POPULAR CULTURE & SOCIAL LIFE

For a society that is putatively founded on the notion of human equality, Americans seem acutely obsessed with ordinality (maybe we think we’re immune to the “natural” (Darwinian) tendency to…

The other morning, on some blogsite I was perusing there was an essay on “why Michael Phelps is a jerk.” Conceding that it might take a jerk to waste his…

Now that public massacres like the recent one in Aurora, CO, arrive with almost semi-automatic regularity to prompt a few days of public keening, prayer and opportunistic platitudinous funeral orations…

Remember that “freedom fries” business and all the catcalls at the “froggies” for not jumping in on Bush’s (now Obama’s) stupid, useless, economy-busting wars? Have those impetuous Americaines delivered them…

Recently, in a movie theatre in Hong Kong I watched the excellent, award-winning The Kings Speech. Seated around me were Hong Kong people who had lived under royal hegemony until 1997.*…

My dear, departed friend and collaborator, movie director Denis Sanders used to love to tell jokes impugning people with elitist social class pretentions. One in particular that I remember (that…

After seventeen blissful years—certainly longer than most marriages and relationships—Gudrun and I are splitting up. Nothing is forever, but I was hoping she would carry to the very end. It…

See also, Archives 64. 1: Don’t Ask; Don’t Drop the Soap I hate parades. To me they harken back to the Roman triumphals bringing back loot and slaves from their…

I am prompted to my theme by a restaurant review I just read about a place in San Diego that claims to sense authentic Jersey cheese steak sandwiches. Got that…

Confession: I ask for the “senior discount” when I go to the movies. That way I don’t have to hand them the deed to my home. (Related confession: I sometimes…