I am just a fountain of good taste: Plague 1: Blood Cocktail: Red Nile The original eye-opener. Great way to start the plagues, perfect for weekend brunch of fresh fruit, coffee, matzoh brie, and Sephardic dried-fruit-and-cumin haroseth. Ingredients: 2 oz potato vodka 4 oz tomato juice 1/2 oz lemon juice 1 oz Arak 1 tsp white horseradish 6 drops Texas Pete 3 drops Fee Brothers Old Fashioned Cocktail Bitters (no corn syrup) Dash salt Dash pepper Carrot stick for garnish... Read more
A round-up of what I’ve been reading. “Missouri Considers Lifting Lifetime Food Stamp Ban for Former Drug Felons.” Missouri is one of 10 states that currently has a lifetime ban on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for anyone convicted of a drug-related felony, but they could soon be amending their policy. The harsh ban was part of the welfare reform effort of 1996, but most states have since modified or completely removed the lifetime ban. However, the Missouri Senate... Read more
Man, this book is hard to excerpt: Yet my father had more refined dreams. Like most athletes he lived amidst the large deeds and ephemeral glories of the past, recalling a time when it must have seemed to him he had been more Elevated, and this continual and melancholy look into the past had drawn his brows together into a knot, giving him a look of unmistakable hostility. Moreover, in an attempt to more vividly re-create that past, my father... Read more
reviewing an actual movie which exists: The new Muppet movie, Muppets Most Wanted, is basically 1981’s Great Muppet Caper if you make Kermit self-pitying, Piggy helpless, and Russia the villain. Also, there are several gulag dance scenes. more (plus my advice for enjoying the movie!) Read more
Service journalism: I’m a very very beginning exegete, and the sort of Exegesis 101 rule for the Old Testament that they give you is “Everything in the Old Testament is about Jesus.” I’d like to propose a new Biblical exegesis 101 rule: everything in the Gospels is about the Mass. I mean, just off the top of my head… more (I really got a lot from this) Read more
“And then he rose from the dead. True story.” Found here; some of the others also worth a giggle. Read more
These are glorious; via Matt Jones among others. Read more
“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.” –possibly Auden? Attributed to Auden, anyway. For a while now I’ve been trying to hunt down Abel Ferrara’s ultra-artsy, not-on-DVD vampire movie, The Addiction. It’s on YouTube again now–see it before it vanishes!–at a link you can find here, along with Kindertrauma’s reflections on the film. I watched it last night and suspect I need to watch it at least once more before... Read more
I’ve watched a few movies lately which I haven’t posted about here. My one-line review of 1952’s underworld soap opera Casque d’Or is basically, “Simone Signoret eats cheese off a knife. Thanks France!” Slightly longer review: Signoret is sultry in a layered performance; she’s great at conveying irony and intelligence with just a quirk of her lips. Even more fun was last Saturday’s adventure, 1956’s Trapeze. It’s playing again this Thursday at AFI, so you can catch it on the... Read more
“First let’s say morning prayer. But let’s say it quietly, in case somebody here has got a hangover.” That’s from the first episode of Rev., a Hulu series about an Anglican vicar in a tough London neighborhood, and it captures the show’s best side: a humorous acceptance of human weakness, combined with a seriousness about prayer. There’s a lot to love about Rev., so although I’m going to be critical, I want to start by highlighting what’s so intriguing and... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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