Welcome to Kentucky, now thank God you’re alive (it’s the law)
Here’s the lead: “LEXINGTON, Ky. â?? A lawmaker says the state’s Homeland Security office should be crediting God with keeping the state safe.” Apparently, in Kentucky that’s the law. Really. State Rep. Tom Riner, a Southern Baptist minister who was instrumental in establishing that requirement in 2006, disapproves of the fact that Homeland Security doesn’t…
this makes me so happy.
I’m not the only one who gets a little grumpy about Thanksgiving: see Slate’s article, “Why Food Writers Secretly Hate Thanksgiving” and yesterday’s Grub Street entry, “Thanksgiving: We’re Already Over It.” But this Thanksgiving album of shots from the legendary Magnum Photos makes my day. (Below, that post-turkey daze.) Enjoy.
TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN
Expect straightforward, no-nonsense fare at swank Dr. Phillips eatery
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
I refuse to write anything about the hugely anticipated reopening of Will’s Pub. Seems like every time I do, some complication befalls the place. Poverty’s in my background, so I tend to have a death grip on beloved things for fear of them being taken. And I don’t wanna jinx this blessed thing even if…
FIRST SHOT
Every year, the corporate-controlled media does its part to convince us that holiday retail sales are going to be taking a big upswing — except this time, when even the most overzealous CNN “analyst” couldn’t cough up that kind of propaganda with a straight face. Pity the poor home-viewing market, which has a battery of…
LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES
IAAPA. Say it with me, please: “eye-AP-pah.” It’s the sweetest sound in the theme-park business. Take the entire north and south wings of the massive Orange County Convention Center and fill them to capacity with every product imaginable that’s offered at an entertainment attraction, then set loose a sea of polo-shirted salespeople for a week…
POLICE BEAT
Nov. 14 (2008-493324) 9:11 a.m.: Nail salons are good places to jack flat-screen TVs. This thief removed a facial machine as well. Gotta exfoliate. (2008-493342) 9:21 a.m.: Different nail salon, same idea: Smash the front door, grab the telly. This time, the TV wouldn’t budge. (2008-493532) 11:53 a.m.: If you leave your garage door open…
HAPPYTOWN
Hey, UCF students: You’re about to pay a lot more for your edumacation! On Nov. 20, permatanned Gov. Charlie Crist announced that he was caving in to university presidents’ demands to jack up your tuition payments by as much as 15 percent annually so they can build neat things like the $55 million UCF football…
COMMENTS
Hat trick I too wear a size 7 7/8 hat `”The hat is the answer,” Holiday Guide, Nov. 20`. I have found nice hats in my size, in a modified fedora style — a slightly smaller brim, between fedora and porkpie — for $14 in the men’s clothing section at Target on Colonial Drive. They…
ANOTHER BROTHER
Krispy Kream is obviously the older brother. One-half of L.A.-by-way-of-New Orleans sibling duo the Knux, it’s not just his superior size and nonchalant attitude that instantly reveals his elder status over partner-in-rhyme-and-production Rah Al Millio (call him “Al”). Nope, like any alpha male across the human and animal kingdom, Krispy needs to test every new…
THE EURO WITH A THOUSAND FACES
In the PBS series The Power of Myth, mythologist Joseph Campbell explained the Buddhist concept of the bodhisattva (illuminated being) as one who says “yes” to everything in the world, including brutality and vulgarity. “?‘All life is sorrowful’ is the first Buddhist saying,” says Campbell. “It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved,…
MAD COW’S TWO TALES
Life as a wealthy upper-crust sort in Edwardian England apparently wasn’t always as effortless as you’d imagine. Consider the case of Arthur Birling, for example. The patriarch of J.B. Priestley’s play An Inspector Calls, Birling (Mark E. Smith), is a respectable British gentleman. He has a respectable manufacturing business, a respectable charity-board-chairing wife (Kate Singleton)…
TO KILL A TURKEY
; “What is perhaps most troubling, and sad, about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures all these relationships and connections. To go from the chicken … to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world in a journey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly, not only in terms of the animal’s pain…
DID LAMAR SPIKE IT?
In 1985, New York Judge Sol Wachtler famously told a newspaper that prosecutors could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich” if they wanted to. That phrase has become a staple of legal punditry ever since, and with good reason. There is no place in the criminal justice system where a prosecutor holds…
BLISTER
I’m not sure how this happened. Through some lubricated loophole in the gay-card charter, my razor-sharp matrix of cynical bones has landed itself in a sloshing pool of heterosexual sincerity, a swelling, smiling bowl of vodka, wit and fraternal camaraderie taken completely out of context and slapped down right in the Lower East Side of…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Have you ever arrived at a mountaintop on a clear day? Do you remember how it felt? Can you reimagine the sparkling purity of the air as it sweetened your lungs, the shimmering light that washed through you in waves, the exaltation of the sweeping vista as it lifted you to…
SAVAGE LOVE
I am a 28-year-old woman who has been with my boyfriend for two years. I would call it a stable, fulfilling and kinky relationship. I consider myself GGG, and every time my boyfriend has brought up a kink or variation, I’ve been willing to try it. Some things became a permanent part in our play,…
cranksgiving.
OK, you know what? Thanksgiving pisses me off. I know I’m not the first person to grumble about familial obligations on the holidays â?? and don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of things to give thanks for â?? it’s just that the whole dance of relatives/dietary restrictions/travel logistics is so exhausting, and, well ……
Of Mormons and gays
This about says it all. You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the worldâ??s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should…
“Pete and Pete” Revisited
Now can we get the fucking season 3 DVD out on the shelves, please? Reigniting the dim fire amongst fanboys of a very specific age (read: mine) for the short-lived Nickelodeon show “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” to get the proper respect it deserves demands, the blog “Gaytriarchy” slapped together a bunch of 120…
