I added Mark Morford, a “society columnist” for SFgate.com (an online publication of the San Francisco Chronicle?) to my blogroll a while ago, but today I decided I needed to tell the world (or at least the people who read my blog) about him and his column Notes and Errata.
I don’t even know how I discovered him; probably through a Google keyword search, which is how I stumble across lots of incredible stuff. He has a way with words, he examines the (21st-century American) human condition with refreshing insight, and he has a twisted sense of humor. You just have to see for yourself. Here’s an excerpt from today’s column Do Bad Movies Eat Your Soul? in which he talks about some of the 100 worst-reviewed movies of all time. Or, rather, he uses that topic as a vehicle (which he drives like Mr. Toad) for his incisive social commentary…
Then there was that time I watched about nine minutes of “Elektra,” just to admire the utter insane buffaliciousness of Jennifer Garner and appreciate her sexy swordsmanship before quickly realizing the movie was soul-freezingly awful, and watching the entire thing would’ve required bashing my head with a brick and then stapling my eyelids open and tying myself to a large pole and screaming in terror like Harrison Ford and Karen Allen when the Nazis opened the Ark of the Covenant and the demons swirled and danced and melted everyone’s face off.
This kind of thing is not everybody’s cup of tea, of course. There are pop-culture and generational references that many will miss, and you might not be into his brand of humor. But the best thing about the column is that he sprinkles his irreverent, wacky commentary with real wisdom that everyone should be able to appreciate (and wisdom is in such short supply these days). Today he emphasized the importance of “maintaining a low-level hum of gratitude and integrity and sly joy in life.“
That’s what I’m talking about.
If you’re looking for something that’ll make you laugh out loud and think twice a week, here’s his RSS feed. Vincent links to another article of his on sknoblog too.