Armageddon sick of these fires.

No blog today. Sorry, guys. I’m running errands, bashing out a script for the radio, and taking a stand on climate change. All time-consuming pursuits, especially the climate change one - because, quite honestly, it’s hot as hell here. Someone needs to do something about this.
Right now in L.A. we’re witnessing what Armageddon will look, feel, and smell like.
Apocalyptic fires [...]

He’s baaaaaaa-ack.

Every time Michael Moore releases a new film, something inside of me lurches convulsively, and a crushed-out little voice cries, “Why aren’t you doing stuff like that?”
And I have no answer.
I’d certainly love to. Perhaps I fear that if I start shooting bare-knuckle exposes of my adopted country, then my adopted country might just get [...]

Corruption: the NEW American Way.

Today I felt I had to draw your attention to the Lobby Blog on the Huffington Post.
Increasingly, what gets done in the world of U.S. politics is less to do with what should be done or what’s for the good of the people, and more about lining the profits of the very rich and pandering [...]

Genius finally gets its due.

Not often I’m excited and baying to see an animated movie, but this one promises to be stunning. It’s called 9, it’s produced by Tim Burton, and started off as a mesmerizing little short film that did the rounds on YouTube. Burton saw it, invited Shane Acker the director to turn it into a piece [...]

Short, Dick on Peta.

You know how some people like to be subtle, while others sledgehammer their message home as though you don’t have two brain cells to rub together?
Well, try this for size. I have no clue if any of it’s true, but PETA seems to think it is, and I did see one of their billboards over [...]

Fantasies and facts, and nothing in between.

I know I shouldn’t be droning on, but it’s been a tricky week and this is important. So let me hand over the Swami today to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, and a sterling column he wrote about how pathetically impotent the modern media have become in separating what’s news from what’s drivel and bunkum. 
He uses as [...]

Listen and learn. Obama sets things right.

The man is a revelation. Please pass this on to anyone you know who may have been suckered by the liars and the right wing fundamentalist scaremongers on Fox News.
“Today,” he says, “I want to spend a few minutes debunking some of the more outrageous myths circulating on the internet, on cable TV, and repeated at some [...]

Writing a few wrongs.

I have a gift, did I ever mention this? It wouldn’t surprise me if I didn’t. It’s just something I can do; a natural talent so effortless that it frequently slips my mind. Yet it’s an amazing asset nonetheless and I should do more with it.
What am I talking about? Why, handwriting analysis, of course.
You didn’t know?
It’s not exactly a [...]

Ways to baffle Americans, part 1: Acorn Antiques.

It remains one of the funniest things ever broadcast on British TV. Unfortunately, it doesn’t travel, either historically or geographically.
Acorn Antiques was a fake soap loosely modeled on a real soap running at the time called Crossroads, about life in a motel, whose bad acting, flimsy sets, and abominable clunky plot-twists became a British institution [...]

The Pitts. But in a good way.

There’s a lot of talk in the news about Brad Pitt’s appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, chatting about how ridiculous the anti-gay marriage lobby is and also about smoking pot.
I get the feeling that this is not what he wanted the promotion for his new movie to be about. And it wasn’t helped [...]