Weeping Joyously: Dancing Around the World with Matt Harding

One of the biggest and most beautiful internet videos is Where the Hell is Matt Harding? It first appeared on youtube in 2005 and became a “feel good” classic of the genre.
Now Matt Harding has come back with a powerful sequel dated 2008 that is making the internet rounds all over again. There’s a different [...]

Mack the Knife and Pedro Navaja: The Louis Armstrong and Ruben Blades Confluence

 First, the Inimitable Mr. Louis Armstrong, doing one of his signatures.

Now, the immensely talented Ruben Blades, doing the latin descendant of Mack the Knife, “Pedro Navaja”(Peter the Knife or Switchblade). Check out Oscar H on the piano!

Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936)

 The one and only time the great Charlie Chaplin’s vagabond spoke was when he sung this song in “Modern Times” (1936), one of my all-time favorite movies. The lyrics are in gibberish!!

Ann Patchett Event, Writer’s Garrett Dallas

Went to see Ann Patchett, one of our favorite novelists, at a Dallas Writer’s Garrett event last night in Richardson. Patchett is the author of Bel Canto, a great novel about terrorism and love, Truth and Beauty, a memoir, and her latest, a novel called Run that’s doing very well on the NY Times bestseller [...]

Rest in Peace Rodolfo

In 1988, I trekked to San Francisco on a bus from Santa Cruz to stand (or better said, sit) in line all day long to get a standing room only ticket to see Luciano Pavarotti in one of his signature roles, Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme. I’ve seen La Boheme over the years (3 [...]

The Cultural Politics of Spider-Man 3

A few weeks ago I wrote a post titled The Cultural Meanings of Spider-Man, in which I reviewed some of the scholarship on this American icon. In my post, I discussed Niall Richardson’s article The Gospel According to Spider-Man (2004), which analyzes the use of religious motifs in the first Spider-Man movie. Well, I write [...]

The Cultural Meanings of Spider-Man: Critical Approaches to an American Icon

The Cultural Meanings of Spider-Man: Critical Approaches to an American Icon

Now that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 is due in theaters in a few days, starring the inimitable Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, we may want to pause to consider the power of this enduring American icon. For almost half a century, Spider-Man has been a [...]

Making it Real: The Poetry Chapbook and the College Classroom

Making it Real: The Poetry Chapbook and the College Classroom

Gracias a la Vida que me ha dado tanto
me ha dado el sonido y el abedecedario
con él las palabras que pienso y declaro
madre amigo hermano y luz alumbrando,
la ruta del alma del que estoy amando.
“Gracias a la Vida”, Violeta Parra

Last fall, I experimented with a different [...]

Credit Where Credit is Due Please: Cormac McCarthy and the Oprah Book Club

Oprah has picked Cormac McCarthy’s beautiful and haunting The Road for her book club. I was over at Amazon.com looking at the message board for the new paperback edition of The Road and was struck by some posts attacking Oprah and the intelligence of her viewers. This is very sad. Oprah has promoted the [...]

Off to London to see Shakespeare

I’m putting Patrick Stewart’s picture at the head of this post because I will be seeing him play Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest on Monday March 12th in London. I’m not going to London only to see him, but seeing a Royal Shakespeare Company production for the first time is pretty exciting and certainly one [...]