It is a noble thing to dedicate your life to educating the young, even if our society doesn’t value teachers the way it should. And yet at the same time, teaching can also provide a shelter for all manner of time-servers, frauds, phoneys, creeps and even perverts. [Read more →]
February 20, 2010
I dream I am a youngish version of myself attending a summer theater program at NYU. We have our belongings arranged for inspection in an orientation room and it is clear people brought too much stuff. The head of the program has us pack up and head towards the dorms. I walk with one other student and we run into the head of the program who is chatting with Meryl Streep. Meryl seems interested in me, which feels wonderful and bizarre. I ask the head of the program where we go to pick up our room keys. He gives me a funny look. Suddenly, someone picks me up from behind and holds me aloft while another man pours a very cold beverage onto my crotch.
Dramatis Personae
Barack Obama, President of the United States
Joe Biden, Vice-President of the United States
OBAMA: I have one small concern about our health care proposal.
BIDEN: What’s that, boss?
OBAMA: Don’t call me “boss.”
BIDEN: I’m sorry — I thought that was the lingo. You know, jive talk. [Read more →]
Jeff Bridges gives a brilliant and captivating performance as Bad Blake, and makes us really care about this washed up country musician. The story is not new, but Bridges makes it feel fresh. The concert scenes are exciting, the story is engaging and the milieu feels authentic. It is not a great film, but it sure is good. [Read more →]
Parents, if you stay awake at night worrying that one day when your kids go to college they might try to throw a ping-pong ball into a cup of beer, you can rest easy, as long as the college is in Suffolk County:
A Long Island lawmaker hopes to curb underage drinking by banning the sale of booze-themed board games, like beer pong, to minors.
It would be against the law to sell beer-pong sets to minors under the measure proposed by Suffolk County legislator Tom Cilmi.
“I am not one who would typically advocate for regulation of our free market, but this is simply common sense,” said Cilmi. “Our children’s lives are at risk.” [Read more →]
Shocking news from Russia: a man claiming to be a member of the Romanov dynasty recently tracked down and beat to death an 82 year old ex-KGB officer for his part in the murder of Tsar Nikolai II and his family. [Read more →]
“[D]o not linger over your own ruins.”
Lesser minds examining Vladimir Nabokov’s posthumously published The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun), A Novel in Fragments will be tempted to begin by quoting index card D2, page 133, in which the great Enchanter writes, “Now comes the mental image. In preparing for my own experiments — a long fumble which these notes shall help novices to avoid — I toyed with the ides of drawing a fairly detailed, fairly recognizable portrait of myself on my private blackboard.” This is a trap of course, neatly set by that great player of literary games, that the present reviewer shall neatly sidestep by instead noting that when the great Nabokov passed away in 1977 (as harrowingly related by a character purporting to be Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, in T.O.O.L.‘s introduction), I was four years old, and had only just recently discovered his works. I was halfway through my second re-reading of Pale Fire – I hadn’t yet found all the clues as to the butterfly/Hazel Shade connection – and I was devastated in that way that only the near-infant fan of a great author can be when he learns his favorite author has shuffled off this mortal coil.
I have occasionally described books as “a wild ride.” Books are like trips we take — some are pleasant Sunday drives, some are fast and bumpy. John Dies @ the End is like a ride on a twisting, speeding, swooping roller coaster. On acid. With no seat belt. [Read more →]
“Holy crap! I crashed my car into a power pole. Good thing I’m not seriously injured. Whoa, watch out for the downed power lines! Can’t believe I wasn’t hurt. Must be my lucky day. Man, I have to piss… Argghh!!!”
Roy Messenger is dead. I’m sure if he knew there were live wires in the ditch where he was urinating, he wouldn’t have urinated on them. And that would have prevented him from being electrocuted when the electricity traveled up his urine stream and into his body, which is what authorities believe happened. [Read more →]
I have been reading the Journal of Jules Renard, as translated and edited by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget. Originally published in 1964, it was reprinted a couple of years ago by Tin House Books. The complete journal runs to more than 1,200 pages. The Tin House edition, at 304 pages, provides a representative sampling. [Read more →]
“To Texas . . .
Joyous and sparkling,
Evergreen when it rains, enduring in drought,
Timeless, endless in boundaries, exciting,
Home to the adventurous of yesterday and today,
With shrines from the past, and space
and spirit for the future.
To Texas …
Everlasting in the hearts of your people!”
It was about fifteen years ago when, as editor of the Fort Stockton Pioneer (a Thursday morning weekly serving a West Texas community of about 10,000), I was handed a letter from one of our readers, for publication in the next issue … a letter admonishing our paper for not devoting adequate space to Texas Independence Day. She may have been DRT (I honestly don’t remember for certain), but she was certainly something of a Lone Star zealot … a perception of mine that was reinforced by her comment as she handed me the letter …
The next big war may not involve missiles, bombs or gunfire.
The next war may simply involve a cyber attack that shuts down our national power grids, leaving us with no electricity. no Internet, no clean water, no food supply and no central government.
Tilikum the killer whale, I think, has put his employers in an awkward position. I mean, a killer whale is not an employee that you can fire, or take away his quarterly bonus. And there is, of course, the awkward press conference where you explain, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, that “in July 1999, security guards found a naked dead man draped across the orca’s back one morning.” Sure, the guy sneaked past SeaWorld security and apparently died of hypothermia, but it’s awkward when one of your employees was found wearing a naked dead man as a hat.
In a fortnight I move to an undistinguished town in the middle of Germany, to bring enlightenment and English to the uncouth. I’ve been looking at accommodation websites, sifting through the weirdness for acceptable digs. The real difficulty isn’t the flat, it’s the people. Terrible flatmates are an affliction and a curse. I particularly detest slobs. [Read more →]
Brothers & Sisters (Sunday, ABC, 10PM) — I consistently neglect one of my favorite shows week after week and it’s simply because I’m 32 years old and like to be in bed by 10 on a school night, especially on Sunday. With Brothers & Sisters airing on Sunday at 10PM, I never watch it live… and considering this column posts on Monday at 2:00, I don’t get to write about it. So this week I’ve decided to honor B&S, stay up late, watch it and discuss. [Read more →]
If you would like to learn more about the strange little man who, according to the FBI, frightened a nation with deadly mailings of anthrax, thesmokinggun.com has published the FBI’s first batch of released documents .
One look at the House and Senate health care bills shows who Congress’ favorite constituencies are. It must be sheer joy to be on that list. If you or your group are there, it means Big Brother loves you and will address your every whim. Of course this largesse comes at the expense of others, but you’re not worried about that. You’re more important, more deserving, a little more equal than the rest.
What’s more interesting than who is on the dole, is who isn’t. For example, there’s not much in there for doctors. The bills are loaded with rules and regulations, those type of sentences that contain the words “shall” and “must.” Somehow, Congress left the goodies out. No scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, no guaranteed minimums, no cushy boards to create steady streams of government cash into the pool of physician pockets. [Read more →]
The Olympics are over. To me, that is Good Sports at its best. Not the games…the fact that they are over. I’ll admit it. I don’t like the Olympics. There was a time, back when I was in college, that I liked the Winter Olympics, I suppose, but that was a long time ago. I just don’t enjoy the whole thing. I have reported on good and bad sports involving the Olympics over the past few weeks, as the sports world certainly includes these games, and I figure it is my job to talk about them. I just don’t enjoy them. [Read more →]
With President Palin and the Republican Congress stubbornly insisting on invading Iran, it has been the proud and seemingly quixotic task of the 44 Democratic senators to prevent cloture on the war resolution. But now Majority Leader McConnell is threatening to use the reconciliation process to pass the bill over the objections of not only Democrats but of the majority of the American public. [Read more →]
10. It’s a heartwarming story about two senior citizens trying to figure out how to get their cable television to work
9. The actors were told, “Improvise! That way we don’t have to hire any writers”
8. The Motion Picture Association of America rated your film PG for “Particularly Ghastly”
7. It has one or more Transformers in it
6. The opening and closing credits actually meet in the middle
5. It’s called The Love Guru II
4. All the actors are gerbils
3. The iPhone product placements detract from the Biblical setting
2. Instead of 3-D glasses, you’re supposed to wear sleep masks
1. It was directed by Marvin Scorsese
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
