“All I want to do is be a good dad, but I’m pretty bad at it.” – Jim Gaffigan

Jim Gaffigan is one of the great comedians of our time and continues to gain popularity for his honest humor about life, family, and his love of food. Jim jokes a lot about his adventures in fatherhood, but the truth is—he’s really a good dad.

Acculturated featured an article recently about Jim Gaffigan being a good husband, but he’s also an exemplary father. He speaks honestly about knowing nothing about raising children, but how he’s striving to be a good dad to his five kids. It’s refreshing to hear a comedian speak with such honesty and conviction about fatherhood, especially since fathers are so important but are often overlooked in today’s society.

Much of what makes Gaffigan’s comedy so hilarious is…

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Celebrities don’t always get things wrong. From time to time, they even get things really, really right.

A recent interview with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s accountant reveals that Hoffman repeatedly rejected the advice to share his fortune with his kids. Hoffman “did not want his children to be considered ‘trust fund’ kids,” and he didn’t want to raise spoiled brats. So he left his children nothing in his will. Instead he left a wish that his son (his will was written before the birth of his subsequent two daughters) be raised with exposure to culture and the arts.

Hoffman’s wishes echo those of Sting, who recently announced that his children would not be touching his $300 million fortune. He said, “I certainly don’t want to leave them trust funds that are albatrosses round their necks. They have to work.” He made it clear that he wants his…

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When is a parody pop song a public service? When it’s Weird Al Yankovic covering Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” with a grammar-salve for our age of English language destruction called “Word Crimes”.

Now, wait. Was that use of the apostrophe in the word it’s correct? Weird Al wants you to know if it was. As he sings:

Say you got an “i-t” Followed by apostrophe “s” Now what does that mean? You would not use this (Every dog has it’s day) In this case! As a possessive (no,no,no) It’s a contraction (yeah,yeah,yeah!) What’s a contraction? Well, it’s the shortening of a word or a group of words by omission of a sound or letter.

As someone who grew up being corrected by my father and who now faces off against four kids in a…

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“Our military and our people regard the supreme leader as more precious than their own lives.” –Statement from a North Korean Media Outlet

I’m going to attempt to explain the tense geo-political situation that Seth Rogen has created with his forthcoming film The Interview in one sentence, using only the titles of his previous movies. Here goes…

Just kidding! That was a joke. You know, that thing that apparently no one north of the 38th Parallel seems to understand? Instead of using my finely tuned Western hemisphere sense of humor to explain the situation, let’s turn to the professionals at The Telegraph:

Pyongyang has written to the White House to demand that President Barack Obama intervene to halt the release of ‘The Interview’, a Hollywood comedy blockbuster that pokes fun at Dear Leader Kim Jong-un.

The movie, which is scheduled to be released in…

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Periodicals and tabloids of all kinds have a common subject on their covers this summer: killer bodies. When the weather gets warmer, clothing tends to get lighter, which means that readers can peruse hundreds of glossy pages featuring celebrities in bikinis, swim trunks, or in the buff.   But not all magazines are alike in the way they showcase the human figure.  While some convey messages about vanity, others choose to portray health, strength, and vitality.  In an image-driven culture, that distinction matters.

While perusing People and Us Weekly during my travels, I have noticed that the editors are sticking with their usual summer theme: hottest celebrity beach bodies.  Actors, actresses, reality stars, and musicians have been captured at the beach or in their swimwear at staged photo shoots.  Several spreads feature an analysis of stars’ calorie intake by dieticians and trainers. As to be expected, many of the “hottest” celebrities…

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Last week my wife took our very young daughters to Disneyland, where they were excited to pose with a few of the Disney princesses. The fantasy is a thrilling one for little girls, which I’ve written about before for Acculturated, but the Disney princesses also seem to be fertile ground for adult artists, who wring out all the fun and fantasy from those icons in order to make grim socio-political observations.

The most recent example is the domestic abuse awareness poster campaign from an artist known as Saint Hoax. “When did he stop treating you like a princess?” goes his slogan, emblazoned beneath the bruises, blood, and black eyes of a battered Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, and Sleeping Beauty. “Disney princesses are perceived as ideal females,” Hoax explains. “They belong to a fairytale land where happy ever afters are bound to happen. But what happens after the happy ever after?”

…

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Candace Cameron took some major heat on Facebook when she announced that she was going to go on a five-day cleanse after a “very indulgent week in Napa.” Fans hammered her for not “eating real food” and for being a “sellout” to the cleanse craze.

I’m not sure why people picked on her in particular, because it seems like just about every celebrity cleanses and makes a public ordeal about it. But cleansing has gone completely overboard in America. Our bizarre relationship with food oscillates wildly from obscene overindulgence to guilt. People look at “food porn” or go on “foodcations” to ridiculous places devoted to culinary pleasure like Blackberry Farms, and then return and starve themselves for a week.

Why is it so hard for us to be normal about food?

It’s like food is the new faith in America, and the cleanse has become a way in which…

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This past Wednesday evening I was lucky enough to attend ESPN’s 2014 ESPY Awards at the Nokia Theater here in Los Angeles. What started twenty-one years ago as an up-and-coming network’s humble attempt to compete with the increasing number of awards shows has now become one of the hottest tickets and biggest TV draws every summer. Rapper Drake hosted the evening’s festivities and did a decent job of keeping the show lively and entertaining.

Here are a few of my thoughts and reflections on what I saw, heard, and experienced at the ESPY’s.

As a lifelong sports fan and ESPN viewer, I was thrilled to find myself with a ticket to the show. What I did not count on was just how up close and personal I’d end up getting with some of the sporting world’s biggest names. How close, you ask? I spent more than an…

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I have heard the sound of a civilization collapsing. It occurred at the end of the newly released, highly worshipped film Boyhood. It happened when the film ended and the lights came up, and a few people in the theater actually applauded.

They may have been the only ones left awake. To say that Boyhood is dull is to say that that anthrax can cause an adverse reaction in humans. This film, written and directed by Richard Linklater, is so totally aimless that it eventually enrages. It seems to go on for weeks and nothing really happens.

It also validates two claims of modern cultural critics. The first is that we are now living in a post-literate age. The second is that American boys are having a very difficult time becoming men. Boyhood validates those two claims in spades.

For too many filmmakers today there’s no need to impose a…

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Remember when popular television was light and fun? Shows like Friends, Sex and the City, and Seinfeld weren’t exactly clean, but they weren’t dark and twisted. They were funnier than they were sad; and they were mostly about friendships, communities, and relationships. E! Online made a list of the top 20 series of the last 20 years, and only a couple, such as The Sopranos, were heavy on violence and suffering. The rest, like Arrested Development, Grey’s Anatomy, or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, tilted either towards funny or emotional, but none were particularly graphic or morose.

This year’s Emmy Award nominees for best drama series offer a stark contrast to the shows of the 90s and the 2000s. On the list are Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Mad Men, and True Detective. Downton Abbey is the only series that is not morbid, violent,…

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