Spend Bill Gates’s Money
The rudimentary web page “Spend Bill Gates’ Money” is at neal.fun, a site that also includes “Progress,” which counts down everything from the next minute to when the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda; “Life…
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…
The Broken Hopes in ‘American Factory’
The 2019 documentary American Factory is about a Chinese glass company that opened a factory in the United States. The film is good enough to be, well, lacerating at times.
When a GM plant closed in 2008 in Dayton, 10,000 people lost their jobs. The repurposing of the plant by…
Who Could Ask for More
The “When I’m 64 Beatles Festival” was held this weekend in Prairietown, Illinois, “a populated place located within the Township of Omphghent,” not far from St. Louis.
It was a perfect day for it, 75 and sunny. Butch Moore and Alan White, who are often performing…
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)
…
“Chrissy, Manhattan, New York”
I had the strange but wonderful pleasure of meeting Chrissy while taking a stroll on Manhattan’s Lower West Side.
The New Who: I’m In Love with Her and I Feel Fine
Editor’s note: This post inaugurates the first in a series of 11 reviews of the recent reboot of Doctor Who, cast with a female doctor.
Doctor Who, “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”
Series 11, Episode 1
Written by Chris Chibnall
Directed by Jamie Childs
Starring Jodie…
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…