I find it baffling to read even marginally positive reviews of Sarah Palin’s performance in last night’s debate. I saw it the same way noted political commentator Roger Ebert did.
A common regret is watching blog-a-thons come and go with nary a contribution from Culture Snob. So I was overjoyed to see the announcement at He Shot Cyrus for the “My Best Post Blog-a-thon”: “Everyone should participate because here’s the best part: You’ve already written your entry!” What surprised me was how easy the decision was.
It’s been linked to plenty over the past few days, but David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address deserves to be read, in light of and in spite of his suicide.
So it was written, and I agreed. On the other hand … .
We were in the play area of the department store – most likely building things with Legos – and two girls were taking great delight in excluding me. They were speaking a language I didn’t understand, and it wasn’t exactly a private conversation. They would glance my way during their exchange and occasionally laugh. I felt mocked, which was exactly what they wanted. They were speaking Pig Latin, I figured out later. Of course, Pig Latin is only effective as a private language through a certain age, but we update and upgrade our codes throughout our lives.
To break away from The Dark Knight, here’s a Culture Snob essay that’s been distilled by Wordle.
The Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon ended yesterday, and while participation was … selective, I couldn’t be happier with the submissions. My own writing aside, the blog-a-thon generated 14 15 new essays (as of July 15) and gave new life to a handful of others. More importantly, the work was often searching, naked, funny, touching, real, and resonant.
These are things that just ain’t happening for the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon, for reasons of time, energy, and tone. Feel free to steal an idea – the blog-a-thon runs until Sunday, and we’re not much for deadlines. Or beg me to complete one in particular.
Dearest Emily, Right now, your primary activities are eating, reaching, sleeping, pooping, laughing, peeing, bouncing, crying, sitting up, and spitting up, but before I know it you’ll be running around and saying all the nasty words you’ve learned from your parents. And before we get too wrapped up in soccer practice and homework, I want to ask a favor: Each year on my birthday, I want my present from you to be sitting with me and your mother and watching a movie, and talking about it afterward.
To mark the fifth birthday of Culture Snob (and the second day of the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon), some raw data and some calculations: In five years, Culture Snob has produced 514 entries, 36 polls, and 17 commentary tracks – nine full-movie commentaries and eight of the five-minute variety. I have written roughly 450,000 words for the site – an average of about 250 a day, or enough to fill 1,800 double-spaced typed pages over the site’s life.