InstaPunk Returns

This is cross-posted from a confidential site I use to communicate with an old friend on matters more concerned with writing than this one normally is. Sometimes the two sites intersect in unexpected ways. (e.g., See The French Hurry-Up from Feb ‘26.) This does seem an appropriate follow-up to my most recent IPR post. Up to you what you make of it… Inevitably, another major commitment of my time called Instapunk Returns will occasionally stick its nose into the doings here. Working on both, I’m sometimes forced to ask myself how I got from Point A to Point XXX as I seem to have done yesterday at IPR. Specifically, how did I manage to get from here… Yes, I did ‘Shapes’ at graduation, but we all learned our ABCs too. …to  here ? The concluding flourish of my latest IPR screed,  Thoughts on Foul Language I put the Little Red Hen Nursery School in the same context with the song  abcdefu  because we all have an important personal timeline with respect to the alphabet. My...

  A cartoon stolen from ****ing Alarmy, who always watermark their stuff There comes a time when you realize some critical cultural variable has reached the kind of tipping point that transforms into chaos. I recently realized one of these tipping points has been reached when the streaming services, desperate for new product in the vacuum left by their failed woke productions, suddenly dumped a bunch of theatrical releases and straight to video movies from the years 2023 and 2024 on their platforms. I watch a lot of movies on streaming services, but I quickly learned not to watch anything dated ‘23 or ‘24. Too much gender confusion nonsense, too much (un)veiled lefty politicking about this and that, but most of all, way way too much foul language. I’d long had a rule that more than 10 F-bombs in 5 minutes was a signal to bail from any movie. Now I knew that this low bar couldn’t be met by the overwhelming majority of movies from the past few years. I’m not a prig. I probably hold ...

A snip of what’s up at Reels. I wouldn’t normally use this site to promote a single joke at Facebook’s Reels investment in ACHD social network communications. This is a special case in a couple ways. The graphic basis comes from a post at Breitbart by John Nolte, whom we admire for his courage and his encyclopedic knowledge of (yeah, I’ll use the highfalutin’ word…) Cinema . It’s long been a conviction of mine that the most indispensable credential for opinionating is knowing at least one subject extremely well. Nolte’s love and expertise about all things connected to Hollywood and its extraordinary cultural contribution for over a hundred and fifty years now qualifies as just such a credential. He was with Breitbart from the beginning and has survived all the ups and downs there because he never stops doing what he does best, which is write about all the phenomena that have affected and changed the world since this breakthrough project was produced in 1872: Edward Muybridge. Ever hear...

Are we being distracted from the real problem? This is a fairly typical posting from the right-leaning media… FTA: <<Liberal celebrities and entertainers love to get preachy with the public. It’s almost like it’s coded in their DNA. They just can’t resist it.   One public relations expert recently said that the public is sick and tired of it. People want to be entertained, not lectured to.   He used two specific examples. Bruce Springsteen and the Black Crowes. Springsteen’s concerts have become more like liberal talk radio and the Black Crowes actually had audience members walk out on them for trashing the USA.   Doug Eldridge, the founder of Achilles PR, says people have had it with this.   “At this point, it’s fatigue,” Eldridge said.   “Much like compounding interest, it’s not a linear calculation; it’s accumulation,” he continued. “For the last decade, fans (read: average Americans) have been lectured, lied to, gaslit, and shamed, if they didn’t confo...