A confluence of interests, Mr. Daroga's and mine, has me reading about the Walker Brothers (a pop trio that rivaled the Beatles for fame in the UK in and around 1966) and listening to a Four Tops live show Mr. D found somewhere. And it's gotten me thinking about a few things that you just don't see anymore ( Read more... )

The Pew Research Center and NPR have just released the results of a poll which raises some interesting questions. What's being pulled out most is the idea that class, rather than race, is what segregates America these days; 37% of black people say that the values held by poor and middle class blacks have grown more different over the last five ( Read more... )

The problem with a book as funny as Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is that it's funny in precisely the way I want things to be funny. That is to say, it examines terminally unimportant aspects of culture (The Real World, breakfast cereal, Coldplay) in such a maddeningly entertaining way that one is convinced that it can't possibly be useful. Have you ( Read more... )