Mad Men has reached its end, almost. For peculiar reasons that even show creator Matthew Weiner can’t clearly articulate, they have split their final season into two seasons, and so Sunday night’s climax was, strictly speaking, the midpoint. Nonetheless, it worked fine. We have long seasons in America, while British shows, where they call them “series” instead of “seasons,” are relatively abbreviated and often more like an American...
Omaha is, just now, a bit of a monster mash. Vampires and giant monsters have converged on the town, and one supposes it is just a matter of time before they meet up to pony, boogaloo, and do the swim. For the first group, the vampires, this would be entirely in character. They are the brooding bloodsuckers at the center of Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lover Left Alive,” currently...
There’s a new, local whisky about, and I’ll discuss it in a moment, but first I want to say that it’s a bit surprising that Omaha hasn’t had its own whisky for such a long time. After all, this was a city that, to a large extent, was built by the Irish, who invented the stuff. This was, and is, a brewing town. This was a frontier town....
It can’t be easy being in a family where everybody seems to be famous. There is Ellis Marsalis, Jr., who quietly, from the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, became the educator for an entire generation of jazz musicians, including Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr., and Nicholas Payton. Ellis literally fathered four musicians as well. There’s trumpeter Wynton, who has managed nine Grammys in his career. There is...
Captain American, the spangled, square-jawed, patriotic superhero that is the eponymous lead of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” began with moral repulsion. The character's creators were Jewish. There was writer Joe Simon, nee Hymie Simon, whose father was an English tailor, a common profession for Jews in England. There was illustrator Jack Kirby, nee Kurtzberg, whose parents were Austrian Jews. And there was publisher Martin Goodman, nee Moses...
There have been a few moments when the 20th century crashed to an end, always with a death. Frank Sinatra passed away in 1998, and with him, America’s first great era of popular standards lost one of its most defining voices. Johnny Carson died in 2005. The time when a single evening talk show host could dominate the American airwaves, and the American dialogue, had already passed with...
I used to like to joke that my goal was to be a professional basketball player, and that I hoped to play for the Washington Generals. This joke never went anywhere, so I removed it from my repertory, but now seems like a good time to explain myself. The Washington Generals formed in 1952, since then have only managed to win six games. They have lost 13,000 times...
WAYNE SHORTER
ESCOFFIER: MASTER OF THE KITCHEN
THE FAINT: DOOM ABUSE
NO STRANGERS AT KANEKO
WE ARE ALL COUNCIL BLUFFS: BAR RESCUE GOES TO O'FACE
Monster Mash: "Only Lovers Left Alive" and "Godzilla"
THE CONTENT AND THE CONTROVERSY: NSAA BANS POEMS WITH GAY THEMES
THE 1968 EXHIBIT AT THE DURHAM
MICKEY ROONEY, 1920-2014
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER