Day 571: Surratt Sentenced To Swing

originally published July 24, 2013 Normally I shy away from writing articles on topics which have already been turned into major motion pictures directed by Robert Redford and starring Robin Wright. But I’ve never seen the film The Conspirator, nor have I spoken to anyone who has, so I’m just going to play this one […]

Day 570: The Crown Jewels Of Cinemas

originally published July 23, 2013 When Samuel Lionel Rothafel first arrived in New York, he had big plans for the place. The year was 1912, and people had been cramming into nickelodeons and converted vaudeville theaters to watch movies for more than a decade. But to Rothafel, movies were more than globs of sideshow kitsch […]

Day 569: The Motion Picture Patents Company (Or How Thomas Edison Was A Dick About The Film Business)

originally published July 22, 2013 Ask any conspiracy nut – or in fact anyone who knows anything about the state of modern media, because in this case, the conspiracy nuts are bang-on correct – and they’ll tell you, a shockingly small number of companies control almost all the mass media that we as a culture […]

Day 568: Skymall’s Spectacular Bounty Of Strange

originally published July 21, 2013 If you have spent any time aboard a commercial airliner, and if while doing so you’ve been able to pry yourself away from the in-flight showing of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, edited for mature content (running time: approximately twelve minutes), then you’ve probably perused the pages of Skymall, the in-flight […]

Day 567: The Serialest Of Serial Killers

originally published July 20, 2013 Things aren’t looking great for serial killers. Don’t get me wrong, this is probably a good thing, I’m just saying that, like photomat operators or carpeted lamp salesmen, it’s a career path in jeopardy of falling right off the market. Back in the olden days, there was no DNA testing. […]

Day 566: The 566th-Day Stretch

originally published July 19, 2013 Regular readers know I don’t devote a lot of my sports-watching time to anything other than NFL football and Olympic shot-put trials. Nothing against the other sports out there – I simply like the fact that I can cram all my vicarious thrill-gaming into Sunday. Well, and Monday night. Thursday […]

Day 565: Ninety Minutes From New York To Paris?

originally published July 18, 2013 There was a time when I pined about the lack of flying cars in this so-called future we live in, to the point where even my dogs learned to roll their eyes when I’d bring it up. Well Rufus, I’ll have you know there was more to my childhood daydreams […]

Day 564: Have Gum Will Travel

originally published July 17, 2013 There is something blissfully inelegant about chewing gum. As soon as you pop it in your mouth, you are in possession of a piece of eventual garbage that, if you don’t start out with an exit strategy, may finish its life crammed under a desk or depurifying the bottom of […]

Day 563: Why The Little Guy Keeps Picking On Poor Monsanto

originally published July 16, 2013 If you’re like me, you probably have at least two or three friends on your Facebook feed who periodically vomit a string of ‘awareness’ posts. You’ll read the first couple, then your scrolling will gradually increase speed until you thankfully land on a photo of some friend’s friend’s baby. A […]

Day 562: Happy Centenarian, Lots Of Stuff

originally published July 15, 2013 Maybe it’s simply the distorted perspective of having a daughter who believes the original Teen Wolf film is ‘old’, the Woodstock concert is ‘ancient’ and Elvis Presley is ‘ancestor-esque’, but I think our culture is in danger of losing its sense of history. This is why we curators of trivia […]