We all know this story. We’ve seen it acted out with Muppets, or Mickey Mouse, or monstrosities that reside in the Uncanny Valley of Doom. We had the story read to us when we were children, and grow up to read it to our own brood. It’s been adapted numerous times for every medium. It is as ubiquitous as Shakespeare, and as indelibly tied to the Christmas season, ironically, as Capitalism itself. Which makes it almost impossible to review. It’s impossible to look at this […]
Rousseau, Holden Caulfield, and Ringo Star walk into a review…
Last year, my goal was to read a biography of every president. Well, I failed. I read 15 biographies (but two of George W. Bush). That goal is still in play this year, however. But my I’ve also given myself a new goal: to read more literature. I generally focus more on sci-fi/fantasy and history, and have found myself woefully inadequate in other areas. I’ve never read Jane Austen, or Tolstoy, or William Faulkner. I aim to remedy that in 2016. On it’s face, Metamorphosis […]
Founded on a tautological proposition that no one challenges.
It’s easy to pick on Richard Nixon. The list of his crimes, aspersions against his character, and embarrassments he forced on this country is long enough that it could take up this entire review. He was a blight on the office he felt so entitled to. He is the avatar for nefarious public officials limited by a base cunning and furtive guile. His promise was ambrosia; his delivery: brinksmanship. Richard Nixon savored attention, but skulked in the darkness of public derision. Every friend was an […]
When the movie is made, I hope they get Abbi Jacobsen (Broad City) to star.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
I can’t stress how much I loved this book. In many ways, it serves as a companion to Ready Player One. It follows Zoe Ashe from a life of poverty in a suburban trailer park through a terrifying hunt to an inheritance she didn’t know awaited her. It has the same basic plot as the aforementioned book (which I reviewed earlier in the year), but diverges in a number of distinct ways. For starters, the protagonist here is a woman. I don’t think that’s a […]
In a room with Jefferson, Wilson, Truman, and Ike, but generally mistaken for a waiter.
The first I remember hearing about James K. Polk was in my high school US history class. He was described as the greatest president you’ve never heard of, and probably the only president to achieve every goal he set for his administration. Now, I don’t typically speak very highly of my high school history classes (the teacher was given a relatively small canvas on which to paint the picture of history, and he painted with the broadest of brushes), but in this one instance, at […]
A world of broken promises lit only by the flames of a burning village.
First off, my goal was a half-Cannonball. So, yay me! The age of Jackson (roughly 1820-1860) is like a glimpse of movement in an otherwise dark and empty room: poorly understood and full of foreboding. I’m reasonably familiar with the preceding 50 years of US history, and have a more comfortable grasp on the succeeding 70 years, but the 40 years that tie them together isn’t an era I’ve read much about. I know that there were some Indian Wars, and the fervor to push […]
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