Once a cheater, always a cheater. Right, Manny? In 2009, Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games after failing a test for performance-enhancing drugs. This week, a mere two years later, it was announced that he again tested positive during Spring Training. Rather than face the 100-game suspension that comes with a second positive test, Ramirez announced his retirement on Friday, effective immediately. [Read more →]
In Charles Willeford’s great novel The Burnt Orange Heresy
Only twenty-five full-time art critics in America, out of a population of more than two hundred million! This is a small number, indeed, of men who are able to look at art and understand it, and then interpret it in writing in such a way that those who care can share the aesthetic experience.
Clive Bell claimed that art was “significant form.” I have no quarrel with that, but he never carried his thesis out to its obvious conclusion. It is the critic who makes the form(s) significant to the viewer!
The critic occupies a rarefied place. At least, the paid critic does. The man or woman who commands pages in publications such as, oh, let’s say The LA Weekly, or, to choose another publication totally at random The Washington Post, is automatically looked at with unique authority because those particular publications have history, prestige, and money behind them. [Read more →]
10. My dog ate my tax form
9. My accountant was recommended by Nicholas Cage
8. I’ve decided to make my own stimulus package
7. Sarah Palin claims paying taxes contributes to Big Government Socialism
6. Math hurts my head
5. I got an April first e-mail saying we didn’t have to pay any taxes this year
4. Lindsay Lohan stole my 1040
3. I’m protesting the fact that our ‘theater of war’ has become a multiplex
2. After I claimed all the voices in my head as deductions, it turned out the government owed me money
1. I just woke up from my New Year’s Eve party
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Crisis averted! I guess this one will go to waste. Both Boehner and Obama have departed on insipid victory laps. Boehner takes his at a conference declaring to all those who lament that he was rolled that he will presently roll back. Obama puts on an Abercrombie windbreaker and does a more literal lap around the Washington monuments, encouraging the moppets to thank HIM that they will get to sit on Lincoln’s knee today. Well, not that, but they are going to get in. I suppose all is well then. Everyone incensed and outraged yesterday can just stick your toes in the pool over the weekend, we’ve got it all worked out.
And how is that exactly? We’ve got a budget for the half of this fiscal year that remains and it cuts some $31b, while preserving the Cherry Blossom Festival and Cowboy Poetry Slams as well as paying the GIs, somewhat important, but mostly this deal, a beatific demonstration of the bipartisanship the nation called out for last November, preserves our dignity. Lovely. Except for one thing. It didn’t happen. Allegedly the deal is “in place”, a state of affairs not really contemplated by the Constitution. What was actually passed, signed off on by all necessary parties, was just another Continuing Resolution for another week’s daily expenditures. The deal on the budget that is “in place” awaits yet more wrangling of this or that issue, meaning it is NOT a done deal which suggests to me that next week will be exactly like this week with an identical non-outcome. But it’s only Sunday so we can dream for 72 hours or so, can’t we? [Read more →]
Yes, there is much to do. There is much more to be stopped. How can this not be obvious to anyone who funds, rather than milks, the government? As a former corporate type now painting houses under the table for ten dollars an hour, I do neither so offer a disinterested viewpoint.
The other day the President employed a domestic metaphor, saying that anyone who was married could understand the state of negotiations on the budget, the continuing resolutions underwhich the gub has run for months and the emergency funding proposals. Negotiating, we are informed, requires compromise and we Democrats, says Steny Hoyer, Charlie Rangel and O, have already conceded seventy-five percent from our opening position and so they have. Unsaid is that their opening position, was for an increase of spending of some $41b. So what we have here, by analogy, is not a couple squabbling over who brownbags their lunch and who gets to go to McDonald’s. Rather it is between one spouse who wants to take out a third mortgage for their own trip to Vegas and another who wants a divorce. Yes, Mr President, that does bring it home to us.
I don’t know how you even count such things, but one prediction states that in 2011 the world will send seven trillion—nope, I have to write it out: 7,000,000,000,000—text messages. [Read more →]
The Sweet Relief of Missing Children begins with the story of Leonora. She is pretty and tidy and protected. She has her vaccinations, she knows not to talk to strangers, she eats her vegetables and she never takes the shortcut through the alley. She is precious to her parents and she understands these precautions because she understands that she cannot be both precious and free. In the end, none of it matters. [Read more →]
In this great, big social-media-ish world of ours, just where do we draw the line between the personal and the professional? Do you tweet an article in your field and then bitch about your wife? How about friending somebody you met an an industry conference, who will then have access to your vacation photos? It’s a challenge sufficiently daunting that Big Names like David Brin, Scott McNealy, and Mark Zuckerberg have declared privacy to be dead. Maybe that’s true — or maybe, it’s less true than the fact that we have to be a bit more honest with ourselves about how we market our personal brand to different audiences. [Read more →]
Six months ago, as Atlantans were preparing for school and work, they might have seen an unremarkable fellow; black, burly and in dark glasses, tossing their curbside refuse into the back of a stinking trash truck and thought, you know what? That cat looks like the mayor. And he should. Because he is.
Hey, we all have busy weeks. Here’s a meditation on parenthood and artistic identity that originally appeared on my blog:
Quite often, we’ll be listening to my iPod or the radio in the car and one of my young sons will ask me: “Is that you dad?” In my entire life, nothing has been as satisfying as that question. It means my boys see me as a composer and as a singer.
The audience that really counts gets it. [Read more →]
Last week I came upon this quote from the English novelist John Fowles: “There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.” [Read more →]
One of my least favorite things in sports is the bizarre tendency for athletes and commentators to cry racism when there is simply no evidence of it. It happens with such regularity that it has become a cliche of sorts. The NFL, in particular, seems to be a hotbed for claims of prejudice and bigotry, especially when it comes to discussion of African-American quarterbacks. This week, it was Warren Moon, former signal-caller for the Houton Oilers, who was accusing the public and the NFL draft experts of criticizing Cam Newton, soon to be NFL player out of Auburn, simply because he is black. This was completely misguided. [Read more →]
10. Her failed vice presidential candidacy and half-term as governor
9. Her ability to keep an eye on Russia from her house
8. The millions available to her, since the Tea Party is an extremely pro-Big Business movement financed by the billionaire Koch brothers and disguising itself as populist
7. If she doesn’t feel up to giving a State of the Union message, her ability to have Tina Fey substitute for her
6. Her eight-episode reality show Sarah Palin’s Alaska
5. Her keeping in touch with voters through tweets and a Facebook page – even though they were actually written by cyber ghostwriter Rebecca Mansour
4. Her launching a Facebook page under the name Lou Sarah, so she could praise the work of the fake Sarah Palin
3. Her ability to write her acceptance speech on her hand
2. As a Pentecostal, her belief in Armageddon as predicted in the Book of Revelations
1. As Commander-in-Chief, her ability to make sure Armageddon happens on schedule
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Was anyone else at first baffled by the koran-burning mob attack? As far as anyone outside Jones’s congregation knew, the koran burning was proposed then cancelled weeks ago. So what happened? He thought about it and went ahead and did it a few days ago. Had you heard? Hell naw. There was a total news blackout on it. No “responsible” media wanted to foment… oh, I don’t know, a mass attack on a UN compound that might result in some good old-fashioned kaffir beheading. Of course some malefactor with a vested interest in foment informed the ass-up praying crowd at the next opportunity. Was this Ossama or some other renegade mufti we are trying to paint with a laser sight? Nope, it was Harmid Karzai, the “President” of A-stan and now that Mubarak is on the unemployment line he is the highest paid employee on the US payroll. [Read more →]
Here, in the heart of the oil patch that is the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeast New Mexico, one often hears complaints about the image oil & gas companies have among the general public … mostly negative, and often unwarranted. And on that point, I agree … it IS mostly negative, and it IS often unwarranted. [Read more →]
Enjoying that Big Mac? You should. For many years the leading publication on economics, The Economist, has used the relative prices of the Big Mac in whatever currency as a way of discovering the true value ratio between, say, a dollar and a peso. Of course there are many more official and formal ways to do the same thing. Armies of statisticians, flacks and hacks on the payrolls of government and business labor to find those proportions and fortunes are made or lost in the fray. But the Big Mac Index has proven itself among the most accurate measures. Perhaps Numero Uno. Why? Because unlike lira, greenbacks, gold or rare stamps, you can eat a Big Mac and in the end, that is the foundation for all value. Consumption. [Read more →]
Some things are meant to be. On the one hand, you have a long-running show that’s losing its star. While the program is still profitable, the most die-hard fans would concede it has become predictable even by sitcom standards. (Dwight did something most people would find socially inappropriate again?) On the other, you have a man who is full of surprises for all, whether you’re his girlfriend or a segment producer on Good Morning America. Steve Carrell’s replacement is clear: the new boss on The Office should be Chris Brown. [Read more →]
The early 20th century was a golden age of American horror and fantasy fiction. Inspired by the works of such great gothic writers as Bram Stoker, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Matthew Lewis, and Edgar Allan Poe, a new breed of writer was crafting tales of fancy, suspense, and supernatural horror. In publications like Weird Tales and FantastiFiction, heroic, larger-than-life heroes strode across harsh landscapes to do battle with incredible creatures, witches fought for the souls of the innocent, and a house itself might come to life and attack its tormented inhabitants.
The literature of fantasy, heroism, and horror is one of pure entertainment. The crafters of these stories were interested primarily in offering to readers a diversion from the trials of their everyday lives. In many cases, their literary skills were unequal to their visionary imaginations, and the entertainments they created were considered disposable. It is only a select few of the pulp authors of this era whose names are remembered today, and continue to charm a new generation of fans with a taste for exotic storytelling.
