Wednesday, October 30 2002
Prague Is Pop
Sure enough, before the soup arrives the band of young, shaggy musicians is working hard to blow the breadbaskets off the dinner tables.
San Francisco Daze
The myths of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, and the cafes and bars of North Beach where the Beats proved that anyone incapable of rhyming poetry was cool, continuously lure thousands who cling to the nostalgia the city offers so readily.
Wednesday, October 23 2002
Pregnant PopTarts
This celebrity baby boom, as some are calling it, as well as the showing off of bumps by said celebs, has truly put a new glimmer on motherhood.
A Case for Legalizing Some Crime
Millions of professionals . . . derive their livelihood, parasitically, from crime.
Wednesday, October 16 2002
Johnny Clegg: A South African Story
He was the first vocal artist to use Nelson Mandela's name in lyrics, but South Africans only got to hear them after the new democracy had come about.
Post-Ellen Blues: (Or Lack of?)
From a creative, social, and political standpoint, are there any major differences between dramas on commercial/pay cable channels and the networks?
Superman Said Suicide Is a Shame
Every child knows that monsters will not appear in Sydney, as they crawl into Tokyo's harbour; that asteroids only plummet on American cities; that aliens visit small towns around the world 'except' Australian ones . . .
Rock Writing and Sports Writing: Aesthetics vs. Athletics
(Richard Williams) felt, when he hung up his pop pen, that he'd almost run out of words to meaningfully apply to music.
Wednesday, October 9 2002
Cher Was No Gypsy
So those stories about gypsies were true: they were thieves and beggars, always ready to assault, possibly even kill, and quickly move on.
Wednesday, October 2 2002
Toward a Critical Nationalism
A critical nationalist emphasizes the limitations of nationalism; she thinks that the rights of nations are usually overridden by the rights of individuals and universal human rights.
Wednesday, September 25 2002
Appetite: Pop Culture’s Urge to Purge
The summer after the seventh grade I used to steal my sister’s dubbed copy of Appetite for Destruction and lay out on the lawn with…
Wednesday, September 18 2002
Hello Cruel World: Blogs and Tunes One Year Later
. . . (S)houldn't we be celebrating our collective vain, ironical stupidity just to bug that humorless sobersides Osama bin Laden and his fellow fanatics?
Cosby Redux
The root of hip-hop generation displeasure with The Cosby Show was not simply that the show wasn't 'political', but rather the show did in fact serve the political function of diverting attention away from the harsh realities of Reagan-era social policies.
Wednesday, September 11 2002
The 2002-2003 Season Part 1: Same Old, Same Old
Reliving the '80s is perhaps the perfect metaphor for what the networks have in store for us this season.
Wednesday, September 4 2002
The Schizophrenic Collide-a-Scope
Commercials not only serve as the sort of national archives for domestic events and values -- the town crier, if you will -- but advertising is one of the ways that popular culture actually manages to persist.
Wednesday, August 28 2002
Glastonbury Blues
I purchased a tent, a sleeping bag, a packet of baby wipes, three packets of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka.
Prague: A Dual Heritage of Beauty and Sacrifice
Prague shows the world that sacrifice is not futile, that evil can be fought and ultimately, defeated.
Admit You’re Happy, Dammit
Receiving several queries from members who felt that they had been discriminated at their workplace for being 'too happy' (one can only imagine what happy feats incurred the wrath of their employers), Johnson also contacted the ACLU in efforts to curb happiness discrimination.
