Rightists Drown in Steve Bannon’s Flood

Actor Michael Landon, born Oygenglayben Schmuelowitz (memo to self: Confirm that before press time), was the handsome star of Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie (I just lost every millennial reader). Landon’s mother was severely schizophrenic, and his father was emotionally ill-equipped to ...

Andrea Riseborough

“I’d Like to Thank the Blackademy”

]It’s Oscar season! Which of course means only one thing: White people are evil. Of course, to be fair, that also applies to rainy season, holiday season, baseball season, football season, blueberry season, duck season, and wabbit season. In “de facto apartheid” America, it’s a given that ...

Dinner Bell for the Right’s Last Supper

In February 2007, 24-year-old paranoid schizophrenic Holocaust denier Eric Hunt had an idea: He’d kidnap Holocaust survivor/author Elie Wiesel and make him admit that the Holocaust never happened. Hunt tracked Wiesel to a speaking gig in San Francisco. His plan was to accost the old man, force ...

Light Skin Atone

Well, I warned her. September 1992. I was in Munich for the only reason I ever went to Europe, the sonofabitchin’ Holocaust. My traveling companion Tina and I had just concluded two weeks in Poland, and now we were in the heart of Bavaria, where I was scheduled to give a talk. I was in our ...

Boston Common

Oh, What a Tangled Weave We Weld

Autumn 1986 I attended an exhibit at the California Institute of the Arts. I wasn’t there for the “art”; CalArts exhibits were (and are) for the pretentious hipster crowd, not for guys like me who love mocking the pretentious hipster crowd. But a former high school friend invited me, and I ...

Hidden Hand Job

You know who probably got more tail than anyone in history? The first dude who was able to predict a solar eclipse. Think about it. “Today I shall blot the sun from the sky! If you wish to escape eternal darkness, send me all your virgins to favor me with pleasure! And a few older, experienced ...

Special-Needs Nation

When I’m asked why I never had kids, my standard answer is, I’ve spent my life in mortal fear of being tethered to another human in a manner from which I can’t legally walk away if I choose. That’s an honest answer, but it’s not the complete one. The second part, which I always leave ...

Purge and Cleanse, No Loose Ends

It’s a tradition ’round these parts (and by “these parts” I mean my desktop, comfy chair, and rum bottle) to end December by cleaning house of interesting bits and pieces I didn’t get to use during the year. Normally, this housecleaning consists of unused back-and-forths with journalists ...

Duane Jones

I Woked With a Zombie

My Christmas gift to myself this year is a column about zombie movies. I’ve been wanting to do this one since October, when it was announced that Night of the Living Dead is getting a woke remake by something named Nikyatu Jusu, which I thought was a martial art but turns out it’s a scowling ...

Treading Water With Bimbos and Bilkers

This week, I present the parable of the bimbo Kansan. Bambi Bimbo leaves her Midwestern homestead to come to Hollywood. With her tight ass, toned tummy, pert breasts, and button nose, all her life she’s been told by her kin in Kickenschitt, Kansas, that she’s destined to be up thar on that ...