Harry Patch, 1898-2009

Two weeks ago I noted the passing of 113-year-old Henry Allingham, who, besides being the oldest man on Earth, was also the last founding member of the Royal Air Force and one of the last five veterans of "the war to end all wars" still living. At that time...

Arachnophobia At The Watergate

"Get back, you eight-legged freaks" – actor David Arquette’s ad-lib that inspired the title of the 2002 film Eight Legged Freaks, which was called Arach Attack in production There was also the 1990 film Arachnophobia with Jeff Daniels. But both...

Pynchon In Nixonland

Thomas Pynchon, the mystery man of modern American letters (though not exactly all that mysterious – his voice is, after all, a familiar one to regular viewers of reruns of The Simpsons), has a new novel out in about a week. Its title is Inherent Vice, and...

After The “Beer Summit”

It is now a little over twenty-four hours since the eminent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge (Mass.) Police Department sat down at a white lawn table on the South Lawn of the White House, joined by President Obama (with...

Laughing Matters

So here I am, having just judged the Daily Show as having jumped the shark by substituting predictable polemic for snarky satire, posting yet another Daily Show clip for your comedy delectation. So what’s up with that?  Was I hasty?  Did I jump…the gun? Or...