May 2012
Stand back, folks: Charlie Pierce is on a roll
In re: the whole Old Man Ricketts and His Terrible, Horrible, No-Good-Very-Bad Idea, I totally almost forgot to read Charles P. Pierce on the topic! Which would have been a huge mistake:
Now, though, there’s no need to fake it once you make it. The offices were devalued as we convinced ourselves that “government” was an alien entity, and we accepted the fundamental absurdity...
But I know something about you ...
You went to Cranbook/that’s a private school:
The story paints a detailed portrait of [Cranbook School] as having a kind of Hogwarts grandeur. “In the chandeliered dining room, students waited on fellow students and sat on straight-backed spindle chairs bearing the school’s insignia of a proud crane. After dinner, they wiped their mouths with cloth napkins,” The Post wrote.
What’s...
Miss you already, Dick
“I’ve said it many times,” Mr. Mourdock said. “This is a historic time, and the most powerful people in both parties are so opposed to one another that one side simply has to win out over the other.”
That sort of talk has Democrats seething. “He says there’s a problem, Mourdock does, of too much bipartisanship and he can be counted on to obstruct,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said on...
The vote was the Senate Republicans’ 21st successful filibuster of a Democratic bill this Congress, which started in January 2011. Republicans have blocked consideration of President Obama’s full jobs proposal, as well as legislation repealing tax breaks for oil companies, helping local governments pay teachers and first responders, and setting a minimum tax rate for households earning more than...
The standard Hollywood storytelling model insists that every commercially viable narrative be an inspirational bubblegum version of the Hero’s Journey, and that we all sit there in the dark buying into the self-flattering fantasy that we, too, are the heroes and heroines of our own little movies, and that everyone else in our lives is but a glorified supporting character or background...
April 2012
If there are any real-life inspirations for “Parks and Recreation,” they aren’t necessarily the bold-faced political names you might expect. One of Schur’s personal heroes was the superintendant of schools in the town where he grew up — a man who worked on making the schools better for 46 years.
“There’s a real nobility in that, and I think TV has, at some...
“The brutal reality is that Iranians had entrusted their national destiny to a...”
– The Ayatollah Under the Bed(sheets), by Karim Sadjadpour
“In an ironic twist, the producer of a movie about mutants cautions against...”
– Spider-Man and the Half-Life of the Movie Reboot
I am going to go out on a limb and say that nothing about “The Wolverine” will have a “‘Chinatown’ feel to it.” Just a hunch.
“What person who actually has a job and a reputation… would give a f*** about...”
– Nick Denton on commenting
I ask some version of this every time I read an Internet comments section. The mind boggles.
“a list that was improbably poignant, and even, in its way, literary.”
– What We’re Reading: Buzzfeed
“Although I like Kanye,” Obama continues, with an easy smile. “He’s a Chicago guy. Smart. He’s very talented.” He is displaying his larger awareness of the question, looking relaxed, cerebral but friendly, alive to the moment, waiting for me to get to the heart of the matter.
“Even though you called him a jackass?,” I ask.
“He is a jackass,” Obama says, in his likable and perfectly balanced...
Twitter issues no such warnings
It may not be true that “the three most written-about subjects of all time are Jesus, the Civil War, and the Titanic,” as one historian has put it, but it’s not much of an exaggeration. Since the early morning of April 15, 1912, when the great liner went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, taking with it five grand pianos, eight thousand dinner forks, an automobile, a fifty-line telephone...
March 2012
In a month of strange tournament-related press...
I think we’ve found a winner:
Applebee’s® Finds More than Seventy Percent of Basketball Smack Talkers are Women
Kansas City, Mo. – (March 27, 2012) – Upsets and underdogs have rendered many tournament brackets dead, but Applebee’s reports that online trash talking is alive and well in college basketball.
And, guess who’s talking the most smack: Women.
Applebee’s female Facebook Fans...
“You can’t cut the defiance out of London,” a university student said at a pub near the Strand, where protesters had stacked placards near the door during another of the recent protests against higher tuition fees. “There are people in London here who look at Beijing with great envy. To be able to call in the tanks, to be able to push people around. ‘Oh, the things we could do if we never had to...
February 2012
“When you attack sex, college, and JFK, you’re really limiting your pool of...”
– Paul Begala
“PageRank, however, has always been just one of the factors determining how...”
– Daniel Soar, London Review of Books
I learned of this review via Gmail. I read it — and posted this excerpt and link — via Chrome.
Hi, Google.
January 2012
“It is Alito’s quarrel with Scalia’s originalist approach that is most...”
– U.S. v. Jones: Supreme Court Justices Alito and Scalia brawl over technology and privacy. - Slate
Sam Alito is hilarious! Who knew?
You know it's a rough day when
… your dad calls you to tell you he saw you in your mailbag video and you can hear the concern in his voice immediately as he says: “Jeez, son, are you OK? You look like you haven’t slept in a week. Get some sleep. Can you take a nap during the day here and there, maybe? At least go have a steak. You need protein.”
To be fair to the pops, he ain’t wrong. Especially...
“Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything...”
– Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job - Boing Boing
“Decoder Magazine is foremost an attempt to interpret a world of culture and...”
– Decoder Magazine, Issue #1 Kickstarter
That sounds great and all, but wait … say what?
Residents of Worcester’s Grafton Hill neighborhood acknowledged Monday they would not necessarily mind a Panera Bread franchise coming in and wiping out Callahan’s, a charming, family-run bakery that has been a fixture of their community since 1964.
According to locals, the national restaurant chain would be just the thing to run the mom-and-pop establishment out of business,...
December 2011
“This has been a key theme of 2011: For reasons that defy any of the signals...”
– Ezra Klein
“Boys are given goats to herd and messages to deliver. They hunt and fish. Girls...”
– NYT — Now We Are Six: The Hormone Surge of Middle Childhood
Where does “riding a bike” and “watching ‘Howie’s World’” fit into all this?