[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR most of my life -- I was a kid during the Reagan Revolution -- I've been puzzled by otherwise smart people falling for Libertarianism and Ayn Rand's brand of freedom snake oil. Everybody likes the idea of freedom, but for the Fountainhead crowd, the notion acquires cartoonish dimensions, and their definition of the term seems to tilt toward rich businessmen and … [Read more...]
Guest Columnist: Mr. Rogers, and America
[contextly_auto_sidebar] I'M hardly the only Gen Xer to grow up on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, a show that first aired about a year before I was born. Part of me thinks that my fondness for the program comes from the fact that my frequent viewing companion -- my maternal grandmother -- was, like Rogers, a Pittsburgh Presbyterian. But Rogers and his show imprinted itself on all kinds of people, … [Read more...]
The Dark Magic of Ottessa Moshfegh
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IT's not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite writer. But that's pretty close to what happened when a story collection called Homesick For Another World, by a young author I'd not heard of, arrived in the mail one day. I read a few dark, alienated short stories, some of which were set in a dreary, bleached-out, dingbat-lined Los Angeles. I found a noirish … [Read more...]
Guest Columnist: A Break in the Performance
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Regular CultureCrash guest columnist Lawrence Christon has a new piece about an incident in St. Louis that brings together a number of tendencies in the arts. Of course, the situation he writes about echoes both forward and backward in time; cultural appropriation has become one of the most contested issues lately and seems likely to remain that way. I don't concur 100 … [Read more...]
Handguns, the Press, and Annapolis
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Almost a quarter century ago, I worked as intern, in my last year of journalism school, at the Baltimore Sun. This was a rough few months for me -- I earned nothing for five-days-a-week in the paper's features department, the city was experiencing a crime wave right up to the edge of my neighborhood, and I was breaking up with a pretty serious girlfriend during just … [Read more...]
Martin Amis on Poetry and Posterity
[contextly_auto_sidebar] AS smart and funny as his novels are, Martin Amis is a devastatingly good essayist as well. I spoke to him recently about his latest collection, The Rub of Time, which assembles several decades of nonfiction pieces. The subject of the book is the toll taken by the ages -- the way it gradually erodes talent and inspiration as surely as it does the soil on a hillside. … [Read more...]
The Sacred Art of John August Swanson
[contextly_auto_sidebar] EVEN as a lifetime religious skeptic, I've long been fascinated by artists, writers and other culture-makers who bring religion, spirituality, and related matters into their work. Most likely, the art impulse and the urge to worship and praise originated in tandem; what we now call religion and culture were almost seamlessly joined for many centuries. (The agnostic or … [Read more...]
Punk, Indie Rock and Power Pop With Chris Stamey
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Though he's hardly a household name, North Carolina's Chris Stamey has been just alongside many of the key developments in left-of-the-dial rock music over the last four decades. As a young Southerner he visited and then moved to New York City right as CBGB's and Television were exploding, he helped found the dBs and Let's Active, which put him on on the ground floor of … [Read more...]
The Bookers: Performing Arts in Los Angeles
[contextly_auto_sidebar] It was on returning back to town in 2016, after a year away, that I was startled to see how much the performing arts scene had changed since I originally landed here in the late ‘90s. Some things about L.A. were worse, but this was more, better, more wide-ranging. Instead of a simple cultural geography that mostly involved downtown L.A., the city had de-centered: Now … [Read more...]
The Return of the Posies (Guest Columnist)
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FRIDAY night, the Seattle-area band the Posies stopped through the Bootleg Theater, which has gradually become one of my favorite places to see a show in Los Angeles. Out with me was a music writer whose work I've admired for 20 years (okay, she's now my wife), who was an ardent fan of the band back when they and a handful of other indie rockers were reviving power pop … [Read more...]