Brendan Bernhard

Streets of Loathing

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Sang Tan/AP LONDON — The real news on the first day of President Bush’s three-day state visit to London was to be found on the front page of the liberal Guardian. Under a photograph of an anti-war protester pinning an upside-down U.S. flag on the gates of Buckingham......

This Peeping-Tom World

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Anthony Mandler/FOX The last time I went to a casino I thought I’d accidentally wandered into a convention of unrepentant drunks and three-packs-a-day smokers. Although nearly everyone was wrestling with one-armed bandits or hovering over roulette wheels, gambling appeared to be an almost incidental activity. The real attraction......

Gloom, Doom and George W. Bush

Brendan Bernhard
LONDON--You may not be able to get as many TV channels in London as you can in Los Angeles or New York, but you sure as hell can buy a lot more newspapers. In fact, you don't even have to fork over any cash. Just stroll onto any train and......

Rumsfeld Peed His Pants

Brendan Bernhard
I caught an episode of Kid Notorious, the cartoon on Comedy Central (Tuesday, 10:30 p.m.) about the life and loves of producer and Hollywood legend Robert Evans, and I must say I was pretty disappointed. There were some funny bits, and the visual aspects were beautifully done, but the level......

Love in the City

Brendan Bernhard
Miss Match, the airy romantic comedy on NBC (Fridays, 9 p.m.) produced by Sex and the City’s Darren Star, is one of those shows that I watch, enjoy, keep watching, continue to enjoy, but can’t think of much to say about, which may be why I haven’t discussed it before......
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Teenage Brooklyn

Brendan Bernhard
Illustration by Young Chun A bildungsroman for the hipster set, Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude is a big, lyrical novel about childhood, interracial friendship, pop culture and Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn. (It’s so relentlessly pro-Brooklyn it could have been commissioned by the borough’s tourism bureau.) Most of all, it’s an......
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Words, Music, and More Words

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Brendan Bernhard When John Wesley Harding wrote a song back in 1997 called “Miss Fortune,” he couldn’t have imagined just how much fortune it would bring him. No, it didn’t win the British singer-songwriter a Grammy or become a hit single; instead, it became a novel. A long......

Said's Last Stand

Brendan Bernhard
In 1983, when I worked in the library at Columbia University, I checked a book out to Edward Said, the Palestinian-American author of Orientalism who died this past September. I didn’t know much about Said at the time, but I retain an impression of a severe and slightly arrogant presence......

Odd Coupling

Brendan Bernhard
Someone once said that smoking a cigarette is as near as you can get to doing nothing while technically doing something. If so, watching Two and a Half Men, the new sitcom on CBS, must come a close second. The good news is that it’s not habit-forming, it won’t kill......

Death in Moscow

Brendan Bernhard
Nothing you see on television this week will provoke as many contradictory thoughts and emotions as Terror in Moscow (HBO, Thursday). A British-made documentary on the hijacking of a Russian theater by Chechen rebels, this 54-minute film brings you about as close to terrorism as you can get without being......