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A Brit Dissects America • 12/22/05
Pond Scum: Saving Us All from Satan's Power
By Steve Finbow

"We proclaim our individuality and our rejection of the system and prevailing culture by buying into a smaller culture that is even more restrictive in terms of dress, art, and morals. Both the Beatnik and Punk movements proclaimed sexual equality and political freedom yet were essentially sexist and reactionary..."

A Brit Dissects America • 1/19/06
Pond Scum: Lord of the Lies
By Steve Finbow

"The media is a co-conspirator in the West’s attempt to eradicate evil, however slight that (apparent and so-called) evil is – adultery, alcohol abuse, or homosexuality. The moral universe has shrunk to the personal and the media believes it is the arbiter of an individual’s morals. The government, the media (in America the FCC), and right-wing pressure groups (the AFA) operate a dualistic morality outside of any humanistic concerns..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 1/6/06
Culturally Speaking #74: New Things in a New Year
By Sarah Stodola

Some of my friends are doing the most amazing things, China's urban population runs rampant, celebrities no more, I know why I'm white, and more...

THE BEST BOOKS OF 2005
As Chosen by Me Three Editors and Friends

Weekly Culture Rundown • 12/9/05
Culturally Speaking #73: The Goods on Hitchens and Lethem
By Sarah Stodola

I'm back! With Hitchens, Lethem, funny liberals, racial inquiries, Ritalin promotion, bad sex, and more...

A Brit Dissects America • 12/8/05
Pond Scum: A Beard Stripped Bare by the Fatuous, Even
By Steve Finbow

"We proclaim our individuality and our rejection of the system and prevailing culture by buying into a smaller culture that is even more restrictive in terms of dress, art, and morals. Both the Beatnik and Punk movements proclaimed sexual equality and political freedom yet were essentially sexist and reactionary..."

A Brit Dissects America • 10/27/05
Pond Scum: The Merkin Chronicles
By Steve Finbow

"There is a small planet orbiting a distant sun. There is a small moon orbiting a small planet orbiting a distant sun. The inhabitants of that moon are a pinkish brown, a yellowish black, a reddish green. They are mostly large and shiny. Some have threadlike pigmented structures that grow from follicles beneath the skin. Others are as bald as stingrays. Some carry metal implements that puncture and tear the flesh with speed and light..."

Music • 10/25/05
The Dance of Decadence: The Permissive Society
By Steve Finbow

"What do they sound like? Well, the lead singer of Jackie O described them as having the tight drum and bass of Joy Division and the riffs and energy of Led Zeppelin. That is not far off, but there is evidence of Joe’s other influences – Television (the band), Ronnie Hazlehurst, Geoff Love & His Orchestra, and television (the thing in your living room)..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 7/8/05
Culturally Speaking #69
By Sarah Stodola

A bad day in London that everyone knew was going to happen, Judith Miller in jail, James Wood on perfect endings, Stop Smiling Magazine and more...

Weekly Culture Rundown • 6/24/05
Culturally Speaking #68: Going Broke in London
By Sarah Stodola

"A Times article says that women's prizes in literature are still useful because women fare poorly when it comes to the major 'gender-neutral' awards. The first thing that pops into my mind here is that last year ALL of the National Book Award nominees for fiction were women, which means so was the winner. In addition, the Nobel Prize was awarded to a woman. If things were bad for women before, you have to think that the tide might be turning, and thus women-only prizes aren't necessary after all. "

Culture • 6/23/05
Batman and America
By Nicholas Allanach

"Recently released Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan and staring Christian Bale, is far from the homoerotic and colorful version developed by Joel Shumacher in the mid-nineties. Instead, Nolan’s take on the Dark Knight will remind fans of Frank Miller’s aging hero from his graphic series, “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.” Nolan’s and Miller’s depiction of Batman is similar in that both are complex psychological glimpses into the inner workings of an antihero, torn between justice and vengeance..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 5/20/05
Culturally Speaking #65
By Sarah Stodola

Paul Krugman on the China-USA economic relationship, Malcolm Gladwell on fads, a "best of the web" list, non-dictionary words by Merriam-Webster, and more...

Culture • 4/28/05
36 Years Since 1969 and We're Still Hip
By Dorian Bensen

"Now is as good a time as any to celebrate an anniversary of the year 1969 -- the height of 60's culture -- because it’s safe to say that by now a full generation has certainly passed since then, and also because it has been 36 years since ’69, and those are all multiples of three, and I take that as a sign...

Music Review • 4/26/05
Death and the Fax Machine: Beck's Guero
By Mark Grueter

"None of this, of course, is entirely new for Beck (who long ago sang, “I know, I know, it’s the positive people running from their time, looking for some feeling”) - just one more foot deeper in the grave. But with previous albums (save Sea Change) there was a clearer attempt to mix offbeat humor in with the grimness..."

A Brit Dissects America • 4/21/05
Pond Scum: The Last Resort
By Steve Finbow

"In two weeks’ time, the UK has a general election. Unlike the US, we have more than two main parties. We have three: Liberal Democrats (Liberals and Social Democrats all mixed up, sort of like a cheesy mashed potato without any gravy); The Conservative Party (The Tories, more of a shit-covered pine cone – very hard to swallow); and then there is the incumbent political party – The Labour Party (a rum baba, topped with pink icing, revolving at the speed of trite)..."

Film Review • 4/20/05
Walk on Water
By William Sternman

"Cafeteria believers are always free to pick and choose among various Biblical strictures. As one wag pointed out to one of the world’s most egregious religious grazers, the gay-bashing Dr. Laura Schlessinger: 'I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?' Not to mention: 'I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes men unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?' Walking on Water, an Israeli movie, does not consider these questions either..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 4/8/05
Culturally Speaking #60
By Sarah Stodola

Me Three's new weekly events listings, bands that played at Fez, the sad state of Afghanistan, the latest royal wedding (and bafflement over royal hairdos), Saul Bellow's obit, a new book about a literary townhouse in Brooklyn, and more...

A Brit Dissects America • 4/7/05
Pond Scum: the darkness sur-
rounds us
By Steve Finbow

"It was 1989 and I was working as a researcher/editor for Allen Ginsberg. I had been a long-time Bob Creeley fan, when Bob Rosenthal told me Bob was going to be in New York for a reading, I inveigled an introduction. Bob was reading at a school on the upper East Side, if I remember correctly, and I went to hear him read and introduced myself. He said he was going to a party on the upper West Side and would I like to come along..."

Film Review • 4/06/05
Dear Frankie
By William Sternman

"This touching movie, written by Andrea Gibb and directed by Shona Auerbach, is about a nine-year-old deaf boy whose whole life centers around his dad, who is traveling around the world on the British warship HMS Accra. He tracks his dad’s progress on a big wall map and treasures the stamps that the man sends him from around the world..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 4/1/05
Culturally Speaking #59: The One with Not a Single Graphic
By Sarah Stodola

A repeat of the rant against book blog coverage, a different perspective on the death toll in Iraq, books that don't quite get turned into movies, and realizing that Adam Smith isn't the guy I always thought he was..

Movie Review • 3/31/05
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
By William Sternman

"Although the whole idea of forming a commune was to live in almost early Christian simplicity in communion with nature and to reject all the materialist trappings of the corrupt establishment, Jack prefers to live off the fortune his industrialist father left him. (Never let principles stand in the way of convenience.) Give the man his due—he’s a vegetarian and he generates his own electricity with wind towers, but he also tools around the island in a polluting gas-guzzler..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 3/25/05
Culturally Speaking #58
By Sarah Stodola

A new way to receive Me Three updates, another Kakutani review, wondering if your doctor shares your political views, the newest push for cencorship in Congress, Safran Foer's new novel, and more...

A Brit Dissects America • 3/24/05
Pond Scum: A Writer Walks into a Bar...
By Steve Finbow

"In that year, when I wasn't drinking, I got a lot of writing done. So does that mean...Oh, I've come over all Carrie Bradshaw... alcohol influences the quality and quantity of writing? Or is it a muse, a means, an aid? And as an aside, who can hold their drinks better – the Brits or the Yanks?..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 3/18/05
Culturally Speaking #57
By Sarah Stodola

The thing to read in Spanish, the biggest McDonald's in the world, Me Three print submissions, the new federal budget, the charmed writing life of Jonathan Lethem, signs of US permanence in Iraq, and more...

Book Review • 3/15/05
de Kooning: An American Master
By Sarah Stodola

This biography is of general importance chiefly because it is, surprisingly, the first comprehensive biography of the artist. But it is also a highly enjoyable read – one might even say it’s a page-turner, if books of this genre are permitted to be labeled as such. As a non-artist, I went into reading this 633-page tome fully prepared to be bored silly. But the authors manage to make even the potentially tedious descriptions of the artistic process readable.

A Brit Dissects America • 3/10/05
Pond Scum: The Size of My Hat
By Steve Finbow

"There may have been ducks on the wall, I can't really remember. There was definitely embossed wallpaper. I remember stones: stones in the shape of things; a stone the shape of a swan, a stone the shape of a slipper, and a large stone that sat in the centre of the hearth and was the shape of, well, as far as I could tell, a stone. There were antimacassars on the backs of the napped chairs and mismatched sofa..."

Movie Review • 3/8/05
The Merchant of Venice
By William Sternman

"In strictly Elizabethan terms, Shakespeare’s play is a comedy, since the hero (Antonio), the merchant in question, accomplishes what he sets out to do. In actuality, the play is a crypto-tragedy, since the real hero, Shylock, is prevented from doing what he sets out to do and, like Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, is destroyed in the attempt..."

Movie Review • 2/10/05
The Woodsman
By William Sternman

"The Woodsman is about a pedophile that returns home after twelve years in prison. He is still a pedophile even though he is in therapy. In the movie’s most powerful moment, Walter (Kevin Bacon) asks his doctor, “When will I be normal?” This simple question is really a cri de coeur, an unanswerable scream of existential pain and angst. It still reverberates in my skull..."

Culture • 2/8/05
Here She Is...Miss Danbury
By Chris Fara1

"The scene looks more like a Halloween party than the Miss America show. Contrary to what some folks might think, the amateur pageant league isn’t all glamour and glitz (though there is a fair amount of glitz). On this occasion, the rented space is only a thousand square feet, which would barely fit Miss Alabama’s hair team – but showbiz is showbiz..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 1/28/05
Culturally Speaking #51: It's Mostly Just All About Us
By Sarah Stodola

How the Academy got it all wrong, the author's masculine pen, Manhattan's demise, and...oh yes, about ten bit's on this little lit journal called Me Three...

A Brit Dissects America • 1/27/05
Pond Scum: I Name the Guilty Bearded Men
By Steve Finbow

"Is America resistant to outside influence instead of being a creation of outside influence? And is the world open to American ideas and not just fast food and computer systems? Will these two cultural signifiers be America's legacy to the world by the end of the 21st century? Chicken zingers rather than free elections. Windows 2026 rather than self-determination..."

Movie Review • 1/25/05
Kinsey
By William Sternman

"I’m not at all surprised that Condon has turned his movie into more than a dry docudrama (although it is highly enlightening) or a turn-on flick (although there are moments…). In Gods and Monsters, which he also wrote and directed, he made the life of homosexual film director James Whales, who directed the first Frankenstein movie as well as The Bride of Frankenstein, more than a study of a dirty old man (Ian McKellen) trying to get into the pants of his beautiful young heterosexual gardener (Brendan Fraser)..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 1/21/05
Culturally Speaking #50: For Number 50, We Visit Number One
By Sarah Stodola

That Me Three Print Journal, the changing structure of the media, the most depressing day of the year, 34 scandals created by the Bush administration, and more...

Writing • 1/20/05
Memoir of a Memoir-Writing Class, Week Ten (The Final Chapter)
By Harris Bloom

"When she realized no tears were forthcoming, she asked the guys in the class to get up and be 'beat boxes' (she didn’t know the term so she demonstrated – quite the sight) for the rap song she’d written. Naturally she went at it alone once we had all demurred, but not before she went to her desk to retrieve the Big Fur Hat she wore to class. After putting it on, she launched into a song and dance (and I use both terms loosely), rapping like, well, the 50-year-old white woman she was..."

Movie Review • 1/18/05
Beyond the Sea
By William Sternman

"Against even bigger odds, the 45-year-old Spacey makes us accept him as the 20-year-old Darin -- not through makeup, shadowy lighting or filming through gauze or a Vaseline-coated lens (as was done with Lucille Ball in Mame), or even through linoleum, as the older Tallulah Bankhead once quipped would be appropriate for herself -- but through the sheer power of his personality..."

Weekly Culture Rundown • 1/14/05
Culturally Speaking #49: The Newish One
By Sarah Stodola

Margaret Atwood's first book, Paul Krugman takes on Social Security, hippos and turtles, donors to the presidential inauguration, top classical music albums of the year, and more...

A Brit Dissects America • 1/13/05
Pond Scum: Are We There Yet?
By Steve Finbow

"I still vote Labour, and I will probably do so in the next election. Maybe, in later years, I will vote Liberal Democrat. You never know, when I am drooling into my nightshirt in a bath chair, manhandled by warty nurses, I may sport a little shoe-polish-blackened toothbrush moustache and throw the odd Roman salute. What I'm trying to say is, do we become more conservative as we grow older? Do governments? Does culture?..."