FRIDAY REVIEWS

June 5, 2026

THIS TIME THE WORLD George Lincoln Rockwell, 1963

George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party in 1959. Although I find little value in reading the perspective of American Nazis, I have learned all sorts of things by listening to people who have set themselves against the world. And Rockwell was most comfortable as enemy of everyone. He made himself into a cartoon character, strutting before meager gatherings with a corncob pipe jutting from his square jaw, like General MacArthur (or “Bob” Dobbs of the SubGenius). Neighbors ostracized his family over outdoor displays of the swastika. He mistook notoriety for fame, only once addressing a large crowd, and his recruits never numbered above the dozens. Privately, Rockwell mocked his ‘soldiers’ for their low intelligence, and eventually one of these low intelligence men shot him to death in a laundromat parking lot. He was 49, and has largely been forgotten.

As a writer, Rockwell often got in his own way, leaning into all caps, angry underlines, livid exclamation points, and pointed whinging over his failing marriage. As an autobiographical subject, however, he doesn’t disappoint. Ample clippings and photos show the steely-eyed action man doing all sorts of awful things. There he is, picketing Eisenhower’s white house for being too leftist, and Sieg Heiling the grave of Joe McCarthy, and posing next to the ANP’s ‘Hate Bus,’ a flower child Volkswagen camper redone as anti-race mixing billboard. And that one and only time he spoke to a large crowd? That was his oration to 8,000 frosty Nation of Islam members under the massive vaulted dome of the DC arena that would later host the Beatles’ first US concert. Both groups aligned on antisemitism and racial separation, but there was no hint of adoration from the crowd. Two decades earlier, the American Nazis had addressed twice as many people, supporters, at Madison Square Garden. Rockwell surely kept this in mind as he raged at tiny audiences from tattered stages.

My copy tells its own story. A book printed just before my birth has aged like a historical artifact from centuries earlier. Iron impurities in the sickly, acidic newsprint have browned and brittled its pages. The cover has long since detached from the book itself, exposing mustard-colored smears of cheap glue. The spine’s black swastika wraps around to the back cover. The incompetence betrays its author’s isolation, of whatever grubby small-time press would agree to print the book of a Nazi in postwar America. Respectable people wanted nothing to do with his horseshit.

MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE, 2026

Sometimes one needs to unwind in an empty house in South Portland, Maine, drink a couple of White Claws and watch, by themselves, the 2026 film Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (Hulu / Disney+). This science fiction comedy crime story stars Vince Vaughn as the gangster boss of James Marsden and husband of Eliza Gonzalez. There are two Vaughns, one having time-travelled from six months in the future to avert a calamity, making this a lesser companion piece to Palm Springs (which holds the same rarified position in my heart as Back to the Future). ‘Lesser’ mostly because this movie badly sabotages itself through copious step printing, that unnecessary and laborious downgrade from slow-mo. This is a shame, because the writing is sharp, the dialogue tart, and the four—meaning, really, three—leads have fantastic chemistry.

Every character gets to be a character. The film teems with small, wild performances from Keith David (continuing his clearly fun late-in-life turn to comedy), Stephen Root (like John Goodman, always a privilege to watch), Jimmy Tatro (whose mean, meaty mug I feel I know intimately, despite IMDb telling me I’ve never seen anything else he’s ever been in), the always-great Arturo Castro (doing deft drug logic comedy), the apparently-very-good Emily Hampshire (efficiently weird), and the acquired taste of Ben Schwartz (brief, funny; I’m a fan). Although the stakes here—being merely death, not purgatory—are lower than in Palm Springs, I never would have imagined that a Vince Vaughn performance(s) could get me weepy.

Here is my recommendation; watch Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice after riding the Casco Bay mail boat ferry in 26° F sleet. On this sleepy, three-hour voyage into the mists of coastal Maine, the ferry stops at multiple tiny islands to scrape against groaning piers, its huge, wet ropes lassoed onto weathered bollards as pallets of construction materials are delivered down, by winch and sling, to men with hoary beards and rough hands and layered sweatshirts, men who look like Graham Platner and who may just yet vote for him. By the final stop, back at the much larger island of the North American continent, one has reset from social media and the orange man and the many threats to humanity lurking in the deep end of this decade, and is perhaps more amenable to a rare film—like 1921’s The Kid or 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom—that promises lightweight comedy but delivers weighty humanity. Again: Vince Vaugh is in this thing, twice. I would never recommend such a film without good reason.

INCIDENT ON RT. 66

Last week, while driving east on the road formerly known as Route 66, I decided I’d listen to the music of Discharge at full volume. I’ve worn earplugs at every concert I’ve ever attended or performed, so music at high volumes always felt weird. I boosted the band’s 1982 song “Drunk with Power,” and heard an entirely new level to music I’ve listened to steadily since high school; an undertone of grinding, clanging noise just below the main instrumentation. I suddenly understood a deeper truth: this is what hardcore punk sounds like to people who don’t like hardcore punk. (Turns out the front bumper’s lower valance on my 2010 Prius had come loose and was scraping the pavement below me. The piece is currently on order.)