You Gotta Love This … Strib v. City Pages

Just one question here. You’re a big city newspaper manager. Why declare a letter to a rival editor “Not for Publication” and then copy a dozen reporters, several if not all of whom have little reason to be sympathetic to your argument? Have you perhaps not heard of the internets? You know, the thing with … Read more

Comedy and Tragedy

This is how Peter Schilling and Brad Zellar really feel about today’s arts and entertainment happenings: On the film Notes on a Scandal, which Schilling deemed “damn good”: On the Lyle Lovett-John Hiatt-Joe Ely-Guy Clark show:

That Notorious Clear Channel Story …

Here’s an interesting look from Slate’s Jack Shafer into the notorious incident up in Minot, North Dakota a few years ago when a train derailment threatened the city with a poisonous vapor cloud, but authorities couldn’t alert the population because all the Clear Channel-owned stations were on robot control …

60 Minutes

I don’t know who looked less credible on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”, George W. Bush or the president of Duke University, but the CBS News crew deserves a shout out for allowing both men to present their case regardless of how anemic each was. It is fashionable to avoid ever complimenting bigfooting mainstream … Read more

Tax Season: Opening Night

(See notes below) My friend Adam and I were musing, while en route to this party, that our tax accountant is probably the only such one who can get rock stars and top artists to show up at his party. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that his new digs double as an art gallery. And … Read more

Bored

Bored bored bored? Bored of hunkering down in your house? Bored of all the movies on TBS? You could have been a Russian Czarina, sloshing in vodka and noshing on blini. They managed to be glamorous in Siberia, why can’t you? The “culinary outings” from the Outing Lodge in Stillwater are some of the most … Read more

Whatever It Takes …

A nagging techno-glitch has had the mighty Lambert mainframe down for a few days. Anyone out there who knows a sure-fire, never fail fix for preventing a router from crashing the cable internet connection, drop me a line. As on election night, I spent the post-Bush “surge” speech with MSNBC. Since Fox is … well, … Read more

Good Intentions Do Not A Great War Film Make

Letters From Iwo Jima, 2006. Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Iris Yamashita. Starring Kazunari Ninomiya, Ken Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Shido Nakamura, and Hiroshi Watanabe. Now showing at the Uptown Theater. During World War II, the Marines used to tell their recruits that they were being trained so hard so that they might … Read more

Someone's Shining Hour

Skipping all the way to Sunday, not because I want to wish away my weekend but because there’s a concert I’ve long looked forward to: Vocalist Christine Rosholt, a woman of excellent taste who was once a featured reader in our magazine (sorry, no link; it’s not online), is leading a tribute to Harold Arlen, … Read more