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the gleaming (s)word: September 2014
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Thursday, September 11, 2014. A Look Back at Me and U2. Occasionally, I like to take a look back at the years through the lens of a music band’s history, and U2’s distribution of Songs of Innocence. Along with the unveiling of iPhone 6 earlier this week provides a good opportunity to do just that. I was a teenager when U2’s undisputed masterpiece The Joshua Tree. Came out in 1987. I had it on cassette and by the time Rattle and Hum. In recent years, I’ve read that Rattle and Hum. U2 represented “th...
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the gleaming (s)word: August 2014
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Sunday, August 31, 2014. A Gatsbean Odyssey: The Man Himself (1/7). I’ve never understood The Great Gatsby. Like Odysseus departing for Troy, every time I embark upon reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece I have the highest of hopes only to find myself lost at sea. He is desperate for a welcome by old money and, even worse, he has a serious crush on Daisy Buchanan, the most vapid and annoying character I have ever encountered in literature. Of the gentleman of wealth, but he is a testament that some ...
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the gleaming (s)word: August 2015
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Thursday, August 20, 2015. Oh, the Blog Posts I’ll Never Write! Lana Del Rey: In Praise of No Context. This post was nearing completion when I decided to apply the brakes to my blogging. The post was to discuss how encountering Lana Del Rey’s music without knowing anything about her personal life and how she is perceived by others enhanced my appreciation for her art. I was particularly excited about making a connection to the Kazuo Ishiguro novel. Never Let Me Go. From the post that never was:. I also i...
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the gleaming (s)word: February 2015
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Friday, February 20, 2015. Listening to Vinyl: Dust in the Grooves. I used to think music fans who insisted on the superiority of vinyl records over compact discs were just pretentious. Surely, I thought, digital recording methods are better. That changed, however, when my wife bought me a simple Sony record player a few Christmases back and I gave vinyl another try. With illustrated libretto for $9.99? I couldn’t be happier. I scavenged some albums out of the clearance bins at Rasputin Music. The packag...
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the gleaming (s)word: Journey into Hip-Hop: Mo’ Meta Playlist (3/4)
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Wednesday, June 24, 2015. Journey into Hip-Hop: Mo’ Meta Playlist (3/4). This is Part 3 of a series of posts discussing my search for a particular style of hip-hop music. It isn’t intended to exhaustively cover the genre, so if anyone is inclined to deconstruct what I don’t know from these posts about what I think I know—feel free to educate me via a comment below or tweet. 8220;I get down to what it is and if it ain't funky . . . see ya! 8221; –Public Enemy, “Revolution Generation”. Mo’ Meta Blues.
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the gleaming (s)word: June 2015
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Monday, June 29, 2015. Mad Max: Fury Road. Mad Max: Fury Road. Was quickly hailed as feminist, but. Founder Anita Sarkeesian- central to the Gamergate controversy- begged to differ in a series of tweets. Expressing her thoughts on the film, which I present continuously here:. On the surface,. Is about resisting a cartoonish version of misogyny. But that resistance takes the form of more glorified violence. S villains are caricatures of misogyny which makes overt misogynists angry but does not challenge m...
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the gleaming (s)word: May 2015
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Saturday, May 2, 2015. Eternal Recurrence and Milan Kundera (4/4). This is Part 4 in a series examining Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence through film and literature. Expect spoilers. If popular culture can employ Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence (or eternal return) to meaningful effect, then certainly high culture can do the same. Milan Kundera’s novel. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. As the characters of the novel make the decisions that determine the course of t...
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the gleaming (s)word: December 2014
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Sunday, December 28, 2014. Self-Portrait of The Philosophe at 40 Years of Age. In the 17th Century, a fashionable pastime in high society was writing portraits of oneself and others. French writer François VI, Duc de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) begins his self-portrait with a physical description:. I] am of medium height, well set-up and proportioned, by complexion dark but fairly uniform . . .". Behind my eyes, I am simply baffled or dismayed by just about everything. 2 Ibid., 25. 3 Ibid., 26-27. Wedne...
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the gleaming (s)word: Journey into Hip-Hop: Expanding Horizons (4/4)
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Thursday, June 25, 2015. Journey into Hip-Hop: Expanding Horizons (4/4). This is Part 4 of a series of posts discussing my search for a particular style of hip-hop music. It isn’t intended to exhaustively cover the genre, so if anyone is inclined to deconstruct what I don’t know from these posts about what I think I know—feel free to educate me via a comment below or tweet. For example- have something to offer. To Pimp a Butterfly. Is sometimes described as post hip-hop for its genre-bending style. On.
