Top Five Recent Movies about Middle-aged Men who are Emotionally Detached
by Ernie on 14/03/10 at 9:31 am
5. About Schmidt (2002): retired man, discovers his life is pretty empty when, after his wife dies, he has no meaningful social connections, a fact made especially apparent at his daughter’s wedding.
4. Up in the Air (2009): middle-aged man discovers his life is pretty empty and meaningless, which is especially apparent at his sister’s wedding [...]
Full StoryBethany Gives Us More Top Five Barbies!
5. Catwoman Barbie
4. Athena Barbie
3. Barbra Streisand Barbie!
2. Hot Wizard of Oz Dorothy
1. Computer Engineer Barbie, Yay!
Plus one WTF?
Plus another WTF? It’s Palm Beach Barbie, in case girls want to pretend they’re an elderly woman wearing a caftan on her way to grab an Early Bird special.
Full StoryErnest Hilbert Reads “Coil” from Sixty Sonnets
Click To Play
Recorded at Widget Studios, Philadelphia, PA, engineered and produced by Dave Young for Pub Can Records. ©2009
Full StoryTop Five Movies that Take Place Mostly in Malls
5. Scenes from a Mall (1991)
(Fun factoid: those are not Bette Midler and Woody Allen’s bodies on the poster. In the days before Photoshop, someone went to the trouble of cutting and pasting those heads onto those bodies. Is being Woody Allen’s body-double a career low or a lifetime low?) [Yeah, one of the worst [...]
Full StoryFor Valentine’s Day, a Poem by Luke Stromberg, “Squirrel Luck”
I can’t sleep.
The squirrels are fucking
Again. In my wall.
I can hear them:
Nails across wood,
Excited chatter,
Then finally a sound I imagine
As the female’s sigh of satisfaction—
Over and over.
They fuck
All night long.
The whole world is fucking.
I picture the young couple next door—
The husband
Steely-eyed, square-jawed,
His thin, blond wife,
Clothes always clinging
To her jogger’s frame— writhing
On bed sheets, their tanned [...]
Ernest Hilbert’s Top Two Hundred Best Songs of the Decade, Number 12
“Squatterz” by Jakk Frost: You can’t buy these albums on iTunes or in stores (the few that still sell albums). I got my copies of his albums from a cab driver who got me home late at night from a party (and I was spiraling around the galaxy at that hour). I had seen the [...]
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“A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book”: Ernest Hemingway Videos
Hemingway’s famous Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Patrick and Sean Hemingway on the controversial new edition of A Movable Feast
The Old Man and the Sea
Michael Palin’s Hemingway adventure in Cuba, courtesy of the BBC
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Top Five Words for the Recent Blizzard (Philadelphia Edition)
5. Snow D-Day (as in “snow day”)
4. Snowtastrophe
3. Snowpacalypse
2. Snowffleupagus
1. Snomageddon
Thanks to E-Verser Chris for getting us started on this.
Oh, and thanks to Erica, for sending in this picture from her neighborhood.
You just gotta love Philly. And while we’re on the topic, you also gotta love a “regional cuisine” that consists of “Cheesesteak with Cheeze [...]
Full StoryTop Five Father/Daughter Relationships in Shakespeare
5. Portia and her father, Merchant of Venice: “so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.”
4. Jessica and Shylock, Merchant of Venice: “My daughter! My ducats! My daughter! My ducats!”
3. Perdita and Leontes, A Winter’s Tale: born in prison and doomed to death as an infant by [...]
Full Story“Rowing in the Dawn” by Ernest Hilbert in The Oxonian Review
I rowed for one of St. Catherine’s “beer” eights, or social eights, at Oxford. We would haul the big wooden boat out before sun rose in the winter so we could be out of the water by the time the Blues, the serious rowers, needed the river. The Isis is what the Thames becomes when [...]
Full StoryTop Five Relatively Recent Cases of Famous Men Having Illegitimate Children/Second Families
5. Strom Thurmond: After the Senator’s death, it was revealed that the staunch racial segregationist had, at age 22, fathered a child with his family’s black maid, then-16-years-old, Carrie Butler. Thurmond supported his daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, at various times throughout her life, paying her college tuition and occasionally providing her with money, but never [...]
Full StoryBethany’s Top Five Words in English in which the Feminine is the Unmarked Category
“Unmarked category” means the default. So for many words, for a long time, one assumed it was used to refer to a man, unless someone specifically stated it was a woman. This is why one might say “woman doctor.” Otherwise it might be assumed that when one says “doctor,” one means a man. This usage [...]
Full StoryCalvin and Hobbes Snowmen
Here is a link to some Calvin and Hobbes strips on snowmen, courtesy of E-Verser Cynthia, she of the flying trapeze, and now, as of last week, a member of the Polar Bear Club. Click here to visit the Calvin and Hobbes gallery.
Thanks, Cynthia!
Full Story“The Fluffer Talks of Eternity” by D.A. Powell
I can only give you back what you imagine.
I am a soulless man. When I take you
into my mouth, it is not my mouth. It is
an unlit pit, an aperture opened just enough
in the pinhole camera to capture the shade.
I have caused you to rise up to me, and I
have watched as you rose and [...]
E-Verse is Snowed In!
It’s really picking up now, so we have snow, which was already on a layer of snow, and between a nice shanking of icy rain just to make it that much nicer. But being snowed in for the day isn’t so bad when one has books, and grub, and coffee, and cool cats, and a [...]
Full Story“Academic” by Theodore Roethke
The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:
You’re likely to go on living for years,
With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop-girl simper,
And the style of your prose growing limper and limper.
Top Five Plays or Movies that about Shakespeare but Not Adaptations of his Plays
5. Elizabeth Rex: Queen Elizabeth spends a few hours talking to a man in Shakespeare’s acting troupe who specializes in playing women. In other words:a man who plays women teaches a woman who acts like a man how to be a woman on the eve of the execution of the man she loves (Essex) for [...]
Full StoryThanks to the 8000 E-Verse Readers This Month
We’re getting more and more readers here at E-Verse, so this is a big thanks to all of you for stopping by. I’d like to know who the reader in Siberia is . . .
Full StoryTop Five People Killed While Skiing
5. Ulrike Maier: world class Austrian skier, broke her neck in a fall while racing. Age: 26.
4. Doak Walker: Heisman Trophy winner and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Age: 72!
3. Sonny Bono: skied into a tree. Age: 62.
2. Michael L. Kennedy (son of Robert Kennedy): skied into a tree while playing “ski [...]
Full Story“Here” by Joshua Mehigan
Nothing has changed. They have a welcome sign,
a hill with cows and a white house on top,
a mall and grocery store where people shop,
a diner where some people go to dine.
It is the same no matter where you go,
and downtown you will find no big surprises.
Each fall the dew point falls until it rises.
White snow, [...]
“The Saint and the Crab” by William Logan
Along the campo, Manin’s bronze winged lion prowled
among the tanned intruders, licking their hands.
Pools of iridescent shellfish
lay open in the restaurant window,
a shop of otherworldly opals, the mussels’ sheen
the skies of a closed heaven, crabs flat on their backs,
their armor intricate trapped plates and escapements.
The squid slumped in its own ink, the octopus appalled
in its [...]
Top Five Movies about People Visiting Las Vegas and Doing “Crazy” Things
5. What Happens in Vegas (2008): dumped workaholic and fired slacker end up married after night of debauchery, and also win 3 million dollars at the slots. Judge sentences them to live together for 6 months, with whoever asks to be let out of the marriage automatically forfeiting the money to the other. Naturally, both [...]
Full StoryReally, Would it Kill You to Read a %*$(@&*# Book? . . . . the Rap! (Not Safe for Children or Those of Senstive Dispositions!)
Thanks to E-Verser Bill, famous lawman, for sending this in.
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Remember Live Aid? Maybe Hearing Aid, the metal one in the US? Well, how about Swedish Metal Aid . . . .
Have you ever seen so many mullets?
Full StoryScariest and Coolest “Puppets” Ever: Enter Royal de Luxe
I’m not typically amused by puppets, but these are no mere “puppets” in the traditional sense. Les Machines de l’île involves colossal puppets. Wait till you see these.
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