Vox Pop

Health Care in America has Gone to the Dogs

[26.Oct.09] :. Compared to the modern-day American, their dogs have the best of everything: questionable intelligence (i.e., happiness), poor memories (i.e., forgiveness), and low expectations (i.e., contentment).

Jewish is Coolish…At Last!

[10.Sep.09] :. My people can finally emerge from behind their nebbishy personas to assume their proper place in the coolness pantheon.

The ‘Michael Jacksons’ and All Their Infuriating Complexity

[12.Aug.09] :. Maybe it’s more fun to idolize or demonize public figures than to have more complex, mixed feelings about them.

Expire, Please. Go Kaput. Die, Already.

[6.Jul.09] :. It’s not a film, it’s a movie. It’s not a vinyl, it’s a record – and other trendy things that need to go forever bye-bye.

In Treatment: Fantasy Therapy for All

[27.May.09] :. Explorations of the outer limits of the patient/ therapist relationship titillate viewers with the possibilities of what could happen.

A Lament on the Deafening Silence of iPods

[7.May.09] :. I miss your impulse to play your music LOUD, to draw me in, to irritate and offend me – and I miss my impulse to do the same to you.

I Can Almost Taste It

[17.Mar.09] :. For someone who wouldn’t know my mortars from my pestles, I seem to spend an awful lot of time observing chefs in action.

Genius Persona(lities)

[10.Feb.09] :. The mark of true genius is the effortless creation of something wholly new that, once seen, becomes self-evident.

TV Egos Unbound

[14.Jan.09] :. The small screen is no longer for small personalities or those without ambition or washed up has-beens.

You’re Gonna Get a Lot More Girl Talk

[11.Nov.08] :. Even though the presidential and vice-presidential candidates didn't win the posts they were gunning for, Americans have a lot of women winners, this election.

Hypocritic Oaths

[16.Oct.08] :. The source of most hypocrisy in American politics is a moral certitude that is so unyielding, it’s almost bound to trip up the person espousing it.

I Miss When Artists Were Artists Instead of Marketing Machines

[8.Sep.08] :. Art has always had an uneasy relationship with commercialism. But that’s the point: it’s supposed to be uneasy.

Anywhere, USA

[18.Jun.08] :. It seems to me that people in the US are actually craving not change, as we're hearing in current campaign rhetoric, but rather sameness -- and more than ever.

Broads Don’t Blog, Especially in Haiku

[29.Apr.08] :. Broads can only thrive under certain social conditions, and those conditions, alas, no longer exist. But a new species has emerged...

Obama, Clinton, and Cantaloupes

[2.Apr.08] :. The media will keep playing YouTube videos and speculating about politicians’ intentions rather than doing the hard investigative work -- simply because they can.

A Return to Rhetoric

[12.Mar.08] :. Long past the days of the eloquent Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or John F. Kennedy, Americans have rediscovered the desire to be absorbed by words, stirred by words, even awed by words, again.

A How-to for Hillary

[4.Feb.08] :. How we want Hillary to appear before us says a whole lot more about us than it does about her.

Trouble in Shopaholicstan

[10.Dec.07] :. If those slim hipped, cigarette smoking, small-portion eating, fast-walking chic Parisians are going to flaunt their fashion sense in Jersey while taking advantage of the weak dollar, then we really must seal our borders.

Talk About G-generations

[8.Nov.07] :. Members of the 'Generation After' are the ones who grew up in the shadows because the previous generation was blocking the sun.

Can’t You Read the Signs?

[1.Oct.07] :. Cars, guns, values, the US Constitution... like a yellow traffic light, their meaning and importance, relative to oneself, is open to interpretation.

You Are Who You Know

[4.Sep.07] :. If I want reading recommendations, Amazon, I’ll turn to people who really do know me. They’re called friends.

The Lost in Translation Generation

[13.Aug.07] :. Americans Need to Learn English…British English, that is!

Vexed by Beauty

[11.Jul.07] :. Whom next to blame for society’s infatuation with beguiling young women?

Surrender Yourself to the Attack of the Comedians

[18.Jun.07] :. The truth hurts, but in the wake of our welts and bruises, if we've been properly assaulted, we're still laughing.

Please Do Not Remain Seated

[11.Apr.07] :. Sometimes small gestures contain larger meanings. For me, the decision to sit rather than stand at a concert is a sign of giving up on the youthful exuberance that defines the rock concert experience.

Gender Divides

[14.Mar.07] :. Are celebrity “girls” really the only gender that’s “gone wild”? Or has the media gone mad -- and misogynistic?

People Substitutes

[12.Feb.07] :. Contrary to what Babs sang, people who need people might not be the luckiest people in the world, after all.

Death Watch

[16.Jan.07] :. Guessing whether a celebrity is dead or alive has become something of a modern-day parlor game.

No! No! No!

[12.Dec.06] :. Finally, a stand-up, face-off, clenched fists, chin in the air challenge to America's bullies.

Feel Better than You’ve Ever Looked Before

[12.Nov.06] :. There's a quiet revolution happening in self-improvement: rather than addressing our lives from the inside-out, we're now addressing them from the outside-in.

Gay TV:  Making Same-Sex Marriage Safe for America

[19.Oct.06] :. At the same time that gay TV is shaping the culture, the culture is also shaping gay TV, containing it and restricting it from going "too far".

A Need for Nerds

[12.Sep.06] :. Now more than ever, as we stumble along the dark, uncertain path of These Troubled Times, we need our brainiacs to help illuminate the way.

About Those People

[14.Aug.06] :. People magazine is more than just a gossip rag or a teller of heartwarming tales: it's a secretly subversive publication, bent on reshaping society's attitudes about beauty and sexual desire.

When Harry Met Sally It Was Soooo Sweet!

[21.Jul.06] :. Call me crazy but I prefer to see movies about a relationship between two living, breathing (without assistance), fully functioning (but preferably super-neurotic) humans -- not a person and a ghost or a person and a spirit or a person and a coma victim who's teetering on the brink of life and death.