This is rich

January 26, 2012

Newt Gingrich appears to be worth at least $7 million. Mitt Romney is worth around $150 million. My question is this: If both men are millionaires many times over, does the poorer one get to call the richer one “elitist”? That’s the mood here in north Florida, apparently. CNN has this story about how Gingrich, [...]

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If you only see one silent film this year …

January 25, 2012

Expanding on yesterday’s post, we did go and see The Artist. Two thumbs up. While it’s hard to judge whether the movie’s appeal derives more from the gimmick ( a silent film in black and white) or the story (the inevitable arc of celebrity in Hollywood), maybe it’s best not to overthink it. What I [...]

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Limit the Oscar nominees to those I’ve seen

January 24, 2012

Of this year’s Oscar nominees, so far I’ve seen three: The Descendants, Moneyball and War Horse. Tonight, the wife and I may go see The Artist. Maybe we’ll get to some of the others too, but really: the nominees are no longer must-see cinema, are they? Were they ever? We just go for the same [...]

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Would you mind shutting the hell up?

January 23, 2012

Don’t you hate asking people behind you in a theater to keep quiet? I do. I always fret that it might escalate into something undignified, like a fistfight in the parking lot. Sometimes appeals to common courtesy hit people the wrong way. It’s like you flipped them the bird or keyed their Camaro. But I [...]

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Sorry, Joe. We thought you were dead

January 22, 2012

I was glad to see those greatly exaggerated reports of Joe Paterno’s death. Not because I had any ill will toward Paterno, but because I like seeing this gilded sparrow we call Twitter sometimes crash into a brick wall. And I like the fleeting embarrassment of the Twitterati while the little feathers fall gently to [...]

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Obama, Al Green and the fat man

January 21, 2012

So we’ve got the president channeling Al Green and Newt Gingrich looking like he can win in South Carolina. Two guys defying my cynical and uninformed expectations. There is a reason I don’t get paid to analyze politics. How about that Obama? This is going to make the Tea Party types hate him all the [...]

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So long, Kodak. And thanks for all the pics

January 20, 2012

There was a time when I was probably the very definition of Kodak’s business model: a young, newly married guy who decided it was time to start taking pictures of his kids. I started out with a Brownie Holiday I found laying around my Mom’s place, moved up to a borrowed Instamatic and finally decided, [...]

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Gingrich vs. Gingrich, 12 years later

January 19, 2012

I‘m not sure what to make of Newt Gingrich’s second wife coming out with these “exclusive” revelations concerning his moral character. At first glance, ABC’s preview of the Nightline interview doesn’t seem to add much to the body of knowledge. Marianne Gingrich (still keeping the name a dozen years after the divorce) seems to think [...]

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Don’t pick up the SOPA

January 18, 2012

I won’t be joining today’s protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), since a quick glance of my site traffic reveals that nobody would notice if I did. It’s a two-edged sword, running an unread blog: You are completely free of responsibility, but you are also completely without influence. Ah, well. At least nobody’s [...]

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“Crooked Letter” is a classic

January 17, 2012

Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is one of those crime novels where it’s not all about the crime itself. I appreciate that, especially since the crime in question is the disappearance of an attractive young woman. And then another, 25 years later. Vanishing women are so common in this genre that most books using [...]

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