Leigh M. Johnson

25 Random Things About Me

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Memphis, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 10 Comments

So, there’s a thing going around on Facebook that asks people to list 25 random things about themselves. I usually delete messages like this immediately, but for whatever reason I actually filled out the list this time. I suppose that the point of this exercise is to show something revelatory about what the author finds…

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Clean Slate

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics 2 Comments

It’s funny how a simple and arbitrary change in the calander date can give us all the impression that something has really started over, that we have begun a new project that is in some way really distinct from the one we were in only a couple of days ago, that the weight of 2008’s…

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Yes I Did

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama 1 Comment

… change the format of this blog, that is. I’m going to give this look a trial run for about a week before deciding whether or not to dispatch with it. Comments welcome, even encouraged.

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Antiheroes (Again)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 4 Comments

There’s an article in the current issue of Newsweek by Joshua Alston entitled “Too Much of a Bad Thing” (without a question mark, but I’ll come back to that later) that claims we are all suffering from “Antihero Overload” and bemoans the fact that “no one on TV can be merely good or evil anymore.”…

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Dangerous Disorder

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics 3 Comments

James Baldwin, a 20th C. African-American novelist and parrhesiastes, wrote a letter to his nephew in 1963– on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation— that was later published under the title My Dungeon Shook. In that letter, Baldwin tried to persuade his young nephew not to fall prey to the more insidious temptations of assimilation,…

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Cultivating Weirdness

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 1 Comment

I wasn’t surprised to find among the list of “local weirdos” featured in the article “How To Be A Local Character: Five Basic Examples” Memphis’ own Prince Mongo (pictured left). Prince Mongo– né Robert Hodges, changed his name to King Mongo, then Saint Mongo– has been a fixture in Midtown Memphis for as long as…

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Foodies

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 4 Comments

Over on KHG’s blog, there’s a really interesting post (Titillating Food) about her experiment with trying to make “caramel sea salt.” Reading it, and amazing at all of the care and thought that went into such a project, got me thinking about that odd-variety of human being that we call the foodie. The foodie differs…

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Picture This…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 3 Comments

I recently discovered wordle.net, which generates “word clouds” from text that you enter. The program gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently, thus producing a kind of shorthand-image of what is emphasized in the original text. I know that readers of this blog probably don’t need yet another Internet distraction, but this one…

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A Leaner, Meaner, Angrier Art World

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 2 Comments

The painting to the left is Akt Elke 2 (Nude Elke 2) by the German artist Georg Baselitz, who is famous for painting figures upside-down. When Baselitz was asked by a reporter recently whether or not he felt any guilt about the “astronomical prices” his works were fetching at auctions, Baselitz took a long drag…

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Vox Populi

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics 2 Comments

With only 8 more days to go before the Inauguration, Slate magazine (in collaboration with MixedInk) has invited us, the people, to help write Obama’s inaugural address. The way it works is as follows: when you click on this link, you will be taken to a site where you can begin writing your own speech….

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