The Cold War was a depressing fact, and we did practice duck and cover sometimes and other times were taken for drills to the nuclear fallout shelter under the adjoining junior high building. Divine or no, Armageddon could happen.
As a child of the ’60s, I am finding phrases of that era useful again. One of them—“Everybody’s off on their own trip”—did not necessarily mean drugs even then; it meant we walk our own paths. Sometimes these are mysterious to ourselves and others, even when they intersect.
There is tremendous loneliness in free will and its consequences, in deciding to play a certain game and then defining what it means to win or lose.
The construction of two new bridges to replace an existing bridge joining Illinois and Missouri, on the north edge of St. Louis, is midwifed by expertise, daring, and trudging drudgery.
Sixteen months ago I worked as an extra on the third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It has just been released, and we went to see it opening weekend.
In Joseph Heller’s writing no one games the system entirely, but in Catch-22, one unlikely person, by cunning, ingenuity, and hardship, wins a temporary stay.
China sets are no longer valued as they used to be. Young people often do not have space to store things that will be rarely used, or do not like the ornateness or implied waste of resources.
Tori and Lokita has an integrity of vision. Its pacing is unlike any blockbuster, so we are allowed to follow characters down the street at a human pace, and listen to them perform, by demand, the entirety of a special song they have memorized to the customers where they run drugs. The consequences to them of events beyond their control, due to choices made by other people, are realistic and heartbreaking.
Visitors to the exhibit grab drinks at the bar. Photo by John Griswold The traveling Banksy exhibit looked good in the online ad, and there was a warning of “high sell-out risk.” I bought quickly, for two of us, mine a VIP ticket for extra access, so I…
The best part of the documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain and the select best of Bourdain’s many shows embodies the complexity of trying to hold all the beauty and pain as he moved down the road.