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The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is the equivalent to America’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Both organizations perform the same ceremonial functions in handing out their respective awards, the BAFTAs and the Oscars, although their overall duties have increased this century. When race moves center-stage, as it has in the movie business, a lot of people have a lot more work to do, and not just making movies. (more…)
3,007 words
British people are not doing a great deal of laughing at the moment. Innocents are being butchered or raped in the streets or on trains, the economy is being frog-marched to the cliff’s edge, and there are more bad actors in the Houses of Parliament than there are on British television. And there isn’t even anything funny on telly to take a nation’s mind off its decline and fall. (more…)
2,214 words
-I don’t want to look at everything in black and white, but in America I gather blacks are sweeping the country.
-About the only job they can get. And very well they do it too.
Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, Beyond the Fringe, 1962 (more…)
1,539 words
The decade of the 1970s coincided with my seventh through the seventeenth years. They made a strong impression on me, as those years of one’s life generally do. I remember a lot of what I saw, experienced, and thought about growing up. (more…)
5,495 words
CHAPTER 3
DENAISSANCE
Reverse-engineering the West
But what of those decadent ages in which no ideal either grows or blossoms?
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution. (more…)
4,186 words
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A vast majority in American society remain confident in so-called First Amendment values. (more…)
How does she know that “11 Inches of Snow in Minnesota” is my porn star name?
How does she know that “11 Inches of Snow in Minnesota” is my porn star name?
2,547 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
Third commercial break
There’s another spot from GM, and after that is an ad for Pillsbury Plus Yellow Cake. It has pudding in the mix! Nom nom nom . . . (Speaking of annoying piss-ants, Saddam Hussein ordered his nuclear weapons researchers to buy 550 metric tons of it, according to anonymous sources in the Pentagon. (more…)
2,864 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
My young heart suddenly sank like Ted Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick on November 18, 1978. I discovered that the Star Wars Holiday Special was being shown on TV — but that it had aired the day before! (more…)
1,923 words
I would be lying if I said I try to avoid pop culture, because it really doesn’t take much effort. When you are young, you pick stuff up from being around other young people, and if you are a parent, you pick stuff up from your kids. But I’m old and have no kids, and I find that if you don’t listen to the radio in the car and only watch Turner Classic Movies, it is actually quite easy to completely lose touch with pop culture. I’m perfectly happy having no idea who the latest singers and teen heartthrobs are. (more…)
1,966 words
It took 101 years, but television producer Norman Lear — who probably influenced American culture more than any other single figure in the 1970s — finally decided last Tuesday that it was time to die. (more…)
Michael Tirrell James
Michael Tirrell James
1,905 words
I recently wrote about the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and his then-mysterious “adopted black son” whose existence Johnson only ever referenced for entirely cynical reasons. In 2019 he claimed before Congress that he had asked his adopted black son what he thought about slavery reparations and that he was against it. This was the first time he had ever mentioned having a black son, nor does it appear in any of his official biographies. (more…)
1,922 words
It aired for only one night in 1990 to an audience of merely a few thousand people on a subscription satellite TV channel that no longer exists before being quickly forgotten, but since being rediscovered in the Internet era, Heil Honey, I’m Home has since achieved a sort of mythic status as one of the most politically incorrect TV show in pop-culture history. (more…)
1,692 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
My Problem with “Anime”
What I hate most about anime is the word “anime” itself, because the term was invented as a con to obscure the fact that you are simply watching a cartoon. It’s not “anime.” They are cartoons from Japan.
The term “action figure” was coined in the 1960s by the inventor of GI Joe, because he knew if he called them “dolls” — which is what they were — no boy would want to play with them. (more…)