Jack and Vanessa get out of Dodge
Mob Rule: Part 40
When Jack realizes he's stuck between The Kennedys and his old mob buddies back in New York, he makes a bold squeeze play to abandon the Presidential campaign trail and return to the family fold
By John Armstrong
So now I was in the middle of a triple-cross, because surely the last thing Meyer and Frank expected was for me to come home having made a side deal with one of my co-conspirators. But, like Sidney said, this was a game where the rules changed while you played.
It wouldn’t matter anyway unless I figured out how to excuse Vanessa and myself from this party without getting shot. I had to keep myself ready for any opportunity to get a small head start on them, even a few hours. They’d relaxed on watching me so far as I’d noticed and as I thought about it I realized why. They’d hamstrung me in the most efficient way possible: I had no money.
I’d gotten so used to Sydney or one of the others paying for everything or simply signing for it ...
Missy Elliot and Adele duke it out
Podcast: Pop This!
Adele says hello while Pop This! bids adieu to 2015 with a look the most underrated and overrated moments on last year's calendar
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 8: Underrated pop culture moments of 2015
"Oooh... Pizza Rat..."
"If you just got a rotating tattoo that evolved every year into pop culture’s most forgettable moment of all time… that would be great."
"Pop culture ... is this weird thing… it takes fire and everyone talks about it..."
"Is the dress blue and black or gold and white?"
"I want to talk about Missy Elliot's comeback... Not enough people are excited about it."
"Is Star Wars overrated?"
"You had me at Star Wars…"
"I'm tired of squad goals..."
"Caitlyn Jenner... Amazing cultural shift."
"I guess capitalism needs to suck every dollar out of pop culture…"
"Hotline Bling... I love that music video so much I want ...
Pop This! Hits, hisses and misses
Podcast: Pop This!
Trainwreck chugs toward a cliff of critical revision while Albert Maysles's final piece of non-fiction brings an Apfel for a teacher
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear Episode 7 as Pop This! breaks down the year in movies*:
“I dream one day of owning a La-Z-Boy"
“What about a La-Z- Girl?”
"Sometimes I love AND hate.. but mostly love..."
"My hate has grown for a few things... A lot of my hate has grown for Trainwreck."
"You have to watch... It Follows."
"I found Iris Apfel…. very inspiring..."
"My grandmother is a huge part of my life... she made me hyperaware that we put seniors to the side…"
"If The Rolling Stones Tour and people buy tickets isn’t that it…?"
"Ex Machina... fantastic."
"I'm playing air theramin..."
"I love watching dudes bond over things that aren’t demeaning to women, The Night Before was... ridiculous and lovely and ...
Getting down to brassy tacts
Mob Rule: Part 39
Jack and Lyndon sit back on the campaign trail with a bottle of bourbon and dig at the roots of each other's deep beliefs
By John Armstrong
We had more than several over the next few hours. There were twin beds in his room and I sat on one with Vanessa beside me and him on the other, facing each other. I took a long drink of bourbon and smoked half a cigarette trying to figure out how to start and then finally just began at the beginning, with Frank and I diving for cover on a New York sidewalk, only a few months ago. Back when the world made sense.
If I left anything out it was because I’d forgotten it, not because I was being cagey. I’d had enough of subterfuge and lying to last me a lifetime and I trusted Lyndon implicitly, no matter what side we wound up on in the end.
Over the last few weeks and especially during our early stops in the South he’d gone off-script regularly, hitting on poverty and race equality whether he was in front of ...
Top Ten 2015: Women land box-office blows for a surprise win
Movies: Top Ten 2015
Women stormed the box-office with raw power and profound emotional insight, overcoming Hollywood's institutional misogyny
By Katherine Monk
Let’s hear it for the girls. Though the year started slowly with just a handful of bright moments on what seemed to be a rather bleak horizon — from a pruny soak in a Hot Tub Time Machine and a disappointing date with The Avengers — 2015 ended up celebrating the fair sex in surprise fashion, starting with Mad Max’s furious females lead by Charlize Theron. The movie was kicked from the ticket wicket by Elizabeth Banks’s Pitch Perfect chorus, but there was still plenty of room for revision as Melissa McCarthy took on the spy genre and Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith deconstructed the adolescent female psyche in Inside Out. James Bond lost a bit of box-office mojo with Spectre – pulling in $196 million domestically, compared to Skyfall’s $304 million – but while Hollywood expressed concern over a grim ...
Murder, He Wrote
Movie review: The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino creates a self-conscious cartoon that puts a bullet through the brain of western myth
From the frying pan to the panhandle
Mob Rule: Part 38
Jack learns that brokering political deals in Florida means biting into fat slabs of bad meat
By John Armstrong
So that’s what we did. When we got to Florida Bobby called Wallace and arranged a conference in Albany, Georgia for the following day, the closest reasonably sized city to both camps.
I didn’t go along with them and I confess I didn’t argue hard for the privilege. I’d seen enough of Wallace, Conner, and the "superior white race” and so far as I was concerned, I’d be just as pleased if the next time I saw them it was to identify the bodies. Our two diplomats left with a driver around 10 a.m. and expected to be back for supper. While they were gone I thought I’d take Vanessa to the beach and let the sun bake the stress away. It was already over 80 degrees.
I found Sydney drinking coffee and asked if he knew how to get to the beach and he looked at me like I’d already been in the sun too long. I was in my shorts and sandals, a towel ...
Star Wars goes back to the future
Movie review: Star Wars - The Force Awakens
The long-awaited new movie reclaims the universe of Star Wars, makes it fresh again, and still finds room for old favorites like Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher
Pointless and broken
Movie review: Point Break
The remake of Kathryn Bigelow's cult classic about two dudes on opposite sides of the law is a murky bore
Rod Mickleburgh’s Cool Yule Top Ten
Music: Christmas Carols
A devout atheist reveals an unrepentant penchant for Christmas carols, and offers a list of top yule tunes, as well as a few nasty disasters from the past
By Rod Mickleburgh
A confirmed atheist from birth, I nevertheless fell under the spell of Christmas carols early on in my twisted, hippie life. I well remember a time when, in the days leading to Christmas, CBC Radio would broadcast the singing of carols every morning from the Timothy Eaton’s Store in Toronto. And this was no professional choir. The singers were the shoppers, and whoever else showed up to carol at 8.30 a.m., when the half-hour live broadcast began. Complete with coughing, the grave, echo-y announcements of the next carol, the audible rustling of the carol sheets and finally, the glorious sound of all those voices raised on high, it was an indelible part of my “child’s Christmas in Newmarket”.
I can tell you they never did Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty the ...
