Have you ever jumped into a pile of leaves dear readers? Fallen into a snow drift? Tumbled into a pool? Slipped in the mud? Yeah I have too. Nature has a surprising amount of built in padding for both kids and adults alike. And yet we never seem to take advantage of it – Especially…
Have you ever read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? It’s more than 100 years old at this point. In case you haven’t read it, it’s a story that explores the subjects of race and identity. It has been studied over and over, because while it digs into the the existence of slavery, it also exists…
The Canadian Sweethearts were a Canadian rockabilly duo that were popular during the 1960s and played together almost 20 years. They are probably best known for their song Eeny Meeny Miney Moe, but the most important allusion I want to make between them and the musical act being considered today is that both group were…
Sexuality is a complicated thing, dear readers. People of all sexual orientations exist in this world – heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, polysexual, pansexual, and transexual. And those are just the baseline, it gets more intricate then that. Which is a difficult thing to address because we have so much cultural material out there that mostly…
Ever watch How I Met Your Mother, dear readers? In what seems to be a theme of break up related things, I am now writing another post about breaking up. Breaking up is hard to do, after all. There is this episode of How I Met Your Mother called Nothing Good Happens After 2 AM,…
Sometimes people confuse talent with potential. Potential is aptitude not yet realized, but talent is an expression which is right in front of us. Yes, talent can be reigned in, developed, focused, nurtured, etc. But the real question of the day is, can we recognize talent when it does something a little bit left of…
I watched American Beauty this past week, and it made me cry dear readers. It wasn’t something I was expecting, but I suspect the movie just opened me up to the experience of addressing some hard feelings I had about love, loss and hate. If you’ve seen the movie, I think you’ll know what I’m…
Common to absurdist thought are elements of satire, agnosticism, and nihilism. The art form rose up in the late nineteenth century, with philosopher types like Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Kurt Vonnegut leading the way. Now if you are looking for some more memorable and mainstream examples of absurdist thought via film, then I’ll happily include some….
There is this fantastic track by NOFX called Mattersville. That they are in my top five punk bands of all time should have no bearing on this. Now you should know, when this song was first released in the early oughts, it made me nostalgic for my youth while I was still in my formative…
I kind of hated dating when I was a younger buck. Mostly because of all the hormones, the uncertainty of identity, and dealing with the scores of other impressionable youth who were in the same boat as I. It was messy and unclear, but giving myself and others roles made it easier to navigate, and…