Pop Culture/Film/Literature

Outbursts I’ve Considered, Then Thought Better Of…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 6 Comments

I don’t think I’ve said so officially on this blog yet, but the NBC sitcom “Community” is one of the funniest things on television in a long, long time. It’s about a group of ne’er-do-well’s attending community college who accidentally fall into a Spanish “study group” together. Much hilarity ensues. The group’s Spanish professor, Señor…

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This Is Now An “Award Winning” Blog

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

You can read the whole story here of how my blog came to receive the illustrious “Chuck Norris Stamp of Approval.” I’m truly honored, I think.

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Another Milestone

June 9, 2024 Dr. J BlogCounts, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

Thanks to a nice bump in traffic today, courtesy of our friends over at Daily Kos (who linked to this blog’s transcript of Cornel West’s note to Obama), we just topped 40K hits! So, let me take this opportunity to thank all of the regular and non-regular visitors to this site. Please keep coming back….

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The Deadly Serious Business of Tenure

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

Last week, University of Alabama-Huntsville Professor of Biology Amy Bishop opened fire in a faculty meeting, killing three of her colleagues and wounding three others. Despite our hopeful image of the Ivory Tower as a place far removed from the ugliness of “real world” violence, stories like these remind us that, regrettably, wishing doesn’t make…

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Battle of the Sexists?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Sports, Women and Gender Issues 2 Comments

First, my apologies to regular readers of this blog for my extended absence of late. As some of you know, my department is hiring for a new tenure-track line this semester, a process which has the tendency to eat up every last moment of “spare” time for everyone involved. Second, I hope that you don’t…

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Quiet Desperation

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 4 Comments

The new film Up in the Air, directed by Jason Reitman of Juno and Thank You For Smoking fame, has gotten a lot of buzz lately, most of it surrounding George Clooney’s performance as a “corporate downsizer” (he fires people for a living) and for-all-intents-and-purposes homeless, constantly “up in the air” business traveler (his greatest…

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When Growing-Up Is NOT “The Bomb”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve recommended a book on this blog, the last one being Junot Diaz’s tragic and beautiful The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Part of the reason for the absence of good fiction here is because I went through a bit of a literary drought recently, reading several books that…

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The Peter Principle

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

I just read an article in NewScientist about the “Peter Principle” (based on the theory put forth by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1998 book The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong). The Peter Principle is a fundamental law of “Hierarchiology” that states: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to…

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Liability Waivers

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

I recently had occasion to read the application for a (to-remain-unnamed-for-now) reality television show. Most of it was pretty much what one would expect, namely, questions designed to identify potential candidates’ idiosyncrasies, fears, hopes, delusions of grandeur, pet peeves, and anything else that might make for interesting TV. Also as expected, there’s a lot of…

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“This Country Was Not Built By Men in Suits.” (So Say the Men in Suits)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 3 Comments

I’ve been fascinated recently by the obvious change in tone of many television commercials. We’re in an economic downturn, in case you hadn’t heard, and so many of the major ad-men seem to have been forced to acquiesce to the hard fact of hard times. There’s a lot more emphasis on product “affordability,” a lot…

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