ago, Carlton Cuse held up a picket sign that read: “Do You Want To Know What The Island Is??” Thousands of fans have dreamed up imaginative theories, all in an attempt to solve the show’s complex riddle. And now at last we have our answer! According to Jacob himself, the island is…A CORK!!! (crickets) [Read more →]
Face it folks, you’re going to get sick and tired of me writing about the new health care law. I don’t think it’s Constitutional, no matter what precedents you can dig up out of some dusty old tome of law. Common sense will tell you that this is a gross encroachment of liberty by government, all in the name of power. The issue has divided this country more thoroughly than anything since the Civil War. I don’t know what it’s like in the cities, but this country boy can feel the anger and fear in small town America.
This doesn’t end well, no matter what happens. If it isn’t repealed, rural America is going to go crazy, and if it is repealed, the cities will be overwhelmed by rioting. But let me present the only side of the story I’m familiar with, the side of the story that I live…
What do Congress and the NFL have in common? They’ve both just passed significant new rule changes to correct what they view as systemic problems that result in unjust or unfavorable outcomes. Also: they both have not considered how tinkering with incentives can drastically change behavior, and in doing so, create new unforeseen problems. [Read more →]
Former presidential candidate and great American hero John Edwards based at least one of his campaigns on the unfairness of the “two Americas” — that there was “one America” for rich people like him, who could basically do whatever they wanted and get away with it, because they were rich; and another “America” for poor people who had to take it when rich people like John Edwards screwed them over. Mr. Edwards had a vision to combine these “two Americas” into one America, where everyone would be screwed over equally by John Edwards.
So far and unfortunately, Mr. Edwards’s vision has gone unfulfilled. And one need look no further for evidence than the Tiger Woods incident(s). [Read more →]
February 6, 2010
I dream it is Saturday morning and the cleaning man and his people are here, but not much cleaning is being done. The cleaning man tells me he thinks of himself as a designer, not a cleaning man. I tell him, no, he’s a cleaning man and I gave him money and he is to clean the house. He explains that this is not “the thing,” and that I must at least help him with the “swats.” I say, “What is this word, ‘swats’?” He says, “Rags.” I say, “As far as I know, I am not obligated to help you with the ‘swats.’ I am paying you a hundred dollars. You are supposed to clean the house.” During this conversation I notice that the sofa cushions are on the dining room table.
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is in its fourth edition (but fifth incarnation) since 1974. I’ve played three incarnations: 2nd, 3.5, and 4th. I’ve got to say that the fourth edition does one thing very well.
For anyone unfamiliar, a table top role-playing game (RPG), like D&D, uses a pen, character sheet(s), a series of books, and a set of dice. The set of dice consists of: 1 four-sided, 1 six-sided, 2 ten-sided, 1 twelve-sided, and 1 twenty-sided die. Dice are also abbreviated “D” as in D20 for a twenty-sided die. You might laugh at this now, but one day you’ll be in a comic shop on the wrong side of the tracks and knowing what a D20 is might help you make a saving throw against a band of asthmatic angry nerds. [Read more →]
