When we had to wait
While taking a walk the other day in a suburban area, I passed a yard with a tire swing tied to a large tree branch. Into my head popped a song lyric that goes like this: Life was just a … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Arts
For fun
How to walk downstairs with some zip in your step, by James Cagney (aka George M. Cohan): As a child, I loved that scene. In particular, I liked the fact that it builds to a peak and then calms down … Continue reading →
Why does hip-hop music get a pass from the #MeToo movement?
Good question, I think. And it’s one being asked by Gabriel Hays in this article: For the week of March 31st, 2018, eight of the top 20 songs in Billboard’s “R&B/Hip-Hop” chart were blatantly sexist and misogynistic. In these songs, … Continue reading →
Mud time
Frost again: The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But … Continue reading →
The entertainment industry is shocked to discover that there might actually be money in catering to the half of America…
…that it usually ignores at best or insults at worst. In other words: [The first episodes of the Roseanne revival] worked, leaving many TV insiders shellshocked today by the magnitude of the revival’s ratings success that revealed the untapped potential … Continue reading →
Did you watch the “Roseanne” premiere?
I’m not ordinarily a sitcom viewer, but I watched about 10 minutes of the new “Roseanne” revival. Then my TV decided to have a problem, and by the time it was fixed I had forgotten about the show and it … Continue reading →
Three swans: Part III
I bet you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for Part III since the series first appeared back in 2012 (here are Part I and Part II). No? Well, here’s Part III anyway. Just to recap—“Swan Lake” is popular for … Continue reading →
This play sounds interesting
It’s called “Admissions,” and it’s by Joshua Harmon, and I’m surprised it was ever even produced, given the current political climate: It’s a relentless, often very funny exposé of the hypocrisies and self-contradictions of the diversity craze that defines virtually … Continue reading →
The man who could do everything: Tommy Rall
Well, maybe not everything. But an extraordinary number of things. And boy, could he do them well. A while back I showed a clip of Rall in the barn dance from “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” in which he was … Continue reading →
Mind-reading machine
This doesn’t sound like a good idea to me: …[A] new artificial intelligence research project coming out of Japan…can analyze a person’s brain scans and provide a written description of what they have been looking at. To generate its captions, … Continue reading →
Why selfies are distorted, especially noses
This is one of the more depressing—albeit minor—pieces of news I’ve read in a long time: Last year, more than half of plastic surgeons were approached by patients who wanted to look better in selfies, according to a survey by … Continue reading →
Childhood is the kingdom: Millay reading Millay
I find that lately I’ve been pulling back ever-so-slightly from day-to-day politics. It’s not that I’m not writing about that sort of thing; I definitely still am. I just find that, for the most part, the stories du jour are … Continue reading →