Uncategorized
Those who can’t
This is an interesting idea for a documentary (h/t the New Yorker’s Book Bench Blog), which is making the rounds … A guy found all of the poems he wrote as a teenager, when he was convinced that he would become the world’s greatest poet. Years later, he unearths them and realizes how bad the…
Read MoreLost, found, lost
Here’s something I wrote for the paper about the end of (perhaps meaning of) Lost. More important, here’s the Owen Freeman illo that went with it. Only, when it came time to run the essay, the powers that be decided to run it on A1 on Friday, where we would just never ever run an…
Read MoreYou’ll be wanting this
At long last, the greatest hits of Gene Weingarten. Coming in July.
Read MoreSNL Homowatch (5/15: Alec Baldwin)
Well, it remains to be seen if my time is well-spent on an SNL Homowatch or not, but hallelujah, the season is over. If anything egregiously gay-obsessed comes up in the summer reruns, I’ll hork up a blog item about it. If not, I’ll think about reviving the SNLHW (hey, if everybody can abbreviate everything…
Read MoreOh my garsh
Big hailstorm Sunday back in the land of my birth. The wind comes right behind the plain … and fucks shit up. I feel bad for everyone’s car. I also feel bad for watching these over and over. I love the people and their acksints. Sounds like home; looks like it too. I can almost…
Read MoreLooks really matter
I got into newspapers in high school because I liked the way they look. In college, I chose writing and editing over design, but two decades later I keep wondering if I made the right choice. We’ve been attempting a bit of visual branding with some of my longer reviews/essays about television in the Style…
Read MoreGood grades in everything but math and hair
Right on schedule, I’ve become one of those tedious people who measures the passage of time in varying degrees of disbelief and iPod playlists. According to reunion literature that came in the mail and which I tossed in the trash, it’s been 20 years since I graduated from Loyola. (Bachelor of Arts — major in…
Read MoreThe truth
This brief screed about “overwriting” was posted by Michael Brick near the end of a very long comments thread over on Gangrey that discusses writing, outlining, frustrations, listening to music while you write (do you or don’t you?) and so much else. I’m reposting it here because it’s just so damn true. “That word though,…
Read MoreBoard
“Resentment is like drinking poison, and then waiting for the other person to die.” — Carrie Fisher Since I clipped it out years ago (I think from the New York Times Magazine sometime in the late ’90s), I’ve had this picture either on a refrigerator or a bulletin board or somewhere at the ready. As…
Read MoreSNL Homowatch: 5/8 (Betty White!)
[Author’s Note: This is my “SNL Homowatch,” where I count and try to make sense of Saturday Night Live‘s endless obsession with making jokes about gay people and gay sex, without letting gay writers or gay performers have a go at the joke themselves. It’s a cycle I call enlightened homophobia — jokes about gays,…
Read More