Deconstructing Pop Culture

We attended the Buffalo Springfield concert yesterday evening at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.  I vividly remember seeing them some 43 years ago and always have been a big fan, so I was excited about going to the show.  It was sold out and I was far from the oldest person there.  It was [...]

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The whole point of going to a movie is to see things you’ve never seen before; to be shocked, scared, informed, entertained, or simply to experience a new perspective, a different way of looking at the world. We have come to expect such unusual depictions – even peculiar ones – from the director Werner Herzog. [...]

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I recently re-read the article “Are you a racist?” by Derald Wing Sue (2003). I think Sue’s argument is mistaken on several points, which I now propose to address. Who is a racist? Distilled to its essentials, Sue’s basic argument is that every white male is a racist because they are beneficiaries of a pervasive, [...]

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I recently visited the California African American Museum in Los Angeles with several of my friends. It is situated in Exposition Park, across the street from U.S.C. Before everybody got there I walked around the Rose Garden, redolent of Los Angeles in the 1930s. Bold statements about art, poetry, literature and philosophy adorned some of [...]

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I took my daughter Lauren to see John Cale perform this evening at UCLA’s Royce Hall. In addition to a stripped-down trio of drums-bass-guitar he was accompanied by a selection of musician’s from UCLA’s student orchestra. The concert’s conceit was a live orchestral performance of Cale’s early-1972 album “Paris 1919.” I have to hand it [...]

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Maybe I saw something in her that reminded me of a girl I knew in high school; if not precisely that, then something similar. Gen Y women in the media/pop culture business share several intriguing characteristics – a combination of reticence and availability, subtlety and brashness, carefree yet deadly serious. I had heard of her, [...]

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“The Cube” is an oppressive, claustrophobic movie by the director Vincenzo Natali. It is about the escapades of seven people who are trapped inside of a gigantic cube. The cube comprises 26 equally-sized rooms on each side for a total of 17,576 rooms altogether. Each room is bathed in a different color light. The rooms [...]

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JG and I decided to sample the meatloaf at several local restaurants. Meatloaf, of course, is well known as a “comfort food,” presumably because it elicits visions of home and hearth. It’s not exactly clear why this is so, seeing as how it can be prepared a half dozen different ways. Everybody seems to have [...]

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EMI Records recently released yet another box set on Pink Floyd’s behalf. It’s at least the second of which I’m aware, the first having been released during my tenure at that fine, albeit troubled, concern. Its quixotic descent into the market place stimulated me to think about the greatest Pink Floyd record that never was [...]

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We saw several movies over the holiday season, and I wanted to set forth my opinions about them. Generally speaking I don’t like that many movies, and I have a policy of only going to movies it’s likely I’ll enjoy seeing, based on self-knowledge of my own proclivities and tendencies. While this creates some false [...]

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