I don’t know what I would have thought about this movie if I had seen it when it came out....
Full Post • Posted December 27, 2016
This is the second in Edmund White’s series of quasi-autobiographical novels and like the first, it follows a precocious and...
Full Post • Posted December 27, 2016
George Michael has died. He is the first man I ever saw wearing earrings, which mattered to me enormously as...
Full Post • Posted December 24, 2016
I've used Suffusion as the theme for this blog fromthe beginning. It was always a bit overkill—you can tweak anything...
Full Post • Posted December 21, 2016
To the extent this movie is a TV episode blown up to two hours and with better effects, it’s a...
Full Post • Posted December 20, 2016
This adaptation of the first half of Leviathan Wakes is an odd combination of imagination and shyness. It leaps forward,...
Full Post • Posted December 19, 2016
I have a complicated history with this show. I over-invest in the best parts, and gripe about the rest. The...
Full Post • Posted December 19, 2016
I’m not a fan of teen or young adult fiction. I’ve got nothing against it, but it has never been...
Full Post • Posted December 17, 2016
Earlier this Fall, I hurt my shoulder and elbow. Right shoulder, right elbow, and yes, I'm right handed. In the...
Full Post • Posted December 11, 2016
The heart changes, and it is our worst sorrow; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in...
Full Post • Posted December 5, 2016
The Sci-fi Channel’s adaptation of The Expanse put these books on my radar. The show seemed like it might be...
Full Post • Posted November 23, 2016
I bought an old hard cover edition of this book online and it showed up riddled by bookworms (all dead...
Full Post • Posted November 22, 2016
Mac OSX autocorrect is invisibly great when it's switching "teh" to "the." It's infuriating when you are fighting it over...
Full Post • Posted November 21, 2016
Things are silent here. It's the silence of grief. I'm not sure how to explain what I mean, but, here's...
Full Post • Posted November 17, 2016
Clinton 2016 Pride ...
Full Post • Posted November 6, 2016
It's been quiet around here, but alot's been going on. My brother got married. Work is crazy. There's stuff with...
Full Post • Posted November 4, 2016
Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l’aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer qu’en répondant :...
Full Post • Posted October 25, 2016
There's been a lot of trouble around here this weekend. Thankfully though, things seem like they are going to be...
Full Post • Posted October 3, 2016
I’d seen this season a long time ago and was uncertain about whether to continue watching the show. But by...
Full Post • Posted September 26, 2016
Reading this book was like sitting on the couch as a kid watching my brother play a level, waiting for...
Full Post • Posted September 25, 2016
I started Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files nearly two years ago, but as of spring I was still only through...
Full Post • Posted September 18, 2016
Dear Timeline, First off, I just want to make it clear that this isn't about you. We've had some rough...
Full Post • Posted September 17, 2016
A man is a man, and the modicum of reason he might have counts for little or nothing when passion...
Full Post • Posted September 11, 2016
Folks can change their ways much as they want to. But I don’t care how many times you change your...
Full Post • Posted September 10, 2016
The woods on Mont St. Hillaire have darkened and dulled to the hard green of late summer. They are ready...
Full Post • Posted September 8, 2016
Now there is nothing that irritates me more than when people torment one another, especially when young people in the...
Full Post • Posted September 8, 2016
Over Christmas this past year, the Beav and I passed through DC and stopped to see a temporary exhibit of...
Full Post • Posted September 8, 2016
Over the past few months I’ve been watching Carol. Sometimes for the story. Sometimes for the photography. Once without sound....
Full Post • Posted September 6, 2016
She looked out into the quiet, sunny streets, and for the first time in her life, she hated it all—the...
Full Post • Posted September 5, 2016
Indeed, a student can’t have too much time on his hands, if he wants to understand every theater’s individual repertoire,...
Full Post • Posted September 4, 2016
My brother, my sister and I have played World of Warcraft for years. It’s fun, but it’s also a way...
Full Post • Posted September 4, 2016
This is the gay spy thriller the BBC put out last year and that has finally come to Netflix in...
Full Post • Posted September 3, 2016
Nearly a year after reading it for the first time, this short book remains one that, when I’m sitting in...
Full Post • Posted September 3, 2016
The Thêatre du Nouveau Monde staged a translation of Romeo and Juliette this summer. Turns out the Beav had never...
Full Post • Posted September 2, 2016
Easily the most disappointing sequel I’ve seen in a long time. Which isn’t to say the first movie was great,...
Full Post • Posted August 21, 2016
I first posted to this blog five years ago today. When it began, I was only just back from a...
Full Post • Posted August 21, 2016
From fiercely clear sun of Spain to the moody blue clouds of the Netherlands in a few hours. The difference...
Full Post • Posted August 11, 2016
The walking and the seeing done. Sitting. Listening to a moment....
Full Post • Posted August 9, 2016
In a reconstruction of a 12th century Moorish home, a couple of turtles wandered freely in a central courtyard. There...
Full Post • Posted August 8, 2016
We were so dazed by the speed with which we were changing that we mistook this virtuosity for insincerity. —...
Full Post • Posted August 8, 2016
During our time in Spain, the swifts were always there, calling out from above in chorus. High up, the flocks...
Full Post • Posted August 7, 2016
The five year anniversary of this blog is coming up in a couple weeks. Seems like a good time to...
Full Post • Posted August 7, 2016
The afternoon heat in Andalusia crushes rather than burns. There's no air, not enough shade, and if you go out,...
Full Post • Posted August 6, 2016
What a difference a week makes. I'm as proud now as I was embarrassed and confused last Friday....
Full Post • Posted July 30, 2016
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book as unsettling as this one. Things start off in familiar...
Full Post • Posted July 24, 2016
I'm back from Spain as of last night and have stuff I want to write about in the coming days...
Full Post • Posted July 18, 2016
As I travelled these past few weeks and now again asI'm back home and am getting some work done on...
Full Post • Posted July 17, 2016
I'm away on vacation for a few more weeks. More posts when I'm back. Until then, here's a portion of...
Full Post • Posted July 6, 2016
The weeds in the garden have been growing, and after several days of hot sun, the tomatoes, cabbages and all...
Full Post • Posted June 18, 2016
I wanted to post “At Pegasus” by Terrance Hayes, another poem about dancing in gay bars, but I can’t make...
Full Post • Posted June 16, 2016
AT THE OLD PLACE Joe is restless and so am I, so restless. Button’s buddy lips frame “L G T...
Full Post • Posted June 15, 2016
My first gay bar was the Palace Saloon in Fairbanks, Alaska. Like me, the Palace lived something of a double...
Full Post • Posted June 14, 2016
I love Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together and have since first seeing it in the late 90s. I rewatched it...
Full Post • Posted June 12, 2016
I don’t know the book but I’d heard good things about this movie. So I was surprised how thin I...
Full Post • Posted June 12, 2016
A small sci-fi film (it’s scale reminded me of Moon) that I enjoyed. Two things surprised me as I watched....
Full Post • Posted June 6, 2016
Ryan Reynolds is like a Cinnabon. Both look good, and on a crazy day when you’re feeling “what the hell,”...
Full Post • Posted May 30, 2016
The second season of Daredevil is chatty enough that by episode three, I was making mental comparisons to Interview with...
Full Post • Posted May 16, 2016
When I was in film school (studies not production!), I was curious about “the festival film,” which to me manifested...
Full Post • Posted May 15, 2016
It was a doozy....
Full Post • Posted May 13, 2016
J’ai fermé les yeux pour ne plus rien voir J’ai fermé les yeux pour pleurer De ne plus te voir....
Full Post • Posted May 13, 2016
It was a dreary day and the seriousness of life was getting to me and I just wanted to get...
Full Post • Posted May 11, 2016
Months after finishing The Hero of Ages, I still catch myself lost in thought, imagining its characters and scenes or...
Full Post • Posted May 9, 2016
Better the swan’s brief note than that loud call of the crane, wind driven through the clouds of heaven —...
Full Post • Posted May 8, 2016
^include(/Blog Videos/2016-vids/GeeseInSpring.m4v)^...
Full Post • Posted April 27, 2016
Now words divide themselves in all directions, since one begets another; a lone word starts, then bursts apart into many,...
Full Post • Posted April 26, 2016
After (could it have been?) nearly five months, the stars aligned, tech cooperated, and I signed into Azeroth to goof...
Full Post • Posted April 25, 2016
A thread on the Tinderbox backstage forum has touched on export and its difficulties. I’ve written here that export is...
Full Post • Posted April 13, 2016
Andrew Leung and Ben Whishaw are in bed talking. Leung is on his back, and Whishaw is beside him, head...
Full Post • Posted April 10, 2016
I went on a movie spree a month or so ago, watching or rewatching pretty much anything that struck my...
Full Post • Posted April 9, 2016
It's spring. The snow is melting away. The sky is clear. The air is warmer. Posting is slow, but last...
Full Post • Posted April 7, 2016
^include(/Blog Videos/2016-vids/GeeseOnTheRiver.mp4)^...
Full Post • Posted March 24, 2016
I felt we were on the level of rhetoric where anything at all could be said. Perhaps the inmost you...
Full Post • Posted March 20, 2016
The Congress offers an honest portrait of the weirdness of modern life. It is metafictional, hyper-referential and combines both photographic...
Full Post • Posted March 2, 2016
This show is a superhero version of Sleeping with the Enemy. It’s gut-wrenching, relentless and left me anxious enough that...
Full Post • Posted February 23, 2016
I came to this movie knowing nothing about Amy Winehouse or her music. So it introduced me to a new...
Full Post • Posted February 22, 2016
Gregg Araki’s early films — The Living End, Totally Fucked Up — were rough affairs, shot, cut and released on...
Full Post • Posted February 21, 2016
Two things occurred to me as I was watching this movie. First, disaster movies give me the same pleasure that...
Full Post • Posted February 20, 2016
…to love all things are easy. — Oscar Wilde, De Profundis...
Full Post • Posted February 18, 2016
Sense8 is a difficult series to get started. The focus shifts constantly between characters and locations without any shared story...
Full Post • Posted February 16, 2016
^include(/Blog Videos/2016-vids/TimelapseSunrise.mp4)^...
Full Post • Posted February 15, 2016
Watching this movie and remembering what has attracted my attention in the others I’ve seen, I think it’s clear I’m...
Full Post • Posted February 14, 2016
I have a personal interest in Melville that is not academic or systematic. In my early years at university, as...
Full Post • Posted February 14, 2016
My brother finally decided to watch this show and once he got going, tore through all three seasons one after...
Full Post • Posted February 13, 2016
Maurice was written only twenty-five years after the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Billy Budd, yet its...
Full Post • Posted February 11, 2016
This book has been a slog. Short as it is, I never thought I’d get through it. Is the central...
Full Post • Posted February 11, 2016
A quiet dutch coming-of-age/coming out tale in which two young runners are attracted to each other, kiss, and then have...
Full Post • Posted February 10, 2016
I ordered City of Night and this book was delivered instead. In it, a young man comes back to LA...
Full Post • Posted February 10, 2016
A few weeks ago, Stephane Dion, Canada's new Foreign Affairs Minister, met with hisAmerican and Mexican counterparts in Quebec City....
Full Post • Posted February 7, 2016
This is my final post about my grading rubric, and I’m going to use it to explain how I set...
Full Post • Posted February 2, 2016
Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than...
Full Post • Posted February 1, 2016
Grades are calculated automatically in my grading rubric using attribute values assigned or calculated at each of the three levels...
Full Post • Posted January 27, 2016
For reasons I'll leave obscure, this entry in my commonplace book is on my mind this evening. Our culture tends...
Full Post • Posted January 25, 2016
Late last year, I was flipping through some passages in some of Edmund White's books (A Boy’s Own Story, Hotel...
Full Post • Posted January 23, 2016
Something of the poetry of this book is suggested by the scene of Divine’s death in its final pages. In...
Full Post • Posted January 22, 2016
In this second post I’m going to go through the prototypes and agents I used to make my grading rubric....
Full Post • Posted January 20, 2016
Poetry is a vision of the world obtained by an effort, sometimes exhausting, of the taut, buttressed will. Poetry is...
Full Post • Posted January 18, 2016
Last semester, I spent a few weeks creating an analytic grading rubric using Tinderbox. I don’t generally use rubrics, but...
Full Post • Posted January 17, 2016
This movie was a real downer. It didn’t help that (as I discovered watching) I don’t know the Beach Boys’...
Full Post • Posted January 16, 2016
I discovered Nina Simone in “Where Lies the Homo?,” an autobiographical, found-footage film by Jean-François Monet that moved me deeply...
Full Post • Posted January 15, 2016
This movie mustered real surprises. It also felt like a spy story rather than an action film. So I enjoyed...
Full Post • Posted January 14, 2016
For a short while ten years maybe fifteen years ago, I watched most of the animated films that were released...
Full Post • Posted January 13, 2016
I loved that this movie showed that politics requires calculation and that it also showed both the cruelty and the...
Full Post • Posted January 13, 2016
I first saw Rodin’s sculptures as a student when I travelled to Paris for the first time. Country mouse that...
Full Post • Posted January 12, 2016
A history of the transformation of white American discourse on race. In the years following the revolution public figures struggled...
Full Post • Posted January 12, 2016
I sought at first the simple liberty of leisure moments; each life well regulated has some such intervals and he...
Full Post • Posted January 6, 2016
Tinderbox agents have queries. They also have actions. The first culls notes from a project, gathering up those that you...
Full Post • Posted December 31, 2015
So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each...
Full Post • Posted December 31, 2015
Email Me • Return to Home Page • ©2011– . Site created using Eastgate's Tinderbox.