Tim DeRoche's Blog, page 6

Double meaning – “Putting a hat on a hat”

I recently discovered that this phrase — “putting a hat on a hat” — has two completely different meanings, one in comedy and one in football.

Above, Bill Hader learns from Seth Myers what it means to put a hat on a hat (layering one joke on top of another to ill effect).

And below former tight end Cam Cleeland explains how an offense lines up against a defense, putting a hat on a hat (blocking each defender with a single offensive player):

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First page – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

Here’s the first page of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The brilliant Charlie Kaufman breaks at least two rules here:  (1) starts with a block of action description that is 16 lines long (any more than four and everyone will know you’re an amateur!), (2) tells us what is printed on his tie (not the writer’s business!), and (3) introduces a voiceover to tell us what is happening (verboten!).

What I love most about this is the quick start.  We meet Joel right away.  We know that som...

We’re all Keynesians now — except when we’re not

 

The famous quote is “We’re all Keynesians now” credited to Milton Friedman and/or Richard Nixon.   Or as Paul Krugman wrote in 2011, “Keynes was right“.

What they mean is that — in an economic downturn — there’s a general consensus among economists, policy makers, and monetary leaders that the government should engage in expansionary policies, increasing the federal deficit and enlarging the money supply.  As Keynes said: “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.”

As someon...

First-borns are taking over — Should we be afraid?

Over at The Cut, Adam Sternbergh bemoans the slow-motion extinction of the middle child. As fewer families have more than two children, the number of middle-born children declines. Dramatically.

I’m interested in a related phenomenon — the fact that first-borns are a much greater percentage of the population now than in previous decades. Using the chart above from the Pew Research Center, I estimate that first-borns have gone from about one-third of the population born from 1950-1975 to over...

Wait, JJ Cale wrote “After Midnight”? And he’s dead?

Until just a minute ago, I had always assumed that JJ Cale was a really talented younger guy putting his own spin on older genres, maybe like a JD McPherson or a lesser-known Dwight Yoakam.  This based solely on a few great songs that had popped up in my Spotify playlists in the past couple of years.

But it turns out that he’s been around since the 1960’s, is considered to be one of the founders of the “Tulsa sound,” wrote the biggest hit song from Eric Clapton’s first solo album, and died ju...

New review of Huck & Miguel by leading Twain scholar

Kevin Mac Donnell, a leading Twain collector and scholar, reviews Huck & Miguel for the Mark Twain Forum.

Not merely episodic, but cinematic… This ballad is satirical, funny, thrilling, hopeful, and human.

Daniel and I are so gratified that someone of Kevin’s knowledge/love of Twain would respond so positively to our work.

“I’m going to blow some bubbles to make myself happy again”

 

Informed that her blueberry muffin had fallen on the ground and was no longer edible, our daughter Neve makes a frownie face, then says, “I’m going to blow some bubbles to make myself happy again.”

Is Paul Ryan too far left for today’s GOP?

That’s what the New York Times implies with this headline:
“Ryan found himself on the margins as his party moved to the right.”

But is that right?  Isn’t Paul Ryan much more “conservative” than Donald Trump and his followers on many, many issues? (e.g., fiscal policy, free trade, traditional Christian morality, entitlement reform)

What would political journalism look like if reporters couldn’t use the terms right/left or liberal/conservative? Those words have become almost meaningless except...

Incredible Christian funk from a guy who ran a flour mill in Nigeria

Currently sitting in a coffee shop in Glassell Park, and they are playing one of my favorite artists of all-time, the obscure Nigerian funk master William Onyeabor, who died a couple years ago.  Here’s the song that turned me on to him, which I first heard on WMSE in Milwaukee. After abandoning his music career, Onyeabor ran a semolina flour mill in Nigeria.

Economists tout “success” of policy that drove housing costs up for millions of Californians

In the midst of an affordable housing crisis  in California, UCLA economists have the balls to put out a study trumpeting the success of California’s 2008 anti-foreclosure law.

Their definition of success?  Housing prices are now 15% higher than they otherwise would have been… up to 60% higher in some middle-class neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Our politicians continue to pass laws — often with the backing of prominent economists — that drive up the cost of education, health care, and housing...