for AmSpec: I have seen the future, brother, and it is a real bummer. Ahhh, look, X-Men: Days of Future Past could be much worse than it is. The last two adventures of Marvel’s Merry Mutants were execrable; this one is merely doughily pointless. X-Men: The Last Stand was like watching your big brother break your favorite toys. X-Men: First Class was more like watching somebody else’s awful, sticky children have a slap fight in a sandbox, except with the... Read more
feature: What about the giant squid, you may ask? “Wimpy,” says Cassell. The giant—which grows to 60-plus feet and is one of only four squid, out of the 400 or so species found in the oceans, that are human-size or bigger—is generally considered to be fairly placid. In any case, it’s so elusive, no modern squid hunter has ever even seen one alive. No, if you want a scary squid, you want a Humboldt. more Read more
tr. Cyrus Brooks: Rather against his will, Fabian was allowing Malmy to enlighten him on the subject of short-term loans. “The whole country, politically and economically, is falling more and more into the hands of foreigners,” he maintained. “A pin prick and the whole thing will blow up. If once the money is recalled in large quantities, we shall all go broke–the banks, the municipalities, the joint-stock companies, and the Reich.” “But you never put that in the paper,” said... Read more
not really a book review! I read John Darnielle’s 2011 novel Master of Reality under the unfamiliar constellations of Australia—which was fitting, since the slender book is about being both physically and spiritually far from home. Master of Reality is an entry in Continuum’s “33 1/3” series of books about pop or rock albums. (The other books in the series tend to be straightforward critical studies.) I’ve never listened to Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, but Darnielle’s diary of a 1980s... Read more
Really fascinating piece which I hope sparks (see what I did there?) a much-needed conversation: One cannot encounter Orthodoxy without also encountering food aplenty. People customarily do not eat their first meal until after receiving the Eucharist, so eating together comes to define the community. Along with the times of feasting, four fasting seasons collectively span sixteen to twenty-two weeks each calendar year, giving rise to popular Orthodox cookbooks featuring extensive “Lenten” sections with fast-friendly recipes. While I rejoice in... Read more
Figured I’d pass this along. I attended the first one of these, and wrote about it here. Read more
from A Queer Calling: …One summer while on retreat, I sat at the dinner table nearly every evening with a priest who seemed to understand my uncertainty intuitively. Frequently, I asked him questions about how he understood the role of celibacy in his vocation to the priesthood, if he experienced loneliness, and if he had any regrets about forgoing marriage. This priest could tell that I wasn’t casually exploring monastic life with no real intention of committing to a celibate... Read more
Me at AmCon: Don’t call Wilfrid Sheed’s 1963 The Hack a forgotten Catholic classic. I don’t want it to be dismissed so easily. Sheed was the scion of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, the Catholic publishers and apologists; he knew that pre-Vatican II world of professional religion from the inside. The Hack is a satirical tragedy about Bert Flax, a man who supports his wife and five children by writing pabulum for the lower levels of the Catholic press: angels... Read more
well worth reading even if you have no especial interest in weight loss or shows about ditto: …Every week on the show, you watched us exercising and working out. That’s part of the process, of course — making people healthier. But they don’t show the additional mandatory six hours or so of us furiously flailing the pounds away. They much preferred filming us right at the end of a workout, when we looked like lazy quitters for stopping so early.... Read more
It’s only May and I’ve already watched three very different vampire movies. 2008 Swedish chiller Let the Right One In is the one which most thoroughly explores vampire imagery and lore; it’s just as good as you’ve heard, achingly sad and genuinely awful and scary. A few notes which I hope won’t constitute spoilers. But really, if you think you might like this movie and you haven’t already seen it, what’s keeping you? (In my case the answer was, “A... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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