Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock . "We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us," says Walt Kelly’s Pogo. (Not Gene Kelly, who never danced punk’s pogo.) That classic Cold War punch line’s almost an affirmation for those of us who consider ourselves enlightened Americans. But as such, a maxim’s never as good as […]
Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Next Big Thing, on down the line The next big thing: Is there some age where there is no Next Big Thing? In your 20s, to say nothing of college and before that the high school years, there’s always another brass ring for which to make a grab. From high […]
Friday, Dec. 2, 2005. Can you get by with writing or saying whatever you want because you’re sick, and you’re lightheaded from clogged sinuses or fever or some-such thing? It’d be nice. So later if what is written makes no sense, or even worse, it does make sense but it offends people you don’t want […]
Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 24, 2005. Old School by Tobias Wolff provoked this riff. (I checked out the audio book from the library perhaps a year ago and returned it after hearing only most of the first disc, going by that’s when its familiarity ended. Having forgotten I had it out […]
Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, Nov. 18, 2005: What happened to the Mall? I thought the Mall is what destroyed Downtown, not Wal-Mart. The latest batch of Wal-Mart-bashing ignores the history of American retail. I don’t know this history in a scholarly way, only that portion I’ve lived. So this is a chip of […]
The Pollocks are always greener on the other side Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, November 13, 2005. Among the better-known people to whom I’m not related: Ben Pollock, the big band leader of the 1920s and ’30s, no connection Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionist painter, no connection Sydney Pollack, the movie director and occasional […]