How We All Came to Be We’ve had a lot of good reaction to my last two blogs on the subject of the vile, cheap buffoon and intellectual pretender, Jon Stewart.   He’s not worth any more space, but I wanted to use his absolute lack of taste, and his utter lack of spiritual depth, […]

My Blood Runs Cold, My Memory Has Just Been Sold… In the summer of 1975, trying to beef up my college-bound credentials, I took a biology class at Arcadia High School, taught by a self-satisfied, sandal-wearing ex-hippy whose name I can’t remember.   I may not remember his name because, unlike the rest of my […]

Jon Stewart, the Two Dollar Whore Suppose you’re sitting in one of those little comedy reviews, like the Ice House in Pasadena or the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles.   The comic steps up to the microphone and starts in on your aunt, who is sitting one table over.   It’s a real Don Rickles […]

Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette, July 26, 1771 Boston, July 22: We are informed from the county of Hampshire, that on Saturday the 13th, the famous Joseph Holmes of Hatfield (who has been a frequent visitor at the courts of assize in that county, and has as often broke Goal (jail)) was detected at […]

“…Benjamin Merrill, be carried to the place from whence you came, that you be drawn from thence to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck; that you be cut down while you are yet alive…” Without dispute, the greatest news story of 1771 in the American Colonies would have […]

In the BBC adaption of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, Wives and Daughters, a rumpled country Squire Hamley played by Michael Gambon, anxiously makes a bid for the help of Miss Molly Gibson (Justine Waddell) in the care of Squire Hamley’s ailing wife. Unfortunately, Miss Gibson’s step mother, using Molly as a chess piece, insists the […]

Well, shoot. The next four episodes of Island at War, though very good, seem to err in the Desperate Hausfraus direction. Sleeping with the enemy, of course, is a dramatic staple.  It’s the very stuff of espionage films and there can’t be anything more poignant than losing in battle and knowing the enemy has taken […]

Redeeming the Time on Netflix So far, this series, a fictional story set during the World War II occupation of the British Channel Islands, is just stunning on all levels:  the performances are compelling, the art direction is gorgeous, and the light!  It certainly seems divine, since it has that breakfast-in-an-Irish-cottage quality, where everything feels […]

Reprinted from the New Hampshire Gazette, July 5, 1771 As no nation or people can be secure from their enemies and preserve their independency without the military art, it must give great pleasure to every friend to his country, and the British nation, to see the present revival of military discipline in this and the neighboring colonies. […]