In My Checkered Career, I wrote about some of the ways I discovered jazz – primarily through record stores and radio. But all through the 1950s, I listened mainly to the popular music of the day, both the residue made for adult audiences and rock&roll (very broadly defined) specifically aimed at the new Youth Market, […]
Liberace Meets Little Richard Read More »
and I saw someone walking down the street talking out loud, laughing and chattering to no one, I’d conclude them mad and give them a wide berth. Now such madness is the norm, and I’m the deviant. and I saw someone walking down the street eyes fixed apparently upon the palm of their hand I’d
I took my daughter and her boyfriend to dinner at a place called Joe’s Crab Shack. Strategically installed near the entrance to the town’s first shopping mall, Joe’s presented thousands of winking lights that glanced off reproduced tin signs promoting products unavailable since the ’50s, taped music of the Beatles and the Bee Gees, fancifully
We All Want to Change the World Read More »
“‘It suddenly struck me the other day,’ continued Bernard, ‘that it might be possible to be an adult all the time.’” (Aldous Huxley, 94) In 1963 when I was an undergraduate at a midwestern university, a famous poet (at that time such a thing still existed) was spending a year on campus as Poet in
Oh Brave New World That Has Such Cornholes in It Read More »
Why should anyone be bothered with a fifteen-year-old analysis of an undistinguished right-wing hack’s ephemeral newspaper column? Simple answer: virtually the same column, written by a different right-wing hack, showed up a few days ago in the Colorado Springs Gazette. The good professor Walter Williams, Olin (see below) Distinguished Professor of Economics and recipient of
Same Old Song, Same Old Dance (2020) Read More »
The free Wednesday newspaper waits in my mailbox, a wrapper for advertisements by the shrill ream, topped by a sheaf of messages from New York addressed to Occupant, my pet name. “Valentine Veggies Keep the Heart Beating,” the newspaper boldly asserts. A perfect story for today, pushing slow products under the banner of health, devoid
Valentine Veggies (for Yevgeny Yevtushenko) Read More »