In lands not ours, at morning comes your night / With whistling shells and clamorous sirens’ blare. / We listen through our days and strain in prayer . . .
In lands not ours, at morning comes your night / With whistling shells and clamorous sirens’ blare. / We listen through our days and strain in prayer . . .
I’m not ready to give up on Timothy Hutton and the gang just yet, but the big business, rich- heartless-business-guy-is-the-evil-one theme that drives the show may be getting a bit tired. After all, once you’ve demonized the “rich and powerful” for four years, it’s got to be hard to keep recycling the same story (how come this never seems to include government—I’ll tell you why: there are no right-wing capitalist loving writers or producers on the show!).
Some interesting Man Bites Dog and the Hand That Feeds Him news from the MSM: a teenage member of the main cast of the CBS TV sitcom 'Two and a Half Men'—I suspect that he is the half a man referred to in the series' title—has told people not to watch his show.
The ION Television Network is presenting a good five hours of Christmas-themed mysteries for this day after Thanksgiving. From 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST, the network will show reruns of two episodes of Monk, two of Psych, and one of Leverage. They're all well worth watching. (Schedule details below; check your local listings for confirmation.) I was disappointed last year to find out , , ,
The Wall Street Journal has a “Notable & Quotable” section in its Op Ed section every day, and yesterday’s caught my attention. This quote was next to an op ed compliments it quite well: “The Food Police are Routed at the Ballot Box.” It seems Mr. Twain didn’t take kindly to the moralist nannies who looked down at those who enjoyed their pipes or cigars. Seems they used statistics back then just as our modern moral nannies do. Just think of the entertaining invective he…
It’s been 35 years or so since your writer was introduced to the glorious amalgamation of rock, soul, and reggae put forth by Graham Parker and the Rumour, and my passion for the singer/songwriter and his backup band hasn’t waned since they released their last album together 32 years ago. That said, it’s been a wild ride ever since – Parker subsequently issued several good solo albums and at least four or five that can be considered great or even “classic” whatever that means in…
So goes the line from many corners of the political and cultural realm: it was the social conservatives that caused Mitt Romney’s loss in our most recent presidential election, as well as lose two Senate seats when the common wisdom was that the Republicans should have taken over the Senate. This line comes not only from Democrats and their allies in the media, but from Republican elites and their allies in their media. I find this comical, as well as annoying, when we consider that…
Until recently, it was a mystery as to why Steven Spielberg could never successfully pull the trigger on a truly great dramatic picture. Until October that is, when he premiered 'Lincoln' at the New York Film Festival. As it turns out, the reason is quite simple - the guy's not a deep thinker. A capably talented maker of action-adventure movies (if readers forget 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull') to be sure, but someone who daydreamed about reanimated dinosaurs and aliens during history and social studies…
Marsali Taylor is really quite a promising talent. She throws plot threads wildly in the wind as though they were confetti, and then navigates the reader through the pea-souper she’s created with almost alarming ease. It’s all very well-done, with clues fairly planted for the reader to spot. And I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t spot the culprit. I was convinced we were going to get ending X, and all the time I failed to realize that was what the author wanted me to…
As we know, and as I’ve said here ad nauseum, the battle for the soul of America is the culture, not politics, as important as politics is. The only way America could ever elect a Community-Organizer-in-Chief is because Americans have been brainwashed for 50 plus years by their entertainment, media and education to buy what he was selling. I think conservatives (as I always say but wish I didn’t have to, broadly speaking) are finally getting what I argued for in my recent post, it’s…
A truly liberal person will steadfastly oppose actions of government that force people to act against their conscience or allow individuals to do harm to other human beings. I believe that those are the principles we should consider when looking at facts about government-financed public education and a government-enforced policy of unlimited elective abortions. I welcome those who disagree, to state the principles by which they do so, with equal directness and brevity. Nothing else can justify any sort of collective action against individuals. .…
One thing that can be said for Dean Koontz is that he likes to mix it up. His characters may tend to look similar (as what author’s don’t?), but he likes to experiment with his stories. 77 Shadow Street, I think, is unusual among his books in featuring quite a large cast of characters and constantly jumping the point of view from one to another. I wish I could say I thought the experiment was a great success, but I wouldn’t call it a total…
. . . 'A Fatal Winter' is not bad, but G. M. Malliet has some atrocious luck when it comes to being read by me. I had just read a novel which pretty much uses this book’s entire twist as just a part of its solution, and by comparison solving this one was a snap. So I was left on the sidelines waiting for the outcome I knew was coming sooner or later, and being annoyed whenever the romantic mush interrupted the proceedings. . .…
The classic fictional detective Nero Wolfe meets his assistant Archie Goodwin in Robert Goldsborough's latest entry in his continuation of Rex Stout's classic mystery series. Goldsborough's prequel to the Wolfe-Goodwin series is excellent and overcomes many of the problems inherent in such efforts to continue other writers' series, writes Patrick Ohl: "It's a delight to see Nero Wolfe back in action, and I'm really very pleased with the result."
As we know, last Tuesday’s election didn’t exactly go the way conservatives and other right-minded individuals might have wanted. Values voters as I’ve heard them called, or religious folks as they likely are, also got what might appear to them as bad news as well. I have another take.
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