I discovered the poet Seamus Heaney in grad school. Being mad for Irish lit, I should have unearthed him sooner, but I hadn’t outgrown Modernism yet, and for the Irish that meant Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, and O’Brien. At least for … Continued
The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant would like to kindly request that the intertubes stop using the phrase, “throwing shade.” Although The Rant possesses many degrees establishing our grammatical and linguistic bona fides, The Rant isn’t one of those uptight English … Continued
The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant has been receiving rant suggestions from our many admirers. Generally we just nod politely and resist the urge to inform the fan we do not indulge in vicarious ire. We have enough bile of our … Continued
I learned how to fold origami from the PBS show ZOOM. Produced in Boston, the show featured kids in striped rugby shirts running around, singing songs, telling awful jokes, teaching you their secret language Ubbi Dubbi, and showing you how … Continued
The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant would like to kindly request that the celebrities quit showing up at our parties. This week’s perp, Justin Bieber, crashed an L.A. prom and nearly got everyone trampled, including himself. Not to worry said his … Continued
The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant finds it highly amusing that all of D.C. threw a party at the White House because Congress passed legislation and the President signed it. Which is of course their jobs, so woop-dee-do Beltway. The Rant … Continued
Chasing down a memory can lead to delightful places. I was thinking about the first concert I ever attended, Foreigner, and how I managed to get there. A new family had arrived at our church from California and had a … Continued
The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant finished up all the taxes and felt in need of one of these: This set The Rant to wondering how the barrel fashion statement came to be viewed as an image of poverty. Our story … Continued
The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant has a geese situation. The Rant despises geese: the honking, the pooping, the unprovoked biting in the butt. Now that we think about it, geese are the avian equivalent of Twitter. With slightly less biting … Continued
Courtney Love gives me the fantods. So while I was looking forward to seeing the Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck, I knew there would have to be a Courtney reckoning. About a third of the way into the film, … Continued