Muddled Musings
From WDET Detroit Public Radio December 8: Does giving something a name give it power? That’s what WDET wondered in the latest episode of its podcast Created Equal. It examined the origins of a crime first identified in the Motor City: carjacking. The term was invented in 1991 after Detroit News crime reporter Scott Bowles …
I have been a police reporter for 15 years, and a film reporter for another decade. So I feel comfortable committing the following double heresy: All the President’s Men is a lousy movie. As a book, it’s poetry. As a story, it’s the gold standard for every aspiring reporter. But, strictly from an entertainment …
I’ve never really had an issue with clowns. Krusty is one of my favorite Simpsons characters. The Joker is my favorite villain from the realm of superheroes (I even have a Halloween mask from The Dark Knight). As a boy, I was one of Bozo‘s faithful TV servants (along with Bozo’s magician sidekick, Marshall Brodien, …
There’s an idiom in contemporary politics that goes, approximately, like this: Republicans wake up angry; Democrats wake up sad. It would seem an inescapable truism, particularly given the rancor that freights this presidential campaign. While it will go largely unnoticed, Mike Pence did something extraordinary Sunday: He promised the nation that his party would peacefully …
I’ve always been a sucker for gadgets, gizmos and whatzits. Perhaps it was the gimmicks in the cheap magic tricks I bought as a kid. At least that’s what I rationalize when I continue to feed my addiction to odd purchases. Like the spy pen camera I bought I last week. I had no …
A world in chaos. Terror attacks run rampant. Deportation is the hottest issue on a worried public consciousness as walls keep immigrants from interacting with native citizens. A documentary? A nightly newscast? A Trump political ad? Try Children of Men. Ten years after it hit screens, wowed critics and cemented the reign of the …
As a Houdini wannabe — there’s gotta be a term there somewhere — I often find myself scouring YouTube for explanations of how magic tricks are performed. Some are genius. Some are painful. But all are, to some degree, a mirror. After a random question from a friend (“How do they levitate on the …
I recently came across a University of Indiana study that advertisers are increasingly turning to subliminal ads to woo millennials (who knew millennials had subliminal…anythings?). From sex to software, the study said, an Internet-fed generation increasingly relies on fleeting visual clues for information. The study wasn’t much of a jaw dropper: Journalism had to do a similar …
Another Sunday Mass. This time, a gay Florida nightclub, where 50 people were shot to death and another 50 wounded (by conservative estimate) today. There’s no reason to expect this shooting to unfold any differently than, say, the Sunday Mass in Charleston. The sane will say this needs to stop. The confederacy of dunces …
The Hollywood Bowles 