Alt Classical: Cover Tunes
Nothing Else Matters – Apocalyptica (Metallica) Repost from 2014 When I was a child, my parents listened almost exclusively to classical music –it was years before I realized their radio could tune in other...
The Pop Culture Philosopher Blog
Cover of Sister Mine
Sister Mine
As I mentioned in my review of “The Justice Trilogy,” when you are a minority author writing a genre book, you’re risking ending up with a fractal audience, occupying a niche inside a niche....
The Family Gene
The Family Gene is not an easy book for me to write about –it’s difficult to say anything about a deadly disease that doesn’t sound trite, glib, or callous. Nor was it an easy...
Reconstructivist Art: Smooth Criminal
In honor of Michael Jackson’s birthday this week, please enjoy this essay about his song, Smooth Criminal, considered as an exemplar of Reconstructivist Art. Michael Jackson’s hit single Smooth Criminal is an object lesson...
Caroline, or Change
When I went to see what turned out to be an extraordinary production of the Broadway musical Caroline, or Change (playwright Tony Kushner, composer Jeanine Tesori) I wasn’t sure what to expect. I remembered...
The Mysterious Disappearance of the Strangely Beautiful Woman
Please enjoy this repost of an affectionate parody of one of my most favorite authors, Haruki Murakami I was in the bathtub, playing with my rubber duck, when the phone rang. It rang exactly...
Soichi Sunami: Modern Artist
I always knew that my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born, was an unusual person. Born in 1885, fifteen years before the end of the nineteenth century, he was an early Japanese...
R.I.P. G.O.P.
I’m progressive, even radical on many topics, but I also hold some conservative views; and like most people, I’ve grown more conservative as I’ve grown older. I’m not a fan of the Democrats, and...
Quietly Subversive: Malcolm in the Middle
Bryan Cranston became a superstar playing a kindly suburban teacher turned deadly drug kingpin on the hit AMC show Breaking Bad, but before that he was best known as Hal, the emotional center to...
Reconstructivist Art: The Lion King
In honor of the 20th anniversary of the Lion King‘s premiere on Broadway (July 8, 1997) please enjoy this repost of an essay about it as an exemplar of Reconstructivist Art. Along with “The...
The Justice Trilogy
Growing up as a non-white kid who read science-fiction and fantasy almost exclusively, finding books with characters who looked like me was not an easy task. Ursula Le Guin’s famous protagonist Ged (A Wizard...
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