THE SCENE IS TENSE. RENE Belloq, a French archaeologist hired by the Nazi government (ptoo ptoo ptoo) to steal the Ark of the Covenant in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, is about to open the sacred artifact wherein…
Category: Crit
Examination, analysis, appreciation.
Art Imitates Science Imitates Art
WHO DOESN’T KNOW “THE UNIVERSE Song” from the Monty Python movie Meaning of Life? The one that starts out, “Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving / And revolving at 900 miles an hour…”? For years, I’ve…
Words to Bring Back: “Illicitator”
– Definition: n. An auctioneer’s shill – Used in a sentence: “Some of these political rallies seem to reek of illicitators.” – Why: It’s obscure, yes, but how many illicitators have YOU spotted recently?
First Graf: The Book of the Damned
CHARLES HOY FORT HAS A special place in my weirdological heart, as he was the first writer to compile an exhaustive list (four books full, in fact) of oddities and anomalies. He is thus the (unwilling) intellectual godfather of every…
Words to Bring Back: “Civics”
– Definition: n. pl. (construed as sing.) The division of political science dealing with citizenship and civic affairs. – Used in a sentence: “My old high school stopped teaching civics years ago.” – Why: It’s needed. Boy, is it needed.
A Torah of Fire
“If you have learned much Torah, do not take credit for yourself — for that is why you were created.” — Pirkei Avot IT’S OFTEN OVER MY HEAD, but there’s an eight-page “parsha sheet” (Torah-commentary newsletter) I have been following…
Digital Vittles
ONCE UPON A TIME, I subsisted on frozen meals from Lean Cuisine and Amy’s Kitchen. Then I “got religion” via two sources: Tamar Adler‘s An Everlasting Meal — Cooking with Economy and Grace (which also contains one of the finest…
KCBS: Stop the Banter!
(Sent today via email.) To whom it may concern, As a KCBS listener for more than 20 years (and a former radio reporter/announcer at KSRO in Santa Rosa), I’m writing to comment on your (apparently) new policy of having hosts…
First Graf: Silverlock
TAKE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, STAR A grumpy Chicagoan, people the landscape with characters and places from the world’s literature and you have Silverlock — a fable of the human spirit no less great or more complex a story than a man…
Pithyism #72
OUR POLITICAL LANDSCAPE MIGHT BE less prickly were our politics not so personal.
Aside
“THAT’S NOT ONLY BRILLIANT — IT’S ‘why-didn’t-I-think-of-that’ brilliant.”
Faint Praise
“I DON’T MIND WATCHING HIM chew the scenery — he leaves such interesting bitemarks.”