Archive for the ‘Popular Culture’ Category
Ten years later.
Taken at 9:59 a.m., New Yorkers witness the collapse of the South Tower. Each face is more powerful than the next. By freelance photographer Patrick Witty. We’ll call this the requisite commentary-on-the-anniversary blog. Probably every American is reflecting on that Tuesday, September 11 ten years ago, in their own way, to many different degrees of [...]
September 9th, 2011Comedy relieves us again from news: “You food-chilling m**%$* f*#$%**”
My brother and I don’t have cable, but I subscribe to Netflix Instant, and he subscribes to Hulu Plus, so we get access to a truly massive amount of material for less than $20/month between the both of us, via the PS3. So, for the first time in about five years, I’ve been able to [...]
August 28th, 2011Homage to midcentury last: the ranch home
Central living area of the Rosenbaum House, the sole Frank Lloyd Wright home built in Alabama, and the only one in the southeast open to the public. I absolutely love this home and its entire midcentury character. An entire month has passed since I last was brought to this computer screen, to compile some sort [...]
July 25th, 2011Tell it right, and a western can make me cry.
I have always been a sucker for a good story. The simplest tale, told in the right way, brings me to tears. It is almost silly how often I have found myself sitting in the movie theater at the end of a great film, or even a mediocre one, and suddenly, some small trigger in the narrative, [...]
June 23rd, 2011Ode to a great movie, in Kathleen Kelly’s tangent on books
AOL user Shopgirl writes to her online crush, ny152, on her trusty IBM circa 1998. Nora Ephron is exceedingly talented, and she writes some of the most charming movies in existence. Even when they aren’t box office hits, or even critically well-received, I usually enjoy them enormously. Of these, I have seen You’ve Got Mail [...]
March 5th, 2011Through the Disney lens
Atlanta got about five inches of snow last night, and in a city with very little equipment for clearing the roads and a populace that doesn’t often drive in snow, it means the entire city pretty much took a snow day. The free day allowed me time to finish up some projects around the apartment, [...]
January 11th, 2011“You’re a wizard, Harry.”
Honeyduke’s, where I bought a Chocolate Frog for my brother and took in the whole whimsical place. Very few people get to experience their favorite fairy tale world in real life. Unless you happen to be in a movie made by Tim Burton or your imagination is made in the physical world at an amusement [...]
January 10th, 2011“Jimmy Fallon’s late-night house of joy,” and why he’s the best on TV
A dose of Jimmy Fallon does the soul wonders. The other day on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy performed a Christmas tune with Dee Snider (of Twisted Sister fame) and his Late Night band, which just happens to be the fabulous Roots. He sang and played his guitar alongside some amazing talent, and did [...]
December 19th, 2010“Come see Tribes of Genuine Ubangi Savages: From Africa’s Darkest Depths!” and how National Geographic is like the circus
This Zulu couple, photographed on their wedding day, was published in November 1896 in National Geographic; it was the first time the magazine printed nudity, since its inception in 1888. The boobies in National Geographic have always bothered me. The magazine’s founding creed is based on “the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge,” and has [...]
October 20th, 2010Historian Sean Wilentz on Glenn Beck: “Confounding Fathers”
The Tea Party Historian Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton University, was on Fresh Air talking with Terry Gross about the roots of the Tea Party in 1950s Cold War politics. He has an article on it, “The Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War Roots,” in The New Yorker this week as well, on [...]
October 13th, 2010