Last summer The Atlantic featured “14 Biggest Ideas of the Year.” My response—as was almost everyone else’s I spoke to about that article—started out excited but quickly deflated. The “ideas” were more platitudinously ordinary than inspiring: “Wall Street: Same as it Ever Was”, or the number one choice, “The Rise of the Middle Class — […]
Popular Culture
Chasing the Bubble
A poster hanging in a coffee shop window on Smith Street promotes yet another Walt Whitman event. My friend Michael, a Whitman scholar, told me there is some kind of Whitman commemoration going on in Brooklyn every month. *** In terms of square miles, Brooklyn is New York’s second-largest borough, after Queens; in terms of […]
We Are What We Eat (Hear, See, Learn)
Bill McKibben has been a longstanding writer about the environment and sustainability. His first book, The End of Nature, was published in the late 80’s. That was followed by The Age of Missing Information, published in 1992. Missing Information explores the differences in the quality of the experience of 24 hours spent watching television versus […]
Boyled
Over the last two weeks I’ve talked about Susan Boyle more than any other popular culture event in a long, long time. I’ve been discussing it at such length because the whole phenom is so layered—emotionally complex, endlessly arguable, and unabashedly wonderful. I wasn’t the only one captivated by her performance and the global response […]
Fairey: The Conversation Continues…
I have received quite a few emails about my earlier posting on Shepard Fairey. Seems to me that Fairey has come to embody the complexities of a whole slew of third rail issues—image appropriation, intellectual property rights, public arts by decree or default, the acceptable limits of “going commercial”, artist as deviant and miscreant, institutional […]
Shameless Promotion Department
Please indulge me as I shamelessly shill for my friend Eliza Dushku’s new show on Fox. Dollhouse is a collaboration with Buffy czar Joss Whedon and premieres tomorrow, Friday the 13th (you go, goblins!) at 9pm. Here’s a funny promo piece with Eliza and Whedon. And the “official” show site: Dollhouse Kick ass, Eliza! Eliza […]