Today one of my good friends will stand before a judge in the company of her husband and dissolve her marriage. It is in one respect a common act, though rarely uneventful: it happens thousands of times a day in courtrooms across the country. But more and more, it seems to be the initiative of women who have been wives and mothers for years – in this case, 26 years, a figure I can relate to, on the brink of observing my own 26th anniversary later this month.
My friend, like me, married young – at least by today’s standards. We are in our late forties. And our generation seems to be one in which women are making this decision in droves, turning the old stereotype of the male midlife crisis on its head, leaving behind hurt and often clueless husbands who are incredulous that this is happening to them.
It didn’t strike me till recently that eight of the ten divorces I’ve been aware of among my circle of friends and colleagues in the last five years have been initiated by women. In every case, these have been women with children who have been devoted to their families for years. None is wealthy, none is leaving on a caprice after which they reinvent themselves with cosmetic surgery and a convertible. And none is a pop-culture cougar, pursuing her own youth via a younger man in a new version of the classic life upheaval. Full Story »
Scholars & Rogues honors JD Salinger as our 32ndmasthead scrogue.
J.D. Salinger is dead.
If you want to know about his lousy life or how he treated his kids or his ex-wives and girlfriends, or any of that other People Magazine crap, look somewhere else. I just don’t feel like going into it. Too many jerks spend all their time reading that shit anyway, and it’s just not worth recounting it when you could read it all at TMZ or some place like that and besides Salinger himself was pretty touchy about people talking about him and he’d probably sue from the grave. I mean, the guy sued every goddamn body who ever said boo to him for the last 50 years or so.
Some stuff just isn’t worth the trouble.
So I’ll just talk about driving to town last night…. Full Story »
Tony Judt has been a leading historian of, and thinker about, the post-war world for a number of decades. Any regular reader of The New York Review of Books will be familiar with his output, in which he regularly embarrasses most of the rest of us with his understanding, judgement, and, perhaps equally important, his humanity. He has been a near-singular and powerful voice for reason on any number of issues, including the mid-east, where he has been actively involved in Israeli issues since before the six day war (during which he volunteered on a kibbutz to replace settlers off fighting), and post-war Europe. He has taught modern European history for a number of years at New York University, and of course has received his share of academic honors, all deserved. Born in London’s East End of Jewish immigrant parents, he received his Ph.D. from Cambridge before eventually settling in America, as the English are fond of doing. On any number of grounds, he is one of the positive contributors to the world.
He also has amytrophic lateral sclerosis, a form of motor neuron disease, and he is degenerating rapidly. Full Story »
Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in no particular order, Facebook (not that Facebook has gone away, of course), CRM, mobile (SMS, smart phones, apps), blogging, RSS and aggregation, Digg (and Reddit and StumbleUpon and Current and Yahoo! Buzz and Technorati and Del.icio.us and seemingly thousands more), targeted e-mail, YouTube, SEO, SEM, online PR and, well, you get the idea.
We certainly hear examples of businesses getting it right with new media, but in truth these cases represent a painfully small minority. Full Story »
If you’ve been off-planet for the last few months you may have missed the news: Jon & Kate have split, and in the process migrated from the relative banality of the TV listings over to the hyper-banality of the tabloids. I’m still not sure what the future holds for the popular “reality” show, but whatever it is, Gosselin family 2.0 equals Jon minus Kate.
It occurs to me that these events represent something significant in our culture. Since about 1980 or so we’ve been in one of our periodic “childrens is the most preciousest things in the whole wide world” phases. (For more on the generational cycles that produce this dynamic, see Generations, 13th Gen and Millennials Rising by William Howe and Neil Strauss, two men whose work I have referenced a number of times in the past.) In the previous generation (Gen X), children were an afterthought for most parents, who had been socialized in far more self-centric times. Full Story »
Before it was dredged and cleared for flood control, Rock Creek cut a pristine path through the heart of Lewisburg. Well, maybe pristine isn’t the proper adjective for a flowing body of sludge that had a more scatological name than the one the maps gave it, but it was close enough to the Park for us to consider it our personal creek. There were crawdads aplenty down there, and frogs and turtles and large blackish things that might have been rats. Rock Creek was also prone to washing away the occasional carnival from the empty lot on Second Avenue, giving rise to infrequent sightings of gigantic pythons and rogue clowns, but we considered this a small price to pay for being able to fish two blocks from home. Full Story »
After eighteen years, I finally got around to reading Douglas Coupland’s Generation X—the novel that literally defined my generation.
In a way, that makes Generation X sort of like the Moby Dick for Gen X-ers—one of those novels that one should read because it’s a Classic-with-a-capital-C. It’s Important. It’s defining. It’s about me.
Right?
Published in 1991, Generation X tells the story of three unfulfilled, uninspired twenty-somethings who float through life, tell stories to each other, and experience a nagging sense of being adrift in their own lives despite their best efforts to ground themselves. You can almost hear U2 belting out “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in the background.
Being young means getting old, and middle class means boredom. Full Story »
Like a lot of other people, I watched the Watchmen this past weekend.
Despite lukewarm reviews and a running time that nearly hits three hours, the movie still managed to pull in a hefty $55.7 million dollars. While that’s apparently at the low end of industry expectations, the movie exceeded my fanboy expectations.
What I didn’t expect, though, was the spectacular time capsule-on-a-movie screen that Watchmen turned out to be.
As ground-breaking as Watchmen was as a comic book back in 1986-87, it was also very much a product of its time, infused with Cold War sensibility and anxiety, set in a crime-and-slime-ridden Times Square atmosphere writ large upon the world. Full Story »
Today is the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that famously became known as “the day the music died.”
For those not consigned to the generational hell that is Baby Boomerdom, on this day 50 years ago a small plane carrying three important rock stars of their time – Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson – crashed in a snow storm.
All three men died, as did the pilot, a 21 year old with, evidently, about 30 minutes of flying experience.
There has been much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the years due to this event. Full Story »
After a short walk from the light rail I was greeted by an empty P.O. box. A couple blocks north, I was greeted by a copy of the Post/News Duopoly’s jobs page, dated October 2008. “‘The fuck is this?!” I asked myself audibly as I flung the page onto the ground and kept on. At the 7-11 on 3rd/Broadway I bought a Lotto quick pick and a Powerball reject that was laying on the machine. After an uneventful lunch a couple blocks from there, I made the decision to cross the following intersection, one of the most dangerous I’ve encountered in Denver:
The new season of PBS’s long running series Masterpiece Theatre, now known simply as Masterpiece, kicked off last Sunday with a new adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s brilliant examination of gender relations and cultural mores, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
The production is first rate. The actors, young and earnest as they are, seem to have a clear grasp of the key issues of the novel, quaint as they may seem to sophisticated Post-Sexual Revolution viewers. I can recommend it without reservation, something I couldn’t do for last year’s Complete Jane Austen.
In fact, a useful question for us to consider is whether it makes sense for Masterpiece to offer such a production of Tess. Who would get an exploration of the double standard in these times? Full Story »
In the past I’ve written about a variety of generational issues, and have often focused on the Millennials. At times I’ve been construed as dogging them pretty hard. As I’ve tried to explain, my criticisms of them (for being entitled, for lacking critical thinking skills, etc.) haven’t really been criticisms of them, per se – a cohort that’s 75-100 million strong doesn’t get to be a certain way all by itself. The blame, if we want to use that word, falls on those responsible for educating and developing the generation.
Further, some have erroneously interpreted my critiques as somehow suggesting that my generation – X – was without flaw. Which, of course, is ridiculous. Every generation has its relative strengths and weaknesses, and X has been a trainwreck in some respects.
All of which leads me to the other morning, when fellow scrogue Brian Angliss forwarded along the link to a Washington Post column from Neil Howe, the man who co-authored, along with William Strauss, the finest series of works on America’s generations I’ve ever encountered. Full Story »
Running and writing may be polar opposite activities.
Writing requires long sedentary hours of deep thought; running, by its very nature, typifies motion, yet most runners don’t spend their time thinking about much of anything in particular as they run.
Both activities require solitude, although a runner may race with hundreds of other entrants and a writer requires an audience.
So perhaps running and writing seem like odd bedfellows for a book, but then again, Haruki Murakami has made his reputation by stretching boundaries and asking readers to look at the world in different ways.
His latest book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, takes a different approach than his usual fiction. Running is a memoir about the two things in Murakami’s life that best define him. Murakami tries to get inside his own head to explain the appeal, and the importance, of running and how that impacts his work as a writer. “For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor,” Murakami explains. Full Story »
As I was walking down the 16th Street Mall this afternoon, I passed a woman wearing a button that said “Ask Me How Many Houses I Own.” It’s amazing how quickly a creative entrepreneur can turn something into a marketable opportunity, even a political gaffe.
McCain’s deeply regrettable admission has been the subject of many a comment, criticism and joke here around the DNC this week, to no one’s surprise. But what has surprised me was another McCain gaffe that’s gotten far less press, yet which also provides major evidence for how far removed he is from the daily world of the people he seeks to govern. I’m speaking of his admission a few weeks ago that he does not use the Internet and had never sent an e-mail.
I’ve heard apologists argue that it’s a generational thing; he’s 72. My mom is 69, and she’s never sent an e-mail either. But she’s not running for president. Full Story »
As a Democratic woman, I breathed a big sigh of relief last night. Hillary did what she needed to do.
She stepped up with class and grace when the moment demanded it. Plenty of Democrats were nervous as they entered the Pepsi Center last night, and a camera cut to Mchelle Obama’s face as her husband’s one-time rival started speaking indicated she might have been among them. But Clinton quickly allayed doubts with an unequivocal endorsement of Barack Obama as “my candidate,” which elicited cheers amid a sea of bobbing signs proclaiming “Obama” and “Unity.”
It was a poignant occasion for Hillary supporters, and even women like me who have been on board with Obama since the beginning. Full Story »
I’ll approach Obama with fearless honesty. He’s a liberal. I oppose liberals. That’s all that’s involved here.
— Rush Limbaugh on presidential candidate Barack Obama; Mr. Limbaugh has renewed his contract with Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel Radio, which will pay him more than $400 million; Mr. Limbaugh once referred to Sen Obama and actor Halle Berry as “Halfrican American” on the Jan. 24, 2007, broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show; July 6.
We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.
— former senator Phil Gramm, one of presidential candidate John McCain’s top economic advisers, likening the nation’s economic problems to a “mental recession“; July 10. Full Story »
We were just having fun making posters. There was no time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I think most great art is created in a furious moment.
— Stanley Mouse, artistic partner of Alton Kelley; the pair created hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters and threw “the world’s first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman’s Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene”; Mr. Kelley died this week at age 67; June 3.
When it comes to issues like this, [corporations] don’t want to be anywhere near them and they will cave very, very quickly — anything to stop the pain, anything to stop the press from calling.
— Eric Dezenhall, the head of the crisis public relations firm Dezenhall Resources, on Dunkin’ Donuts’ decision to remove an ad from its Web site featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray after conservative bloggers complained her scarf resembled a keffiyeh, labeling it “jihadi chic“; May 30. Full Story »
Exxon Mobil is acting like a dinosaur now, not adopting to a changing environment.
— Stephen Viederman, a New York shareholder, after “Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, defeated a shareholder effort … to take away one of his jobs at an annual meeting punctuated by a debate of the company’s policy toward renewable energy and global warming”; May 28.
Despite significant challenges in the U.S. market, we continue to reshape our business for long-term success. This attrition program gives us an opportunity to restructure our U.S. work force through the entry-level wage and benefit structure for new hourly employees.
— from a statement by Troy A. Clarke, the president of G.M.’s North American operations, announcing that “19,000 hourly workers — a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically pared down — have accepted buyouts“; up to 16,000 of these $28-an-hour workers may be replaced by “entry-level” non-assembly workers making $14 an hour; May 30; emphasis added. Full Story »
Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in no particular order, Facebook (not that Facebook has gone away, of course), CRM, mobile (SMS, smart phones, apps), blogging, RSS and aggregation, Digg (and Reddit and StumbleUpon and Current and Yahoo! Buzz and Technorati and Del.icio.us and seemingly thousands more), targeted e-mail, YouTube, SEO, SEM, online PR and, well, you get the idea.
If you’ve been off-planet for the last few months you may have missed the news: 
After eighteen years, I finally got around to reading Douglas Coupland’s Generation X—the novel that literally defined my generation.
Like a lot of other people, I watched the Watchmen this past weekend.
In the past I’ve written about a variety of generational issues, and have often focused on the Millennials. At times I’ve been construed as dogging them pretty hard. As I’ve tried to explain, my criticisms of them (for being entitled, for lacking critical thinking skills, etc.) haven’t really been criticisms of them, per se – a cohort that’s 75-100 million strong doesn’t get to be a certain way all by itself. The blame, if we want to use that word, falls on those responsible for educating and developing the generation.
I’ll approach Obama with fearless honesty. He’s a liberal. I oppose liberals. That’s all that’s involved here.
