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Tag Archives: Al Jolson
running from the glare of lights
Pop culture as a religion of poses, mimicking the empty religion that has normatively been disseminated to the common denominator. The counter empty gesture harking back to the pre-religious paganism, the sense of wonder in the grove at Alba and … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media
Tagged Al Jolson, amy winehouse, Andy Warhol, c.c. sabbathia overweight, eva braun, Grace Kelly, Greta Garbo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jared Diamond, Leaves of Grass, madona wh, madonna hydrangeas, Marlene Dietrich, Pauline Kael, prince fielder overweight, Ricky Gervais, Susan Sontag, Walt Whitman
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stop all that jazz
… It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.A fantastical rigidity and outright antagonism to Jazz and its corresponding swing variant in the Nazi era. The critique tended to flatten out the contradictions of this musical form … Continue reading
catching a falling knife
Herman Cain. The dandy and the legacy of Amos n’ Andy. The Hermanator experience. The old black minstrel show adjusted for free market ideology. Another figure in a long tradition of American snake oil salesmen rising from the depths of … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media
Tagged Al Jolson, Bell Hooks, Bill Maher, boyce watkins, Charles Baudelaire, Constance Rourke, Edgar Allan Poe, herman cain, Herman Melville, Holly Sklar, Jean Genet, jim crow, jon stewart, julius lester, mark harris Z communications, mel watkins, Noam Chomsky, shirley temple, snoop doggy dog, the hermanator experience, thomas rice, Walter Benjamin
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a sagging and bagging story
The pull up your pants law. With a recession and lots of people with extra time on their hands. The law is part of a more complex social issue that says more about white culture’s response to hip culture, but … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Music/Composition/Performance
Tagged ACLU, Al Jolson, Bell Hooks, Bell Hooks Outlaw Culture, Charlie Chaplin, charlie chaplin baggy pants, dr. keith clark, gary siplin, Heinrich Hoffmann, jim crow, NAACP, pull up the pants law, pull up your pants law, Ralph Ellison, schave and reilly, Sigmund Freud, The Marx Brothers, vaudeville, vaudeville baggy pants
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mailer: writer with a loud hailer
Norman Mailer’s The White Negro from 1957.The search for rebels of his generation led to the hipster. A prophetic inquiry into violence and rebellion? Or a basic re-packaging of his Harvard education into its logical extension which was a … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word
Tagged Al Jolson, Allen Ginsberg, Constance Rourke, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Jimmy Breslin, Lou Reed, mezz messrow, Norman Mailer, patti smith, Peter Max, rachael carson, Thomas Frank, thomas frank the baffler, Vance Packard
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vaudeville: american culture is performance
Vaudeville has been dead for over ninety years.The wandering minstrel had been replaced by the electronic age. The acrobats, the animal acts, the dancers, the singers, and the old-time comedians have all taken their bows and turned stage left into … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Miscellaneous, Music/Composition/Performance
Tagged Al Jolson, alice lloyd, bert gordon, Constance Rourke, fred allen, gilbert sarony, gilbert seldes, H.L. Mencken, Jack Kerouac, june havoc, nancy a. walker, nathanael west, Norman Rockwell, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Halperin, Samuel Beckett, Van Wyck Brooks, vaudeville
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SIR FARTSALOT & MRS. IMAVITCH AT THE G8
As the G20 Summit prepares to unfold and our world leaders set to pitch tent in Toronto . Its called ”Toronto the Good” because it may be the world capital of the politically correct. There is some uncertainty whether the … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc.
Tagged Al Jolson, BP Oil Spill, Carlo Guiliano, Conrad Black, David Cameron, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, G20 Economic Summit Toronto, G8 economic summit Toronto, George Orwell, Gillian Duffy, Gordon Brown, Indymedia, Jonathan Swift, Kevin Bolger, Mae Clarke, Mendelson Joe, Michael Howard, Moe Koffman, Nick Clegg, Ottawa International Writers Festival, Rex Murphy, Roy MacGregor Globe and Mail, Sean Wilson, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, Stephen Harper, Tony Hayward
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CONFIDENCE MEN:Masquerade, Myth and Art
For the confidence man to find a comfortable home in the heart of American culture, he needed a mask. And humor has often become an intricate part of the disguise. From the Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor in blackface which … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Miscellaneous
Tagged Al Jolson, American Humor: A Study of the national Character, Bob Dylan, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Constance Rourke, Eddie Cantor, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Greil Marcus, Griel Marcus, Hannah Arendt, Henry James, Herman Melville, I'm Not there, Luc Sante, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, The Confidence man, The Invisible Republic, The Old Weird America
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No One Knows The Trouble He's Seen
”Very often they do not even suspect that they too are niggers, slaves, ”white niggers”, while racism hides the reality from them by giving them the opportunity to despise an inferior, to crush him mentally or to pity him. But … Continue reading