Kindness

is to be found here:  http://patricksjustincasesite.blogspot.com/

It's prettier, and the text's a bit more cleaned up.    Read full post »

Spending time with better people

Frozen Franzenage

Provoking the dread

For me, the end of October is always slightly tinged with dread -- provoked not by Halloween spooks, not even by election season, but by the advent of something called NaNoWriMo. If those syllables are nothing but babble to you, then I salute you. They… Read full post »

Absorption / Deflection

The Stewart and Colbert Purity Crusade

Many of you probably watched the famous Jon Stewart "smackdown" of -- in particular -- Tucker Carlson on Crossfire. I knew then that the primary crime Tucker was guilty of was possessing too much personality (his punchy bow-tie, pink shirts, buoya… Read full post »

Evidence

The U.K. has cut back expenses hugely and fired millions. It will certainly go into a major Depression. As Tony Blair said when asked why he hit his one-year-old baby: "You have to discipline them!"

Lloyd ("U.K. Cuts Back Gov't Expenses," realpsychohistory, 21 Oct. 2010)… Read full post »

In consideration of all he has accomplished

BOYCOTT THE HACK ZACH ... in perpetuity

I think it's simply a "travesty" that a supremely spoiled sophomoric pack of so-called ACTORS can RULE the film industry. LIKE anybody in THAT CAST has EVER DONE anything (frankly) remarkable in THEIR… Read full post »

Substituting a goat

And in other miracle-related news, some people in Hollywood decided to stand on principle.

The issue was Mel Gibson, charismatic movie star, Oscar-winning filmmaker and drunken, bigoted, death-threat-issuing lout. Gibson was supposed to make a cameo in "The Hangover 2,"… Read full post »

Repeat

The time has come to admit it -- Jodie Foster is not all that. Foster, beloved child actress turned two-time Academy Award winner, Yale magna cum laude, respected director and person who has lived in the public eye for 40 years without a nip slip, bar brawl or nutty… Read full post »

Welcome to the third and final session of the Salon Reading Club for Jonathan Franzen's novel "Freedom." Last week, we took the discussion up through Page 382, and now it's time to consider the book's conclusion.

[. . .]

I'm a little ambivalent about the ending of "Freedom." While it was… Read full post »

The Democrats, as usual, are still fighting the internecine party battles of the '90s. While Jerry Brown struggles with the 1992 presidential primaries out in California, Bill Clinton is attacking a prominent liberal critic and defending his legacy of triangulation.

At a joint appearance with former… Read full post »

The thing that had a radicalizing impact on me began after [Hillary lost in] Iowa. Because there was this pile-on, and to me it was mind-bending. It was coming often from people on the left. It was like something they had been keeping inside as they bit their tongues and covered… Read full post »

(Hofstadter pointed out that the left is certainly not free of this mind-set, and so Dick Cheney and Halliburton have often served as the designated superhumanly competent malefactors for the other side, as in the 9/11 "Truth" movement.)

[. . .]

Is it any wonder, then, that a growing number of… Read full post »

When the Jon Meachams and Mika Brzezinskis work up the courage to condemn the people who have done and are continuing to do this for the "blood they have on their hands," then their purported outrage and beliefs can be viewed as sincere. But they don't do that and won't do that. Righteous… Read full post »

What to do when history is not on your side?

I can’t believe we’re going through this again.

In January 2005, Time magazine featured on its cover a photo of a young man in a shirt and dress slacks sitting in a sandbox. The headline: “They Just Won’t Grow/… Read full post »

Thoughts on "The Switch"

(Originally posted at Movieline.com)

Wallie tries to explain to Cassie what he had done, essentially immediately after he recalls his having made the switch 6 years before. Cold sober, chilled but vividly intent, he is well on the way to explaining ... and then the… Read full post »

Xbox your movie

3D will interest when it seems linked to an argument that the whole experience of BEING TOLD a story for two hours straight needs explanation, when the possibility might be opened up that you could rather play a part in the movie-world you've "entered." Right now, we're… Read full post »

When people are porn

My story has occasioned a healthy amount of reaction around the web, including from TED and Chris Anderson himself.

First, the snark: Maura at The Awl (a commentary site run by ex-Gawkers) calls the story “breathless” and “smug”. Most of the comm/… Read full post »

How eager should we expect the civilized to be?

“The essence of learning is found neither inside nor outside the classroom, neither online nor offline. It’s in the flow from lived experience and practice, to listening, researching, and sharing the fruits of your work with a commu… Read full post »

Glum and glam

Like its star, Salt is a spare and lean piece of work; it’s everything a modern action movie should be, a picture made with confidence but not arrogance, one that believes so wholeheartedly in its outlandish plot twists that they come to make perfect alt-universe… Read full post »

King Bash

Phil Perspective

but did you know that Roberts and Phillips were engaged as of three months ago?

A big part of me wishes I had remained free of this information - just like I lament knowing about the CNN nuptials of John King and… Read full post »

@Pacificwhim

@cabdriver

Then read more before you opine, please. King never wrote such an opening to a novel, ever:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House,… Read full post »

On tech, anti-tech, and James Cameron

However, there may be no director whose themes are more schizophrenic than James Cameron, who constantly flips between worshiping grand technology and stigmatizing the kind of personality who employs it. In Avatar, as in Lucas’s Ewok battle, the high-tech… Read full post »