Sometimes when I really feel down about the current political climate, I think about Andrew Jackson and remind myself that the United States survived his presidency (you know, with the exception of a few million Native Americans). Of course he didn't have access to nuclear weapons (or just "nuclear," if you're in a…

Honestly I'd say the spirit of inclusion developed around Star Wars and not in it. Apart from Yoda all of the Force users in the original trilogy were white dudes. Anyway, most stories involving magicians make it clear that not everyone can use magic.

When I was doing residency in New Mexico we would have visiting residents from smaller hospitals, and they had some stories. Allegedly a cartel set fire to a family practice office in Truth or Consequences because the doctor was allegedly prescribing so many controlled substances that she was considered competition. …

Defense is easy:

I'm sure the 30-year-old guy with progeria who wrote the Travel Ban will pound some Red Bull, pull an all-nighter with the webcam model who's taking all his money, and come up with some top-notch North Korea legislation.

Cf "Farm Bill, Incomprehensbility of" and "Farm Bill, Beneficiaries of"

This whole thing won't tank his career, but it might undermine his authority as Speaker. Removing Obamacare has been the core of the Republicans' rhetoric for the better part of a decade, but even with Republicans in control of the White House and the legsilature he couldn't cobble together enough support within the…

I get that the tone of this article is supposed to be arch and snarky, but that phrase is some bullshit. Mainly because he's presenting the best movie mentioned in the goddamn article as one of the worst.

If you asked me which one I wanted to watch right now, I'd say the Matrix mainly because it's shorter. If you asked me which one is a crowning achievement of cinematic technique, I'd say Cloud Atlas.

I have trouble with any article that laments the unoriginality of the Star Wars franchise and then turns around and backhands a movie like Cloud Atlas. If nothing else, it's one of the most perfectly constructed movies since the silent era.

Gore Vidal was a brilliant thinker, but he also embodied a particular kind of late-20th-century intellectual arrogance.

One of my favorite Tom Waits songs.

The endless blank stare on Mira Sorvino's face when the waitress asks what business they're in is one of the most perfect comic moments I've ever seen.

I just saw that movie for the first time last week and was floored by how funny it was (I expected it to be amusingly snarky, but it's hilariously snarky). Everything after they get to the reunion is a little pokey, but the rest is pure gold.

Mr B is such a bizarre character that I don't identify mockery of him as generalized to the trans community at large, but that phrase is definitely loaded.

One of my favorite moments of cinema-loving was asking a clerk at Facet's Cinematheque in Chicago for a copy of Girl in Gold Boots. He said that the store didn't have a copy, but he did have the movie in his own video library, and it really was a fascinating time capsule of a particular moment in the American…

Now I'm reflecting on the outdated technologies I had to employ as a teenager in order to see images of naked women - magazines, floppy discs, VHS cassettes, laserjet printouts…

It's kind of striking to read Vidal's 2001 essay about McVeigh's execution. There are a lot of mentions of the Branch Davidians killed by the ATF, but basically no mention of the people who died in the Oklahoma City bombing. On one hand he's making a larger point about the relationship between government sponsored…

I tried to edit my Duke Nukem .con files so that the background music would be midis of Metallica songs, but I could never make it work. Tragedy.

What a nerd - didn't you realize how many low-res jpegs of naked women could fit onto a stack of floppy discs?