For some reason our attempt to point you to Steve Gilliard’s compelling thoughts on “New Journalism” failed yesterday, so we’ll try again. I am envious of Gilliard’s broad-ranging feel for the middle-distance history of journalism—particularly as it was affected by the convulsions of the sixties and seventies. How could such intense social and political upheaval … Read more
Please can I have some health insurance? Representative Jim Ramstad gave us a good chuckle this morning in his Strib op-ed piece, “Too much at stake for continued partisan warfare.” He rattles off a litany of the nation’s problems: social security, hungry children, crisis in public schools, out of control health care costs, national security, … Read more
Welcome to this thing, yet another old thing reconfigured as a new thing. It’ll be mostly about baseball, but I have a wandering mind, so it’ll likely occasionally stray pretty far afield –at some point, I suppose, I’ll feel compelled to talk about other random nonsense as well. Sometimes the random nonsense and the baseball … Read more
Exit 127 off Interstate 90 doesn’t seem to go anywhere. There are no towns, no farms, no apparent reason to build an exit in the middle of the driest, flattest section of South Dakota, a desolate expanse of land. If you steal a glance at the right moment, though, you may notice a nondescript vinyl-sided … Read more
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REPRESENTATIVE MANWhile Clinton Collins’ musings have long been a favorite of mine, it is a shame that he is perpetuating the (implied) myth of how the shortest month of the year came to be Black History Month [Love It and Leave It, February]. The selection of February, in fact, was made by a black scholar, … Read more
We’ve all heard about the different levels of grief and Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Lately I’ve had reason to re-examine the varying levels of “relevance and cool” in the music business. There are phases, to be exact. Level 1. You start out, fresh, unknown, and interestingly unstudied. Someone more famous than yourself has gone … Read more
Yes, it seems outlandish, but that’s the correct title. Charlotte Bronte’s classic tale of bitterness and resignation, rendered as a musical. Poor dowdy Jane cultivated an air of invisibility as she skulked about doing her menial work and watching her cruel crush woo other ladies, so the very thought of this mousy heroine breaking into … Read more
It’s usually not a good thing when your landlord takes an interest in your love life. But in Annie Wilson’s case, a little meddling is just what she needs. Having recently lost what she thought was the love of her life, she’s uprooted herself to a new apartment across town. The landlord tells her 3A … Read more
Game show hosts, goateed beatniks, and a chorus line of bathing beauties? Why, it could only be a McCarthy hearing! Time Track Productions takes an absurdist look at the red scare by envisioning the questioning of J. Robert Oppenheimer as a fifties-era variety show. It’s hard to take on the politics of fear, whether vintage … Read more