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words
On a Sunday last May, while Minneapolis burned, my Yankee sweetheart and I indulged in a double helping of nostalgia. The engine that propelled us along this journey down memory lane was Blast from the Past, an American romantic comedy, now a little more than twenty years old, that celebrated the morals, manners, and milieux of an even earlier time and place, the America sacrificed on the altar of equality of opportunity in the annus mirabilis of 1965. (more…)
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin
1,328 words
I consider social media the biggest pestilence on the culture since the opioid crisis. . . and before that, the mass-dosing of the populace with antidepressants. . . and before that, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. . . but social media is good for a few things. (more…)
2,458 words
In 1998, when I was 12 years old, my father and I were watching television one evening when we stumbled upon an HBO made-for-TV movie called The Second Civil War.
The film has been largely forgotten in the years since, but its content — and the eerily accurate predictions within it — are quite astounding to behold today, 22 years later.
The film was directed by Joe Dante and has an ensemble cast featuring Denis Leary, Dan Hedaya, James Earl Jones, Beau Bridges, Phil Hartman, (more…)
2,425 words
I feel like I grew up in Twin Peaks, the fictional Washington logging town that gave its name to David Lynch’s iconic TV series, which aired on ABC from the spring of 1990 to the spring of 1991. Twin Peaks has one of the best pilots in television history, which was followed by an abbreviated first season of seven episodes. (more…)
1,420 words
Modest Mouse was formed in Issaquah, Washington, in the year 1992. Issaquah was formerly a sleepy community removed from the sprawl of the Seattle metropolitan area, but is now another far-flung bedroom town swallowed whole by the Microsoft and later Amazon-centered tech boom and its ensuing concreting of the Puget Sound (more…)
4,673 words
To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
I grew up in the final years of the Cold War. If you aren’t old enough to remember the Cold War, let me tell you that it was a trip.
6,583 words 
In tyrannies. . . to test the tyrant’s authority was to risk incarceration, torture, and death; in America’s democracy, by contrast, to contest the president’s authority was to win media attention, big book advances, posses of fellow-travelers, and lawyers such as Ken Starr crowding for business and prominence.
— Nigel Hamilton (more…)
1,944 words
You’d rather see me in the pen
Than me and Lorenzo rollin’ in a Benz-o
Beat a police out of shape
And when I’m finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still getting swole off bread and water
I don’t know if they fags or what
Search a nigga down, and grabbing his nuts
And on the other hand, without a gun, they can’t get none.
— N. W. A., “Fuck tha Police.” (more…)