One of the controversies surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings was the package that Cho sent to NBC. It included video of him ranting and posing; NBC aired it and then other news outlets re-aired it, branded with NBC’s ID. A negative reaction quickly followed and the media scaled back on its use. A debate ensued [...]
VT shooting and the Culture Blame Game
On Friday, I posted my latest Spot-on piece, which focused on the pop culture fallout of the VT shootings (“Seeking Tragic Answers in the Aisles of Best Buy“). On Friday, Stephen Hunter wrote a great piece on how Seung-Hui Cho might have been influenced by movies. Hunter is a former soldier and a gun owner [...]
Tarantino versus Rodriguez & versus Himself
I recently posted an item about the release of the movie Grindhouse, a double bill directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. My pal Dan Dorman then followed with two lengthy comments, which has now prompted me to respond with this lengthy post. Mind you, neither of us has seen Grindhouse, but from what I [...]
Barrelhouse Music
Last summer, I did a little mini series of songs with piano in them. As I said at the time, the piano may seem delicate for rock, but it is a percussion instrument and it also has great range of expression. Here’s one cut from the brand new LCD Soundsystem album Sound of Silver and [...]
“Oh, there goes Rabbit, he choked, he’s so mad…”
I’ve been really busy lately and never got around to posting these Easter photos. You may recall that last year, I captured some images from my town of Laurel, MD of front yard Easter displays. I was up in Bellrose, Queens, NYC this year and took a few more shots. Tags: Easter, decorations
I-Man gets fired. Should hip-hop get bounced?
My new post went up over the weekend at Spot-on and it’s all about how the turmoil over Don Imus has spread to hip-hop. I could see that coming very quickly over the course of the week. Partly, it’s a racially-driven phenomenon. There are plenty of white folks who don’t understand how a brotha gets [...]
R.I.P., Bob Clarke
Sad news last week that director Bob Clark and his son were killed in a car crash in Los Angeles. If you read the stories over the holiday weekend, you noticed that some articles listed him as the writer-director of A Christmas Story (1983) and some as the writer-director of Porky’s (1982). This article shows [...]
Grinding It Out
Grindhouse opens today. I’ve been surprised by people I know who are eager to see this movie. I’m not sure if it’s legitimate love for the work of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez or if it’s unfamiliarity with the subject matter. The movie attempts to replicate a typical moviegoing experience from the Seventies, with a [...]
In which I get myself in trouble…
Here’s just another brief glimpse into my life and how I run my mouth (see previous example here). I work in an office. I’ll sit in a meeting listening quietly — perhaps engaged fully, perhaps at half-speed, because not everything is pertinent to my job. But then someone refers to KC & The Sunshine Band [...]
My other blog is Movable Type
As if I didn’t have enough trouble feeding words into this thing, I have agreed to write a regular column for Spot-on, run by my friend Chris Nolan. It’s interesting, because Spot-on is a family of bloggers, who cover various topics from locations around the world, and yet it’s (intentionally) a lot like a stable [...]