Mattel’s legendary high fashion gal on the go Barbie is pushing 65. Most of the jokes in Greta Gerwig’s monster, monster hit of the same name have a similar vintage. Seriously, is there a single gag in this movie that couldn’t have appeared on Saturday Night Live back in 1975? But the monster success of…
Oppenheimer? Meh!
Two thirds of the way through Oppenheimer, I asked myself “Why did Christopher Nolan make this picture?” Because, except for a few cheesy nits, which I will most assuredly pick later, what we have gotten, about two hours in, is essentially a pseudo documentary, a laboriously accurate, $100 million reconstruction of the events leading up…
Amy Coney Barrett to her sisters: “Ladies, ladies, ladies! You shouldn’t call Chief Justice John Roberts a two-bit political whore just because he is one! That’s not polite!”
Well, indeed it isn’t, but it is quite apropos factually, which is sometimes supposed to count in legal matters. Both Mark Joseph Stern at Slate, The Supreme Court’s “Unanimous” Trump Ballot Ruling Is Actually a 5–4 Disaster, and Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy, Supreme Court rules for Trump in Section 3 disqualification case, are…
Mitch McConnell: Farewell to a sh*t
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Mitch! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose,…
Adam Rubenstein and the Times: Yes, but …
Undeservedly ousted conservative NYT editor Adam Rubenstein is deservedly getting plenty of ink n’ pixels with his tale of undeserved trauma, I Was a Heretic at The New York Times, over at the Atlantic, recounting, among other things, how he received, well, a “woke up” call on his very first day, in the course of…
Yes, Fani Willis is a COMPLETE trainwreck
Let’s assess the best case scenario for what went down after Georgia district attorney Fani Willis brought “wide-ranging” (and undoubtedly true) charges of criminally corrupt electoral misbehavior in the 2020 presidential election on the part of then President Donald Trump and a host of other political pluguglies: Immediately after bringing indictments for one of the…
Is the New York Times very naïve, very cynical, or very stupid? Discuss amongst yourselves.
It’s tempting to say “it’s a combination of all three,” but, well, that wouldn’t make any sense. Here’s the deal: Eric Lipton writes in today’s Times Hours after the news broke on Wednesday that the United States had picked up worrisome intelligence about Russia’s capacity to strike American satellites, the Pentagon sent a missile-tracking system…
Misato Clarinet—“Donna Lee”
Last year I published a piece on the history of the famous jazz composition “Donna Lee”, attributed variously to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Norman “Tiny” Khan. Well, here’s another take on “Donna”, because how many seriously cute 10-year-old beboppers come down the pike these days? Most of the information here is in Japanese, but…
C. Stewart Verdery, Jr. Is TERMINALLY Naïve!
Yeah, C. Stewart, Jr. is quite a dude. He served as assistant secretary for Homeland Security back in the George, Jr. years and before that general counsel to the Senate Republican Whip. He is the CEO of “Monument Advocacy”, a “cutting edge” (I guess) DC shop handling “government relations, public affairs, strategic and crisis communications,…
Clover Trio—“Played Twice”
Damien Argentiéri, organ, Benoist Raffin, drums, and Sébastien Lanson, guitar. Live at Sunset – Sunside, Paris 22/3/18. Posted by Clover Trio.