Thursday, August 6, 2015

2 Questions 2 Answers at Art City Jax

One Wednesday night at Bards and Brews, the Silver Cow’s open mic on King and Park, I watched a master class on owning the microphone.  We’d gotten to it and a few readers hit the post with wonderful poetry, but the crowded mess behind the audience jabbered on as often happens when you mix mouths with spirits, understandably.

Read the rest at Art City Jax

Mad Men and the Real Thing at Partisan Magazine

MAD MEN ENDED with a chime, not a window. The Yogi’s meditation bell registered another Don Draper idea to keep cash registers singing:  the famous Coca-Cola Hilltop commercial, one of the greatest commercials ever.  It’s implied (and outright stated by John Hamm) that Don, hair perfect and costumed like an ad man among so many hippies, yet again exploits a personal crisis to sell something, this time Coke, a campaign Jim Hobart has been pursuing Don for since the series began.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

NPM15 Poem 1

It's back! Twitter National Poetry Month!

Tweeting poems
all April, fools
hope for retweets,
for favorites,
for any proof
we're not alone.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Sad Men Mad Men!

It's almost time, folks.

Almost MAD MEN time!

Yes, Mad Men is ending its 7 season run of glory this spring. I hope to have some time to write critically about the episodes but to whet your appetite, I thought I'd here collect my musings on the show and the first half of Season Seven. Feel free to enjoy and laugh at my silly predictions.

"Selling Mad Men": an introduction to both the show and my expectations for Season Seven. Published at the tragically defunct Trop.

"Sad(der) Men: Time Zones": A review of S7E1 where I (rightly) focus on Peggy's brokenness, the healing of which was one of the most important arcs of the first half of Season Seven. Also at the I-miss-you-so-much Trop.

"Sad Men Slamming Doors": S7E2 (the happy at the end episode) gets the treatment here. Written for Why-are-you-gone? Trop but turned down (for what) because they didn't want to totally devolve into a fan boy party.

"Hallucinations Belong to Everyone": Back home at Too-cool-for-this-world Trop, this first half of Season Seven wrap-up looks forward to the changes coming in the second half.

Let me know what you think!