Confessions of a Conservative Atheist
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An updated rendition of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and the debut of “Spirit in the Night” sets the second show apart, but you can’t please all of the people all the time as some deranged critics are claiming the Boss needs lessons from Taylor Swift, who should be so lucky playing at this… Continue reading Bruce Springsteen spends Labor Day at the Meadowlands to the delight of fans and ire of a particularly misguided critic
Earlier this year, my Facebook feed was suddenly awash with homosexual content for a couple of weeks. Now, it’s on to half naked women, all with no rhyme or reason. The veneer of all powerful technology is mostly false marketing spin or delusions of grandeur... Today’s world is driven by technology, creating the general impression… Continue reading Facebook’s feed is a disaster and our tech overlords are emperors with no clothes
An almost 15-year old controversy over the Academy Award winning film, The Blind Side, is thrust back into the spotlight, proving once and for all that no good deed goes unpunished for progressives, and helping others through good works only counts if you are of the right race. We should all agree that modern storytellers… Continue reading White saviors, the progressive preference for fantasy over reality, and the reality that they secretly want black people to suffer
“We are facing an issue that knows no party. It is not new. That issue is supremacy of the Law. On this issue America has never made but one decision,” the future President declared while facing down an unprecedented police strike in 1919. Before Calvin Coolidge was elected President in 1920, he faced an existential threat… Continue reading “Silent” Calvin Coolidge and the existential battles of our time
The Boss released Human Touch and Lucky Town on the same day in 1992 to some of the worst reviews of his career. This doesn’t mean there aren’t stellar songs on both including the most poignant take on jealousy in his canon. By Springsteen standards, the early to mid 1990s was the nadir of his… Continue reading “I Wish I Were Blind,” revisiting Springsteen’s oft forgotten classic from Human Touch
There are professional wiffle ball leagues of all things, even a World Series, but last weekend it was three generations united by our love of a plastic ball, friendly competition, and beer, don’t forget the beer. Last weekend, I got together with about fifteen friends, their rapidly growing children, and more general acquaintances for an… Continue reading The simple joy of wiffle ball
James Cameron substitutes plot points for story and character, and visual detail for worldbuilding, failing to achieve his narrative goals or deliver on the underlying promise. Sadly, this trend is not unique to him and is a plague on Hollywood in general. The best I can say about Avatar: The Way of Water is there… Continue reading Avatar: The Way of Water, Frank Herbert’s classic Dune, and why Hollywood needs more storytellers, less technical wizardry
Two geniuses, separated by their respective fields of study, their appearance, manner, and over two hundred years, but both kept detailed notebooks, jotting down their every thought. Beethoven, however, transformed his into hundreds of published works while Da Vinci wrote thousands of pages he kept almost entirely to himself. Few would debate that Leonardo da… Continue reading Beethoven, Da Vinci, and the mysteries of the creative impulse
I cannot be the only one increasingly tired with critics hailing recycled ideas packaged in slick ways as modern masterpieces, nor do I think anyone should be impressed that a movie made by a small army at a cost of at least a hundred million dollars looks good. Unless you are a recent arrival from… Continue reading “Barbenheimer,” Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and the dearth of original ideas
Like a great sonnet of old, Bruce Springsteen uses the perspective of the speaker to establish a character that is both part of the story and separate from it. A verse about this father cut from the original song, but available in lyric form further illuminates a story of aging that is both universal and… Continue reading Springsteen’s “Glory Days” and the unreliable narrator
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 