Is This Your Bar of Soap?
This is side five. Follow in your book and repeat after me as we learn three new words in Turkish: Towel. Bath. Border. So begins Waiting for the Electrician or…
Culture
Why Do We Make Music?
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d, And, as with living Souls, have been…
The Last Case of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes. Iconic detective, 93 years old. Tending his bees in bucolic self-exile near the Dover coast. Mycroft gone. Watson gone. Mrs. Hudson gone. Even the band of villains and…
The Hollow Men – Poem and Commentary, for All Hallow’s Eve
Want something spooky, even terrifying, for Halloween? Read this. The Hollow Men: I think this truly epic poem (one place where the word is meaningfully used) should be read at…
The Hollow Men – Poem and Commentary, for All Hallow’s Eve
Want something spooky, even terrifying, for Halloween? Read this. The Hollow Men: I think this truly epic poem (one place where the word is meaningfully used) should be read at…
The Signal
One of the oddest – but most intriguing – scifi films I’ve seen recently was the 2014 movie, the Signal. It is a small-budget film that premiered at the Sundance…
Houses of Cards
While there are parallels between them, there is no direct, simple comparison between the original, British mini series, House of Cards, and the American series of the same name. The…
The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction
I have been reading the essays of the late critic, Walter Benjamin, most famous for his 1936 piece, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction (an…
Ex Machina
Ex Machina – “from the machine” – is a British film that is more about philosophy and morality than science. It opens a can or worms, philosophically, that underscores issues…
Refugees: a Jewish issue comes to the fore
A quintessentially Jewish issue has dominated the news and become a prominent election issue ever since the picture of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying dead in the Mediterranean surf generated headlines…
The Missing Frankenstein Movies
I was worried when I saw a new package for the Frankenstein films in WalMart recently. Labelled the “Complete Legacy Collection,” it offered eight original films on the Frankenstein theme,…
Can we talk politics without lashon hara?
Over the course of the election campaign to this point, the Jewish community has seen repeated and sometimes flagrant violations of halachic and ethical prohibitions against lashon hara – wicked…
Anthony and Cleopatra
While Julius Caesar is my favourite of all Shakespeare’s plays, I think Anthony and Cleopatra is my second favourite. I know it’s hard to choose any favourites from his plays,…
The Road Not Taken
I was surprised to read a recent piece in the New York Post that suggests a poem I have long loved was actually not what I thought it was about.…
Stop Whining, Elvis Haters
Don’t people who hate Collingwood’s Elvis Festival ever get tired of whining and bitching about it? I guess not. There’s another whining letter about it in this week’s Connection. More…
Strat Plan Part 6: Culture and the Arts
The fifth and final objective in Collingwood’s developing strategic plan (the woo-hoo plan) is culture and the arts. For something so important to the community, with such a huge potential,…
Victor Hugo’s Hunchback
I have just finished listening to a well-read audio book (in English) of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, Hunchback of Notre Dame, or more properly, Notre Dame de Paris, as the…
The Lonely American
“Time Square Caught Napping” • Photo by Nana B Agyei Michael P. Printup, president of Watkins Glen International, one of the country’s largest racetracks, stood with a group of about…
Will Ferrell does a mock music video of gangster rap – and it’s a scathingly hilarious critique of the genre
A musical commentary, followed by social and political analysis, followed by hilarious spoof rap videos, and more This is scathingly funny. Will Ferrell does a mock music video of macho…