Baptized in dishwater
Mob Rule: Part 42
On the run and low on funds, Jack and Vanessa hunker down in a roadside diner and discover the unsung joys of a short-order life and red-eye gravy
By John Armstrong
I have to say, if you’ve ever complained that you had no time to ponder life’s mysteries, get a job as a dishwasher in a busy lunchroom. Once you get into the swing of it, your hands learn the job and most of your mind is free to contemplate and wander where it will. It’s also sort of a non-stop process — a room full of hungry customers can dirty plates and cups just as fast as you can wash them so you soon forget any crazy ideas like “catching up” and just settle into a machinelike routine of dip, scrub, rinse, stack and repeat. The kitchen clock was on the wall behind me so I had no clue what time it was and I was honestly surprised when Cooter tapped my shoulder and said, “Hang up your brush. Time to eat.” It was just past three and Lurlene had hung the closed sign on the ...
The Revenant is raw tension
Movie review: The Revenant
Leonardo DiCaprio undergoes a horrendous series of trials — including that famous bear attack — in Alejandro G. Inarritu's masterful tale of survival
David Bowie's Top Ten movies
Tribute: David Bowie
As the world mourns the loss of an icon who changed pop music, let's not forget David Bowie's impressive, and sometimes abysmal, body of work on the big screen because it was all part of a greater performance
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER - The I-5 was a ribbon of wet blackness that emerged, intermittently, with each croaking swipe of the wipers. It was going to be a long drive from Vancouver to Tacoma, and in late October rain without someone to talk to, it was going to feel even longer. No one wanted to see Bowie with me. Not this tour, at any rate. My partner was a former music promoter. After a lifetime of walking around with a headset and a deck of laminates around her neck, she had no desire to be a plus-one in press seats. Besides, it was the Outside tour. A 1995 conceptual opera featuring Nine Inch Nails and Bowie playing the character of Nathan Adler, a man who judges the worthiness of art in a post-apocalyptic future, the Outside tour proved ...
David Bowie’s Top Ten movies
Tribute: David Bowie
As the world mourns the loss of an icon who changed pop music, let's not forget David Bowie's impressive, and sometimes abysmal, body of work on the big screen because it was all part of a greater performance
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER - The I-5 was a ribbon of wet blackness that emerged, intermittently, with each croaking swipe of the wipers. It was going to be a long drive from Vancouver to Tacoma, and in late October rain without someone to talk to, it was going to feel even longer. No one wanted to see Bowie with me. Not this tour, at any rate. My partner was a former music promoter. After a lifetime of walking around with a headset and a deck of laminates around her neck, she had no desire to be a plus-one in press seats. Besides, it was the Outside tour. A 1995 conceptual opera featuring Nine Inch Nails and Bowie playing the character of Nathan Adler, a man who judges the worthiness of art in a post-apocalyptic future, the Outside tour proved ...
Stalls, but no loitering
Mob Rule: Part 41
On the run from old Joe Kennedy and the D.C. spin parade, Jack and Vanessa hole up in Savannah in a vain search for relief
By John Armstrong
I was prepared when we got to Savannah, not that it did me any good. There were two pay phones, one out of order and the other in use by a man with two old cloth shopping bags at his feet who looked as badly off as we were. I shuffled and danced and muttered behind him in an agony of impatience but he just stood there saying “Ummm-hmmm” every few seconds. By his reaction, whatever they were telling him wasn’t terribly exciting but he seemed determined to hear all of it. At one point he pulled the phone away and I thought he was going to hang up but he was just changing ears. I was anxious to get the phone but I was also hopping back and forth on my feet while I waited because our bus had no toilet on it, and it had been a long time since Tallahassee. I considered solving both problems at once, just unzipping right ...
Movie review: The Joy of capitalism
A woman invents a miracle mop and finds herself knee-deep in screwball dysfunction in David O. Russell's uneven fable about working-class America
Squeezing Gervais's not-so Golden Globes
Podcast: Pop This!
To toasting and roasting Ricky Gervais as returning host of the Golden Globes, an awards show that makes some viewers walk around the house in high heels with a tall glass of pinot
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 9: Looking at The Golden Globes
I will tell you what I genuinely think of Ricky Gervais: I think he is smug, self-congratulatory, fat-shaming...and he can be incredibly boring.... He has a lot of specific self-hatred... The only human beings who don't want to be liked are sociopaths. Mad Max. Rent is not a comedy? Empire is not nominated in the musical category? One of the great loves of my life, Spy Magazine... the monocles reviews, that's who I envision as the Hollywood Foreign Press I have the feeling they are the kind of people who go to Cannes and don't see movies I love Veep so much. A rare show without a weak link. It messes you up.
...
Squeezing Gervais’s not-so Golden Globes
Podcast: Pop This!
To toasting and roasting Ricky Gervais as returning host of the Golden Globes, an awards show that makes some viewers walk around the house in high heels with a tall glass of pinot
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 9: Looking at The Golden Globes
I will tell you what I genuinely think of Ricky Gervais: I think he is smug, self-congratulatory, fat-shaming...and he can be incredibly boring.... He has a lot of specific self-hatred... The only human beings who don't want to be liked are sociopaths. Mad Max. Rent is not a comedy? Empire is not nominated in the musical category? One of the great loves of my life, Spy Magazine... the monocles reviews, that's who I envision as the Hollywood Foreign Press I have the feeling they are the kind of people who go to Cannes and don't see movies I love Veep so much. A rare show without a weak link. It messes you ...
