Mein gott in la la land! Der Ahhhnold ist ein multi-talented mutter humper, ja? The Gangwashi Church theme park for the Forbidden City? With — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Archives for 2005
WILLY’S WIT
In a word: “The Prince and the Showgirl,” starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe] was a disaster almost from the beginning. Olivier should have expected trouble. He had asked William Wyler what she was like to work with, and he had replied, “Hitler.” “Olivier,” a new biography based almost exclusively on primary sources. In fact, […]
GRAY’S ANATOMY
Our favorite philosopher John Gray on René Descartes, by way of a nauseating shouts of a radical Muslim, as he watches an old video showing the decapitation of Nicholas Berg by his Iraqi captors: “Go to hell, enemy of God! Kill him! Kill him! Yes, like that! Cut his throat properly. Cut his head off! […]
DEEP FLAME
He’s never at a loss for rhymes. In re: the — Leon Freilich EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
SOMETHING ELSER
“Europe Central” — the WWII tale to remember. Most people have never heard of Elser, although he nearly changed the course of history 66 years ago this month — on Nov. 8, 1939, to be precise — when he tried to assassinate Hitler by planting a bomb in the Munich beer hall where the Führer […]
SUPERNATURAL DUMMIES
Isn’t it time to drop religious faith from human belief? Kansas Yahoos will be dogging us forever with their biblical delusions. In an article in Harvard Magazine called There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. In the early part of this century, the toxic mix of religion and […]
NO CAPTION NEEDED
Invent your own. We think the guy on his knees is looking for the
SIMONE! SIMONE!
She came. Der Standard complained that her “creative method” was “often inflated” and that her “extreme agility and dynamics” made her seem, “in gesture,” like a “hyperactive flight controller [who] rages, pushes, presses herself into the music, as if her art were a constant boxing match, a musical sports trainer.” As promised, a li’l somethin’ […]
TRUE GORE
More firebrand than elder statesman, Gore Vidal at 80 is proof that celebrity may not be such a bad thing. As “America’s most visible radical public intellectual,” to quote Doug Ireland’s description of him, Vidal has been exploiting his calculated celebrity “to explain to a large public the insidious effects of America’s domination by a […]
NOT NICE EITHER
We hope you didn’t miss know-nothing column about “French gangsta rap” and hip-hop culture in re: the suburban French riots. (The column, posted Thursday, is hidden behind the TimesSelect subscription wall, hélas, but you’ll get his drift from the critique.) Also, in re: the Evangelical theme park Leon Freilich offers this verse commentary:
NASTY BUT NECESSARY
We hesitate to use the infamous Goering remark about deceitful leaders and the ease with which they’re able to mislead a nation into war while denouncing their critics as unpatriotic, not only because it’s already been seen many times but because it draws a very nasty comparison between 21st-century America and the Nazi Germany of […]
WHERE JESUS WALKED
Will Mel Gibson cut the ribbon? American Evangelicals are to unveil plans for a $60-million theme park in the Holy Land. But
EARLY CONCEPT
A forerunner of performance art? “Company of Pianos”] is that of the huge bonfire on the beach of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1904, when a thousand square pianos were burned to a crisp. The main manufacturers got together to put on this show in order to declare the “square” dead. That quote, from a
STORMY WEATHER
“Zut alors!”
IT TAKES A WOMAN
We see that ABC News: Arts and Entertainment, has has a gig to guest-conduct the 99.99999% all-male Vienna Philharmonic in a concert this coming weekend (which will make her the first woman ever to do so). (See the Postscript.) CIRCLE JERKS, our recent item about the orchestra’s sexism, Rodgers wonders “whether [the orchestra’s] long-standing critics […]
TOP OF THE SAND HEAP
In re: Scroll to the postscript. — TSoT EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
GIVING GOOD HEAD
We like the way the Los Angeles Times put it, with all eight “No”s, though you’d never know from the photo what happened: No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No Schwarzenegger ‘Sequel’ Couldn’t Captivate Voters — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit