Author: Daniel Ross Goodman

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save When Loni Anderson sashayed into America’s living rooms as Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati, she didn’t just steal the show. She redefined what a TV bombshell could be. With her platinum blonde hair, sparkling dimples,…

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save When Alasdair MacIntyre sat down to write After Virtue in 1981, he didn’t just pen a book — he launched a philosophical rebellion. The Scottish American thinker, who died on May 21 at 96 in South Bend, Indiana,…

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save When Michael Ledeen strode into a room, you felt the air shift. It wasn’t just his towering intellect or his penchant for quoting Machiavelli with the ease of a man ordering coffee — it was the…

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save In a world of grandstanding and gavels, David Souter was a whisper — a Granite State recluse who slipped onto the Supreme Court in 1990 like a shadow through a side door, only to leave…

We’ve all heard the saying “saved by the bell.” But some musicians might argue that we should also have an expression for when an artist is saved by a movie (or by TV). Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a song that was upstaged by the British band’s other hits such as “We Will Rock You” and…

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: A musician rises to fame, becomes hooked on drugs, and has his career nearly spiral out of control before being saved by a savvy new romantic partner. While it may be a tale as old as time, or at least as old as pop music, the way…

“You like Peter, Paul and Mary?” Jack Byrnes (played by Robert De Niro) asks Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) in Meet the Parents, as “Puff the Magic Dragon” starts playing in Jack’s Buick. Greg hesitates, then says, “Sure. ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’ You know, I actually wrote a paper about this song back in college? About…

“Can you fly this plane and land it?” “Surely you can’t be serious.” “I am serious — and don’t call me Shirley.” This seriously hilarious line, which is in the running for most often-quoted movie line ever, is from the 1980 disaster movie spoof Airplane!, one of the greatest comedies of the past 50 years.…

The directive to “go West, young man” has been an American adage for almost 200 years. Many attribute it to the pre-Civil War-era New York newspaperman Horace Greeley, but it may be even older than that. The guidance gained legions of adherents after gold was discovered in Northern California in 1848. These four famous words…

“Thriller! Thriller night! And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike! You know it’s thriller! Thriller night! You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight.” If you grew up in the ’80s or ’90s, these words are probably ingrained somewhere in your mind next to where you’re storing other…