I often wonder whether, as sometimes seems obvious, we live in truly horrible times, times unlike any others ever seen. The worst of times. The absolute worst. Or I wonder (and, admittedly, this is a real possibility) if that kind of thinking is just the grumpy old bastard in me raising his bumpy old head.… Read More Something Old, Nothing New
Pretty much every morning, for the past two years, the First Amendment champions at The New York Times have kept us up to date on the grim totals of the pandemic with all manner of charts and graphs and statistics. In the 21st century business of journalism, this is known as “data journalism:” the gathering,… Read More The End is Near
Probably 15 minutes or so into one of the latest Netflix blockbusters, a satirical hammer to the skull about disasters that human beings so blithely and comically ignore — ha! climate change, ha! silly politicians, ha! the pitfalls of sudden fame, ha! a comet destroying Earth, ha! we’re such dunderheads — I knew that we… Read More Remember When Movies Were Good?
During my first semester of college, in between learning to catch a screaming frisbee behind my back (I should have been in class) and drinking unfathomable amounts of beer (I probably should have been studying), I wandered through a slightly advanced English class — trust me, it wasn’t that advanced — in which I was… Read More If At First …
One late July day in 1999, months after the end to another spectacular season in his Hall of Fame career and just weeks before he was to report back to Detroit for his 11th year in pro football, Barry Sanders fired off a fax (remember those?) to his hometown newspaper (remember those?). “Today,” Sanders wrote,… Read More That Time
For a long, blissful time in my life, television existed in its rightful place. It was there when I had to, or simply wanted to, catch a game. It was right there, in the prime real estate of the living room, when I needed to turn off my brain. It was an easy way out… Read More TV for These Times
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