The Latest(ish)
I was somewhere around Oudezijds Voorburgwal, on the edge of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, when I knew that the drugs would never take hold. My vision was bad, but then it always is; my judgment was no worse than normal; and my usual bleak mood was no better. I had absolutely no interest in tie-dye, Hermann Hesse, granny glasses, world peace, the teachings of the Buddha, or a flower in my hair. I was a loser Leary, a deadbeat De Quincey. It had all seemed so much simpler just a few hours before. I’d been sitting in an old café [...]
No Fear or Loathing
August 29, 2005
When the New York Times refers to a new show as “transgressive,” it’s a bad, bad omen, and when the theme song of that new show, Showtime’s new series Weeds, a satire of suburban life, is Malvina Reynolds’s antique, condescending and trite “Little Boxes,” the signs are even worse. Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same, There’s a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they’re all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the [...]
Stoned in Stepford: Suburbia on high.
August 15, 2005
Weeds; published originally in National Review Online
If, in 2005, a movie about two rednecks, one hottie, and a Dodge Charger emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag turns out to be a hit, it will say a lot for the appeal of nostalgia, the power of marketing, and the prospect of seeing Jessica Simpson in Daisy Dukes. It may even say something about the way this nation has finally come to terms with its bottom right-hand corner. And if it has, just a little of the credit must go to Bo, Luke, and Daisy and a show once described (in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner) as the “worst [...]
Siren Song of the South
August 5, 2005
The Dukes of Hazzard; published originally in The New York Sun