Dispatches

Chappelle’s New Show

Dave Chappelle’s new standup special, Sticks & Stones, has been getting attention for setting out to be provocative in the #MeToo era.

“If you say anything, you risk everything,” Morgan Freeman says in the Netflix trailer.

Chappelle says he is sick of PC scrutiny: “That’s why I don’t be coming…

Foods of Japan

If you look back through my blog, you will see I was in Japan this summer. For some reason, before I went I guess I thought many restaurants outside of the tourist quarters would serve portions an American might find small, and there would always be rice, and while the…

Travel’s Mixed Bag

Something begins to happen, when I travel, just short of three weeks into a trip. I used to think I began to wear out at that point because the travel itself was strenuous. I remember feeling an urge in Vietnam once to be home again, sitting on my own couch, drinking Diet Coke from my own glass. It sounds pathetic, but there is something important in it.

The New Who: Off to the Races

Doctor Who, “The Ghost Monument”

Series 11, Episode 2

Written by Chris Chibnall

Directed by Mark Tonderai

Starring Jodie Whittaker, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, and Bradley Walsh

Guest Starring Shaun Dooley, Susan Lynch, and Art Mali

Original Broadcast 14 October 2018 (49 minutes)

 

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All That We See or Seem

When Bashō, following Zen, implies again and again that life is a dream, something in me rebels. His entire practice was to capture concrete, sensory details of the physical world, so “dreamlike” seems like a contradiction. Yet even his final hokku, dictated as he was dying, and partial because his…

‘Yamato’ Means ‘Great Harmony’

Fifteen miles down the rail line from Hiroshima, City of Peace, is the Kure Maritime Museum, more commonly called The Yamato Museum, a paean to the greatness of Japan’s navy in WWII. The Yamato, largest battleship ever built, was completed at Kure Dockyard the week after Pearl Harbor and was…

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