celebrities

47 posts

Is Seth MacFarlane A Jackass?

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 →

An Open Letter to Kim Kardashian from the Ghost of My Mother

My mom was a tough lady. Born to genocide survivors from Turkey in pre-war Palestine and raised in the post-war West Bank she grew up with loss always on the brink, and a sense garnered out of necessity that one can make lemonade out of even the tartest, dirtiest lemons. She was also very, very ill from a young age, one of the first in her generation to be formally diagnosed with SLE (as opposed to “rheumatism”), but regardless of her life’s seemingly endless challenges, she went to school in the states, graduated Magna cum Laude, and was a highly respected linguist and speech pathologist. Along the way she married my dad- a schlubby, sweet Mormon guy (I know), and had me. So it goes.

She was also a bitch of the first order. A woman who inspired fear and respect. She ruled the household with an iron fist clad in a velvet Chanel glove, and made it a point of pride to stand any man down who got in the way of her or her husband’s success. Continue reading →