Putting on the Ritz Crackers, Conclusion
No one today, it seems, can pursue a hobby, escape a vice, or suffer a tragedy without submitting himself to the ministrations of “professional” experts.
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Westerns Episode 19, The Long Riders (1980)
In this final episode in the series, Dr. Fleming looks at Walter Hill’s 1980 film The Long Riders, which offers a look-in at the James-Younger gang and their exploits in Missouri and elsewhere.
Puttin’ On the Ritz Crackers
I used to take some care in cutting and lighting my cigars, but the sight of the aficionados at work, many of whom have less taste in cigars than the affected young man, has driven me to biting the end off and snatching a light from a pack of cheap matches or from the kitchen stove.
Podcast: America From Pete Rose to Kamala Harris
America, once the land of opportunity for ambitious men is now dedicated to incompetence.
Wednesday’s Child: Curriculum Vitarum
In Sicily they say a cat has seven lives. I am now on my seventh, and the thought of it no more perturbs me than it does the tenacious feline.
Wooden Heads and Stony Hearts
The abortion question is being raised by both sides in the shadow boxing performance we call presidential elections. No other question so exemplifies Sam Francis’ characterization (borrowed from the father of Neoconservatism, Benjamin Disraeli) of our two national factions as the Evil Party and the Stupid Party.
Ray Goes to the Movies at Home: Introduction to the Fifties
The 1950s are often called the American decade, a time when the United States ruled the roost militarily, economically, and culturally. Hence, the title of this list of my favorite movies.
How Your Tax Dollars Are Funding Invasion USA
The Daily Mail has just published an article by Todd Bensman, who has been in Colombia investigating the U.S. taxpayer funded system of importing Third World immigrants into the United States.
Wednesday’s Child: The Gadarene Instinct
The subject of “election interference” is of late the media equivalent of tulip fever, notwithstanding that free competition of opinions and ideas, which interfere with and undermine one another, is what a proper electoral campaign ought to be all about.
Beers for Fears
Americans live on a diet of fear. The fears on which we feed are not just our metaphorical daily dose of nuclear holocaust, deadly plague, poisonous spiders, extraterrestrial invasion, and global warming, but, literally, the food we put into our mouths.
Wednesday’s Child: The Death of Music in the Spirit of Fun
A longish title today, but worth it. Nietzsche’s birthday, on October 15 exactly 180 years ago, is coming up, and what better tribute to the author of The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music than a modern update? Especially because my post a few weeks back, on the different speeds with which the arts atrophy, elicited such a lively response from the gentle reader.
