AMY WINEHOUSE SINGS “BEAT IT.” Read more

edited: de mortuis. Read more

As in our own time the permafrost of modernity has at last begun to melt–and a more determinedly pluralistic world has bounded back into an often troubling life–the world we are seeing is not a strange new world, revealed as the glaciers draw back, but a strange old world: kinship, locality, embodiment, domesticity, affect. All of these things, but I would add that at times we are seeing them in something as actual–and as tangible–as the tomb of two friends... Read more

IT’S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE!: 1. Conservative, moralizing politician gets caught [EDITED to remove unnecessarily crass description; “gets caught” pretty much covers it…]. 2. Conservative Christian commentator wails about how could he? with much throwing of the fiftieth stone. I would never! 3. Liberal commentator (Christian or not–all look same!) inveighs against the obvious Schadenfreude and piling-on of aforementioned conservative Christian types. Drink if they cite “Judge not, lest ye be judged”; drain your drink if they bother looking up... Read more

TURN YOUR WATCH, TURN YOUR WATCH BACK/ABOUT A HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS: I only remember two songs from my childhood, listening to “Q-107, Washington’s Top 40!” I remember “Karma Chameleon,” which for some reason I associate with the yellow schoolbus taking me to Jewish day camp. And I remember “Billie Jean,” on the playgrounds of Shepherd Elementary–a school named after a segregationist, where I doubt I knew fifteen other white kids, but the white kids I did know were almost all... Read more

INSIDE OF A CATHOLIC, IT’S TOO DARK TO READ. Summer books recommendations… hey, I’m in this! Read more

What one then sees is a diverse set of practices that cannot be reduced to a single overarching motive but nonetheless employed the same rhetoric: practices of peacemaking, of countenance, of kinship. The same rhetoric that could ease the reconciliation of enemies could also enable the acceptance of a gift, or bind the affection of friends. It could enable adversaries to lay down a quarrel, without losing face. It could ease the passing of a gift, by its tactful indication... Read more

POSSIBLY MY FAVORITE MST3K JOKE EVER: “Vatican II: The Final Reckoning!” I think this might even beat the “Happy Saint Blaise Day!” throttling scene from Soultaker…. Read more

“I’M WITH CUPID”: My review of Design for Living at the Shakespeare Theatre. With bonus Edward Albee! (And yes, if you want to take this article as my partial rebuke to Jamie Kirchick, you may.) Read more

Confusion was widespread in those years, but Empson countered it with a peculiarly British conception of ambiguity: “When I was crossing the fighting lines during the siege of Peking, to give my weekly lecture on Macbeth, a generous-minded peasant barred my way and said, pointing ahead: ‘That way lies death’”. Empson’s response was foggy, gnomic but swift: “Not for me, I have a British passport”. —that same article about Angleton; whole piece is pretty fascinating Read more