As we all know by now, last week the U.S. Senate, in spectacular, lily-livered fashion, caved to the NRA, voting down even the weakest, most watered down version of a gun control bill. After the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, which so many people claimed “changed everything”, nothing, in fact, has changed at all. Forget an assault weapons ban, forget bans on high capacity magazines; we can’t even ask gun buyers to submit to a simple background check at a gun show. And, since, according to Mother Jones, “around 40% of all legal gun sales involve private sellers and don’t require background checks” that’s a lot of buyers and a lot of guns. Continue reading
Dorothy Barker
23 posts
We all have them. The beloved, critically acclaimed or culturally significant movie that we just, somehow, missed. Continue reading
This may well sound heretical to most of the members of my sex, but I’m going to say it and risk reproach anyway: Enough with the shoes.
I know. I know. I’m a woman. An adult, human, American woman. I am supposed to love shoes. Not just love them; lerve them. Flove them. Adore them. Kneel before their beauty, tremble in their glow. Stop dead at store windows displaying a perfect Prada pump; shiver with delight at the flash of a red Louboutin sole. But lately: well, the whole shoe mania thing is leaving me cold. And a little (dare I say it?) pissed off. Continue reading
This week is the season finale of Bunheads, an ABC Family confection set in a fantasy California idyll, about the teachers and students at a dance school. I will watch the episode. And I will watch it as I have watched all the prior episodes: with continuously rolled eyes and a simmering irritation that could result in a remote flying at the TV. Why? I’m hate-watching it. Along with a handful of other shows. Yes, I’m watching numerous television shows that I despise. And I’m not the only one. “Hate-watching” is a thing now; just last night my friend and I bonded over the fact that we’re both hate-watching The Newsroom, too. Another friend is hate-watching True Blood. So this is my question: What the fuck is wrong with us? Continue reading
Maybe the better question would be: Is Seth MacFarlane the jackass? In the June 18th edition of The New Yorker, there appears an article that should be one of that magazine’s typical pop culture pufferies; clever, knowing, in-depth, but not too taxing. You know the ones: Tad Friend usually writes them. I usually eat them up. I’m not looking for a scathing take-down of Andrew Stanton or The Artist or Anna Faris, I just want more information than I knew before, a few telling details, some cultural context, a little inside dope and a diverting read. Continue reading
As I mentioned in the comments earlier, my family never really celebrated Father’s Day. Both my parents were pretty committed Lefties and the general consensus was that both Father’s and Mother’s Day were Hallmark holidays created just to sell us all more crap. Nevertheless, every year when Father’s Day rolls around I can’t help thinking of my Dad and wishing I could call him, tell him happy Father’s Day and hear him say, “That’s today? Thanks for nothing, kid.” My Dad died in 2001. Continue reading
The fourth volume of Robert Caro’s immense biographical series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson was just published; it sits at number three on The New York Times non-fiction best-seller list. Entitled The Passage of Power, it joins Caro’s earlier entries The Path to Power, Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate. Such strong, manly titles! Each one is more muscular than the last, what with all that “power”, “ascending” and “mastery”. Without even reading the books (yeah, that’s not gonna happen) you certainly get a sense of Johnson; he seems like a marble statue ever shouldering uphill, a towering force of absolute forward momentum. Continue reading
This past Friday The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson aired its 1,500th show. It’s been on the air, with the Scottish born comic/actor Ferguson as host, for eight years. CBS just renewed Ferguson’s contract through the 2014 season. The show won a Peabody award in 2009 and Ferguson was nominated for an Emmy in 2006.
Nevertheless, chances are pretty good you’ve never seen it; it starts at 12:37 am for heaven’s sake, when most normal people are well asleep. The ratings, naturally, bear that up. The Late Late Show averaged about 1.6 million viewers this season (compared to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’s 1.8). But still, that’s 1.6 million people who, I promise, are laughing their asses off. Continue reading
On Friday night at the bar Public Assembly in Brooklyn, the band Trinity Jam played. This might not have made the Village Voice and Rolling Stone and Perez Hilton, but it did. That’s because Trinity Jam is made up of Patty Schemel, Melissa Auf Der Mar and Eric Erlandson. And when their former band mate got on the stage for a few songs, it really became an event; that former band mate is Courtney Love and suddenly, at a bar in Brooklyn on a Friday night in April, Hole was reunited.
The reason for this somewhat impromptu happening was the after party for a documentary called Hit So Hard; The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel, which opened this week in New York (the Cinema Village showings on Friday night were sold out). Continue reading
Recently, I booked an airline ticket through United Airlines and decided to pop for the “Economy Plus” seating. It added $54 to one leg and $64 to the other but I figured: why not. The ticket was actually less than I’d expected and I’m an adult with long legs and a little money in the bank. I deserve it. When I happened to check my bank statement on-line (I pay for everything with my debit card) I noticed that I’d been charged twice for each of the economy plus additions; a total of $118 that United, essentially, stole from my bank account. Trying to reverse these charges has plunged me into a bureaucratic rabbit hole of hell that has gotten me thinking: just how much is corporate America filching from us, right beneath our noses? Continue reading