Neal Pollack
By Neal Pollack
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Culture In Search of the Jews of Jurassic World
Obviously, it doesn’t matter whether I liked “Jurassic World.” The movie made $520 billion, so one man’s opinion means nothing. But even though I hated that dumb movie as much as I’ve ever hated anything, I still paid my money like all the other chicken-wing-chomping idiots in that suburban theater that Saturday night. At least…
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Film & TV What If ‘Mad Max’ Were Jewish?
My name is Max Stein. My world is reduced to a single instinct: Survive. Well, that and find a decent mechanic. Who knew that maintaining a killer muscle car would be such a pain in the tuchus? If you know anyone reliable, please tell me. My current guy is a big overcharger. Also, he is…
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Culture How I Moved to L.A. Without Leaving New York While Becoming and Not Becoming a Father
The following essay appears in the forthcoming anthology “CHOICES: Why I Decided To Get Married Or Not And Have Children Or Not And Also I Am Half-White Or All-White Or Not White At All And May Or May Not Be Jewish.” The other day, as i sat on a bench at the park drinking wine…
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Culture How To Navigate the Federal Bar Mitzvah Exchange Marketplace
Welcome to the federal bar/bat mitzvah marketplace, where we will make sure that your child gets the ritual adulthood celebration that he or she deserves. Please note that every American Jewish child aged 13 must receive a bar/bat mitzvah or else the family will face a severe financial penalty that even the savviest accountant won’t…
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Culture ’50 Shades’ of Meh
At 8 p.m. on Sunday night, I took my seat at “50 Shades Of Grey” in the back row, like a guy in a trenchcoat at a Times Square spank-room circa 1977. To further accentuate that feeling, the Alamo Drafthouse — the only place I’ll see movies in Austin — had a custom pre-show made…
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Culture The Neal Pollack Guide to Awards Season
Awards season is here. I love it so much that I wish I were receiving an award myself. Seriously, I will accept any award, from any ceremony, in any category. “Where is my award?” I will ask, while watching my TV. But absent some miraculous occurrence whereby I am transported into another dimension in which…
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Culture Welcome to The New Republic — Taylor Swift’s Been Waiting For You
The recent violent coup at the top of The New Republic’s masthead brought the magazine into full public consciousness for the first time in quite a few years. But scandal aside, TNR has quite a history. As it limps desperately into its second century, here’s a selected and highly subjective rundown of its most important…
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Culture The Humbling of Philip Roth
As word came over the transom last week (an actual transom, since I don’t have a working computer) that Philip Roth was retiring, I dismissed it as old, dull news. I’d read the report in the original French, and translated it myself into Turkish and then into Swiss-German just for fun. Then, along with the…
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