We live in confusing times. Art that seeks the high ground seems to struggle to survive. Trash seems to flourish, whether in television, movies or popular music. We’re supposed to deplore this, right? But the thing about a pop artist like Ke$ha that is so genius – and I’m specifically thinking of her 2009 hit [...]
Stretch It Out with Jack LaLanne (1914 – 2011)
Yesterday, fitness guru Jack LaLanne passed away at the age of 96. He was noted not only for his early recognition of the importance of exercise and proper diet, but for the way he turned to mass media to spread the word. His TV fitness program The Jack LaLanne Show debuted in 1951 on local [...]
Internet Freaks Out Over Movie That Lies
It’s hard to recall that The Social Network hasn’t even been out for four months. In that short period of time, it’s racked up more than $200 million in its theatrical global release, it’s already started winning awards (and is considered a top contender for the Oscars) and it’s become a top-selling DVD, (while still [...]
Persons A, B & C: Ownership and Purchases in the Digital Age
In two previous posts (here and here), I touched on something about content today that I think is both important and poorly understood. I wanted to take a moment to re-argue this before moving on to a new aspect of this issue. We are in the Digital Age of content and it didn’t take us [...]
Dionne Warwick Sings in French
[EDITORIAL NOTE: At one time, I regularly posted music on this blog. I was informed that I was in danger of having this turn into a music blog, instead of one broadly focusing on pop culture. Having lately browsed through my massive record collection and recognized that I have a lot of rare and obscure [...]
Geek Culture – Wounded, But Not Dead
During the holidays, Patton Oswalt made quite a stir with an article at Wired.com: Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die. He argues that 30 years ago, when he was a young nerd (which is roughly the same timeframe in which I was a young nerd), people really had to work to indulge their “obsessive, [...]