There’s a world of difference between something that’s funny and something that makes you laugh. Over the past decade or so, the real magnitude of that difference has been lost, what with all the ubiquitous lol‘s (and “lol”-variants) showing up in our texts, Facebook feeds and Twitter pages. The truth is, it’s really not that easy…
Read MoreMy head often needs “clearing” and, as far as I’ve been able to tell, music is the only thing that can do that. For others, the cure for a muddled mind is exercise, or meditation, or visit to church, or a good cry, or a long conversation with a dear friend… but none of those…
Read MoreThere are about two dozen songs that every single R&B band in Memphis plays every time they perform. Whether you’re on Beale Street, or in a local juke joint, or rolling down the river on the Memphis Queen or just down South at the casinos, you’re going to hear all two dozen. Songs like “Proud…
Read MoreOnce again, I’ll be participating in the 30 Day Song Challenge on this blog for the entire month of June. I did the Challenge for the first time in 2011 (read my picks here) and then I did it again last summer (read those picks here), though I used a different prompt-list the second time. The Challenge works…
Read MoreI’ve neglected this blog quite a bit over the last year, in part because I was on the job market and in part because, once one gets out of the habit of blogging regularly, then not-blogging-regularly becomes a whole new habit. Let’s remedy that. By way of re-entry, I thought I’d do a kind of…
Read MoreToday and tomorrow, student-workers are going on strike to protest unfair labor practices (ULPs) by the University of California after its administrators refused to meet their (very reasonable) bargaining demands and threatened union members who might participate in a strike. The UC Student-Workers Union, UAW Local 2865, represents over 12,000 graduate and undergraduate Academic Student Employees– all…
Read MoreI had the very good fortune to attend my first Spillit event last night in (local photographer/visual anthropologist, Jamie Harmon‘s) Amurica studio space. Spillit is one of the newer additions to what has become, over the last several years, an incredibly rich, astoundingly diverse, mostly DIY and impressively self-sustaining (for lack of a better descriptor)…
Read MoreThe news has just been released that Rev. Fred Phelps, founder and lifelong shepherd of the Westboro Baptist Church (in Topeka, Kansas) has died at the age of 84. I find it difficult, I confess, to summon the normal human compassion that usually accompanies news of another’s death in this case, largely because Phelps dedicated…
Read MoreLet’s face it: exercising solidarity is tricky business, not the least of which is because “solidarity” itself is a tricky concept, which requires the subordination of real differences (across a whole host of important categorical domains) for the sake of some particular common interest that might prioritize similitude– often for prudentially strategic reasons– over, across…
Read MoreAs some of you already know, I am also one of the bloggers at NewAPPS. I’m re-posting here a piece co-authored by Edward Kazaian and I that appeared this past Tuesday on NewAPPS. It’s generated a lot of conversation so far, and I’ll have a post forthcoming soon on my take on that conversation. What…
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