There’s very little that is more disappointing to a true music fan than when his or her favorite band records a bona fide stinker of a song. When that happens, as it does all too often, I suspect most of us self-respecting music-lovers just avert our eyes/ears, turn away in ashamed obligation, give a conciliatory…
Read MorePart of me wanted to object to beginning this Challenge with a band I don’t like, since that seems contrary to the whole spirit of the enterprise, but I suppose since I’m picking a song I do like (even if it is from I band I don’t like) then I won’t complain. Though, I guess…
Read More[For those of you who’ve arrived here from a link, you can read below the initial “rules” of the 30 day Song Challenge (The Sequel)… but, more importantly, the rest of you who are probably just looking for a quick access to ALL of Dr. J’s entries for the 30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel).. …
Read MoreA couple of years ago on this blog, for the whole month of June, I participated in the 30 Day Song Challenge, a rather ingenious invention by some anonymous music-lover on Facebook. The way the 30 Day Song Challenge works is that it provides one “prompt” every day– for example, “a song that makes you…
Read MoreApologies in advance to my close friends and family, but the truth is that there is quite literally nothing in the world that I love more than Memphis. Thanks in part to the Grizzlies’ inspiring display of our city’s three most valuable homegrown resources– heart, grit, and grind– and in larger part thanks to the…
Read MoreLast week, my Philosophy and Film class took up the theme of “documentary truth.” In preparation for our Tuesday night seminar, students were required to choose one film from a list of documentaries (Grizzly Man, The Thin Blue Line, Night and Fog, Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans, Man on Wire, Super Size Me, Ghosts…
Read MoreI’m not sure exactly where to place the blame for the total disappointment that is the (Academy Award-nominated) film Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a based-on-real-events story of “the greatest manhunt in history.” The hunted is, of course, al-Qaeda founder and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty is organized as…
Read MoreSeveral weeks ago, I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild (adapted from the one-act play Juicy and Delicious by Lucy Alibar), the first feature-length film by director Benh Zeitlin and possibly one of the toughest films to characterize that I’ve ever seen. Whatever other faults it may have– and I will get to those shortly–…
Read MoreElection 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…
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