Pop Culture Petri Dish

The compact T-shirt-clad figure stood toe-to-toe with me, spitting sentences out with a sincerity that took me utterly by surprise. His intensity burned so bright that he'd have been boring holes in my eyes were he actually eye level with me: as was, his gaze was boring holes somewhere around my sternum. "You think you know about my career, you schlubby jackass?! You don't. I know my career. And you know why, Tony? Because I've read about it. I've researched it." He wiped a small slash of bright white foam collecting on his lower lip with his right wrist before he continued. "You make fun of me in your pathetic little Blog, while I'm up there being a hero to millions. MILLIONS!" Finally, he breathed. I tried to insert my two modest pennies-worth while he gulped air. "But you have to admit," I began, "that there are cases in which Blogging has served a vital therapeutic function for millions of frustrated, aspiring, or professional ...

Record labels worldwide would likely kill for more schlubs like me. Now that I'm (barely) financially stable enough to indulge in fairly frequent trips to the local record store, I really make it a point to support artists with my dollars. Hell, I'm so much of a nerd I seldom borrow other folks' CDs to burn them for myself--partly because I like giving bands I like my money, and partly because the collector/packrat/nerd in me just loves the tactile sensation of holding a pre-recorded compact disc and poring over the artwork and liner notes as I listen. The latter rationale is also why I've seldom downloaded music from online sources--it just feels sorta antiseptic to me. I'm slowly tiptoeing into the heady waters of the 21st century, however. The old-fashioned route to purchasing music--buying a full-length album on the strength of one or two killer tracks--is getting to become more and more of a pricy crapshoot. And with my geezerly advancing years comes the revela...

Expect no grand political analysis from this corner regarding the death of our 38th president, Gerald Ford . I was only a grade-schooler when he led the United States. But that didn't stop me from forming an opinion of him that still holds true today. Ford's presidency was always overshadowed by Richard Nixon's fall from grace and Jimmy Carter's work as a diplomat. And he surely torpedoed his hopes of re-election by pardoning Nixon. But divorced from the loftiness of his office and the (admittedly not-unjustified) flak he took for giving Tricky Dick a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card, Gerald Ford always seemed like a pretty nice guy for a politician. He consistently took the jabs of pundits, and Chevy Chase's slapschticky SNL pseudo-impersonation, in stride (the thumbsucking hick bully currently in office should be such a good sport). So when Ford ran for re-election it wasn't a surprise that humor played a role. Even with that caveat in mind, it's hard to believe...