It’s a performance that has electrified the nation. A few weeks ago Future Islands, a synth-pop band, performed on The Late Show with David Letterman. The group did its wonderful single “Seasons (Waiting on You)”, a driving, hook heavy song about a man frustrated with waiting for a woman to reciprocate his love. Since then, the talk in the media has been about the singer of Future Islands, Samuel T. Herring. Because Herring captivated viewers – included David Letterman – by doing what’s been missing in popular music for a while: He sang like a man.

That is to say, Herring, who looks like a young Marlon Brando, exuded physical power, passion, emotion, and harnessed sexuality. He thumped his chest. He growled. He raised his hand like a king bestowing knighthood. He danced, but in a coiled, athletic crouch. And yet he sang without profanity, hectoring, or braggadocio, instead showing…

Continue Reading >

The No. 1 show at DIY network – Rehab Addict with Nicole Curtis – has got to be the most conservative show on television. Now I don’t mean that the host is a Republican (I’ve got no idea). I mean according to the Miriam Webster definition, a conservative is someone who believes in “the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society,” and if there’s anyone who understands the value of keeping to established tradition, it is Curtis. As she says at the opening of every episode: “I’m not your average flipper…I don’t just renovate, I restore old homes to their former glory.”

Curtis lives in Minneapolis where she buys homes that look like they are ready for demolition or are in foreclosure, some are in bad neighborhoods others in more up-and-coming areas. “I believe old houses hold memories and soul,” she explains.

She fixes…

Continue Reading >

There’s so much to love about the Masters.  The Augusta National Golf Club is a venue of preternatural beauty; it is one of those rare places that begs the question: Can it be that man has improved on nature’s work?  And that music.  That simple tune that announces spring’s arrival, and that seems to pair with the course’s shades of green and pink and fuschia so organically that one imagines the trees themselves composed the melody.

Before writing this post I briefly indulged the sensory feast by watching flyovers of my favorite holes accompanied by the Masters music.  It’s an almost bizarrely emotional experience of both nostalgia and anticipation.  The event is ephemeral, yes, at only four days long, but it is also consistent.  It returns each year like the seasons themselves, and each year it is the same.  The 12th green will still be framed…

Continue Reading >

Is the recent Rolling Stone piece on millennial sex worth responding to?

Hardly.

But yet here I am, responding. I mainly want to respond by saying, Don’t read it. It’s a terrible waste of time.

There is something strangely familiar about it. Maybe it’s because, for years now, major publications have been publishing so-called exposés on how raunchy the 18-34 year-old segment of the population is. They seem to get more and more sick and twisted, more and more salacious, each trying to outdo the former. The last one was probably Hanna Rosin’s completely repulsive so-called profile of today’s modern woman, Boys on the Side. Don’t read that one either. Nastiness.

Here is the first reason not to read to read, “Tales from the Millennials’ Sexual Revolution”: The “tales” are pornographic. Literally. They are almost all in some way about porn. I Googled…

Continue Reading >

A woman waddles toward you in the Metro station. Her navy blue dress embraces a ballooning belly. It strikes you, as you stare, that she’s pregnant. She keeps approaching, but you stay seated; it’s been a long day, you think, as you wait for the day’s last train. It’s not until she’s standing right before you, meeting your gaze, and asking for your seat that you rise from the stone bench. After all, you’re able-bodied, and she looks unsteady. She probably needs that seat more than you do.

Truth be told, I don’t know what this twenty-something man’s internal monologue sounded like, but had he asked, I would have vigorously affirmed that I needed his seat. With each passing day, my belly grows larger, and I grow more achy and wobbly. Yet, while many strangers see me, few react with kindness.

Perhaps…

Continue Reading >

The typical family sitcom dad for decades now has been a subversion of the Father Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show, or My Three Sons standard of the 1950s and ‘60s. Instead of a stable, mature, moral role model, he became a lovable but doughy, bumbling doofus who is barely adequate at life and parenting, who needs more patient mothering from his exasperated and usually more attractive wife than even his kids do. See The King of Queens, The Simpsons, and Everybody Loves Raymond, for example.

Enter man’s man Christopher Meloni, from Law & Order: SVU, in the new Fox series Surviving Jack.

Set in the 1990s, Surviving Jack is aptly described as “a family comedy about a man becoming a dad, as his son is becoming a man.” Based on the book I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern, author of the hugely successful, semi-autobiographical Sh*t My Dad…

Continue Reading >

What is Daniel Murphy’s deal?  Baseball’s regular season has started, which means these games count.  You wouldn’t know it by looking at the Met’s second baseman, though.  Already during the first week, he missed two entire games without even being hurt, all because his wife decided to go into labor on opening day.  Come on, Murphy.  Half of New York—okay, 27% of New York—is counting on you!  Not to mention the thousands of fantasy team owners who need you to wake up get back in the real world!

I’m with Mike Francesca, the veteran WFAN radio host who isn’t afraid to say it like it is. “What do you do in the first couple days?” he asked on-air. “Maybe you take care of the other kids. Well, you gotta have someone do that if you’re a Major League Baseball player.  I’m sorry, but you do……

Continue Reading >

From the moment they enter school everyone wants to be perceived as “cool”. Every kid wants to be in the “cool crowd” and sit at the “cool table”. It sounds like something out of the movie Mean Girls, but it’s true. From a very early age, we all have the desire to be liked and accepted. But, what does it really mean to be cool?

A few days ago, I went to an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., entitled, “American Cool”. This exhibit features portraits of iconic figures over the past 70 years, each of which contributed to American culture in a special way. It included everyone from 1940’s Jazz musicians, all-time favorites like James Dean and Bob Dylan, to popular icons of today such as Johnny Depp and Missy Elliott.

At the beginning of the exhibit, a synopsis explained that “cool is the opposite…

Continue Reading >

The human body has a language, and certain poses are inherently degrading. Being on all fours with your head down is different than waltz dancing. One shows submission and a face close to the dirt; the other posture, dignity, and a head closer to heaven.

The boys at the conservative website Breitbart should know this. They’ve spent years selling themselves as common sense conservatives, people who will tell the truth about the obvious things in front of their faces.

Well, they’ve just made a mistake. A big one. In launching a new West Coast wing of their Breitbart.com, they’ve put posters up around Hollywood that are supposed to be satirical. One shows the late Andrew Breitbart himself on a skateboard. Another depicts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with breasts.

And then there is the one with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She is shown on all fours,…

Continue Reading >

Humans have a habit of idealizing the past, more often than not. This is why the first Captain America movie, while fun, also felt a bit forced to me. While Captain Rogers was obviously meant to embody the virtues and big-heartedness of a heroic soldier, he also seemed disappointingly two-dimensional as a character. He was representing the values of a bygone age, without any of its foibles. He was as simple and loveable as a puppy dog, but lacked much depth as a character.

The same pattern could be easily traced through the recent Avengers film: in the midst of the evil and deception of modern humanity, Captain Rogers stood for something different, something true to the old ideals of America. He made a good foil to the more pragmatic and cynical Tony Stark, who operated chiefly from his own initiative and rarely hearkened to any higher values or idealism.…

Continue Reading >