The epic abomination of “Sex and the City”
When challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence the writer, poet, and critic Dorothy Parker retorted, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” Parker, the...
Category: Watch
The deaths that bind us: Solzhenitsyn, Pugovkin, Mordyukova
It feels instinctive to say that the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn marks an end of an era. Which era, though? Solzhenitsyn's life spanned many eras: WWII, the gulag, the Khrushchev years,...
Thanks, Hollywood! The joy of unneeded sequels
We see it on blogs, websites, magazines. We hear it on radio shows. We even comment on it to each other. Believe me, I know how cliché it is to say that Hollywood is out of ideas. But in that same...
My Superhero Dream Team: prepare for glory!
Like most men, I have very limited insight into the higher neurological functions of the American female. So, as far as discussing the themes that women find appealing in their television and movies,...
Who’s afraid of the big, bad Scarf? The censure of the keffiyeh
When fashion becomes a crime worthy of the expulsion of winsome celebrity chef Rachael Ray from the billboards of Dunkin’ Donuts, it is clear that the laws of sensibility have been hurled through...
The Unholy Union of Starbucks and “Juno”
I’m fairly neutral on the subject of Starbucks, because I don’t care about coffee. Coffee generally reminds me of dirty, boiling water that has been poured through a rusty grating and into a cup...
Geert Wilders, “Fitna,” and the last refuge of the bigoted
Fitna (the Arabic word for ‘dissension’), a new film by Geert Wilders, a rightwing Dutch parliamentarian, should not be suppressed. This isn't because it has anything valuable or insightful to...
“LOST”: Sublime Transcendence and… Hey Sawyer, Take That Shirt Off!
A lot of my intellectual friends (the sort of people who, with a dignified cough, announce that they do not "indulge in mass media entertainment," and other, less extreme types) repeatedly ask me why...
Today, the Washington Post made me gnash my teeth
Sweet Jesus, Anne Applebaum, stereotype much? Of course there were many very famous "sultry" women in the USSR - things did not begin, and end, with Stalin and Liubov Orlova (an actress from the...
Heath Ledger was the cat’s meow
Did I seriously just write the above headline? Heath Ledger was? He was? People die young all the time. There's nothing new under the sun, and tragic death in one's prime is no exception. In many...