Monthly Archive: August 2011

Against Perrymania

The tide has been rising steadily for weeks if not months now, but with this latest love note from MSNBC, it seems that we’re about to hit the zenith of hype for Perry 2012:...

Friday Jukebox

I haven’t done one of these in a while and this one is certainly not a new recording by any means (Domino Records, 1960 and available on the “Domino Records Story” CD). I’m a...

Fine Art for Dorks

See more like this one, here. The Dark Crystal was a seriously freaky movie. They should remake it. Consider this an open thread.

Nostalgia and film

As a brief follow up to my post on upper-middle-class families in modern television and film, I’d like to respond to this comment by Sam MacDonald: Yes. If we could only go back to...

Google+ is better for the web than Facebook

I’ve always been a bit of a outsider. I’m partially naturally inclined that way and partially fond of being interested in things that a minority is, which is why I’ve been questioning whether I...

“Yuck” a Duck

~by RTod On Wednesday Erik posted a picture of two (presumably) married costumed lesbians, kissing while holding a sign saying Liberty, a sign saying Justice, and a child that is either from the Village...

Meanwhile, at Forbes

I pitch the creators of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” on what I think is a pretty damn good idea for an episode in Season 4. This would be the subject matter for the episode....

The wheel of fantasy

Riffing off of my Atlantic piece, fantasy author R. Scott Bakker writes: According to common wisdom, genre fiction is culturally cyclical: It ebbs and flows in popularity as time alternately burns out various tropes...

Picture of the day

People use these words to justify a lot of things. Oftentimes, I think they’re misused, or warped in a fundamental, definitional way to mean exactly the opposite of what they actually mean. At a...

Bedtime Story

~by RTod Once upon a time, there was a Kingdom where the people were troubled.  The kings and nobles that ruled them were vane, corrupt and cared little for those they were charged with protecting.  While...

Eddard Stark’s Ethics of Honor

 ~by Kyle Cupp “Have you no shred of honor?” Ned Stark asks this question to the ever-plotting Lord Petyr Baelish toward the end of A Game of Thrones. The question exposes the Lord of...

My first piece in ‘The Atlantic’

Hey everyone…big shameless self-promotion for yours truly. I’ve published my first-ever piece in The Atlantic. It’s about fantasy literature and film. I ask whether we’re in a ‘fantasy bubble’. Take a gander, if you’re...

Market liberals

Matt Yglesias makes tons of sense with his latest foray into an ongoing debate between him and John Quiggin and others. I think Matt operates in that awkward position of being not-progressive-enough for much...