America's Most Critical Journal since 1999
By Dan Geddes NEW YORK – Many American football fans may not realize that the National Football League (NFL) is not a corporation, but a tax-exempt organization. Recently more real die-hard fans have been donating money to their beloved NFL, even though thei... More »
31 January 2014 DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – The delegates to the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) insist that they are not an out-of-touch elite, but are actually “unappreciated servants of humanity.” “People don’t realize how ungodly difficult it is to ga... More »
by Dan Geddes While conspiracy theorists often imagine billionaires meeting together in secrecy to plan the future of the world, billionaires themselves scoff at this idea. Based on a recent Washington Chronicle survey of the approximately 1,000 billionaires i... More »
Llewyn’s (Oscar Isaac) opening folk performance at The Gaslight Cafe in 1961 sets the tone for a surprisingly non-violent Coen brothers’ movie about a struggling singer in the early folk scene in New York. Inside Llewyn Davis doesn’t seem like a Coen Br... More »
Dave Eggers 3 January 2014 Review by Dan Geddes The Circle, Dave Eggers’ novel named for a fictitious Google-like company that profits from its users’ data and destroys individual privacy, is a topical and compelling read. The story takes place in a... More »
CLEVELAND – Five area children have been charged with extortion after an area woman called the police to complain that she was terrified of Halloween trick-or-treaters. The five children, aged 7 through 11, and all dressed as Mitt Romney, have been released ... More »
By Lawrence S. Wittner Review by Dan Geddes What’s Going On at Uardvark? is a satirical campus novel, one where the university is utterly dominated by corporate interests. Companies outbid each other to have the campus buildings named after them. “... More »
Review by Dan Geddes See also: The Island at the Center of the World The Dutch Republic The First Salute Russell Shorto’s Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City is such an enjoyable book in part because Shorto cherry-picks the most i... More »
Woody Allen’s Streetcar Named Desire Review by Dan Geddes Blue Jasmine is Woody Allen’s best movie since Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Blue Jasmine is a compelling retelling of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, but set in San ... More »
Essay by Dan Geddes See also: The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Vineland, Inherent Vice, and Dys, an imaginary Pynchon novel Most Thomas Pynchon fans will not be disappointed by Bleeding Edge, his new novel set in New York in 2001. Some may be dis... More »
In an unprecedented move, the Nobel Literature committee gave its Literature award to Mitt Romney, praising his six-year campaign for the White House as “Dadaist performance art” and “theatre of the absurd of the highest order not seen since ... More »
Clark Casey Review by Dan Geddes Clark Casey’s The Perfect Defective is a hilarious short novella, an enjoyable beach read if your sense of humor includes ribald parody of the LA private detective genre. Aside from the Spade or Marlowe associations, some... More »