January 2020
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Last night we watched "The Man Who Cheated Himself"(1950), a B+ noir/murder mystery/police procedural with Lee J. Cobb as a detective who falls for a rich homicidal dame and gets himself into a lot of predictable hot water. In the film, Cobb has a younger brother, a straight-arrow, played by John Dall, an actor well-remembered…
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Frequentatives perplex me. Even on good days, I can't tell a frequentative from an iterative or what used to be called a present progressive or even from a simple present that expresses a continuing action, such as "he walks to work" — in the sense that he walks every day or many days, not just…
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Just when you think that the movie industry has run the amnesia well bone dry, along comes still another wild riff on the subject of forgetfulness. What a great disease for screenwriters! a disease that keeps on giving — and with no end in sight. This time, Dr. Martin Harris, ostensibly a biotechnologist but in…
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The hardest part of my day is the night. Sleep does not come easy — has never come easy. I regularly wake at 2:00 am, and stay awake for two or three hours. I use this time to fret about the state of the Earth (precarious), the state of the nation (doomed), and whether that…
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Of all human institutions, slavery must be the most loathsome and soul-distorting (although wars, genocides, massacres, pogroms, and wrongful executions are certainly contenders for worst of worst). It's easy to think that slavery is something ancient and foreign. Not something to concern ourselves about — not part our life, nor my life. And yet American…
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In a lifetime with pen in hand or with fingers at the typewriter (or, latterly, at the word processor), I've written a lot of bad sentences and a handful of good ones. But last week, I composed my absolute best sentence ever. It's pure Olympic gold; a bottom-of-the-ninth walk-off bases-loaded HR; a sensational buzzer-beater. Deathless…