16 January 2010: Beware of Professors!

Having spent nearly forty years of my life teaching in classrooms at the University of Kansas and elsewhere, it puzzles me that, on the one hand, Americans in general seem to believe in the virtues of a good education but, on the other hand, they ultimately also seem to distrust their teachers. Barack Obama was…

13 January 2010: How Dark Is Light?

In her autobiography Thursday’s Child, Eartha Kitt talks about growing up in the cotton plantations of South Carolina in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and how she was ostracized by blacks and whites alike because her lighter skin color made her neither black nor white.  So how did she go on to become a great celebrity…

12 January 2010: Sarah Palin Vs. Ellen Degeneres

Today’s headlines reveal that Sarah Palin is joining Fox News as a regular commentator, and that Simon Cowell is leaving “American Idol” at the end of the season.  Now that Ellen Degeneres has replaced Paula Abdul on “Idol,” my guess is that Fox is grooming Moose Palin to join Buckaroo Degeneres on “Idol” after Cobra Cowell’s departure.  I’d…

6 January 2010: The Gospel According to AVATAR

Where TITANIC (1997) showed us the great divide between social classes in allegedly egalitarian societies, with its “message” successfully embedded in a breathless love story between the haves and the have-nots, Canadian film-director James Cameron now picks up where Al Gore left off in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006).  Although Cameron’s AVATAR can be viewed and…

4 January 2010: Harder! Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

At my age, encounters with frisky strangers occur rather rarely, so my New Year’s resolution is to fly as frequently as I can, in order to enjoy free full-body rubdowns and massages in the expert hands of airport security people.  Here’s some dialogue out of a new Quentin Tarantino remake of an old Russ Meyer movie:   “Lower, please. …

16 December 2009: Ben Who?

At a time when newspaper and magazine readers seem to be abandoning print for sexier electronic media, one might expect Time magazine to select someone more bankable for its much-anticipated 2009 Person of the Year cover story—Sarah Palin? Tiger Woods? The Gate Crashers at the White House?  Heck, maybe even the Balloon Boy.  But no.…

13 December 2009: Four Hours to Orgasm!

Just when we’ve all become accustomed to hearing about “erections lasting more than four hours” thanks to Viagra, comes word that there is a new drug in the market which cures premature ejaculation in men.  According to The New York Times, Johnson & Johnson “has developed Priligy, a pill aimed at men who ejaculate before…

11 December 2009: Tiger Burning…

William Blake (1757-1827) said it all in his poem—a song not of innocence, but of experience.  A true visionary, Blake knew about our man, over two hundred years ago, and that this is the way many among us now wish to remember “The Tiger.”  TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal…