It’s been about a year, now, since I made the move to a cell phone that does more than just telephone calls and text messages. Now my phone is A LOT smarter … wish I could say the same for me. [Read more →]
I don’t know how many of you have been following the case of Citizens United v. the FEC, but I’m willing to bet a goodly number of you have an opinion on it. Here’s mine, again, on the heels of today’s Supreme Court ruling.
America loves pie. The American Pie Council (yes, that seriously exists) recognizes this and has created National Pie Day (this Saturday, January 23) to promote it. I have come up with a set of Pie Day rules that I advise you to follow. If you do not follow my rules, you obviously hate America.
I’m an American soldier. I’m willing to die for my country, my fellow countrymen and their interests. But am I willing to die for oil?
You’re damn right I am. [Read more →]
June 25, 2008
I dream I am in a department store where Oprah Winfrey sees me perform some magic. She thinks I’m good and I immediately go to Chicago to be on her show. Once I get there, I drag Michael Jeffrey Cohen’s folder of Improv Olympic history through the dank subterranean swimming pool in which Chicago improvisers meet. I don’t talk to anybody, and I question my own motivations for being there. When I try to get out of the place, I have to climb up and find my way through a wrought iron sewer gate. I find Michael’s folder burdensome. Mary wonders why I don’t just ditch it. Magician Bob Sheets is looking for a spot card.
Robert Downey Jr. makes all of his films better and he certainly deserves his Golden Globe award. He has great chemistry with co-star Jude Law, and their scenes together are lots of fun. And although I never thought of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero, the fight scenes are excellent. But a murky plot, mediocre direction, poorly written female characters and miscast actresses keep this film from being really good. It is mildly enjoyable, but I expected better. [Read more →]
One of my favorite authors passed away yesterday – Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser series of novels. He wrote 65 novels in all, 37 Spenser novels, according to RobertBParker.net, including his newest, The Professional
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Parker appears to have died of a heart attack. [Read more →]
I love Martha Stewart as much as the next gal. Need a cheese plate presentation, a pinecone wreath, or a stamped invitation? Count on Martha to lead us to domestic bliss. Need to see an old lady on a stripper pole? Count on Martha for that too. And it certainly is not a good thing. [Read more →]
In addition to generating huge amounts of revenue and winning tons of awards (James Cameron can now add two Golden Globes to the trophy pile), Avatar makes people want to die. Not the way Battlefield Earth makes people want to die; with films like that the suicidal thoughts typically fade once you reach the parking lot. No, Avatar fills people with the despair of knowing the Na’vi live in such a magical world and ours, by comparison, kind of blows. And I have to wonder, is this the first time these people have ever felt this sorrow…or does it occur every time they head to the multiplex? [Read more →]
The Baltimore Sun reports that, “a longtime tribute to Edgar Allan Poe may have come to an end with the absence of the ‘Poe Toaster,’ who for more than half-a-century has marked the poet’s birthday by laying roses and a bottle of cognac at his original grave site. This is the first time since January 19, 1949 that the person, whose identity is unknown, failed to arrive, said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House.” [Read more →]
Sometime later this year the Supreme Court will probably rule, by a narrow margin and on narrow grounds, to uphold Proposition 8, the California law enacted last year that bans gay marriage in the state. It will slow, not end, the inexorable progress of this country toward justice on this issue. But meanwhile, we have a dilly of a trial going on in San Francisco, Perry v. Schwartzenegger, with David Boies and Theodore Olson, from opposite sides of Bush v. Gore, ganging up against the marriage-is-just-for-boys-and-girls crowd. [Read more →]
In Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz today is a story which quotes Syria’s highest Islamic leader.
“If the Prophet Mohammed had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Mohammed himself a heretic,” Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun, the Mufti of Syria, was quoted as telling a delegation of American academics visiting Damascus.
Hassoun, the leader of Syria’s majority Sunni Muslim community, also told the delegates that Islam was a religion of peace, adding: “If Mohammed had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a prophet.”
Religious wars were the result of politics infiltrating systems of faith, he said[.]
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I saw the movie, Let the Right One In, last year and was immediately drawn in by it. The stark settings and minimal dialogue gave the film a sense of isolation and dread. Nothing good could happen in these surroundings. As soon as I found out the film was based on a book, I had to have it. It just took me a little while.
The book, Let the Right One In resurrects all the chills the movie gave me.
Oskar is a lonely 13-year-old boy — chubby, friendless and a bit homicidal:
Strangely enough, he already knew the name of his victim, and what he looked like. Jonny Forsberg with his long hair and large, mean eyes. He would make him plead and beg for his life, squeal like a pig, but in vain. The knife would have the last word and the earth would drink his blood. Oskar had read those words in a book and liked them.
The Earth Shall Drink His Blood.
“Death is the mother of beauty,” Wallace Stevens declares in “Sunday Morning.” Put that together with Keats’s dictum that ” ‘Beauty is truth, truth Beauty’ — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” and it all adds up to a pretty grim poetic assessment of life.
Stevens’s point, of course, is that a satisfying cadence is an aesthetic necessity:
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging …
“To philosophize is to learn how to die,” said the redoubtable Montaigne, and I’m sure he was right. [Read more →]
I know, I know, I know. I can already hear the blood curdling cries of “heartless” and “monster”, but I don’t think America now has any reason whatsoever for being in Haiti. This represents a change from my previous position, immediately following the earthquake, where I was of the opinion that any life-loving individual who was able to help had a moral responsibility to assist. Let me explain…
24 (Monday, 9PM, FOX) — Tick… tick… tick… tick… “The following takes place between 4pm and 5pm.” Ahh, it was so good to hear those words. Jack Bauer, unwillingly, was back in action rather quickly this season and thank goodness for that. He tried, unsuccessfully, to not be involved with CTU affairs but it didn’t happen and before we knew it, he was toting around a terrorist, shooting locks off doors with his last bullet, and saving the lives of others while putting his own at risk… basically, he was just being Jack. It was so very Jack of him to slice that fire ax into the chest of that bad guy. [Read more →]
There are many things I love about sports. I started watching at a very young age, and have been hooked ever since. Of course, with anything you spend a whole lot of time observing or experiencing, there are always things that you don’t like as well. Cheating is one of those things. This week, Mark McGwire openly acknowledged for the first time that he used steroids throughout a large portion of his baseball career. This came as a shock to virtually no one, I have to imagine, as most people have long been convinced that McGwire was dirty. [Read more →]
10. Outtakes from The Office
9. The Numa Numa Guy
8. A test pattern
7. Law & Order: Mail Fraud Unit
6. Jimmy Fallon
5. Canadian Curling Championships
4. A couple sitting on their couch, watching the cop show Southland on TNT
3. YouTube videos of guys getting hit in the goolies
2. Reruns of whatever was on from 9 to 10
1. Jeff Zucker’s home movies
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
In my last post I wrote about the amazing job the young men and women aboard the USS Carl Vinson were doing off the coast of Haiti. The aircraft carrier is playing a major role in providing much needed relief to the poor victims of the earthquake.
But we should also remember that we are at war and our troops are in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post has written a very good piece on an amazing Green Beret, Major Jim Gant, whom one official called the “Lawrence of Afghanistan.”
If you want to know how we can, and will, win the war in Afghanistan, read the piece about this Army officer.
