I love airport bars – not only because they get me though the horror of flying – I love them because they are the true crossroads of America. Around me are some of the regulars: the guy wearing an earpiece and an embroidered polo shirt who loves his sales job, the guy sitting next [...]
Author Archive
Marginally ironic
1999: I was living in a shoebox-sized apartment in Olympia with an oversized childhood friend named Dan. I was not fortunate enough to land a mate, but Dan was dating an Olympian named Melissa for about a month. It was relatively clear that their relationship was based primarily on regional convenience — a warm [...]
… unless by “radical” you mean “really awesome.”
When Walter Benjamin wrote in 1938 that one may understand the problems associated with a society through a reading of its consumer goods, even his best friend and fellow Frankfurt School thinker, Teddy Adorno, thought that he was taking the whole Marxism thing a little too far.
When Herbert Marcuse wrote in 1964 that advanced industrial [...]
Paul Franzoso, veteran
His parents passed through Ellis Island as part of the swell of Italian immigrants to the U. S. in the early 20th century, and settled in an area of New Jersey called the Lost Valley.
Though his parents were poor, they raised eight children – one of whom was adopted because his father couldn’t bear the [...]
Thursday playlist: My(space) friends
The Hair PUddle is a project based on questioning the culture industry’s domination over how we experience art and music. The idea is simple: anyone in the world can receive a free Hair PUddle CD wrapped in original artwork – all one has to do is ask and supply the project’s overseer, Mr. H. [...]
Falling for fall
Autumn is my favorite season. Even though as a child I was not adept at the things associated with it (like football and school), I’ve always loved it. My feelings have something to do with the deep privacy I associate with the fall, especially when weighed against the summer – the season in which [...]
Guns, germs, steel…and Oprah
America’s cultural tradition has come to include the concept that all people deserve equal rights. However, women in many nations (including the United States) are subject to injustices that range from lower wages to spousal abuse, rape, lashing, and stoning. Understandably, among many Americans there is an outcry to intervene in the most [...]
ForLoveNotMoney 2.0
To be an amateur in the U.S. is to be second rate. The reasoning goes that if one were a better writer, musician, or painter, a career in the arts would necessarily be in order. The professional is lauded – is taken seriously.
Things, however, weren’t always this way. Until the mid-to-late 19th [...]
A special gift
No one ever seems to notice that the U.S. has birthday after birthday without ever receiving a proper gift. Imagine how it must feel to be 231 years old and never once having gotten a birthday present – not even a Glen Campbell album that you already own, or a jacket you would never [...]
Human nature
Leaning over the metal rail of a small footbridge I looked down, countless times, at the brook, which ran the length of my hometown. The fluid beneath was not pure sparkling water, but a concocted soup – a collaboration of rainfall, natural runoff, and pollutants from chemical and other types of factories operating upstream.
To those [...]
