Category Archives: what is wrong with us
Life With Mr. Dangerous and Other Stories
1. A friend wrote “What is this frenzy of activity?” Answer: I made a deal with myself that all posts drafted over 1000 words had to be considered as possible essays and finished as such and sent out to magazines … Continue reading
Hunger Games
1. I read The Hunger Games. So this is how America has chosen to process the power grab by the country’s richest 2%, I think, as I finish the novel. I buy it after I read that the author was inspired by … Continue reading
Filed under novels, politics, what is wrong with us
“Professors of Fiction”
1. I have a conversation with my partner Dustin’s Uncle Jack about how he fell on his good hip and, while painful, it reset his hips. The pain he’s been suffering from the former bad hip is gone. I wish … Continue reading
Filed under fiction, MFA programs, novels, politics, what is right with us, what is wrong with us, writers, writing
Storage
I saw Heathers again last Friday night. I remembered how I went to it twice the first night it appeared in theaters. My friend Libby and I drove out to it in her ancient and enormous Cadillac DeVille, and as … Continue reading
Filed under film, travel, what is right with us, what is wrong with us
The Disease of Our Age
Last week my friend Allison put on her facebook, “Did anyone read the NYMag cover story?” She received a single response, besides mine, from a mutual friend who said “Mine hasn’t arrived yet!” Granted, we were all busy, it seemed, … Continue reading
Filed under what is right with us, what is wrong with us
News of the World
Note: this has been updated, 5/17/2010. Lately I kept thinking of what I thought was a quote of Susan Sontag’s from a posthumous essay, and wrote a post about it. Here is the actual quote, supplied by Joshua Benton over … Continue reading
This Is Not The Superhero Film You Were Looking For
In retrospect, the sturm und drang over whether the Watchmen was any good or not (as a film based on the graphic novel) made us lose sight of what it actually was—a story that’s at least meant to satirize the … Continue reading
Filed under animal savagery, comics, film, gossip, graphic novels, manga, what is right with us, what is wrong with us
Some Stupid People Lose, A Few Good People Win, World Equally Unfair To All
E.D. Hill, who coined the term “terrorist fist jab” in describing something that happens on thousands of basketball courts across the country every day, has not been renewed by Fox. Nationally known adulterer Newt Gingrich wants to protect marriage, because … Continue reading
Filed under what is right with us, what is wrong with us
America Discovers Middle Class Gone, Held Everything Together
I’m not an economist, but even I know that you can’t keep wages down, force people to pay outlandish medical, gas and home loan prices and gouge their financial services with late fees and surprise interest rates and still have … Continue reading
I Don’t Know What To Call This, Because I’m So Appalled.
Scene: Chevy Chase, MD. A small suburban neighborhood. My sister is moving to California. It’s June. The movers are packing and as I eat lunch, I speak with one of the movers, a young woman in charge of packing the … Continue reading
Filed under dialogues, media, what is wrong with us
