Hey, Folks.  This will be my last entry on this blog but I hope that won’t keep you away from PJTV.com where I’ll continue to post Klavan on the Culture videos like the one below.

Pressure – of time and other projects – makes steady blogging almost impossible for me, but it’s been a great pleasure putting up posts here and receiving your comments.  I think I can safely say that each and every one of you is deeply in need of psychiatric care.  But who isn’t?

Please come and see me at AndrewKlavan.com where, as of Monday or so, I’ll have a new place to post material and news.  Among the biggest news by the way is that the new novel in the Homelanders thriller series for young adults is out in February.  Please drop by Amazon or your local bookstore for a copy of The Long Way Home.

And, as I say, Don’t Panic:

If you’re one of those fools who still believes the Truth will set you free, here’s just the medicine you need.  After a single session with Dr. Klavan, you’ll forget that silly Truth business entirely and be ready to take a job in the Obama Administration…  or the mainstream media…  but then, what’s the difference?

Justin Folk provides his funniest visuals ever.

It’s been a while since I’ve read Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art? but as I remember it, the Big T complained that artists circa the turn of the 19th century had lost their faith in the false God of the church, but had not discovered the true God of the gospels and therefore had nothing to write about but sex and ennui.  A similar fate seems to have befallen artists around the turn of the 20th century as well, but I can’t help wondering if the veil is lifting.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but over the Thanksgiving weekend, I happened to watch a screener of A Serious Man, a Netflick of The Taking of Pelham 123 and a TiVo’d episode of The Mentalist–and all of them featured the Almighty.

I generally like and sometimes love movies by the Coen Brothers, but in A Serious Man they’re in their  self-indulgent, ugly and pretentious Barton Fink mode, which I can’t stand.  After a wonderful opening scene, the film is repetitive and unpleasant.  But that’s not to say it isn’t also intelligent and philosophically interesting.  It is.  It tells the tale of a modern Job who tries to come to terms with his suffering.  And while various rabbis mouth the usual modern pieties–we can never know God’s motives so we just try to be kind and do the best we can, etc.–the film actually depicts a startlingly orthodox Old Testament world in which religious rituals bring heavenly rewards and sin is reliably punished.

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a watchable remake of a far, far, not to mention far superior 1974 thriller about the theft of a New York subway train (based on the John Godey novel).  But as in his much better Man on Fire, director Tony Scott continues to ruminate on the nature of sin and forgiveness.  Man on Fire had a lot more to say on the subject and said it more coherently, but references to Catholicism and the confessional make an appearance here too and there’s no question that redemption both earthly and heavenly is at stake.

Finally, the Mentalist:  a sweetly silly crime show that’s a guilty pleasure of mine.  I’ve noticed Christian symbolism is used heavily on the show, from a crucifix randomly hanging on a wall, to the cross the pretty female lead Robin Tunney prominently wears around her neck.  This watershed episode, in which several police officers are killed, ends with the cast singing “Amazing Grace,” while the guilt-ridden agnostic hero Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker) continues his obsessive hunt for an evil serial killer on his own.  I’m not sure, but it seems Bruno Heller, the show’s creator, is suggesting that Jane’s guilt has separated him from God, and that what he’s really hunting for is atonement in its original meaning of at-one-ment.

Anyway, coincidence or not, I’m glad to see the Big Guy getting parts again after such a long hiatus from the entertainment business.  I won’t say that good art is always about God, but I do think it’s always about man, a concept that’s very problematical without God once you really think about it.  Thus it can be nothing but good for our culture if God makes a comeback in the arts.

Although, of course, God was never gone–so maybe it’s we who are making the comeback.

How smart is my Pajamas colleague Roger Kimball?  Dude, put it this way.  If you added together the IQ’s of, say, the entire editorial staff of the New York Times, you would have enough to make Roger a single personal assistant–if by personal assistant you mean Igor from the Frankenstein movies.  Roger doesn’t just wear the bowtie.  He’s earned the bowtie.

Roger is the co-editor and publisher of the essential culture journal New Criterion and President and Publisher of Encounter Books.  And Encounter Books has begun a terrific new series called Broadsides, which I highly recommend.

Now, as I understand it, under the Obama administration, I can go to prison for, like, life for recommending books on my blog, but all the same, these are genuinely excellent so, hey, I’ll fight the power.  Broadsides are short pamphlets by top authors on hot-button subjects.  They’re meant to give you the argument ammunition you need to take your great-aunt’s head off when she starts spouting her liberal garbage around the dinner table this Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I’ve read the first three:  Obama’s Betrayal of Israel, by Michael Ledeen; How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections by John Fund; and Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster by David Gratzer.  Each one of them was by the exact author I would want to hear from on the subject and each one strengthened my convictions with solid reporting and sound reasoning.  Good reads; good stuff.

Plus, when you’re done, you can roll them up and whap your great-aunt over the head with them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Mainstream Media have done everything they can to convince us to abandon the conservative spokesmen who represent us most forcefully. And darn it, I say: If you can’t trust the Mainstream Media, who the heck can you trust? That’s the argument of my new Klavan on the Culture video, with visuals by Justin Folk:

Drop on by Big Hollywood and take a look at the mighty John Nolte’s hilarious and spirited defense of John Miller’s exciting historical novel The First Assassin.  Some noobs at a liberal site decided to go over to Amazon and – snort, snort – write nasty reviews of it.  I’m trying to imagine the sort of person who has the time and inclination to do that.  Now I’ve stopped trying.  Anyway, it’s too bad they don’t have the time and inclination to actually read the book:  it’s good!  It’s based on a true story about an assassination attempt on President Lincoln.  My blurb’s on it, so is Vince Flynn’s, so is Brad Thor’s and Robert Ferrigno’s.  So whose opinions should you trust?  Mine and Flynn’s and Thor’s and Ferrigno’s – or the opinions of people who spray Dr. Pepper through their noses when they laugh?

Hope the controversy sells the book.  The sort of irony that would make my day.

Just got back from Palm Beach, Florida, where I attended David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend.  Lots of big-time highlights.  Newt Gingrich blew me away.  Every time I hear him speak, I think:  there’s the next president.  Then all the savvy political guys I know talk me down, telling me he can’t win.  If he can’t, I sure wish he could.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann spoke my thoughts exactly:  we who love liberty and individual freedom are right, the American people support us, we should have no fear of the left’s power-grabbing crooks and clowns and just go at them.  Sing it, sister.  She was great.

Who else?  Well, Horowitz himself of course, who understands the left in each minute particular.  He says there are two wings of the Democratic party – the Communists and the crooks – and now they have a president who represents both.  Very funny.

Plus there was Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, Andy McCarthy, Steven Emerson, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Pat Caddell…  I can’t name them all  but it was a genuine all-star line-up of brains and, of course in my case, beauty.  If the Freedom Center makes my speech available I’ll post it here.

The rector at my church told me a joke about the Episcopal church.  It goes like this:

Q:  What separates conservatives from liberals in the Episcopal Church?

A:  The altar rail.

For those not familiar with altar rails, the joke is:  the priests are the liberals, the parishioners are conservatives.

It seems that a similar dynamic is at work in the church of Amazon.com.  Note these two lists of the Top 100 Books of 2009 (h/t Instapundit).  The first is Amazon’s Editors’ Picks, the second are the picks of their customers.  Now it would be unfair to call the Editors’ picks liberal (though it would fit better with the joke).  They’re mostly the usual sort of literary novels that are praised to the skies on publication then deservedly forgotten.  I haven’t read any of them, though I did read the first book in The Girl Who… series which was only okay.

But get a load of the customers’ picks.  Number Two after Dan Brown:  Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny.  Number Three:  Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.  Number Fifteen:   Sarah Palin.  Sixteen:  Glenn Beck again.  Seventeen?  Whoa, whattaya know?  Michelle Malkin.  Vince Flynn and Ann Coulter show up later too.

Listen, I love Amazon.  They’re the best.  And I suspect they chose their list for non-controversial literary quality which, really, is fair enough.  But it is amusing to see that the people – the people who read, at least – pick so many conservative books.  And I can’t help wondering how many of the priests of the literary establishment have ever read these books or even know they exist.

I could complain about originality here  – how many sequels about how many Indiana Jones style treasure hunters do we have to play?  I mean, add a couple of zombies and you’d have exhausted the scope of video game creativity these days.  But credit where credit is due:  this thing looks so great and plays so smoothly and has such fun levels, good characters, great acting and terrific music that it’s a blast pretty much from beginning to end.

Also, in a gamer world that includes stuff like Grand Theft Auto, where you play a punk gangster who pulls innocent people out of their cars and beats them up before jacking the vehicle – I mean, bleah! – it was delightful to play a game about decency and sacrifice.  Even though we are, so to speak, among thieves here, there does seem to be some honor going around.  One of the best levels has a scene where top treasure hunter Nathan Drake helps a guy to safety even though 1) he thereby endangers himself and 2) the guy in question is his rival for a girl’s attention.  If you watch closely, this sacrificial action begins the transformation of one of the other characters from a selfish grave robber to a hero willing to risk life and limb to save the world.

Good story, good fun.  Originality aside, you can’t ask for much more from a video game.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a new golden age of television – and I know why too:  lousy treatment and lack of artistic control chased all the good writers out of the movies.   The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, House in its early years – any one of these is better than anything you’re likely to see in a theater currently.

And of course, Mad Men, which just ended its third season.  It’s a terrific show – a little too aimless sometimes, a little too pleased with its own look, and a lot too smug about the superiority of our times to the past – but still, it has a genuine artistic vision of America in the early sixties and, through that vision, a vision of the human condition.  It’s beautifully written and acted.  It’s good stuff.

And it ought to end.  I won’t spoil the finale, but it summed up the series perfectly and took it to its natural conclusion.  Anyone could see it.  And I strongly suspect the show’s creator Matthew Weiner knows it.  But the trouble with TV even in these best of times is that the rewards of continuing a success far outweigh the wisdom of ending it.

The shark is in the water and Mad Men is skiing toward the ramp but how is brother Matthew going to explain it to his broker – let alone his wife – if he doesn’t make the jump?