• Film/TV - Painting & Sculpture

    Protest and Patriotism: Kota Ezawa’s “National Anthem” Video

    July 30, 2022 - By 

    A row of black men clad in black uniforms is down on one knee, their arms interlocked along the sideline of what is obviously a football field. Their heads are bowed, while behind them stands a row of racially varied men in casual, mostly identical civilian clothes, their arms also hooked together as they stare into the near distance. It commands a kind of tender patriotism that asks: What is it to love one’s country, and, for that matter, to love anything? Music from deep mournful cellos begins to play as the scene comes to life, though the figures and…

  • Music

    Brilliant Songs #30: Tandyn Almer &
    The Association’s “Along Comes Mary”

    July 24, 2022 - By 

    It was always the “psychodramas and the traumas” that caught my ear. I must have heard The Association’s “Along Comes Mary” a thousand times in the months after its March, 1966 debut, drawn by its almost hypnotic drive, melodic refrain and multi-syllabic wordplay. But the words tumbled forth with such breathlessness and clung together so tightly that I never saw fit to peel them apart to ponder and appreciate not only their meaning, but also the verbal dexterity they required of the singer. Proof positive of the latter would be to stick the lyrics in front of yourself after you’ve…

  • Personal Reflections - Poetry

    A Poem of Thanks, Belated:
    Ada Limón’s “The Raincoat”

    July 16, 2022 - By 

    I had the great good fortune of returning to my old stomping grounds in California last month, where I welcomed a grandson into this world and beheld the exquisite pleasure of seeing my daughter assume the role of motherhood. I don’t think I had really anticipated the sublime joy of those moments, though they gave rise to what did become my anticipation of all the wonders—leavened by the pretty much requisite trade-off of occasional heartaches—that lie ahead for her. Like most all grandparents I have ever heard from, I was about bursting with joy to hold, nuzzle and coo with the…

  • General Nonfiction - Personal Reflections

    Life on the Farm:
    E.B. White’s “Death of a Pig”

    July 10, 2022 - By 

    Like all city boys (I spent my formative years in Los Angeles), I was enchanted when I finally got out to the radically different milieus of the coastal beaches, the small town countryside, the mountains that became visible around the LA basin when the smog finally lifted in winter, and the deserts that sprawled out seemingly to infinity on the far side of San Bernardino. The slower pace, the natural grandeur, the different recreations and preoccupations engendered by distance from the urban hubbub. It was like a new life had been opened to me, featuring new vistas over which my…

  • Film/TV

    Who Would Be on Your Train? A “This Is Us” Tribute

    July 3, 2022 - By 

    A  beautiful woman—the matriarch in the sprawling, multi-generational television show “This is Us”—is sitting alone, gazing out the window of a luxurious passenger train car. What appears to be a porter—well-dressed and dignified—looms over her shoulder, but before he says anything, she informs him she is waiting for someone. But then she launches into an impromptu reminiscence on her long-dead father’s love of such trains, and his promise that someday the two of them would journey on one. Whereupon she looks happily up at the porter and invites him to “sit with me.” Soon, she is asking him to recite…