Tag Archives: 2011

Monster

The video (here­after, “art piece”) for Kanye West’s “Mon­ster” is con­tro­ver­sial. That’s for sure. Read pretty much any­thing that’s been writ­ten about it already, or just watch it, and find out why. That part of it’s not inter­est­ing to me. As con­tro­ver­sial con­tent goes, I’m rel­a­tively unmoved. I am offended by some­thing, but it’s not

Tyler, the Creator — Goblin

I’m earnest in my appre­ci­a­tion and sup­port for women and homo­sex­u­als. As I mature and learn and lis­ten, I become more aware of the dis­crim­i­na­tion, injus­tice, and vio­lence with which peo­ple have to con­tend sim­ply because of their gen­der and/or ori­en­ta­tion. With that aware­ness, I’m con­fronted by my own incon­gruity, dis­cov­er­ing unex­plored prej­u­dices that appall

The Office: Goodbye, Michael

Three moments struck me as par­tic­u­larly poignant and of one accord in “Good­bye, Michael,” Steve Carell’s final episode as the star of The Office. Each (like much of the rest of the episode) put a nice shine on the strangely beau­ti­ful devel­op­ment that we’ve wit­nessed over the past seven sea­sons, both in the Michael char­ac­ter

Alone Together

In its research, its con­tent, its writ­ing, and its tim­ing, Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Tech­nol­ogy and Less from Each Other is impec­ca­ble. Pro­fes­sor Turkle brings to it her expe­ri­ence as a soci­ol­o­gist and a licensed clin­i­cal psy­chi­a­trist, three decades of teach­ing at MIT, four decades of observ­ing the human rela­tion­ship

Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All

The excess of Kanye West’s My Beau­ti­ful Dark Twisted Fan­tasy — the most cel­e­brated 2010 album in hip-hop, and maybe any genre — left me feel­ing more than a lit­tle turned off. A thought that entered my mind (but not my blog) was that the album rep­re­sented a moment in hip-hop that mir­rored some kind

Toro Y Moi — Underneath the Pine

Toro Y Moi’s sec­ond album, Under­neath the Pine, was released on Feb­ru­ary 22, 2011, a few days after Radio­head announced and then rapidly released their newest album, and just over a week after Arcade Fire sur­prised every­one who cares about the Grammy Awards by win­ning Album of the Year. Although it was highly antic­i­pated, heav­ily

Destroyer — Kaputt

It’s no secret that I’m a Destroyer devo­tee. If you’ve ever won­dered why, the lat­est full-length, Kaputt will either clear things right up or con­fuse you even fur­ther. It’s pos­si­bly Destroyer’s most acces­si­ble album, and at the same time, it’s pos­si­bly Destroyer’s most off-putting. Or, nei­ther, I really don’t know. Maybe it’s more like the