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‘Blue Bloods’ Exemplifies the Good in Contemporary Popular Culture
If Blue Bloods isn’t the best show on TV, it is certainly in the running. The recently completed second season ended with one of the better hours of television I’ve seen in a while. The reason isn’t so much the great story line, and lines, or the wonderful acting by the gravitas machine, Tom Selleck and supporting cast, including the hard bitten Donnie Walbergh. It’s rather all of this together with a show that respects the traditional values of family and faith and the wisdom that comes from a life well lived; wisdom clearly comes from those in the family who are older and the younger learn from them, not the other way around so often seen in popular entertainment. Not to mention the positive portrayal of a police force that protects a city of eight millions souls.
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“Blue Skies Smilin’ at Me, Nothin’ but Blue Skies Do I See” — Unless Geoengineers Have Their Way
"I frankly expected more people to punt on this one."
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A&E Solidifies Crime Drama Slate with ‘Longmire’
A&E’s new series Longmire is a promising addition to the network's slate of shows—in more than one way, S. T. Karnick writes.
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“Don’t Look Back” is Definitely Worth a Look
“It’s a legend, a story from the old days. If you’re out rowing and hear a splashing sound behind your boat, that’s the sea serpent rising up from the depths. You should never look back, just be careful to keep on rowing. If you pretend to ignore it and leave it in peace, everything will be fine, but if you look back into its eyes, it will pull you down into the great darkness. According to legend, it has red eyes.” I’m very old and very wise, and therefore rarely surprised. Although I’ve sampled several Scandinavian mystery writers (the genre has suddenly taken off in the backwash of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy), I’ve mostly not been overwhelmed with them. Too polite, too depressing, too politically correct, and usually not well translated. But when Norwegian author Karin Fossum’s Don’t Look Back showed up cheap for Kindle one day, I took a chance. I was surprised. This is a very good book (and the translation is one of the best I’ve seen). In my experience, female authors generally have trouble writing good male characters, but for my money Fossum nailed this one. She grabs the reader by the short hairs from the
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Doc Watson, RIP
There’s been an extraordinary loss of major figures in Americana and roots music in the last few months, including Earl Scruggs, Levon Helm, and Duck Dunn. Yesterday another musical giant, Doc Watson, passed away, at the age of 89. Doc Watson was blind from infancy but taught himself to become one of the best guitar players in popular music. He was to the guitar what Earl Scruggs was to the banjo: an innovator who forever changed the way bluegrass and country musicians approached their instrument. Although there are similarities to the Piedmont-style blues that was popular near his North Carolina home, Doc Watson’s “Carolina flatpickin’” guitar style was all his own. It’s also extraordinary that Doc Watson was not discovered until the folk music boom in the early 1960s, when he was nearly 40. His amazing fretwork and warm, engaging personality soon made him a fixture on the folk circuit. I first became aware of Watson from the seminal, three-album compilation “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” where the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band partnered with legendary, old-time musicians like Earl Scruggs, Vassar Clements, and Maybelle Carter to play traditional country standards. Among the album’s highlights are the recorded conversations of the
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Plum’s Appraisal of American Tunesmiths
"Honey, won’t you come to Tennessee?"
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Respect
"For love of country they accepted death." — James A. Garfield
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‘Mad Men’ Drapers Go to the Theater
Mad Men protagonist Don Draper is showing increasing disgust as the 1960s New Left culture begins its rise. Larry Kauffmann tells all about it.
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An Early American Libertarian Anarchist — Anne Hutchinson vs. The Theological Oligarchy
"Better to be cast out of the Church than to deny Christ."
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‘House’ Conclusion Satisfies Both Emotions and Intellect
For me the most interesting thing about the Fox TV series House, the final episode of which aired last night, was the way the narratives balanced cynicism and compassion, doubt and faith, solipsism and humanitarianism. What was perhaps most extraordinary about the show was that it managed to accomplish this through the depiction of its complex central character, Dr. Gregory House, a cynical, manipulative, oddly selfish medical diagnostician whose great genius is applied to solving medical mysteries.
House has no spiritual beliefs and looks upon the human race with undiluted cynicism: "Everybody lies," he says, and that, to him, is enough. He is devoted strictly to the truth.
What "the truth," is, however, has always been the real mystery of the show. . . .
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I Lost on Jeopardy
I dedicate this post to Tom Friedman, one of the most pedestrian, overrated intellects of this or any other age.
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“All Effect and No Cause”: Colliding Branes, Bouncing Universes, Promiscuous Singularities, and Fashionable Nothings — Five Versions of How It All Began
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." — G. K. Chesterton
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