- This Message Is Very Plain: I h8 ur txt msg (3/9/2008) - Writing in the Sunday Times, Megan Hustad laments the cultural decline of "the office phone call." People prefer to use e-mail for petty confrontations and negotiations, and valuable diplomatic skills are lost and new employees lose the informal training that comes with eavesdropping on the boss. In my new fancy-pants position with my union, I've noticed that my phone calls to people at headquarters frequently go to voicemail, and that the responses come back via… …
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- A Second Shot at Reptilian Fascism (2/17/2008) - It seems I chose a bizarre time to rediscover "V," my favorite TV show from childhood about an alien invasion of Earth that served as a Holocaust parable. In a Penn Station book store on Friday, I noticed that familiar spray-painted "V" on the cover of a book called "V: The Second Generation." Date of first publication: February 2008. The salesman who rang me up was as surprised as me to see it. "This used… …
- Fascist Reptiles and Other Cautionary Tales (2/10/2008) - How well does childhood memory of favorite teevee shows hold up? Judging by the maddening 80's nostalgia currently in vogue, I would wager not well. I mean, "He Man" and "Jem" were pretty stupid as far as kids shows go. They're simply painful to sit through as an adult. As a kid, my favorite "adult" show was "V," an occasional miniseries turned shortly-lived regular series about the human resistance against an extraterrestrial invasion of Earth.… …
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- An Encouraging Labor Statistic (1/26/2008) - For the first time in 25 years the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a union has increased. A report from Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt of the …
- There Will Be Blood (1/11/2008) - Daniel Day-Lewis is pure, foreboding menace in "There Will Be Blood." Although, when he finally unleashes the full force of his menace, it is not entirely what is expected. Nor, likewise, is the blood alluded to in the title precisely what one would expect from the cleverly edited promotional trailers, although plenty of the red stuff flows. Based upon the Upton Sinclair novel, "Oil!," the film could easily have been mere anti-capitalist propaganda, but director… …
- Late Night Labor Wars (12/31/2007) - Thank goodness for the Hollywood unions for providing a little basic trade union education for the American public. It's been so rare to see aggressive, proactive union activity that most people clearly don't understand how this stuff is supposed to work. The fact that most late-night talk show hosts are crossing picket lines to return to the air without their writers, while David Letterman gets to go back with his writers and their union's blessing… …
- Wonderful Absinthe (12/25/2007) - All in all, absinthe's a bit of a disappointment. In case it escaped your attention, the green fairy, which has been illegal in the United States for most of the 20th century for its supposed hallucinogenic and psychopathic effects, is now legal. It turns out, in fact, that it's been legal since Prohibition's repeal but nobody noticed. Since that time, absinthe has been banned from the U.S. for containing a chemical compound that determined European… …
- This Is a Shamelessly Factional Button (12/7/2007) - Shannon Hammock just mailed me a parcel of the past: silly factional buttons from the Socialist Party's 2001 national convention. It was the first time in many years that an organized caucus was formed to compete for seats on the party's national committee. Although they called themselves "the Issues Caucus," their focus seemed to be on personalities. They lumped a bunch of comrades with wildly different politics that didn't necessarily even like each other into… …
- The Great Blog Circle Jerk, part IV (12/5/2007) - I'm pleased as punch to finally be able to acknowledge someone who has been instrumental in keeping me on the dubya dubya dubya dot org all these years. I've worked with Josh Handle (Handle is a "handle," dig?) on a number of socialist websites (including Ypsl's and others) over the years, most of which he designed as I barked orders for how it should look. For my own dot org, he's been an indispensable resource… …
- Nothing Is Revealed (12/2/2007) - Todd Haynes' new anti-biopic, "I'm Not There," lives up to its hype as the perfect film distillation of the life and legend of Bob Dylan. The stories of six Dylan-like characters (played, among others, by a 13-year-old black boy, a British actress, Richard Gere and Batman) intertwine, and, naturally, nothing is revealed. The soundtrack is fantastic, including covers by a who's who of middle-aged alt-rock and a terrific selection of Dylan classics and overlooked gems… …