Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock
Show me your hands. Good, they’re clean. Thumb check, everyone. Twitching and ready to turn up or down? Yes, it’s movie day.
I haven’t caught any stories that note James Cameron is the kind of director who sometimes drops into a shot a wink at a movie that inspired him or relates [...]
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Friday, September 11, 2009
On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States rejoined its fellow nations in finding itself vulnerable to attack.
Because it was attacked.
Americans had grown complacent since what, Pearl Harbor, 59 years and 9 months earlier?
They aren’t anymore.
While increasingly cautious, which is good, and arbitrarily suspicious, bad, Americans overall have gained little wisdom from 9/11. We’ve fallen back [...]
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You scroll through the Internet and land here. Your choice, your control. I create an essay, choosing topic, slant and wording. I’m in control of what you’re reading now. Hah!
The wife reminds the husband about some chore. “You are so controlling,” he says. The husband expounds so about his day that the wife is left [...]
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — News item: The Fort Smith National Historic Site will host a reenactment of the Confederate occupation of Fort Smith from 1861-63 on Saturday. … Union soldiers abandoned the garrison at Fort Smith on April 23, 1861, leaving the fort open to Arkansas state troops. Union forces recaptured the fort in September 1863.
Pvt. [...]
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Report: Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.
Why, everyone should see Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a cross between Oliver Twist (book and any movie version) and WALL-E. Other lead characters: Fagin, Artful Dodger and Eve. The plot: fish-out-of-water-into-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire.
(Shouldn’t reviews now and then be as short as possible? Complete write-ups, not capsules)
In short, this is the best best-movie I’ve seen [...]
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“Today, I wrote about kittens. We’re in a gigantic financial crisis, everybody knows it, everybody is going crazy about it, everybody else is writing about it, so sometimes the best thing to do is write about kittens.”
– Jon Carroll, quoted last month by his paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, on winning
the 2009 Ernie Pyle Lifetime [...]
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Hands up for all who’ll be watching any bit of the national party conventions. Yes, I’ll avoid it, too. None of them has been on the excitement level even of a State of the Union address. If there’s something huge, a stupendous announcement, or an election-risking gaffe, conventions or presidential addresses are rebroadcast so often [...]
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American Airlines is a proud member of something called the Oneworld Alliance, which is a group of 10 airlines combining for the booking of reservations etc. but otherwise independent from one another.
Or is it? Are they?
From an American jet we took Friday, taxiing to the gate at Dallas/Fort Worth, we saw a huge banner hung, [...]
Monday, February 18, 2008
You can’t have a dope business without dopers.”
– Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
Proposed laws about paparazzi are worse-than-useless. There are already laws on stalking, creating a public nuisance and any number of other categories that would apply and hold up in court against photographers (meaning [...]
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Friday, February 15, 2008
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
One of the outcomes of a Democratic presidential victory come November likely will be national health care sooner not later. And one of the outcomes of national health care will be a sudden and welcome drop in pretentious fundraisers.
Nearly nine years ago I wrote an offensive column. I apologized on the [...]
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