Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Sam Cooke, Kurt Cobain, James Dean, River Phoneix – name your favorite artist who passed too soon and play the game. What if? What if Hendrix found another sonic barrier out there, or Joplin wedded her blues with her prodigious talent and a hint of stability in her [...]
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I don’t blog as frequently as I used to, but if you remember the olden days when JohnFN wasn’t busy raising a rambunctious 3-year-old, and wasn’t carrying on post-graduation while covering sports at a mid-metro, then you remember my favorite horse to beat was our current meritocracy, particularly the isolation of the middle class. The [...] I didn’t catch any of the inaugural. I regard inauguration the same way I regard the two weeks of Super Bowl hype - inconsequential to life on any level. Still, thanks to the new inventions of Facebook and Twitter, one could keep track of the festivities and of the all-important speech given by our recently [...] Director Christopher Nolan’s challenge in making his third Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” was simple enough – how do you top the untoppable? It’s a question that hovers over Rises like a shadow in the twilight. Success breeds its own set of challenges, and the challenge for Nolan, who directed what many consider [...] I’ve owned an assault rifle for 10 years. Fired it once. I planned on firing it more, specifically at whatever back-yard farm-field targets I could procure (watermelons, cans), but never got around to it. Ammo, in this day and age, is expensive, and so is time when you are a journalist with a full-time working [...] If you think 2012 was wild, try 1936. That’s the closet mirror to Barack Obama’s re-election. FDR, struggling with a bombed-out economy under his watch (yet the public still blames on his predecessor), runs on a platform of class warfare and attacking business against a business candidate, who runs on a strictly economic platform. The [...] The Social Network: The plot – a group of drunks and pretentious dweebs in the Ivy League go into business together, then sue each other at the end of the movie. The movie is strangely riveting, given it has so few genuinely likeable characters. It has become a kind of window into the soul. When [...] Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention was his finest political moment. Endearing, pointed, human – everything Romney’s critics said he couldn’t convey, he did so successfully and effectively. Ratings for this event won’t be what they have been in year’s past, but familiarity will grow once choice clips make their way [...] Putting a finger on what was missing from “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” isn’t too difficult. It’s hard to do justice to a work, whether it a film or book, when that piece of work is missing one of its most important characters. This was the problem with “A Game of Shadows.” Sure [...] Gore Vidal – playwright, author and ardent leftist – passed away last night; concluding a rough pair of weeks for those on the progressive side, with the loss of Alexander Cockburn days ago. Vidal is known most for his memorable feud with William F. Buckley, a feud that was one of the more memorable moments [...] Jonathan Merritt is a pastor in a Southern Baptist church, as well as a culture writer for various websites that include The Atlantic and USA Today. He wrote an article for The Atlantic last week affirming the right of anyone to eat at Chick-Fil-A. It’s a valuable, nuanced work of opinion that I believe stands [...] We’re nearly a day past the tragedy in Aurora, Colo. and what have we learned? That’s the question being repeatedly asked, but there isn’t much to learn in cases such as these. A lunatic owns a cache of guns, either illegally or legally. He chooses a public venue for his derangement and he slaughters innocent [...] While the Roberts’ Supreme Court was busy handing down its verdict yesterday on the Affordable Care Act (euphemise much?), I lurked the comment threads here and at various other websites. I felt the person who had this ruling the most right was our commenter Veruckt, who stated the fact that many missed through all the [...] The Economist has a fu takedown of a recent rant by The Atlantic’s James Fallows. Fallows rants that the recent conservative streak in the Supreme Court amounts not to an usurpation, but to an outright coup of the democratic process. The Economist thinks otherwise. So it would seem that Mr Fallows “long-term coup” amounts to [...] The world waited to see how Brad Bird, the accomplished director of animated fare “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles,” and “Ratatouille” would work with actual humans. Given his first lead actor in his first live-action adventure was Tom Cruise, we have to wait, since Cruise (who is pushing the half-century mark) has undergone more [...] Spider-Man was my favorite comic book when I was a kid. I emphasize kid, because I read comic books when kids still read comic books (I actually played sports, and had friends, things that don’t conjure the image of a comic reader). Such isn’t the case today, where the local comic barn is now [...] As a friend of the dearly departed Christopher Hitchens, Jamie Kirchick of World Affairs felt compelled to attend Hitchens’ memorial service last month. The event was hosted by Vanity Fair and featured a host of former Hitchens allies and friends. The event also attempted to white wash (or black wash, defending on the interpretation you [...] People often try to find ways to measure the quality and enjoyability of movies. Sometimes these measuring devices consist of stars (usually four or five at most) or even thumbs. Superhero/comic book movies are measured on a different scale. That scale consists of the “it” moment. The “it” moment is something along the lines [...] This year's prom theme is Glock. Surprise is a word with one defined meaning, yet existing in two substantive types. To explain: there are two different types of surprises. There is the surprise of waking up one morning in Vegas, having realized you married Kate Upton. There’s the other kind of surprise, best expressed [...] As Floyd posted below, National Review bomb-thrower and outright bigot John Derbyshire was fired for a column he wrote at Taki’s Magazine this week. I’ve been one to wonder how Derbyshire remained gainfully employed by a mainstream conservative outlet this long. I recall a conversation I had with several other Threedonia commenters about Derbyshire a [...] |
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