Election years are always crazy years for American politics. They’re not always Clint-Eastwood-talking-to-an-empty-chair crazy, though. Nor are they, as a rule, “legitimate rape”- or “binders full of women”- or “fiscal cliff”- or “austerity”- crazy, that is, so crazy that one requires a Crazy-to-English translator to watch the evening news. And although American politics is never…
Read MoreLegendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi once said: “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?” In spite of the many ways sports serves as an apt metaphor for life, Lombardi’s sage reflection keys in on one of the important differences between sports and life. Namely, in sports, they keep score. On a scoreboard. And…
Read MoreThis has been a quiet year here on RMWMTMBM, but I didn’t want the year to end without my annual retrospective wrap-ups of 2012. Following in the tradition of the last couple of years, I’ll break the lists up by topic, beginning with 2012 Year in Music. (If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out 2011 Year…
Read MoreYesterday, one of the worst mass-killings in United States history occurred, taking the lives of 20 children and 8 adults, including the shooter. Especially in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy, it is sometimes too easy to ignore the immeasurably valuable and radically singular worth of each and every human life. Even those lives that…
Read MoreIn a press conference shortly after the horrible news of the Connecticut grade-school shooting broke, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: “There is, I am sure– will be, rather– a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day.” Carney could not have been more…
Read More“I say that I do philosophy, which is to say that I try to invent concepts. What if I say, to you who do cinema: what do you do?” –Gilles Deleuze French philosopher Gilles Deleuze famously speculated in Cinema 1 (1983) that what he called the “movement-image,” a unique creative product of cinema, makes it…
Read MoreIt’s been a little while since the inhabitants of Facebookistan got all fired up about something– where are you now Kony2012?— so I was half-delighted and half-disheartened to see the newest brouhaha to hit the social media site, which I’m calling the Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement (FPD). As these things tend to happen, FPD had been…
Read MoreThe new film version of Yann Martel‘s 2001 novel Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee and starring the wide-eyed and captivating Saraj Sharma in the title role, is (exactly as the posters promise) an “epic journey of adventure and discovery.” And that’s the problem with it. I read Life of Pi shortly after it…
Read MoreAfter much Sturm und Drang for the AVP team, we’re happy to announce that we’ve finally managed to secure a location and date for our exhibit! So, mark your calendars: We’ll be staging the VERY FIRST exhibition of the entire American Values Project collection on MAY 5 at Marshall Arts gallery in downtown Memphis. May…
Read MoreIn the last couple of days, I’ve received a lot of criticism about this post, in which I solicited Dr. Vincent Hendricks (and encouraged my readers to solicit Dr. Hendricks) to grant an interview with me, for the benefit of his English-speaking audience, about the recent kerfuffle surrounding his decision to post on his website–…
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