Everybody knows that economics is about measurement and money and things numerical; that’s why most of us find it so damned dull. But as approached by offbeat economist and Freakonomics co-author Steven D. Levitt, economics is also “the study of incentives”: what it takes to get us to do a certain thing, or to not [...]
reviews
I am a fan of the old Steve Martin. The SNL/L.A. Story/“The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!” Steve Martin. I don’t get the New Yorker pieces, and the thicket of hype was too thick around Lapin Agile to entice me into seeing or even reading it. I picked up [...]
From the time I decided to become an L.A. actor, my life has been one telecommunications nightmare after another, a hellish mix of pagers, cell phones, forwarded voice mail, forwarded home phone, dedicated fax lines. (And a P.O. Box, because yes, even Gapâ„¢-casual fake moms have stalkers.) This year, my descent into the Hades that [...]
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Somewhere in the Night
Lesser noir is fun. Like all noir, it’s generally filled with Famous Character Actors of the Golden Age: faces that started looking 35 when they were barely 20 and never looked too pretty to begin with, your Harry Morgans and Thelma Ritters as opposed to your Alan Ladds and Veronica Lakes. But with lesser noir, [...]
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Book review: Requiem for a Dream
I was introduced to Hubert Selby, Jr. via the movies, specifically the 1989 film adaptation of his debut novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn. Politely put, that movie beat the crap out of me. As I staggered out of the theater, my faux-cosmopolitan self reduced to a sorry tangle of nerve endings, I remember thinking this [...]
Have I mentioned how my mildly (ha!) obsessive-compulsive nature manifests itself in my car? Well, firstly, it shows up in my serial purchasing of the same car. (Corollas ain’t sexy, but boy, are they dependable.) In my annoying moving-around of objects (garage-door clicker, change for meters, Stim-U-Dents) from one storage cubby to another in search [...]
Home Land is filled with great characters, their sharply-observed characteristics and film-worthy comic exchanges. There is no end, apparently, to Sam Lipsyte’s invention, and dude not only has an eagle eye for the bullshit we try to pass off as character, he can turn a phrase like a fine (albeit filthy) woodworker turns a fancy-ass [...]
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Book review: Main Street
It’s hard for me to believe that Main Street was ever a groundbreaking work of fiction, but then, it’s hard for me to believe that I ever thought 256MB was a lot of RAM. Was there ever a time when we (America, not the royal “we”) weren’t aware of our dissatisfaction with the status quo? [...]
