Archive for March, 2007

Voices in the casserole

I keep looking at objects in my house with expectancy, staring into the bright eyes and smiling mouths of all sorts of anthropomorphic animal faces—the bee on the graham cracker box, the Pokemon backpack clip, the dragonfly wind chimes. I am hoping they will speak to me. They stare back dumbly, without consciousness, let alone […]

More ludicrous than thou

To my knowledge, only two of the faculty members in my old grad-school philosophy department professed a belief in God, and one of those was a Catholic who said he’d gladly contribute to a fund to assassinate the Pope. One of the atheist professors once remarked, referring to a theological dispute between two forms of […]

Objets mystérieux

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Owning a thing of beauty, however, is perhaps more complicated. Going to a gallery or a museum and looking at paintings, sculptures, videos, photos, etc., I often come away fulfilled and changed in a way that provokes in me great thought about aesthetics, the art market, the […]

A fugitive piece on reading and writing, Part II

From Part I: And with some chagrin, I had to admit that my list of guidelines — although I stand foot-firm behind them — represent part of the problem with my discipline, perhaps with the academy as a whole, or at least the humanities. Getting a Ph.D. in literature (in my case, American Studies), can actually strip from you […]

A fugitive piece on reading and writing, Part I

When I was a kid I told my parents I wanted to be a writer. They responded, as good parents should have, practically. They gave me a typewriter with a fresh ribbon, on which I began composing furious little stories about Sherlock Holmes. And they warned me there was no money in it. What they […]

And the Oscar goes to…

When I moved to France for a few years in the early 90s, it was a startling new experience to eat and drink with a people that savor and analyze every mouthful. I developed an amateur winedar that enabled me to distinguish a Bordeaux from a Côtes du Rhone, but when I moved to the […]

On intubation

The scariest part of my job is intubating people — medical terminology for putting a tube down someone’s throat so that a machine can breathe for them. This is something that happens regularly in Emergency Departments: people’s hearts or lungs fail them — or they are victims of gunshot or knife wounds or high-speed automobile […]

Little ditty

In the sentimental ‘70s, the appetite for tragic drama in pop culture was a lot more voracious than ever before or since; the genre of the after-school special and such movies as “Love Story,” “The Other Side of the Mountain,” “Ice Castles,” ”Brian’s Song,” “Something for Joey,” and of course, “The Boy in the Plastic […]

Applause line

Another week, another discussion of anti-gay slurs. I was in Vegas over the weekend in a travel-and-partying-related news blackout. So I came across the Ann Coulter thing just this morning, though she said it on Friday. If you haven’t seen the video already, I recommend it: I’ll try not to repeat the apt comments I’ve […]

Drive-bys

Driving in LA, streets become movies framed by your windshield. Ending up baked and brown is enough to make any clucker religious. These three chicks are painted on the wall below the four Eggs of Life. Is that a tear cascading down the rooster’s beak cheek? I don’t want to die! A giant rooster graces […]