Blog

  • August 3rd, 2013 5:07pm

    Premier Khrushchev once attempted to cashier a large number of senior officers in the Red Army, putting them in charge of hydroelectric power stations and the like. This was not to their liking, and in something like a year most of them were back in their old jobs. In fact, the military establishments of the United States and the Soviet Union owe their jobs to each other, and there is a very real sense in which they form a natural alliance against the rest of us.


  • July 29th, 2013 7:08pm

    And then, in 2010, Marvel Comics presented a Spider-Man (the ‘Ultimate’ version) who was 13 years old and brown. To see Spider-Man pulling his mask over a tiny brown chin – to see a boy with short curly hair sticking to the ceiling of his bedroom— well, something happened. Dagim has been Spider-Man for two Halloweens in a row. He takes a bath with his Spider-Man and a toy killer whale. He has Spider-Man toothpaste and a Spider-Man toothbrush. If Spider-Man offered medical coverage, I think he would want that, too.

    I thought for a while that my son would never be interested in my comics. I was afraid they would just represent another club he couldn’t join: all those big-jawed white guys with their hair parted to the side. But thanks to Spider-Man, my son imagines himself jumping on giant robots and saving the city. I hear him doing that behind the door of his room.


  • July 23rd, 2013 1:45am


    mirnah:

    Audrey Hepburn on the terrace of the Hotel Hassler, in Rome, with the telegram announcing her best-actress award, for The Nun’s Story, from the New York Film Critics Circle, 1960.