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Posts Tagged With ‘ ron howard ’

 

The Self-Made Myth

December 2nd, 2020

Hillbilly Elegy is streaming on Netflix There’s a story many of us tell ourselves about poverty.* Poor people are poor due to their own actions or inactions. They just want a handout from the government. They’re lazy. They’re not very intelligent or motivated, and when they do utilize a kind of low cunning, it’s to figure out ways to game the system and screw over virtuous taxpayers like “us.” I remember being told that story when I was very young. We had a house in Rockville, Maryland, and while my mother stayed indoors to protect the fragile health that would eventually fail her,... Read More

I Have a Moderately Good Feeling About This

May 27th, 2018

Just when I thought I was done with Star Wars, The Last Jedi pulled me back in. As a kid, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were right on my wavelength — or I was on theirs. Then, I saw Return of the Jedi, and in one of the first times as a neophyte filmgoer, I had to grapple with disappointment. That was when I started to move away from the Force. Years go by. George Lucas makes the first of his infamous Prequels and, like a jackass, I stood in line in Seattle to see The Phantom Menace. Did I walk out of the theater and boldly proclaim that it sucked? I did not. I made excuses for it, for... Read More

Is It Wrong To Root For The Whale?

December 13th, 2015

Okay, folks, time for a thought experiment. Imagine you’re a whale, a sperm whale to be precise, living in the year 1820. While most of your kind measures 50 feet long, you’re a big sucker that’s around 85 feet long. You spend your days hanging out with your pod, hunting squid, enjoying the freedom of the open ocean. Life is good, right? Well, that’s where we get into a good news/bad news scenario. The good news is that, as the largest toothed predator on the planet, you don’t often get hassled. The bad news is, inside of your head is a liquid wax called spermaceti.... Read More