Monthly Archives: September 2015

Outside of reddit and youtube, where have you seen 3000 comments on a thread? I very much doubt that Silicon Valley’s biggest daily had ever seen such a number before two weeks ago, when the San Jose Mercury News published “Sunnyvale: Neighbors Sue to Declare Autistic Boy a Public Nuisance,” eliciting 2930 comments before the newspaper tied them off. Beyond the headline, your tl;dr version is that the parents and their child were, after years of therapies, incidents, complaints, and […]

Black Mass was promoted as Johnny Depp’s return to actorly stature, but critics and audiences have given the new film a lukewarm reception. This led me to recall the performances that made us fall in love with Depp in the first place. 10. Public Enemies (2009) Depp as John Dillinger squares off against Christian Bale as the policeman in pursuit. When this came out, hot on the heels of the Batman and Pirates franchises, it felt at first as though […]

They don’t get it, do they? They…just…don’t…get…it. I invoke one of the best supercuts on the internet because it’s a perfect reaction to the way the media has covered this week’s historic addresses of Pope Francis I in Washington and New York. I’m not talking about pundits per se; it’s their job to protect their little ideological viewpoints. And the politicians can be, in Catholic terms, forgiven; you can hardly blame them for shoehorning the Pope’s words into their pre-existing, […]

So, we had an IEP scheduled for yesterday at 1:30. At noon I get a call while I’m teaching a class; I call back about 20 minutes later. Jennifer, Dar’s school speech therapist, is calling to tell me that she’d like to postpone the IEP, because their system has been down for the last 24 hours, so they can’t print the usual forms. I don’t bother to say “Why didn’t you print them earlier, so that you might have sent […]

Oh, so that’s what the people’s Emmys looks like! From the jokes to the nominees to the winners to the speeches, the 67th Annual Emmy Awards represented a new sort of responsiveness to fans and glowing-screen-lovers everywhere. In 2015, when you pay to enter a packed movie house, the audience is diverse, and this year’s Emmys was reported – by host Andy Samberg – to be the most diverse on record. (Who knows if that factors in sexuality, disability, age, […]

After the last (and first) Republican debate for the 2016 Presidency, I lamented the usual summer hiatus of “Saturday Night Live”, suggested how they might have reacted to it, and got a lot of positive feedback. Well, another debate has come and gone, and “SNL” is still on hiatus. I guess I just can’t wait until the real show does something like this when Tracy Morgan returns to host the season premiere on October 3rd. How lucky for them to […]

I know that not every post here is a laugh-a-minute, so this week I thought I’d share something that makes me smile. I know that I’ve said in the past that I’m skeptical of reports about Dar’s improvement that start “oh the kids are getting along so well with him!” I always think “does he notice?” His progress and their progress with him aren’t really something I see as related. On the other hand, last year, Dar’s kindergarten teacher had […]

You are now about to witness the strength of more street knowledge. August was a little unexpected. The most critically lauded TV show (85% on metacritic) to begin and end in August was HBO’s six-episode mini-series Show Me a Hero. The most critically lauded movie of August (90% on Rotten Tomatoes) was also the month’s biggest hit, Universal’s Straight Outta Compton. Both of these cinematic projects presume to shape a coherent narrative (underdog, rise, fall, “aftermath”) from real-life events that took […]

Though Buckingham Palace didn’t make a big deal out of it, September 9, 2015 marked a once-in-a-millennium milestone: Queen Elizabeth II officially became the longest-reigning monarch in British history, and the second-longest-serving female monarch anywhere (after Eleanor of Aquitaine; Elizabeth could break that record in three years). By holding her crown for 62 years and 217 days, QEII surpassed the woman who previously held both of those titles, none other than Queen Victoria. Allow me to summarize the tone of […]

Yesterday I read a comment thread begun when a friend asked about the duration of her toddler’s terrible twos. A perky friend chirped “as soon as they can say what they want to say” and another friend chirped in agreement. And then it hit me: Dar is stuck in the Terrible Twos. Liz Phair was exiled to guyville, Dar is seemingly forever exiled to Two-ville. And spoiler alert: the famous “terrible,” despite the kid’s apparent frustration, says more about the […]