Blog tales of the Modern Man
It is no great revelation that there is something dangerously chemical between mothers and sons. I don’t mean in some sort of Oedipal way, I mean in a Jesus-this-relationship-is-hard-for-all-right-reasons kind of way. All motherhood is a laborious thing, or so I have been told. But of my interest today (and everyday really) is the motherhood […]
I wrote a first draft of this post shortly after the Boston bombings and posted it too quickly. Some of you may have read it. I was angry and didn’t know how to put words to it. 15 minutes after I posted it, I deleted it. It’s still imperfect, but I think I’m closer to […]
I work in a profession that involves a lot of training. Many of the people who come to work for me have little technical experience in the area of work we bring them in to do. We hire them, surround them with seasoned professionals and create apprenticeship-style relationships between those of us with scars and […]
Well Martinis Optional, I have been avoiding you. Not so much avoiding you, as passive-aggressively thinking about you and deeming myself unworthy to send you message and strike up a conversation. I have had no shortage of things we could have talked about (and probably should have) over the past five weeks, and perhaps now […]
I have been learning a long overdue lesson this week: No one is what they seem. Thank God. I, like many of you, go through the bulk of my adult life patently unaware of how holistically I am judging people by their first impressions. I like to think of myself as astute! A reader of […]
This entry represents a departure for Martinis Optional. I have worked very hard to keep this from being some sort of self-indulgent voyeur’s diary, where I work out my problems for the universe to read and comment on. I find that sort of thing distasteful, and therefore have tried to stray from anything seeming to […]
I’ve been avoiding this. I don’t think I’m ready to talk about Silver Linings Playbook. But Oscars Day caught up with me, and I cannot write my Oscar preview series without this movie. I’m skipping some of the others. Ones I didn’t get around to seeing (Life of Pi), ones I wouldn’t see if you […]
Every culture must have a methodology for telling the stories that encapsulate its mythology. American culture must, in this way, on a regular basis tell the story of a spy. Why is the spy so central to the iconology of the American myth? The spy captures all the great American characteristics–individualist, anti-establishment, morally-grey and driven […]
Loving Steven Spielberg’s work is all but a contractually required ascension for the American movie-goer. He is, by all accounts, the quintessential filmmaker of the 20th century, master of some of our cultures most beloved stories, stories both popularistic–like Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones–and those that we claim as the some of the highest points […]
I have been overwhelmed by the responsiveness to the Open Letter to SuperBowl producers. Dozens of shares and retweets have produced a groundswell of saddened and frustrated football fans that want to be able to view America’s game without having to be complicit with the subjugation of women that the 2013 Super Bowl so thoroughly […]
