A brief history of an American gift to world cuisine: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This article at the Saturday Evening Post by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie takes a few paragraphs to get going, but then it delivers.
Peanut butter was reportedly invented in 1894. Early recipes featured “a banana and apple salad served over lettuce with a peanut butter dressing” and “a peanut butter ‘loaf’ recipe involving two cups of chopped olives and a teaspoon of onion juice”
“Animal House” is where the 1960s finally and decisively turned into the 1980s — the 1970s being understood as a transition period highlighted by double-knit and “Kung Fu Fighting.” With “Animal House,” we crossed the line from hippies to yuppies, from “all you need is love” to “greed is good.” It seems crazy to say it, but the film’s Deltas — a fraternity of proud, self-defined losers — became role models for a generation obsessed with winning. You could argue we’re still living with the fallout.
— Ty Burr at The Washington Post: I was on campus when ‘Animal House’ debuted. It changed everything.
I love this movie and can quote from it endlessly. And Burr is right.
Donald Trump is Bluto.
“The Warriors” keeps popping up in my Internet wandering. Time to watch it again?
We’re watching “Hijack,” a miniseries about an airline hijacking, focusing on Idris Elba as Sam, a passenger working to outwit the team that’s taken over the plane. Highly recommended—very suspenseful!
The British Home Secretary is a supporting character. I’ve heard of that position but realized I had no idea what the home secretary does.
My half-assed Internet research tells me the Home Secretary is responsible for British internal security, so they are basically Britain’s top cop. They’re also responsible for immigration and emergency services, such as the fire departments.
The equivalent position in the US seems to be the Secretary of Homeland Security. However, the Home Secretary position was created in the late 18th Century, while Homeland Security was created in the aftermath of 9/11.
We Jews are left out of progressive discussion of diversity. Jews don’t count.
A significant part of the progressive movement is outright anti-Semitic.
And conservatives have a weird variety of anti-Semitism that fetishizes Israel and supports some prominent American Jews.
But I just can’t bring myself to care about Jewface in movies and TV.
Bradley Cooper is getting criticized by Jewish activists who are accusing him of “Jewface” for wearing a prosthetic nose in an upcoming biographical movie about Leonard Bernstein.
To be fair to Cooper, early versions of the movie had him wearing a clown nose, so the current version is better.
Want to read: Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World by Mary Beard 📚A new book of Roman history by the author of “SPQR”? Yes, please.
The same lawmakers who want to rob their constituents of the right to bodily autonomy have also begun to treat democracy as an obstacle to avoid, not a process to respect. If the people stand in the way of ending abortion, then it’s the people who have to go.
— Republicans Won’t Stop at Banning Abortion, by Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times.
Me, watching @manton ’s video demo of the Epilogue app for micro.blog: “Hey, I just added that book to my want-to-read-list! And that one too! And I’m currently reading that one! OMG, Manton is looking at my blog! I’m Internet-famous now!”
When I was a kid, we rode bicycles for miles every day, unsupervised. Also unsupervised: We played in schoolyards and playgrounds, went into stores, and went to the movies. Even when we were playing in another kid’s backyard, often the adults weren’t outside with us. I can’t even remember if the adults were home.
And I was, by the standards of my childhood, a sheltered, sedentary, bookish kid. Other kids were having even MORE adventures than I was.
And of course Generation X, the generation younger than mine, were famously latchkey kids.
I don’t see any of that anymore. Kids seem to be always, always supervised by adults.
