The guys in Gaza must be nearing 60 like my bandmates and I. I wonder if they stayed in our country after they were free to return to theirs without booking a steady gig in a gulag. I wonder what they make of Vladimir Putin having an ally in the White House or a short-timer like Pete Hegseth having oversight of the mightiest military on Earth.
Oksana Maksymchuk explained that she started writing ‘Still City’ in Ukraine, “maybe half a year before the actual invasion in the summer of 2021…and the Russian troops were amassing on the border, and we were assured that there would be nothing happening, but it seemed very threatening. I thought, ‘I’m going to write it as a kind of narrative about a non-event,’ something that I was sure would not take place.”
The world knew Nemerov's poetry. No one guessed his heart.
Zombie strips, they are called, drawn long after the original artist has died, and going through the motions for syndication. Bill Watterson, adored for his art and admired for his integrity against corporate newspapers and marketing, criticized this phenomenon. It is said Charles Schultz left instructions not to allow it to happen to his strip.
The brief promotional materials said it had something to do with Chekhov’s “Three Sisters.” I had hopes it would be live theater and that maybe Krymov would appear, if only remotely—he seems to have a new play in New York to promote—or that a scholar of theater or Slavic studies might be there to explain what was going on.
I have no hesitation declaring “To Be or Not to Be” perhaps the greatest film of all time, nor should anyone else. That is not written for effect. I mean it, both in emphasis and a level of insistent aggression that, if you have not seen it, stop what you are doing and watch it forthwith.
I felt strong, refusing the Barbie color. But I denied myself too lavishly.
Given David Holthouse’s quest in ‘Sasquatch,’ he himself is the subject of one of my old, scarcely believable memories. This memory is not potent enough to send me on an investigation worthy of a documentary series, but the coincidence spurs me at least to commit it to writing.
‘Perfect Days’ (2023), directed by Wim Wenders, challenges us, starting with its title, to consider what it means to live an enlightened, fulfilled life.
Somewhere between pages 25 and 30, showcasing my daughter’s fourth-grade photo and Christmas of 2015, the images cease, as if my photo album took a different route from my own at some mysterious fork in time. Somehwere between the physical world and the ether of the digital, years slipped away, as if they never took form.