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 reading[…]
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Category: Identity
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 immigrant[…]
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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 Fox[…]
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Exquisite Corps(e)
Exquisite Corpse was a game played by the surrealists, in which they collaborated on a story or artwork. Each person would contribute a piece, usually based on just a tiny fragment of what came before.[…]
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The Trouble with Tarantino
The trouble with Quentin Tarantino, an unquestionably brilliant and iconoclastic director, is that there’s often a regressive undertone to his superficially progressive imagery. A self-proclaimed champion of the underdog, his brand of empowerment rarely comes[…]
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Strategies: Part IV – Big Visible Symbols of the American Commitment to Diversity
Complete Trump Strategy Guide I am an Israelite myself a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin – ROMANS 11 I have identified five symbols that I suggest we organize around, in the response[…]
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The Racial Draft
Originally posted 8/6/07, scroll to the bottom for update in light of current events. Note: The title of this essay is borrowed from a Dave Chappelle sketch imagining the possibility of changing racial allegiances. For[…]
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The Mind of Murakami
As some of you know, I’m a huge, long-time fan of Japanese surrealist novelist Haruki Murakami, even having written a well-known parody of his work. Check out my review of his latest over at Partially[…]
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Top 10 Movies: #2 – Do the Right Thing
It’s the hottest day of the year. Spike Lee is known as an actor’s director, and nowhere is that more apparent than in his masterpiece, 1989’s Do the Right Thing, an acknowledged classic of American[…]
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Top 10 Movies: #4 – Stand By Me
While Stand By Me (1986) is undeniably an excellent film, I’m not sure I can actually justify how high it ranks on my personal Top 10 list (it almost came in at number 3, but[…]
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