F*ck, yeah!

Replace the asterisk with the vowel of your choice and what you have is the sound-bite that goes along with Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum’s famous fist pump. Lincecum, in case you’ve been living on another planet this baseball season, is the Giant’s pitching ace, the long-haired little kid who looks like a skate-punk, even when [...]

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Prolonging the Party or Stuck in a Rut?

Over the weekend, I saw a screening of 127 Hours, a soon-to-be-released film by Danny Boyle and starring James Franco that’s about Aron Ralston, the guy who you likely heard about back in 2003, when he got trapped by a boulder in a remote corner of Utah’s Canyonlands, and wound up breaking both bones in [...]

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Candles in the Wind

I’ve been thinking about Shannon’s post from Tuesday about the Mad Men finale, when Don Draper chose Pretty over Smart — even though Smart was herself quite Pretty.  Now, I tend to think that Don went from rock star to weenie when he proposed to his 25-year old secretary on a sex-charged whim:   He [...]

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The Lure of TomorrowLand in a Mad World

Did you happen to catch Sunday’s Mad Men Finale? Entitled “Tomorrowland,” as always, the show served up a heaping dose of Yesteryear reality, tarted up in a no-detail-left-behind package of pitch-perfect mid-century style porn. Initially–and despite the big jaw-dropper–I turned off the TV and thought about the women. Faye, the successful, independent, and beautiful doctor [...]

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A Whore By Any Other Name

Doncha just love campaign season? Phones aren’t hung up promptly; scandals ensue! As a Californian, I’m naturally thinking of Whore-Gate, or the instance of gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown calling the police union for an endorsement, and neglecting to hang up before an aide helpfully suggested “What about saying she’s a whore?” (The background is this: [...]

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Brick by brick: Breaking down the maternal wall.

Last week Forbes released its list of the hundred most powerful women in the world and Broadsheet’s Mary Elizabeth Williams had a big beef with it. Not the women who were chosen or, for that matter, why they were chosen.  She was pissed because of a chunk of info that was included in each woman’s [...]

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Of Age and Aunts and Betty White

So I was roaming around The Daily Beast yesterday — ahem, looking for intellectual commentary — when I was sidetracked by a Popeater link entitled thus: Betty White: You’re Never Too Old for Sex. And so of course I clicked. What I found was a little riff on a cover story from AARP magazine in [...]

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Of Sexism and Censorship

Last week was Banned Books Week, and in its honor, I’m bringing up the case of Laurie Halse Anderson’s young-adult book Speak, in which the female protagonist is raped–which a Missouri college professor apparently believes amounts to “soft pornography.” In an Op-Ed piece that ran in Springfield, Missouri’s News-Leader entitled “Filthy books demeaning to Republic [...]

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