-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Tagged
Art Art history art theft Banksy books climate change cthulhu cultural differences cultural issues culture cultured deconstruct deconstructed deconstructing deconstructive deconstructs definition of culture film Fourth of July hemingway history I culture you Labor Day leonardo da vinci literature Memorial Day mind.net music Picasso poetry politics PSA publishing RIP RIP 2016 sub culture superbowl The Plug and Play Life Trump video Vincent Van Gogh Voracious What is art? what is culture? writingArchives
Subscribers
Author Archives: editor, facilitator, decider
Book launch!
Please pardon the overt self-promotion, it’s just that Book Launch Day comes so seldom these days. Anyway, and intended for a rather narrow audience, we introduce today Strategies for Training Excellence. Available now, as usual, with our good friends over … Continue reading
A tradition of gore
Bullfighting is bloodsport. Let’s set aside euphemism and accept that fact from the outset. There’s never a reprieve, nor any chance of a languid, bloodless match. The sands of the corrida will always turn red. Each and every time a … Continue reading
Davy Jones Dec. 30 1945 – Feb. 29 2012
Hey hey I’m a monkees fan. Always have been, even if I haven’t always been willing to admit it. Davy Jones died of a heart attack at age 66, just like a thousand other grand-dads did today. But somehow Davy … Continue reading
Weaponizing the culture wars
The culture wars are, and have been, a charred and cratered part of our political landscape. The divisions between church and state, between private life and the public commons, are becoming ever more blurry and ever more contentious. Would it be alarmist … Continue reading
Posted in New Post
Tagged amy poehler, culture wars, jon stewart, virginia abortion law
Leave a comment
Art as magic
The best art forms present themselves with just a hint, maybe more than a hint, of the mystical. This has always been so, and you can still see it in the unearthly realism and perspective that Leonardo was painting five … Continue reading
Posted in New Post
Tagged brandon mcconnell, new art forms, shadow art, shigeo fukuda, spraypaint art
Leave a comment
Whitney Houston, August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012
We can speculate, and most of us probably already are. Whitney Houston’s excesses and over-the-top lifestyle were her cultural calling-cards for the latter part of her career. Did they lead to her death? That question will probably be answered in … Continue reading
Fathermucker!
Author Greg Olear is talented, funny and kind enough to share his platform with fellow scribes. “Fathermucker” isn’t an expletive (at least not really); it’s the name of Greg’s 2011 novel, and his hilarously unerring blog. Both book and blog look at … Continue reading
Liveblog: Superbowl XLVI
So what have we here? What we have here is a team from Boston that claims to represent an entire region, and a team from New Jersey that claims to be from New York. Schizophrenia Bowl? It very well might … Continue reading
Superbowl Super-blog!
No one here at the Deconstruction claims to be a sports expert. But as we’ve said before, when it comes to American sports culture, we know there’s only One Big Game. That’s why Superbowl Sunday, February 5th, will mark our … Continue reading
Revisiting Cthulhu (with videos!)
There’s been an avalanche of inquiries and more than a few requests that we look back in on Cthulhu and the rest of the pantheon of Lovecraft‘s Very Creepy Ones. But lest we speak too much of them, and stir … Continue reading
Rebuttal to libertarianism
Found myself in a verbal disagreement with a libertarian today. Which was disconcerting, because just based on etymology, I’d assume I’d be in agreement with anyone self-identifying with a variant of the root word ‘liberty.’ Indeed, I’d even self-identify as … Continue reading
Nevermore
Today, January 19th 2012, was Edgar Allan Poe‘s two hundred and third birthday. It was the third consecutive year that the Poe Toaster failed to materialize. The Toaster, for all my life and much longer, offered an elegant annual salute … Continue reading
Turn off your damn phone
In the great scheme of things and compared to the larger woes of the world, it’s not that big a deal. On this we can probably all agree. But those woes, those great schemes, are precisely what we seek to … Continue reading
Cultural destruction
Art inspires emotion. That is its reason for being. But what if those emotions are incomprehensibly negative? What if the inspiration is to destroy? No idle speculation, this. A brazen (not to mention expensive) bit of art vandalism occurred just last … Continue reading
100 Years in 10 Minutes
What were the most consequential events of the last century? A more subjective question can’t be asked. This video takes a crack at it though, with one hundred years worth of highlights; from Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition in December … Continue reading
