Steve Thorngate
My picks for best new music
The Century's "Christmas picks" issue is out; it includes my annotated list of best (popular) music of...
CC recommends: Popular music
The Harrow and the Harvest pushes Gillian Welch's winning formula further. On Mockingbird Time, the Jayhawks' sweet harmonies and gritty edges are finally back. There's a hefty dose of early Paul Simon on Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues. "Soul" is as good a word as any for Liz Janes's groovy little record Say Goodbye. Tom Waits's Bad As Me is accessible enough to convert some skeptics. And The Head and the Heart's self-titled debut is the feel-good record of the year.
Links? Links.
Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.
A quibble about the (very good) new Muppets movie
Years ago I cringed when I saw that the Onion sells a t-shirt with the slogan, "I appreciate
the Muppets on a much deeper level than you." My friend John
and I had just been discussing the Muppets' sly use of metafictional
elements.
New bargaining positions
As of right now, federal spending is scheduled to be cut by $1.2 trillion on January 1, 2013--the same day the Bush tax cuts (worth $3.8 trillion) are set to expire.
...Links? Links.
Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.
Links? Links.
Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.
Victim blaming in Pennsylvania
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania reports that "Victim One," the first of for...
So what church DID that Adam Sandler movie shoot in?
A couple issues ago the Century ran an article
by Matt Fitzgerald of Wellesley Hills UCC in Massachusetts, a church
approached by a movie studio that needed a space rental to shoot an
upcoming Adam Sandler movie.
A Scotch with the 1 percent
If you want to read interesting on-the-ground reporting on the Occupy movement, you could do a lot worse than following Ezra Silk....
New harmonies: Music and identity at four congregations
Some post-worship-war churches revel in musical eclecticism. Others have a singular approach and sound, rendering the terms traditional and contemporary irrelevant.
New article on church music
Along with my work at the Century, I work part-time as a church musician (at Christ Lutheran on Chicago's northwest side)....
"Detroit is right next to Dearborn"
TLC has a new reality show about American Muslims, set in Dearborn, Michigan. American Muslim Aman Ali has a spirited response.
A brave and wise Penn State student
The young man in this video should be a source of some small pride for Penn State right now.
Links? Links.
Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.
What Jon Huntsman is willing to say
A good point from James Fearon: A while back, Jon Hunstman talked to David Weigel
about his serious love for Captain Beefheart, a recording artist about
five clicks too polarizingly odd for most presidential candidates (of
either party) to admit to ever having even heard.
"The church has not posed any theory in that regard."
The Catholic bishops' media-relations director: "While the general
population has debated whether it's nurture or nature that leads to a
homosexual inclination, the church has not posed any theory in that
regard."
Links? Links.
Here are some thing I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.
Ben Dueholm in our pages and others'
In a Century article
published this week, Benjamin Dueholm explains why politicians of
Michele Bachmann's ilk do well in the swing states of the upper Midwest.
He starts with the fact that Bachmann and Garrison Keillor are from the
same small Minnesota town.