Susan’s Losing Streak and the Frozen Pizza That Saved Sunday Deep-dive cultural criticism, film reviews, and culinary history. Exploring the meaning behind the noise.

Susan is on a losing streak. Last Sunday’s 1963 Good Housekeeping experiment, Cheese-and-Onion Casserole, ended with frozen pizza and no regrets. The latest in the series is here: tinyurl.com/mv3b3h2w #ArsMendacium #VintageRecipes #RecipeFail #MidCenturyCooking

The Weight of Gold on Snow I don’t usually write about children’s books.  They tend to live in a separate shelf of the mind, simpler, lighter, meant to teach lessons r...

Sometimes a children’s book says what adults forget.
Maria McSwigan’s Snow Treasure (1942) turns sledding into resistance and innocence into courage.
A quiet lesson in bravery worth rediscovering.
👉 tinyurl.com/38sk9cfd

#SnowTreasure #MariaMcSwigan #ArsMendacium #Courage #WWII #Books

The Myth of the Drip: What Jackson Pollock’s Number 15, 1948 Doesn’t Say There’s a particular hush that settles over a gallery when people stand in front of a Pollock. You can feel it, the reverence, the readiness...

What if Pollock’s “freedom” was just the start of art mistaking spectacle for meaning?
My new essay on Number 15, 1948, challenges the myth of the drip.
👉 tinyurl.com/3f2hvpb6
#JacksonPollock #ArtCriticism #ModernArt #AbstractExpressionism #ArsMendacium

The Music That Almost Met: On Unfinished Harmony in Hear Us Some films end with silence because there’s nothing left to say.  Hear Us  begins with it. The quiet between piano keys, the pause before a ...

Some music never reaches the stage.
My new essay on Hear Us explores a documentary about three musicians divided by borders—and the silence that says what politics can’t.
🎻 Read here: tinyurl.com/2s3kb9wy
#HearUs #RadaHanana #Documentary #ArtAcrossBorders #FilmEssay #ArsMendacium

The Comfort of Ordinary Secrets On certain nights, when the brain is tired but restless, you don’t want literature; you want company. Not philosophy, not moral weight, just...

Some stories don’t need grandeur to matter. An Eye for Murder lingers in small ways, memory, curiosity, and quiet truths.
Read my new piece, “The Comfort of Ordinary Secrets.”
👉 tinyurl.com/39tdzn87
#Books #MysteryFiction #LibbyFischerHellmann #ArsMendacium

The Quiet Violence of Knowing: Reading Conversations with Friends There’s a particular kind of silence that lives between people who believe themselves to be honest. It isn’t empty; it hums with restraint, ...

Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends captures the quiet violence between people who want to be honest but can’t bear the cost.
Read my full essay → tinyurl.com/4msw7wjk

#SallyRooney #ConversationsWithFriends #LiteraryEssay #ArsMendacium

Silliness as Survival: Rediscovering Beach Party Before California became a state of mind, it was an experiment. A laboratory of tan and tune, where the nation’s anxieties were filtered thr...

Before California became a state of mind, Beach Party (1963) captured its sunlit absurdity—Frankie, Annette, and a surfing anthropologist in America’s last innocent wave. 🌊

Read more 👉 tinyurl.com/5xwwxpzx

#BeachParty #FilmHistory #60sCinema #VincentPrice #ArsMendacium

Freedom and Guilt: The Rehearsal for Huckleberry Finn I’ve always thought it strange how easily we forgive Tom Sawyer. Maybe it’s the grin. Maybe it’s because the book feels sun-washed and harml...

Before Huckleberry Finn forced America to face its conscience, Tom Sawyer taught it how to fake innocence and smile while doing it.

Read the full essay → tinyurl.com/y7n2f39d

#MarkTwain #TomSawyer #LiteraryEssay #AmericanLiterature #ArsMendacium

This Heat Will Kill You First All opinions expressed are my own. It starts with a breeze. Nothing terrifying. Nothing warns you of death. It comes through an open window ...

Heat doesn’t roar, it creeps. Jeff Goodell’s The Heat Will Kill You First shows how our deadliest climate threat is silent, swift, and here. My latest essay: tinyurl.com/yct5naca
#ClimateCrisis #ExtremeHeat #JeffGoodell #ArsMendacium #Nonfiction

The Quiet Trap: Mistaking Comedy for Violence I laughed the first time I saw it. Not out loud, but internally, that reflexive flicker of amusement you feel when something looks like the ...

Thought it was a comedy.
Turns out, it was a murder.

Bonnefond’s war painting lures you in with order—then reveals blood, absence, and complicity.
I wrote about it.

🖼️ tinyurl.com/ycyb7494
#ArtHistory #NapoleonicWars #VisualCulture #ArsMendacium

The Silence That Stays The first time I saw Job’s arm at the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts, I didn’t think about theology. I thought about hospitals. Specifically, ...

A man suffers. His friends sit nearby. And do nothing.

I wrote about Job’s Comforters—a brutal, quiet painting I found in Richmond that won’t let go of me.

Read the essay: tinyurl.com/6m8vbd9r
#TheSilenceThatStays #ArtHistory #EmpathyInArt #ArsMendacium