I NEVER WATCH THE ACADEMY AWARDS, not necessarily out of scruple but because I can’t. There is no working TV in my house. (Part scruple, part laziness, on that point.) So I had no idea who James Franco was until I came across Joe Queenan’s description of him in The Weekly Standard:

For decades, Hollywood has been waiting for the full-service artiste—writer, director, producer, screenwriter—who can lay claim to the scepter of Renaissance Man once held by Orson Welles. Woody Allen couldn’t quite pull it off.

Dolls, Dames and Scholarship

Maureen Mullarkey

March 11, 2011

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION features an article on an instructional project by a Hamilton College sophomore. She put some minimal geometry to work to create a life-sized Barbie scaled to the original. The result is a sculpted tutorial intended to let us know that female eating disorders have little to do with food. Just in case we did not already know. // // Still, two things are worth noting. First, the over-sized, over-endowed Barbie is better suited to a Whitney Biennial than an institution of higher play learning. Continue Reading

Ash Wednesday

Maureen Mullarkey

March 10, 2011

ASH WEDNESDAY WAS YESTERDAY, March 9th. I mention it today because, by last night, I had seen only two other people in town wearing ashes. buy priligy online https://medicalcoder.io/wp-includes/sitemaps/providers/php/priligy.html no prescription buy cipro online https://www.mobleymd.com/wp-content/languages/new/cipro.html no prescription It saddened me. Even in childhood, Ash Wednesday captivated me in some unspoken way. I loved walking about displaying the mark of my mortality rubbed onto my forehead. All around were others, adults and kids like me, carrying the same mark. Not everyone, of course, but enough that my burnt-palm ashes did not isolate me. Continue Reading

Still More on Olympia’s Heirs

Maureen Mullarkey

March 9, 2011

PREVIOUS MENTION OF SHERI’S RANCH BROTHEL in Pahrump, Nevada got me wondering. Could this be where Nevada’s annual Cowboy Poetry Festival takes place? Harry Reid was on his feet bemoaning H.R. I, which seeks to defund National Public Broadcasting:

It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.

Olympia’s Heirs

Maureen Mullarkey

March 7, 2011

IF WE CONFUSE CULTURE WITH THE CULT OF THE ARTS, then, yes, Manet, together with all his art historical brethren, is of primary importance. But if we take culture to mean the entire web of aspirations, goals, achievements, and values of a people—their conscience; their taste in ethics—penicillin counts for more than any artist. I was reminded of this by Tracy Quan’s recent article in The Daily. Ms. Quan, author of Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl [“available on your Kindle in under a minute”] is the doyenne of the half-hooker economy. Continue Reading

RSS

James Franco, Artiste

Dolls, Dames and Scholarship

Ash Wednesday

Still More on Olympia’s Heirs

Olympia’s Heirs

Subscribe To The Newsletter

You have Successfully Subscribed!