As I watched him prepare to shoot up on the bathroom floor, I felt a mix of fear, horror, fascination and arousal. He didn’t tie that rubber thingy around his arm like I’d seen Diana Ross do in Lady... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]...

The Sincerest Form of Flattery? The Smackdown. Here we have two writer-directors telling coming-of-age stories starring TV stars trying to give off a semi-leading man feature vibe while projecting angst and alienation. Making his debut, writer-director Jonathan Kasden gives us our latest combatant "...

The Populist and the Outsider The Smackdown. Both "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Reader" seemingly deal with a country and a people's crimes toward humanity. Whether the abject poverty and destructive caste system of India or the German struggle with guilt and ultimate responsibility for the Holocau...

Rising Above Expectations The Smackdown. Childhood friendships can last a lifetime and have profound consequences. Both "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Kite Runner" tell sweeping stories in the lives of two boys -- a set of brothers in the former and a set of friends who act like brothers in the latt...

Edwardian Romance The Smackdown . Teenaged girls are a force to be reckoned with. Like tsunamis and hurricanes. Oh sure, industry wisdom has it that teenaged boys go to the movies; they're the prime target audience. Anyone who ventures into the multiplex in the heat of summer knows that. But never u...

- A network administrator has locked up a multimillion dollar computer system for San Francisco that handles sensitive data and is refusing to give police the password, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday. The employee, 43-year-old Terry Childs, was arrested Sunday. He gave some passwords to...

It can be scary, this coming of age thing. In my case, it's a coming of old age. I'll give you an example. I woke up this morning at 6:10 a.m. I sat on the toilet and realized just in time that I still had my underwear on. Horrifying. Then if that wasn't all, I took a shower, forgetting that the win...

Please help me identify this French novel! I'm filling in another stupid Facebook application involving the books you've read, are reading, etc. and suddenly remembered that I read a French (in French) novel last year around the fall. For the life of me I cannot remember the title OR the name of the...

The Awful Plight of Pittsburg College Professors The Smackdown . Why is it that actors who have made a decent living as leading men want to take roles where they look like crap, struggle with books in serious need of editing and, worse, have to live in Pittsburg? I mean no offense to the place, mind...

Reality on the Side The Smackdown. Goofy. Human. Hilarious with a large serving of sex. Using that recipe Judd Apatow produced or wrote a bucket of consistently engaging comedies the past ten years: Knocked Up, Freaks and Geeks, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy...