Breaking Bad did NOT Oiler it
And it wasn’t just the perfect musical choice at the end (and throughout) of the episode. The highlight for me, beyond “Baby Blue,” was Walt’s parting admission to Skyler, “I…
“Once a man started killing his wife…”
Here is another great line from Graham Greene, on page 67 of The Ministry of Fear (Penguin Classics): “…a kind of self-protective instinct would have made Mrs. Wilcox hate him….
Breaking Bad, please, just don’t Oiler it…
We are nearing the end of Breaking Bad, and it is coming to an end at the perfect point in overall story arc. I admit, I am bubbling with excitement…
The Confused Kryptonian
There are some good parts to Man of Steel, but overall the movie stands on some really shaky reasoning. For one, if Jor-El’s consciousness controls Zod’s ship, why doesn’t he…
Moths and Snails and Slugs
I recently critiqued the writing style in Swamplandia!; however, there was at least one passage that had a lasting impact on me: “Outside our porch had become a cauldron of…
Cheerios Appreciation Day…?
As we approach the first anniversary of Chick-fil-A appreciation day, when right-wingers boasted their bona fides by tweeting pics of fast-food orgies, another large corporation – General Mills – is…
Inundated with Similes
Karen Russell makes excessive use of similes throughout her book Swamplandia!, at least in the first half I completed. Some are clever or insightful, such as “We were watching the…
Don’t lose your PC badge in the Apocalypse
It was an interesting coincidence that The Simpsons aired their “survivalist” episode “Homer Goes to Prep School” the same night The Walking Dead was wrapping up its third season. I’m…
So I can get a Second Wife in Iowa?
The renewed debates on gay marriage have uncovered a desire by some to relegate (or promote, as Rick Perry would characterize it) marriage to a states’ rights issue, namely that…
Reading “Cholera”
Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, like Midnight’s Children, was a long, hard slog, especially for one with a glacial reading pace. The text lives in thick…