Whether or not it was Julie Burchill who described Stephen Fry as "a stupid person's idea of a clever person," it's a finer quip than most of the labored "witticisms" ever delivered"with all the graceful, languid spontaneity of an overdue zoo elephant undergoing a ...
"[W]hen Tom gives his famous "I"ll be ever"where" speech, I always want to call his parole officer." Only a few bylines compel me to set aside my so-called work and read what's printed beneath them immediately, rather than during some well-intentioned "later" that ...
"I WANT TO BELIEVE," announces The X-Files" Agent Mulder, although silently, via that austere poster on the wall of his dark basement FBI office. It's a declaration of defiance; Mulder was exiled to his subterranean berth by agency higher-ups who were embarrassed by his caseload of ...
About 30 years ago, I set out to write an essay"that sounds so pretentious, sorry"but never got past the title: ""Cool" Is Not a Christian Virtue." Thinking deeply, or trying to, about such shallow, ephemeral topics as glamor and fame has occupied much of my limited brain ...
Within the conventions of English drag comedy, the most familiar character is what the Monty Python troupe dubbed "the pepperpot": a frumpy, lumpy menopausal matron, portrayed by a barely disguised male actor. (Amusingly, this "pantomime dame" is also what most real-life ...
So I guess I finally have to write about Bruce Jenner. Tellingly, when I first typed that sentence, instead of "Bruce," I wrote "Kris." That's the name of Jenner's butch, bossy, occasionally estranged fame-hound wife, from whose love canal (when she was wedded to another) oozed ...
As a teenager trolling for role models, I latched onto all the female performers in the punk and New Wave camps: Nina Hagen, The Slits, Siouxsie Sioux"even, God help me, Lene Lovich. "All," that is, except Chrissie Hynde. My indifference was irrational, and bordered on outright ...
I have no “guilty pleasures,” being long past caring what anyone thinks of my terminally middlebrow taste. No, I’ve outgrown Dali, don’t worry"although I won’t admit to just when"but even a lesser Group of Seven still brings tears to my otherwise unpatriotic ...
“[L]ibertarians can generally be divided into two camps: humanitarians and brutalists.” That’s Jeffrey A. Tucker’s provocative proposition in a widely discussed new article in The Freeman. Humanitarian libertarians value the principle of liberty, Tucker writes, ...
One of my earliest articles for Taki‘s was called “The Week in Canadian Sex News!” It’s easier than you might think to wring 800 words (and even an exclamation point) out of such an unpromising premise. Then as now, the Canadian justice system supplies plenty of ...
