By Myles Ludwig My Uncle Izzy was gassed during the First World War. I remember a brief visit with him when he was on his deathbed. I was maybe 4. I was shocked to see that he had shrunk to near-infant size from the man I knew as a sturdy Russian immigrant. I had known him as strong man, a man who had been an acrobat with his brothers performing on the beach at Coney … [Read more...]
Sundays: I’ve got a little listicle
By Myles Ludwig Some days I wake up and think the world is coming to an end. Maybe not the material world as we know it, but the world of popular culture, the world in which celebrity pregnancy overshadows genocide as a global news event and zombies are exalted. Popular culture is a phenomenon that used to be marked by an unwarranted appreciation of the lowbrow, the … [Read more...]
Sundays: Please, Kaity, bar the door
By Myles Ludwig Kids allegedly say the darndest things. Apparently, about 20,000 of them, in the case of the loquacious Kaitlyn Hunt. I remember chipmunk-cheeked Art Linkletter and later, the condescending king of Jell-O-land Bill Cosby, manipulating a batch of freckled-faced, Rockwellian 3-to-8- year-olds into a cul de sac of “cuteness” (read humiliation) with their own … [Read more...]
Sundays: Let the Cord Wars begin
By Myles Ludwig My guess is the Home Shopping Network fills a critical niche in the lives of others, particularly those rubes living 50 miles or more from the nearest Wal-Mart or the lost chic of Park Avenue, women on Ambien who roam the late night channels, surprised to find a dozen Tanzanite tennis bracelets, a couple of über-blenders, a few NuWave cooktops and a cache of … [Read more...]
Sundays: The cries and whispers of summer
By Myles Ludwig As we drift inexorably and aimlessly into the dog days of summer and the annual oppression of August begins to weigh upon us, I have to admit I’m glad not to wake up to the sound of the thundering hooves of the apocalypse again. It’s time for a rest. Outrage is behind us; we can barely work up a smirk about Weiner and Spitzer, a hot political pastrami … [Read more...]
Sundays: The sign of the Stone
By Myles Ludwig I happened to be thinking about semiotics this week — what signs mean, stand for, whether they’re iconic or indexical or just plain cigars — when the new Rolling Stone magazine cover slams into the bandwidth with the angry splat of a Siberian meteor. This must be some kind of cosmic synchronicity, I thought. Here I am trying to get my mind around a rather … [Read more...]
Sundays: Trial by media ordeal
By Myles Ludwig I had really hoped today would be a NoZimZone. I had hoped to be free of this issue — this murder or manslaughter, this fear and self-defense, this profiling as prejudice — but no such luck. As soon as I woke up and turned on my TV, the first thing I saw was the news of George Zimmerman’s acquittal and his tragic involvement with Trayvon Martin. As the late … [Read more...]
Sundays: King Tut’s coup
By Myles Ludwig To coup or not to coup, that has been the question in Egypt. Lots of money rides on the answer. Billions, in fact. Up until the sad, chaotic violence of recent days there, the galumphing of government, citizenry and military has often seemed to me like a Facebook War. Semantic shots were being traded between opposing forces, both of which were claiming … [Read more...]
Sundays: Paula, Edward, Conrad, Twitter – and the theory that ties them all together
By Myles Ludwig Hey, hey, Paula, I wanna marry you. Hey, hey, Paula, no one else could ever do. I've waited so long for school to be through, Paula, I can't wait no more for you. My love, my love. When Texas college students Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson wrote those lyrics to their 2-million selling record in 1963 — and changed their names to Paul and … [Read more...]
Sundays: The spectacle of justice
By Myles Ludwig Justice. Now here is a concept as thin and as slippery as a fine slice of sashimi and as complex as a celebrity fragrance profile. Philosophers have been arguing about it since Socrates and Plato, parsing into as many cultural and ethical Apps as iTunes can stock and it’s still not really clear what it is or how it works. Except as some kind of culture-bound … [Read more...]