Monthly Archives: November 2016

Today Dar’s Alta Bates speech instructor told me that Dar needs to work on using his iPad for more communication and not just things he wants. I guess that could be seen as a good sign, as though he’s good enough with the things he wants. She says that when she presents a pen, or toy apple, or toy tiger, and says, “what is this?” Dar should be able to find it on the iPad. She suggests we start with […]

Order yourself a strong cup of Luke’s coffee, because Gilmore Girls is back. Gilmore Girls was a thing before things were things…or was it? Utterly ignored by the Emmys and rarely earning anything more than a 5 share in the ratings, Gilmore spent much of its run as your crazy aunt’s favorite show that you never watched. Ten years ago, there wasn’t even a proper book about it…until the one whose cover you’re looking at. My essay was the book’s […]

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I looked forward to them every year, partly because the family would get together. I was “bought in” at every level: the TV specials, the food preparation, the familial love. Dar, now 7, isn’t bought in. On one level there’s relief; we don’t have to do anything in particular to impress him. On another level, I feel bad that he doesn’t get excited by Charlie Brown specials […]

“It’s quiet out there. Too quiet.” – Robert Stack, Airplane! You already know that last January 14, when the Oscar nominations were announced, the ensuing #oscarssowhite controversy caused a near-state of emergency amongst the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, leading to, among other things, public promises for the AMPAS membership to be 50% women and people of color by 2020. (As the link reveals, the Academy may be backtracking on that.) We also know that the hullabaloo led directly […]

(Also on medium.) Some people have blamed the astonishing election of Donald Trump to the Presidency on the over-stridence of broadly defined political correctness, like Robby Soave at Reason and Amanda Marcotte at Salon. In this, they basically agree with Jeff Greenfield, who in Politico blamed the election results on Democrats’ “wholesale embrace of identity politics,” with Yuval Levin, who wrote in Slate, “There’s a kind of descent into a really crude identity politics among some younger voices on the left […]

I watched the wonderful movie Life, Animated the other day, which is about Owen Suskind, who is autistic. I had read the book, by Owen’s dad Ron Suskind, although the movie covers Owen’s grown-up life in far more detail. As Aladdin once sang, let’s take you wonder by wonder… Wonder #1: The movie shows ample footage of Owen during The Time Before. One often hears, at least in my communities, that parents can never bear to look at the home […]

I know what you’re thinking: wait, this Wednesday is already the season finale of You’re the Worst?! Yep, and that’s why it’s time to take a quick look back at the 10 best parts of Season 3 of TV’s best show about its worst people: Lindsay’s Paul-stabbing/Gretchen’s Spanish-speaking: these each happened in the season’s first episode, it’s true, but I loved them both for the same reason: here’s a woman we hate-love, doing something we love-love, making another character we […]

On November 8, 2016, when a reality-TV star became the most powerful person in the world, reality ended. And not for any one reason, but for ten of them that most people don’t fully understand. Bye bye Truth, hello Trumpth. May I explain? (1) Big Data took a Big Hit on Tuesday. Big Data, and Long Tail economics, have completely reshaped most industries in America, particularly the advertising of every single product made by the Fortune 500. Corporations pay X […]

Today I’m taking a “gobsmacked” pass on writing a real blog entry. Instead I’m just going to hold my little autistic Dar and hug him. Unlike almost every other parent of a 7-year-old that you know, I don’t have to have The Talk with my kid today. I don’t have to explain Donald J. Trump. He’ll never really know who Trump is. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Trump won’t affect him. Not sure how obvious it is, but I tend to […]

A year ago, I said that the real war on PC was coming. And it came, oh, how it came. We now know that America contains many more openly prejudiced people than anyone thought possible two years ago. And now, many smart people are wondering what we’re going to do with all the “deplorables.” Well, I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it. After Hillary Clinton is elected President, the temptation for her supporters will be to […]