Dramatis Personae
Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics editor-in-chief
Ed Brubaker, writer of Captain America
QUESADA: The wingnuts are all over me for tying-in the teabaggers with those white supremacists. What were you thinking? Don’t you realize these people read comic books? My God, that’s probably all they read.
BRUBAKER: I’m sorry — I didn’t think they were smart enough to figure it out. [Read more →]
I generally tend to go off in my blogs. I love picking on parents, their kids and all the stupid things they do both together and on their own. I guess I just have a knack for being obnoxious and judgmental — even though ironically, up until I had a kid, I didn’t think I was remotely judgmental. Now? Pshht. I totally am. It’s impossible not to be when it comes to parenting. It’s like the minute you squeeze out that kid, you start looking around at other people and their kids and think to yourself, “I can’t believe that mother is letting her son stand on top of the monkey bars. What a reckless moron.” It just happens. Just like your boobs become all engorged with milk whether you’re going to breast feed or not — the minute you have a kid, you instantly start thinking everyone else around you is doing something wrong. [Read more →]
The Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver on Friday, and I can hear many of you sighing with boredom. Who cares, right? And then there are the cynics amongst us who may believe that a pursuit of excellence is a worthwhile endeavor, but who are disgusted by how the athletes are exploited – they make the sacrifices, but corporations, governments, and the IOC reap the rewards. [Read more →]
Among other stumbles President Obama has recently been using a locution that aggravates dealers, magicians, limo drivers, whores and other fine Americans engaged in the vice trade; he has casually been using Las Vegas, presumably because of its gambling-based economy, as a foil to the rest of the nation. But Vegas will not go quietly into that neon it’s-all-good night. Vegas and Nevada (even Harry Reid!) has taken to heart some other ill-phrased advice from the White House. They are punching back twice as hard! [Read more →]
Dramatis Personae
Elder 1, political fundraiser
Elder 2, lobbyist
Sarah Palin, sancta simplicitas
ELDER 1: Sarah, we’re very disappointed in you.
PALIN: Why? [Read more →]
Nancy Reagan used her powers of persuasion in her capacity as First Lady to get us all to “just say ‘no‘” to drugs. Now everyone knows that crack is whack, and only losers are users. Drug use is now the exclusive province of entertainers who take drugs purely for their value as entertainment to us. Barbara Bush focused like a laser beam on literacy, and taught a nation to read. The fact that you’re able to read this now is proof of her success in that endeavor. Hillary Clinton delivered on her promise of providing affordable and effective healthcare to every citizen, regardless of income level or pre-existing condition. Laura Bush focused like a laser beam on literacy, and taught a nation to read. The fact that you’re able to read this now is proof of her success in that endeavor.
We’ve been waiting for over a year to discover what weighty issue our current First Lady, Michelle Obama, would eliminate. And now we know, she is bringing her considerable persuasive heft to convince us all that we need to stop being so fat.
Have you ever met someone for the first time who seemed really familiar to you? Strangely, this person likely wound up being an important player in your life. This exact scenario happens to Jack in LA X when he recognizes Desmond on the plane. In What Kate Does, Kate’s parallel life is once again setting up the scene for her to have a connection with Claire and baby Aaron. What if the reason for this familiarity is because we are recognizing these people from our future, or from the story of our destiny? [Read more →]
If you live in the Northeast part of the United States, you’re probably up to your eyeballs in snow. Certain areas, including mine, have been socked with the second snowmageddon within a week. It’s creating a lot of stress for mothers everywhere — schools are closed and toddler classes are canceled. The roads are impassable, and even if they weren’t, it’s impossible to dig the minivan out from the mountain of snow anyway. What’s a mother to do with an endless stretch of days indoors with a bunch of kids? Here are some ideas to keep your children entertained and you stress-free while stuck in the house. [Read more →]
January 5, 2010
I dream I am playing Barnaby in a miserable production of Hello, Dolly. No one knows his lines, nothing works correctly, and I cannot locate my pants. The problem with the production is attributed to a demonic presence that messes things up and leaves pieces of shit sprinkled around the set. We call in some Rabbis to exorcise the production. Eventually I find seven pairs of my pants frozen beneath the surface of the reflecting pool.
Dramatis Personae
Joe Biden, Vice-President of the United States
Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader
Tom Udall, Senator from New Mexico
UDALL: I’m offering a resolution to end the filibuster.
BIDEN: Sounds good to me. [Read more →]
Dear Roger Ebert,
Everyone suffers through the bittersweet pain of first love lost. Subsequent romances are never the same; are never remembered with quite the same quality of melancholic regret. Your first love is the only one to whom you can say things like “I will love you forever,” and not be lying just to get in her pants.
“Someone else might want to know the point of it all one day,” says teenage Jenny (Carey Mulligan) to the stuffy headmistress (Emma Thompson) at her school. For a young woman in 1961 England, the search for meaning yields no easy answers. But this smartly written film doesn’t try to provide any. Instead, complex characters and wonderfully subtle performances make An Education something you both enjoy and think about long after you leave the theater. [Read more →]
Ronald Colman, award-winning actor of stage and cinema, radio and television — and one of my favorite stars of the cinema — was born on this day in 1891. Colman was a man of another time and another place than those we now know, but his performances continue to capture us and move us. Maybe it was his good looks … maybe it was his charm … maybe it was that voice of his, and his wonderful delivery, which served him so well when he made the move from silent films to ‘the talkies.’ Or maybe it was all of the above, brought together in one very special package.
Two recent events were undeniable… arithmetically indisputable, good news on the economic front. These of course were the rapid growth in Q4 of last year and the recent crash through the dirty-glass floor of double-digit unemployment. Gold prices are well down, oil is up but it seems that is mostly currency fluctuation. That’s good stuff. However public opinion is unimpressed. The recent spike which seems was captured only in Rasmussen’s robo-called three-day rolling average has endured scarcely a week. Even the Obies are going easy on the trumpets. So what is up? It’s quite simple. Everyone paying attention now knows that whatever blurps and blips take place in the short term, economically at least, we are fully and truly screwed. [Read more →]
As I am a foreigner, the first I ever heard about the Super Bowl’s tradition of mid-show entertainment was the now notorious Janet Jackson nipple incident whereby Justin Timberlake ‘accidentally’ unleashed Ms. Jackson’s breast upon millions of unsuspecting Americans. I was living in Moscow at the time and even the Russians were quite obsessed by the role of Ms. Jackson’s mammary glands in a sport none of them played or cared about. [Read more →]
If you have a weak stomach, this book is not for you.
Wake Up Dead is probably the most violent, bloody, gore-splattered book I’ve read in ages, and that’s really saying something. A gang war in Cape Town, South Africa’s ghettos provides the setting and the gang-bangers, drug lords, junkies and an honest-to-goodness cannibal provide the action.
On a steamy night in Cape Town, Roxy and Joe Palmer have dinner with a cannibal and his Ukranian whore. On the way home, they’re carjacked. Joe is shot in the leg and, in a panic, the carjackers drop the gun and take off in Joe’s car. What Roxy does next will cause more bloodshed than she can possibly imagine. [Read more →]
There is a poem by that fine, but neglected poet George Barker called “Allegory of the Adolescent and the Adult.” It has long been a favorite of mine. “It was when weather was Arabian,” it begins. “I walked / Like Saint Christopher Columbus through a sea’s welter / Of gaudy ways looking for a wonder.”
But the wonder proves elusive. Our young speaker tells us that “hollyhock here and rock and rose there were,” but “I wound among them knowing they were no wonder.” A bird with a worm and a fox in a wood fail to meet muster as well, for “I was / Wanting a worse wonder, a rarer one.”
So he goes on, “expecting miraculous catastrophe,” though a bit anxious as well: “How shall I know my marvel when it comes?” [Read more →]
The zipper on my man-purse broke. So I have to find a new one. I devoted not a little of this past weekend, to say nothing of the last couple of weeks, to that aim, and have yet to come up with anything. I know what I’m looking for, and I have seen a few bags that fit the bill, but nothing that’s just right. You see, I live in Los Angeles now, and as a result, no matter what bag I finally decide on, it is certain that there is a better one within an hour’s drive.
Today’s sentencing of Dongfan Chung, a 74-year-old former engineer for defense contractor Boeing who was convicted of economic espionage, makes the Obama administration’s recent downgrading of China as an espionage threat look foolish.
John Tkacik, a former State Department intelligence official, told the Washington Times, that the demotion of China to a second tier priority reflects bias in the National Security Council staff. The demotion was a political decision to assuage Chinese concerns that American intelligence agencies were exaggerating the Chinese threat.
