Michael Patrick Brady

I love this style: Carlton Banks, Kanye West, and the rise of the NBA nerd.

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful response to that grotesque Forbes column that’s making the rounds.

The Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George have an awkward night out with Elaine’s writer father is based on a real-life event where Larry David was forced to entertain his girlfriend’s father—Richard Yates.

Movie Review:
The Muppets

I agree with this Globe editorial: veto casino gambling in Massachusetts.

Pretty obsessed with the Beach Boys’ “Surf’s Up” these days.

“A strategic document from [his] 2007 campaign lists “perfect hair” among [his] flaws.” And 98 other fun Romney facts from ThinkProgress.

“Wages as a percent of the economy… it’s basically the lowest it has ever been.” What the Wall Street protests are all about, in charts.

I’ve been blurbed on the back of the paperback edition of Amir Alexander’s Duel at Dawn

Movie Review:
Drive

“We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil as worthy of genuine respect”

“Liberal critics of Obama generally want both maximal partisan conflict and maximal legislative achievement. In the real world, those two things are often at odds. “

Finnish immigrants, and the shifting definition of “whiteness” in America.

The National Book Critics Circle has made my Boston Globe review of Ben Loory’s Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day their selection for today’s Powells.com “Review-a-Day.”

“A lot of what we’re talking about now is not Harvard, but Harvard as a lens for what happens when you get stuck between class ‘spaces’ in America.”

“The vast majority of Republicans… are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully cynical.”

Seems like a good day to revisit my PopMatters feature on The Departed, South Boston, and the Irish mob.

A great interview with Dick Van Dyke at the AV Club.

Nothing you can do will help a dead man

Great idea! Move the New Hampshire primary to Massachusetts!

Movie Review:
Midnight in Paris

Remember Charles Sumner

“Republicans [have] moved to a mental Shangri-La, where unwanted problems can be wished away, prejudice trumps fact, expertise is evidence of error, and reality itself comes to be regarded as some kind of elitist plot.”

Apparently nobody uses AIM anymore. This article actually made me sad. I still remember the panic and anxiety that gripped BC during the Great Three-Day AIM Blackout of 2002.

Movie Review:
Bridesmaids

Quotes falsely attributed to MLK and Mark Twain are making the rounds. How did they get started?

Robert E. Lee was not motivated by duty, honor.

“[W]e pretend to need them. We pretend to educate the kids. We pretend that we’re actually including them in the American ideal, but we’re not.” David Simon (The Wire) talks to Bill Moyers

The undergrad business major is a waste of time.

The Awl has been turning out some amazing content lately. When Alan Met Ayn: Atlas Shrugged and our Tanked Economy

Paul Krugman on the Ryan budget: “Ludicrous and Cruel.”

New England Uber Alles. A chart ranking quality of life in the U.S. states.

Movie Review:
The Fighter

Movie Review:
True Grit

Denis Dutton, founder of the incredible Arts & Letters Daily, has died.

Obama is a pragmatist.

Movie Review:
Black Swan

Whit Stillman has finished his fourth movie.

Jimmy Carter interview on Real Time. Great president? Or greatest president?

Great map: the racial makeup of Boston.

Movie Review:
The Town

Movie Review:
I’m Still Here

Pretty fascinating interview with Fidel Castro over at the Atlantic.

Movie Review:
Inception

The new ALARM Magazine website is live, and it looks awesome. Stay tuned for my features on Matmos and Liars.

Toby Lester, author of The Fourth Part of the World, writes about America’s naming in the Globe.

FEED Magazine, which I credit as an inspiration, closed in 2001. They just put their archives back online.

Manute Bol invented the phrase “My Bad.” Or not?

Just received my copy of the new Menomena record, Mines. Had a great time interviewing them for ALARM when their last album came out.

Dear New Hampshire: Stop trying to name a mountain after Reagan. Georgia beat you to it.

I am not the guitarist for Cute Is What We Aim For.

The beauty of hand-drawn maps.

Happy International Worker’s Day!

I’ve added some more audio clips from my interview with Matmos.

John Tesh is a pretty cool dude.

Chris Ware’s rejected Fortune 500 cover. I love micro-detailed drawings like this.

“It’s a conundrum. But Jesus was resurrected after three days, and you can visit Muhammad’s grave.” William Langewiesche talks to a military sniper.

Let nostalgia wash over you: the 120 Minutes playlist and video archive

Caught Edge of Doom (1950) on TCM at 3am this morning. A really excellent noir that, despite a tacked-on neat and tidy epilogue, has been described as “one of the bleakest films of the 1950s.”

The top 100 books about New England per Boston.com

PBS NOW takes an in-depth look at Braddock, Pennsylvania, a failing steel town whose mayor is trying to erase the blight and revitalize its fortunes.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is pretty great, and his speech, “Why Working People Are Angry” shows why.

The search for the lost, first cut of The Magnificent Ambersons.

Kelefa Sanneh on the protean nature of white culture and identity.

Credit to ALARM #37 for introducing me to the striking photography of Miss Aniela. The self-portraits remind me a lot of Cindy Sherman.

The silver screen is now teal and orange.

This beautifully awkward 1989 interview of LL Cool J by Kim Gordon in SPIN was the inspiration for “Kool Thing“

“The Federal Republic is not the place for an urban guerrilla movement in the Latin American style. The country offers, at most, suitable conditions for a gangster drama.”

The new Jed and Lucia EP, Many Many, is available on their website for only three dollars. It’s worth a lot more than that. Really excellent, particularly “Spaceman.”

Through the Sparks has a new album coming out March 23rd: Worm Moon Waining. They’re offering three new singles, plus all their previous material, including the excellent Lazarus Beach as free downloads at their website.

Movie Review:
Shutter Island

The future of slums

American TV shows have too many episodes; it’s quantity over quality.

Papyrus is the new Comic Sans.

Movie Review:
A Single Man

Movie Review:
Up in the Air

Whit Stillman talks to Charlie Rose about writing, making films, and how Americans misunderstand what’s great about Paris.

Is the South End erasing Roxbury from the map?

The Rise of Republican Nihilism

Pardon John Brown?

Bethany McLean looks at Goldman Sachs in Vanity Fair.

Movie Review:
An Education

Galileo’s fingers.

“This is just entry level to what’s coming. Just the appalling volume of artifacts will erase all meaning that they could ever possibly have. But we probably won’t get that far anyway.” Cormac McCarthy in the WSJ.

“At one time, we were a city of hate. We’re not a city of hate anymore.”

People felt the universe would reward them for doing what they wanted to do, instead of doing what they needed to do…

How Poverty Works

Objectivism is not a philosophy, it’s a personality disorder.

Pictures like this make me glad they fixed the Hubble.

Ted Kennedy, R.I.P.

Movie Review:
Inglorious Basterds

“Don’t waste time bandying words with philistines and crackpots.” — Marcus Aurelius

Movie Review:
In The Loop

This site is now running on Bluehost, as I’ve finally gotten fed up with Yahoo! Web Hosting.

Movie Review:
The Cove

Movie Review:
The Hurt Locker

Movie Review:
500 Days of Summer

Hating the Kindle

“Being an English major prepares you for impersonating authority” –Garrison Keillor

Remembering Morphine

Harold Bloom discusses Blood Meridian

The last time I wrote about Sonic Youth was in this triple-take on Sonic Youth, The Whitey Album, and Psychic Hearts back in 2006 for Stylus Magazine. It’s one of my favorite reviews.

The antilibrary of Umberto Eco.

Even though I won a free pizza last week, I still hate Twitter.

Movie Review:
Star Trek

Not surprised to see the Jesuits raising this issue. Good for them.

Restaurant Review:
Mooo….

Richard Wagner – Vorspiel

Mike Rowe on the importance of hard work.

The New Republic defends The New Deal from revisionist, conservative historians.

William Langewiesche’s article on the hijacking of a French luxury ship by Somali pirates further reveals his belief in the irrelevance of governments in postmodern crises and a disdain for the vanity of the first world.

Movie Review:
Watchmen

Neko Case in the NYT Magazine. Middle Cyclone out March 3rd. Excited.

Movie Review:
Slumdog Millionaire

Restaurant Review:
No. 9 Park

Though I may not be the bottom review anymore, at least my opinion is acknowledged on Wikipedia.

Movie Review:
The Reader

Ended up right at the bottom, just as predicted. Green seems generous, should be yellow.

It’s unfortunate that Malia has to use a Kodak camera simply because it’s American made. Their cameras are poorly made and prone to failure.

Theater Review:
Equus

Movie Review:
The Wrestler

Movie Review:
Milk

I’m addicted to the TED Lectures YouTube channel. See: Sir Ken Robinson, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?,” Hans Rosling making stats entertaining, and Dan Dennett on teaching religions.

New William Langewiesche article on the mid-air collision of a Boeing 737 and a private jet over Brazil in 2006, at Vanity Fair.

Movie Review:
Doubt

The perils of popular young-adult lit.

Good riddance.

Prescience in Satire:

The Onion – January 17th, 2001 | Bush also promised… that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years… Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession… a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs…

Restaurant Review:
KO Prime

Powerful photos of Barack Obama on the campaign trail.

Hodgman on Writing:

…to become an expert in any given subject that might be thrown your way, from hot dogs to hangover cures, the cellular process of aging, and to present yourself as such an authority with utter fraudulency and a completely straight face. And then to dump all that information out of your brain and start again…

The voice of PBS’s outstanding Frontline

Movie Review:
Burn After Reading

Sad: they’ve retired the Stealth Fighter. Seeing it fly at the Hanscom Air Show in 1997 was a real thrill.

Why I Love Massachusetts:

[Democratic State Senate candidate] Chang-Di­az will face a little-known Socialist Workers Party candidate, William Theodore Leonard, in the Nov. 4 general election. There is no Republican candidate.

Outer space is infinitely interesting.

Soda vs. Pop by county. I am doing my part to keep “Tonic” alive.

Can’t say I like the new Stop & Shop logo. At least the old one was related to stopping and shopping.

Wired profiles Neal Stephenson. Loved the Baroque Cycle, but it had one flaw on the hardcover spine: the second and third books use a long s, but the first volume doesn’t. Looking forward to Anathem.

Movie Review:
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

I can’t believe the Goliath Cranes that lorded over Quincy are being dismantled and shipped to Romania.

I always loved the AMG take on Jon Spencer: “…inspired showman or mendacious con man (frankly, he’s both).”

The United States has a long history of dirty politics, particularly when it comes to alleged religious affiliations.

Higher education isn’t about learning, it’s about defining class strata. Related.

They should start their own all-female counterclergy, and let people decide which Catholic church they like best. Like Antipopes.

The drummers were there first. Learn to enjoy it. Maybe even participate. Anyone can drum.

The New Yorker has a thing for self-harming psychiatric disorders:
The Itch. Lesch-Nyhan.

Mad Men returns on July 27th, looking to inherit the title of best cable drama now that The Wire is finished. This NYT profile of its creator is a nice aperitif.

If only the Bible were as well written as Paradise Lost. It’s… inspired.

It’s a great time to be a film critic. Not so great to be a film fan.

“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” It’s Bloomsday.

You can tear down the projects, but the abstract root causes of poverty are harder to demolish.

Pirate Community Radio in Dorchester, filling a void and facing extinction.

Forbes has featured my articles quite prominently in their Father’s Day Gift Guide

“Measured against the problem we face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know…”

The table of recurring themes in the work of John Irving is hilarious. Everyone should have their work splayed out so coolly.

Q: What do the Daytona 500, Britney Spears, great sandwiches, and I have in common?

A: Yahoo thinks we’re important.