A Need For Television Challengers

One of my favorite movie scenes is the one in Annie Hall (1977) in which Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are standing on a movie line and behind them is a know-it-all guy pontificating to his girlfriend on the theories of the Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980). 

Allen goes off screen for a second. When he returns, he has McLuhan with him. McLuhan immediately tells the guy he doesn't know what he's talking about.

I sometimes wish there was a Woody Allen character or characters who would go on camera on one of these talking heads TV shows to challenge hosts and guests about the efficacy of COVID vaccines and the lethality of COVID. The information given seems to be one-sided.

Literary Epitaphs

In December 2021, I went through a pile of miscellaneous papers that were on top of the microwave oven. While doing so I found one paper on which I had written the epitaphs engraved on the headstones of two black gay writers I knew. Both of them died from AIDS.

Dave Frechette--"I Regret Nothing."

Donald Woods--"Forever In God's Loving Care."

Novelist Julie Otsuka On Literary Guilty Pleasures

"I'm not sure what makes a book a guilty pleasure," said Japanese-Canadian novelist Julie Otsuka to the New York Times Book Review ("By the Book," February 20, 2022), "but you definitely know it when you're reading one."

The Slap That Was Seen Around The World

According to People magazine (May 9, 2022 issue), actor Will Smith traveled to India right after slapping comedian/actor Chris Rock at the Oscars on March 27. Smith slapped Rock because Rock made a joke about Smith's wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who has hair loss as a result of alopecia.

The trip to India was "for spiritual purposes, to practice yoga and meditation." Too bad Smith didn't do those things prior to Oscar night. He would have avoided being banned by the Academy for ten years. Some people have to learn the hard way.