Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Medicine Cabinet Recommends

1.Top Ten State Fair Joys, by Garrison Keillor: Mr. Keillor reminds us why it is good to occassionally savor membership in the throng, the sea, the mass, the country club of humanity.

2. Over, by Dan Ames: A damn good poem.

3.Read Epictetusand become a better person.

4.Michael Pollantalks about the weed:



5. Steven Pinker says violence is declining.

6. Shouldn't you know who Frank Zappa is? It makes me sad when young people's cultural education seems to span entirely from their birth only to the present moment. Why is 'oh, it must be before my time?' an acceptable excuse for not knowing important information? Our bottom-line mentality is surely going to bite us bad some day.

7. Read Lodo Grdzak's most recent 5 part serial 'Staying Calm Amongst Big Dogs And Bitches'. Mr. Grdzak has a patience for the blog series that I do not possess.

8. Fred Hersch (brilliant pianist and Cincinnati native) lays it out with So In Love. Tell'em, Fred:

12 comments:

  1. Loved the Garrison Keillor story. The man can paint a picture,"wandering through the hubbub and amplified razzmatazz and raw neon". The first state fair I ever attended wasjust a year ago. Maine has many state fairs and they are just as Mr Keillor discribes them. I had my first and only deep fried snickers bar, and it was stroke-a-licious.

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  2. Ahhh!!! Love that shout-out man! You've got me thinking about the ending (you gave me an idea), but I'm gonna leave it for now. Gonna check out all your recommendations. Enjoy your summer yo!

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  3. Hey, you deserve it Lodo. You need to have a certain kind of staying power to stick with a blog, and you've certainly got it.

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  4. By the way Spence, "Mr. Grdzak?" Ha! Anyway, time to watch a little bit 'bout The Weed.

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  5. Yeah, have fun! I hope you're not as distracted as I was by the speaker's comb-over. Some people just don't know when to throw in the towel!

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  6. Garrison Keillor is a lame-o that perpetuates stupid cultural stereotypes.

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  7. I think you're right about Keillor's reliance on cultural stereotypes. I can't say exactly why this doesn't bother me. I'll have to think about it.

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  8. Hello, Lake Woebegone is a fictional place. And I want, in my heart, to believe that there is such a place somewhere in this wacky world.

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  9. I almost forgot, thank you for the the link.

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  10. I agree, Willie. I think the reason I'm not too bothered by Keillor's periodic reliance on stereotypes and light tribalism is that it seems insignificant next to his overarching humanism. Whenever he makes some silly throw away joke about Lutherans or Norwegians that your dentist might tell you, I'm never like 'That is EXACTLY like Lutherans!'. Besides, I've never really thought about his work as 'message' work. He constructs honest, lighthearted humanistic stories.

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