Category: entertainment

  • musical

    The Freddie Fender ballad “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” has been playing on a fucking loop in my head for the past 48 hours. I loathe this song in capital letters: LOATHE. I can’t say why; it’s one of those gut reactions that makes me instantly change the radio station. I think I can say… Read.

  • in the dark

    I was on the sofa with a book this morning, curling up into a ball, tighter and tighter, for more than two hours before I realized why the house was so goddamned cold: It’s Tuesday. I’m not normally in the house on Tuesday morning. I’m usually at the office, more’s the pity, so the smart… Read.

  • The Caine Mutiny

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    If memory serves, I bought my first copy of The Caine Mutiny at a used book store in Lincoln, England, in 1999 or 2000. It was a pretty beat-up, water-damaged Penguin paperback edition and I read it as though I was possessed by it, all in one week. (400 pages in a week is pretty… Read.

  • spy world

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    I picked up a copy of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre the last time I was at the resale store. I’ve wanted to read it since I watched the recently-made movie with Gary Oldman, and I have to say I could follow the plot of the movie a lot more easily than… Read.

  • bummer

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    I thought I would spend my lunch break today reading the latest book of fantasy and speculative fiction from Kameron Hurley, The Stars Are Legion. I ordered it last week, or thought I did, and when it didn’t show up on my doorstep and I didn’t get an email from Amazon about it, I checked… Read.

  • La-La Land

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    B and I saw the musical La-La Land two weeks ago in Sun Prairie and she’s still singing songs from it. She’s already bought the soundtrack so we can play it over and over at home, and I think she wants to see it again, too. I’d gladly go see it again if she asked… Read.

  • Spectral

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    Netflix viewers of the movie Spectral gave it four and a half stars. I am now a Netflix viewer of the movie Spectral, and I say that’s at least four stars too many. The setup seemed promising: wraithlike beings haunt a war-torn European city, killing heavily-armed and armored soldiers by merely running through them. Invisible… Read.

  • Oh Barry

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    Weirdest thing that happened to me last weekend: I heard Barry Manilow on the radio. That never happens. Never. I listen to two stations that brag they play the best of the 70s, but they must be using a definition of “the best” that I’m not aware of. Either that, or the people who program… Read.

  • Rogue One

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    I saw Rogue One last week because I am nothing if not a completest. I’ve seen every single one of the Star Wars movies, so at this point missing one would feel like missing church. I’d like to say it was as good as Star Wars (or, if you’re going to get pedantic on me,… Read.

  • “The Greatest Generation”

    “I had no idea, until I became a war worker myself, how low wages actually were. When my skimpy little paycheck of $23 a week came to me, I wondered how on earth I could ever live on that in wartime Washington if I were forced to pay my own room, board, transportation, doctors’ bills… Read.

photo of the author and the author's best friend