Photo by The Retro Store on Unsplash By Geoff Carter (Originally posted in December 2019) While the Couch Potato will always be slavishly devoted to his TV home entertainment center, this week he will be putting down the universal remote in order to turn his focus solely on another entertainment form—music. Part of the reason for this departure …
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Category:Media
Kickass and News Dumpster
Justus Hayes from Vancouver, Canada, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, agrees with the keeper that the real negative aspect of someone like Alex Jones being thrown into the daily news dumpster is that it is already full of the denial/conspiracy crowd garbage, and it is really beginning to smell …
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Prime Time
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter I’m old enough to remember when the Watergate hearings aired in May of 1973. The Senate had established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to uncover unlawful activities—including the Watergate break-in—during the 1972 presidential campaign. Of course, thanks to the incredible investigative reporting at the Washington Post, …
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Dialogues on Hearts and Minds: Letters from the Real Me
Los Paseos from Earth, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis Curley, and Geoff Carter ‘bothood: Yet another selfless, I read it—you don’t have to distillation from yours truly. Sunday Times had a short but exhaustive analysis of Tucker Carlson’s descent into pure toxicity (white supremacy defense …
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Dialogues on Free Market Speech: Letters to the Editors
Photo by Gian Cescon on Unsplash Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis Curley, and Geoff Carter Kara, Elon, and the Donald ….in that order. This may not stick with you, but I’ve just recently discovered Kara Swisher “On Tech” columnist for the Times. Usually a weekly or bi-weekly column, she’s had …
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New Wave Cinema 2.0: The Films of David Lynch
Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter In The New Wave 2.0 series, The Pen in Hand Blog will be examining the work of today’s most provocative and influential filmmakers, artists whose singular visual styles and visionary senses have stretched the boundaries of cinema. Drawing upon Francois Truffaut’s definition of an auteur, …
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Triumph of the Will
Photo: Harry Wad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter The now infamous moment when Will Smith lost his cool and slapped Chris Rock in front of half the world (or more) at the Academy Awards has already been etched into the bedrock of our cultural mythology. Smith has been painted as everything from a …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to Spinning Classic Christmas Vinyl
Photo by The Retro Store on Unsplash By Geoff Carter (Originally posted in December 2019) While the Couch Potato will always be slavishly devoted to his TV home entertainment center, this week he will be putting down the universal remote in order to turn his focus solely on another entertainment form—music. Part of the reason for this departure …
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Highlights from The Pen in Hand Graphics: The Michael DiMilo Gallery
Dick Tater by Michael DiMilo Volume 6 Over the course of the last two and one-half years, The Pen in Hand Blog has been lucky enough to have obtained the services of free-lance artist Michael DiMilo as a contributor. While his unique style has provided a provocative and edgy feel to the blog, DiMilo’s pieces–obviously–stand alone as …
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Dialogues on the Art of Name Calling: the Gasbag Letters
DonkeyHotey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Dave S., Mark Mamerow, Dennis Curley, and Geoff Carter So many of our recent topics are at least partially echoed in the below. Do you gents ever read this NY Times version of the old 60 minutes: Point-Counterpoint? Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. I find it humorous and informative. Collins & Stephens …
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Kickass Crawls Under the Porch
Dusan Bicanski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, not knowing where else to go, is crawling under the communication porch to nap in the cool dirt with the dogs that long ago concluded that their barking at the mailman made about as much sense as …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to Old and New Hollywood: The Legacy of Clint Eastwood
English: “Copyright © by Warner Bros. Inc.” Photographer unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter Clint Eastwood has been a screen icon for the past sixty-six years. He’s acted in over seventy-two films, directed forty-five, and produced more than fifty, sometimes wearing all three hats during a single project. He has been responsible …
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