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...

Since everyone and his sister's best friend's tennis coach is doing a year-end wrap-up, I guess I'll do one, too. This despite keeping an admirable distance from most of the trends, mores, and events that kept pop culture in a lather over the last twelve months. It might be time to change the name of this Blog if I maintain this pace. I could barely count the number of first-run movies I saw in 2006 on both of my hands, watched relatively little television, read one fiction book (boy, does it hurt to pony up to that one), and heard less new music this last year than I had since I was a grade schooler, so this could be easy. Then again, with my propensity to windy meandering, it might not be. So be it; here go a few of My Favorite 2006 Things. Favorite TV: Heroes , NBC's revisionist superhero saga, was my favorite boob tube destination by a landslide. Sharply written, well-acted by an appealing and relatively unknown cast, and deft in its gradual (and still ongoing) un...

This started out about five days ago as a Blog about my favorite Christmas CD's--recordings that capture the essence of the season so sublimely that they often singlehandedly pull me out of the Stygian depths of Scrooge-ism. As research--but mostly as a truly welcome soundtrack to the whole litany of commuting, working, shopping, cleaning, and holiday cooking--I found myself listening to these favorites pretty ceaselessly over the last week or two. They include: Dean Martin's incredibly lush A Winter Romance (call me a blasphemer, but I think this 'un's every bit the Rat Pack Concept Album Masterwork that Sinatra's Songs for Swinging Lovers ever was); Billboard's Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954 (Ground Zero for the definitive versions of most of the standards, from Nat King Cole's gorgeous 'The Christmas Song' to Eartha Kitt's untouchably sexy 'Santa Baby'); Laserlight Records' Jack Jones Christmas (an ace mix of Vegas schmooze ...

There are a whole host of eloquent tributes to recently-departed character actor Peter Boyle , so won't rattle on much here. With deep set eyes that reflected all of the emotion concealed by a perpetually furrowed brow ridge, Boyle was never less than terrific, and almost always the best thing about the movies he appeared in. I'm, sadly, unexposed to Boyle's dramatic output (including his caustic star turn in 1970's Joe ), but like most of the world his sublime work as a comic actor looms large in my heart. To this day, I can't hear "Putting on the Ritz" without hearing Boyle's sad, sympathetic--and riotously funny--monster monosyllabically barking out the song's title in Young Frankenstein . And the wearily-tart repartee between him and Doris Roberts always represented Everybody Loves Raymond's comic trump card. I did want to give a shout-out to one of Boyle's less-ballyhooed comic triumphs. The modest but very funny 1989 comedy The Dream...

So let's get the whole 'How Can I watch Apocalypto when Mel Gibson's such an evil anti-semitic racist sexist homophobic rat bastard?' moral dilemma out of the way first. As I said in a comment on another intrepid film lover's Blog , If I avoided every movie, book, painting, or piece of music created by an artist who said and/or did loathsome things, the sum total of the works of art that would pass through that filter could be counted on Mickey Mouse's right hand. Some separation of art from artist is always necessary. And though I will concede that separating Gibson's work from his offscreen antics of late is a mammoth challenge to anyone who doesn't have the words 'Imperial Wizard' inscribed on his name tag, it's not gonna keep me out of the theater. Enough with the brouhaha. Divorced from its notorious architect, is Apocalypto worth seeing? Absolutely. Is it perfect? Not by a longshot. But it kept me glued solid to my seat, and I want to...