Free Republic

Last year National Review magazine started running a piece by James Lileks in every issue. I am ashamed to say I had never heard of him, although his humor is quite good (better than P J O'Rourke even). And he is, of course, a conservative.Anybody familiar with his work?

The culture of the passengers? Don’t want to generalize; just quoting. The food is horrible. Expect Europeans blowing smoke everywhere. My entire suitcase and clothing at the end of the trip reeked of smoke. They rarely cleaned the deck so I personally slipped 4 times and saw 20 people slip. There are inadequate warnings in place by the pool to indicate that the floor is slippery. If you are elderly, this is a walking death trap. Nobody ever lines up and expect people to push you out of the way or bite your hand off while trying to get food...

With the holiday entertainment season upon us, it's time to compare notes about what the worst Party fare anyone has ever encountered. There are innumerable Culinary Disasters to relate out there, so why not start early and avoid an Entertainment Faux Pas of your own? My wife and I worked for a title insurance company in Portland, Oregon for a while back around the turn of the Century, and we had numerous opportunities to experience some of the most goat-gagging recipes that people came up with for office pot-lucks and various event parties. Some remain legendary, and my wife and...

My friend the Crazy Uke is a mortgage guy; he’s getting me another refi. Years ago - oh, decades - we sat up all night in the back booth of a college restaurant and argued politics; now we sit around the kitchen table of the house he helped us buy, sign endless forms and documents, then pour a drink and agree about politics. I changed. He didn’t. As the son of Ukrainian DPs, he had anti-Soviet and anti-statist ideas poured into his marrow as he grew up, and his accounts of his parents’ lives during the famine and the war...

Over the fire I chatted with a neighbor who’s working on the “Red Dawn” remake. Get this: in the new version, China and Russia invade the US – to put a stop to our greed. There are times you wish you had a mouthful of kerosene so you could do a flaming spit take. If this is how the film turns out, it’ll be hilarious; it’s as if the filmmakers were a bit ambivalent about all the horrible jingoism that such a film might unleash, so they had to temper it with a bit of theoretical altruism that could be...

The love of chrome-and-glass modern restaurants is probably due to one place, which I’ve mentioned before – the Erie Jr. in Detroit Lakes, MN. It had a counter, a high ceiling, plastic booths in vivid hues, a roof that looked like it space ships could dock in the back, and it had that space-age vibe that shimmered off so many new things when I was very young. We had a keen sense of the future then; we knew the toys we had today would be the tools of the future. You know how you put your hand out the window...

Just heard James Lileks on the Northern Alliance radio network. He had a great idea for a T-shirt slogan: "QUESTION O-THORITY" Using, of course, the big Obama "O" at the beginning. Any talented FReeper photoshoppers want to whip up a graphic like that?

It is Daisy’s policy to only sell directly, via phone order or internet order, to persons 21 years of age or older who complete and submit this affidavit of age. You must already have an affidavit on file or complete one now in order for us to be able to process your order. State statutes and/or local ordinances prohibit the sale and possession of air guns, CO2 guns and slingshots in some areas. We are unable to ship airguns into Chicago, Morton Grove, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island City, Manhattan, Queens, New York City and Staten Island. Persons in...

Our bridge problems never end. The Lowry Avenue bridge may close permanently, since it apparently has the structural integrity of cotton candy in a hot shower. It'll cost $100 mil to replace. Or we could just get cars over the Mississippi via large slingshots, or a trebuchet. The Bryant Avenue footbridge over the Minnehaha Creek was closed this week due to "possible future problems relating to gravity," to paraphrase the official findings. I went to the creek to examine the bridge's condition, and I'll say this: If there's one word I don't want used to describe the steel in a...

Scroll down and begin reading here:On the radio today Medved and Hewitt both asked Obama supporters to call and say why they were supporting their man. Specifics, please. The replies were rather indistinct...

Love of country must always be qualified these days, lest anyone think you are unaware of slavery, insufficiently regulated railroad stock offerings, Lester Maddox or the attempt by Philip Morris to conceal the addictive nature of cigarettes. Say “I love this country” at a dinner table with strangers, and it’s like shave and a haircut without the two bits. But? But? We are an exceptional nation, to be sure, but you can’t leave it at that. We are exceptionally misguided, exceptionally lazy and xenophobic, shot through to the pith with bilious perfidy, and our sole redeeming quality is our ability...

[UPDATE 05/06/07: Dedicated to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.] *************************Dear Subscriber: According to our records, your 1957 subscription to The Claxon is scheduled to expire soon. Please don't let this happen! $2 per month will buy you the Quint-State area's leading newspaper, delivered each morning by one of our cheerful Junior Claxoneer news lads -- like 12-year old Claxon Carrier of the Year Skip Olbermaier! Each issue is packed with items of interest around our community - like: Goings-on at City Hall, including the controversial $0.0032 sales tax plan! Publisher Felton Beswick Jr. keeps you up-to-date on the Red Menace! The...

The most heated topic in the blogosphere this week was the announcement by James Lileks, one of the world's most popular bloggers, that his longtime employer, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, was taking away his print column and putting him back on the reporting beat. This announcement, which first appeared late Monday night in Lileks' column, initially drew shocked disbelief, then an explosion of anger  mostly in the form of letters to Lileks in support (including one from me) and to the Star-Tribune in righteous fury. On his radio show, Hugh Hewitt devoted a couple hours of precious airtime to the...

James Lileks is a funny guy and a damn fine writer. I’ve been reading him at Lileks.com since 2002 and am amazed that he hasn’t been snapped up by a major national paper. For a long time he did have an indispensible political column with Newhouse News Service (ha, no link, losers) that, a couple of weeks ago, was abruptly dispensed. And now his home paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune (likewise), has decided that since they have in Lileks a nationally-known top-notch bestselling humor writer and political commentator, they need to… …pick up the slack left by Newhouse and give...

Anything else today? Well, how about a book review? My friend Hugh Hewitt has written a political biography of Mitt Romney, and I can recommend it for one solid reason: this marks the second time in my life I have looked for my name in the index, and found it. Aside from that, I can recommend it on several levels. I should preface this by saying I’m not a Romney guy. It has nothing to do with his creed. I think his accomplishments are impressive, his public persona solid and direct. I think he is what he seems to be....

Lileks: Thoughts on the last indispensable nation on Earth By JAMES LILEKS Tuesday February 20, 2007 An asteroid is heading for Earth. A big one. It's called "Apophis,'' which might be Greek for "uh oh,'' and it will come "uncomfortably close'' to Earth on April 13, 2036. (It's a Sunday.) The odds are 1 in 45,000 that the rock will strike the planet, throwing up sufficient dust to cause a massive drop in temperatures, thereby curing global warming. Hmm: Perhaps "Apophis'' is Greek for "repairman,'' and the technical term for this celestial event is "service call.'' Based on the movies,...

Giving context to Pariah Kerryby James Lileks At the international Davos gabfest, John Kerry called the United States "an international pariah.'' While that does set us apart from nations that manage to be pariahs domestically, it makes you wonder if his quotes were taken out of context. He's smart. He went to college, studied hard. How did he manage to get stuck in Switzerland? The Davos conference is the annual gathering of bespoke-suited nomenklatura who hang around lobbies smoking cigarettes before heading into smaller rooms to talk about important things, like reducing cigarette consumption in Third World countries. No...

Putting an end to the Saddam problemby James Lileks Opponents of capital punishment may have contemplated Saddam's execution by recalling Groucho Marx's quote about never forgetting a face: For you, I'll make an exception. One might argue that the trial could have been less farcical; one might have enjoyed seeing Saddam answer for all his crimes, including the deaths of 100,000 Kurds in 1987-88. In the end, however, he had but one neck to give for his country, and he proved that no man is above the law. Especially the one concerning gravity. Tyrants in other countries might have felt...

We Have Met the Enemy, and It Moooos BY JAMES LILEKS In another display of pitch-perfect priorities, the U.N. has released its findings on cow flatulence. There's quite a lot of it.The 400-page study, $27 million of which probably went to Saddam Hussein for old times' sake, discovered that the planet's livestock, including 1.5 billion cattle, produce 18 percent of greenhouse gases. Apparently the beasts of the field do nothing but wander around all day asking their brethren to "pull my hoof." Every time a cow feels a small sense of relief, a polar bear goes through the ice. Or...

Danny DeVito's disgraceful performance on "The View." the clip shows him referring to the President in terms vulgar enough that they were bleeped out by ABC; what it doesn't show ...were his remarks about having sex with his wife on every surface in the Lincoln Bedroom. Discussing the episode on today's Hugh Hewitt show, the incredibly talented James Lileks made a very perceptive remark about DeVito's comments about the Lincoln Bedroom -- to the effect that DeVito was the type of person who couldn't bear to leave anything undebased. Absolutely true... people like Danny DeVito have always been with us....