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Crashing THE HAPPENING

My Grandfather, remembered
If you ever read his columns, please watch this…I promise it is not a Spielbergian tearjerker.

Annual Giving of Thanks
Firstly, I am thankful that we even have a holiday that inspires us to think about all the good things in our lives. I do find it tiresome when some people argue that it’s a celebration of genocide — you can make that argument about Columbus Day, but Thanksgiving commemorates different races getting along…even if, at a later date, they ceased doing so. The Navajo people, for one, are still extraordinarily hospitable toward strangers, if the time I spent on their Rez is any indication. And that’s a trait worth celebrating…especially since it has burned them in the past and yet they maintain it. I am thankful that my grandfather had a great 86-year run

My Grandfather’s Final-Final Column
[Like 2Pac, he be dropping new joints even after he dead. Pretty sure this really is the last one, though. -- LYT] Don’t I know you? “Of course I know you.  We met at a conference 20 odd years ago and I remember you well.”  What sort of knowledge is that?  The claim to know someone is a big one, and unlikely to be true in anything but the most superficial sense.  The trouble, I think, is that it sounds so clumsy to ask, “Are you acquainted with so and so?”  Yet it’s surely better that the claim to know someone should at least imply a degree of understanding of the person under discussion.

Eulogy for Peter Graham
[written and delivered by Luke Y. Thompson, Nov. 20, 2009, at Sherborne Abbey in Dorset, England] Not long before he died, Peter Graham started a Facebook page. Probably not everyone here knows what that is, so let me explain: Facebook is an Internet social networking site originally designed for college and high-school students to network with each other. It’s grown a bit beyond that now…but I’m not sure “86 year-old retired vicar” was ever in the imagined demographic. Now, let me tell you why that’s significant. I live in Hollywood, and work in the media, and the way older people are so often portrayed is exemplified by Grandpa Abe on The Simpsons: Scar

A near-decade of dickishness
This past August, I passed the ten-year mark as a film critic. My, how times have changed. When I started, it actually seemed like a more pragmatic career move than acting. And I made a good living at it. The paper ran as many as six full-length reviews a week. I didn’t especially have much desire to do a Best of the Decade list, but every LAFCA member is being asked to do one. And it isn’t quite my full tenure — my very first ten-best list was for 1999, an indisputably great year. I don’t really know how it’s gonna go, but I know this much – it makes sense to cull my 10 Best of the Decade from the top-ten lists I’ve done every year