How Could a Commoner Write Such Great Plays?

“Anonymous,” a costume spectacle directed by Roland Emmerich, from a script by John Orloff, is a vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad.

read on

Kinda Cranky Pizza Guy

Burt Katz drove home. It was the middle of the day. He worked downtown but lived in Skokie. His wife, Sharon, watched him come through the door. She was throwing a birthday party for their son, who was 5. “What are you doing home?” she asked.
Burt, who was in his early 30s, explained that he had words with his boss, that he threw the guy up against a wall and shouted at him, and so, though fascinated with business, he hated the institutional sensibilities of white-collar work and abruptly quit. He had three kids, a mortgage and no plans. He also stopped shaving on that day, slightly longer than 40 years ago — April 12, 1971. He has not shaven since.

read on

Tall Order in the Capital

After absorbing a series of historic shocks during the summer, the edifice could take a long time to fix, and its future is uncertain. Congress? No. The Washington Monument, a 555-foot, pointed metaphor for what ails the nation’s political system.

read on

The Cult of Physicality

INSIDE an unmarked warehouse here, not far from a depressing stretch of fast-food joints and the Southern X-Posure strip club, Robert MacDonald — nickname: Maximus — is torturing a group of people. Or at least that’s how it looks. One man, howling in agony a second ago, has collapsed in a pool of sweat. A woman wipes away tears. A few of the rest are limping.

read on