A Magazine of Popular (and Unpopular) Culture
I have spent my entire life on the Kansas prairie, a locale as isolated from the sea as just about any to be found in the United States. But turn …
Salt of the Earth
From my earliest memories I have been confounded by the popularity of many common foods, as in my experience they are so intensely flavorful that I absolutely cannot imagine voluntarily …
Picky Picky
Americans now in their 50s grew up in a time of radical innovation at the intersection of public education and mass media. In the late 1960s, citizen groups such as …
Knowledge is Power!
Looking back on the 1980s today, the first thing I remember is the gleam of it all — the sterile, sleek sheen of a bold new pink-and-turquoise-hued future, molded in …
Perfect Sound Forever
A media magnate blanketing the nation with wall-to-wall political propaganda and misleading advertising. A snake oil salesman running for high public office, using an ersatz mixture of populism and religious …
Prometheus of the Plains
I was sitting next to my mother in our ’60 Chevy one day as she drove down the main drag of our quiet little rural town. It was some time …
Telethon Man
It must have been 20 or more years ago when I first met Jason Fritts. I don’t know the year, exactly, but I recall the cirumstance. I was on my …
Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Jason?
As a child growing up in the 1970s I assumed it was a given that pretty much all grown-ups smoked cigarettes. Clouds of acrid smoke drifted wherever adults congregated; even …
What’s Cooler than Being Kool?