Fiz – 12.21.05
Wish this Remember the Sears Wish Book? Or, do you at least remember your parents talking about the Sears Wish Book? Not the first or the only catalogue, Sears Roebuck made mail order famous and fun: Each page of the holiday book was crammed with delights to circle or cut out or drool on in…
Family valued – 12.21.05
Saws and snowballs Say what you will for finances and household chores, but nothing challenges newlyweds quite like holiday celebrations. Traditions have to be meshed. Other people’s feelings need to be considered. Family members whom you did not marry need to be given their due regard. And people never make you talk about it before…
A wild menu of Indian delights
A pose of objectivity is almost always a sham. I’m more concerned with being fair to a restaurant that being objective, but in the case of Tandoor of India, my opinion is plain biased. I eat lunch there every Wednesday, and one of the owners, Makhan Singh, treats me and my family like his own.…
Inbox 12.21.05
Our contest for best subject line rages on. The deadline for submissions is January 14, 2006. In case you missed last week, we are collecting poignant subject lines for what promises to be a very unusual list. You don’t need to send any other information about the email, just the subject line itself. In the…
Moving works of art
I was poking around Fabrics & Findings the other day when I overheard one woman say to her coworker, “And a 45-year-old white guy wrote it!” Further eavesdropping confirmed that they were talking about Arthur Golden’s bestseller Memoirs of a Geisha, and since its publication in 1997 critics and readers have all marveled at the…
The big ape’s evolution?
One of the greatest movies of the greatest decade in American film, the original King Kong addresses not only its own time, but perhaps all time — beyond its importance in the art of motion pictures, the great ape haunts the imagination, dwarfing all the other monsters in the crowded population of movie creatures. The…
Rock out, get up, or get down
Heaven didn’t want ’em and Hell was afraid they’d take over, so Christian rockers Wales Road and recovering Christian rockers The Lobster Quadrille piled penitently into the Bug Jar instead last Thursday. Tommy Wales opted for a more jangly tone than usual but the songs still sounded great. His humility on stage is refreshing even…
Urban Journal – 12.21.05
Remember Nixon? This is just terrifying. It was bad enough that the Bush administration fought John McCain’s push to ban torture. Now we learn that he has approved government spying on US citizens with no judicial oversight. And he says he intends to keep right on approving it. The excuse is the predictable one: we…
Reader feedback – 12.21.05
Is it time to leave Iraq?
Cost of war – 12.21.05
The totals: 2155 US soldiers, 201 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 27,477 to 30,989 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq from the beginning of the war and occupation toDecember 15. American soldiers killed between December 11 and 15: Staff Sergeant Travis L. Nelson, 41; Anniston, Alabama | Sergeant KenithCasica, 32; Virginia Beach, Virginia | Staff…
Metro ink – 12.21.05
House of books When bookseller Franlee Frank acquired the late composer David Diamond’s book collection about two years ago, she joked it would have been easier to buy the whole house rather than move all the books. Diamond’s dark green, shuttered dwelling on Edgerton Street bore the weight of thousands of volumes and manuscripts. The…
The Johnson years
Bill Johnson came to office in 1993 as an outsider, an Urban League CEO who had been highly visible but had no political experience. In a Democratic Primary upset, he defeated four candidates, two of them well-known politicians with powerful backing: County Legislator Kevin Murray and former City Councilmember Ruth Scott. He said when he…
Johnson on Johnson: The mayor looks back
Schools. Crime. The city’s economy. Even a cursory glance at media coverage from this year’s mayoral election is enough to tell that the issues haven’t changed all that much from 1993, when Bill Johnson first swept into the mayor’s office in an upset victory. Twelve years of politics and policies later, are we better off?…
