In the 1950s, the Federal Government largely replaced traditional designs for new construction with modernist ones.
Rand Paul should explain Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead to Trump.
Brian Sibley surveys the creation and many adaptations of A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol is not about the birth of Jesus. Although Scrooge undergoes a conversion, it is not one of religious faith. Regrets of the past and being forced to confront his inevitable death don’t lead Scrooge to a concern about the afterlife; instead, he wants to make amends and improve the lives of others in the present.
Regarding baby Jesus, Sibley has written a thoughtful and sensitive fantasy interpretation of the event, in Joseph and the Three Gifts: An Angel’s Story.
This past week on the DVR I watched the PBS documentary The Eugenics Crusade, showing how the American Eugenics movement contributed to Hitler’s nightmare of a Master Race. Then I watched a PBS fundraiser feature, ABBA Forever: A Celebration. The two programs have a connection in the person of Frida, whose mother bore her as a German soldier’s “Lebensborn” baby, during the Nazi occupation of Norway.
Speaking of PBS, that’s where A Charlie Brown Christmas can be watched tonight. Quite a switch from decades of airing on commercial TV. And with that comment, this posts ticks three of my blog categories.
Update a few references from 2001, and you have Christmas, 2020 relevance. The writers include Stephen Colbert and Louis CK.
A year ago, before the pandemic, Joe Pera sat down with Stephen Colbert for a low-key conversation. Two nice guys, both very creative, with different approaches to comedy. Joe is the opposite of raging screamer comics like Lewis Black.
Here’s a video Joe put on YouTube today.
