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One night when I was walking the streets of New York City, a young panhandler confronted me and demanded five dollars. “For what?” I asked. “I’ll sing Stevie Wonder.” I gave him two bucks, and he immediately delivered a surprisingly good rendition of “Superstiton.” When he was finished, he looked at me and said, “What’dya…
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Novice writers sometimes ask about the difference between “literary” fiction and “commercial” fiction, and so-called learned people often answer something like this: “Commercial fiction is about plot; literary fiction is about character.” But what any real student of literary fiction knows is that all novels—all good novels, at least—have a plot. That is, they have…
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The fine character actor Treat Williams died in a motorcycle accident earlier this week. I say “character actor” because, despite his charm, intelligence, and vaguely Scottish good-looks, Williams never quite achieved leading-man status in Hollywood. His best movie, imho, was Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City, a wrenching drama about the corrupting influence of drug…
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Once again I’m late to the party, but I finally watched Todd Field’s 2022 movie Tár, starring Cate Blanchett. I really didn’t know much about the film, except that it had been well received (Blanchett received an Oscar nomination) and that it was about a female orchestra conductor named Lydia Tár. From this scant information,…
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Author’s Note: a slightly different version of this post first ran on my old blog, Bahktin’s Cigarettes. It’s hard to believe, but the 40th Anniversary of the Watergate break-in is fast approaching, on June 17. The day will be commemorated by Chapman University and many others. It will not be the most uplifting of anniversaries, surely. I…
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When I was a high school kid in the 1980s, a legend sprang up about a West coast rock band that got busted while playing one of the house parties on UF’s fraternity row. The band had gotten naked on-stage and been arrested for public indecency. And—oh, yeah—they were apparently a really kick-ass band. They…
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I went into my favorite used bookstore recently, and I was shocked to find only a handful of Michael Crichton’s old books on hand. When I was a kid, he was ubiquitous. He was guaranteed to have not just an entire shelf dedicated to his work, but often an entire case. I mean, dozens of…
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It’s a terrible thing when someone loses their job through no fault of their own. But when I read that 4,000 people have already been fired due to AI technology, my first thought is: “Man, they must have had really, really crappy jobs.” I mean, honestly. ChatGTP is just another kind of robot. It’s about…
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Even though I live in Florida, I am guardedly optimistic about our chances of surviving (I almost typed weathering–HA!) the global warming crisis. New green technologies are being created everyday, and the ones we’ve already got have to the potential to completely transform the world. Here is a recent, positive article from one my favorite…
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I have a confession to make: I love concrete architecture. I know, I know. Concrete Architecture (CA, for short) is not fashionable. It’s not renewable (not yet, anyway). It’s not touchy-feely. It’s not cool. Part of the bad-rap CA has is due to its association with brutalism, the quasi-Soviet style that was popular in the…
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