One of my favorite pieces of short filmmaking is DANIELS’ music video for the Shins’ “Simple Song.” (DANIELS is a filmmaking duo made up of Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, best known for the outrageous[…]
Die, or Get Better?
In these days of pandemic, American democracy lies sick, burning not with fever but with fire. Every illness must come to one end or the other. Will she die, or will she get better? The[…]
Fountains of Wayne: A Case Study
Reposting in loving memory of FOW’s late great Adam Schlesinger, a casualty of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: If you know or remember alternative rockers Fountains of Wayne at all, it’s most likely for their massive[…]
Find Me at Partially Examined Life
Pop Culture Philosopher will be on hiatus this summer. However, I’m glad to announce that “Saints and Simulators,” my series on the intersection of religion and technology will be continuing at the Partially Examined Life[…]
“We All Try”: Philosophical Music
Repost from 2015 Hip-hop singer Frank Ocean is well-known to march to the beat of a different drummer, and nowhere is that more apparent than in We All Try, a lovely and plaintive existential humanist[…]
Wokepedia – Seattle Camera Club
This week’s Wokepedia project was near and dear to my heart. The Seattle Camera Club was a groundbreaking, interracial, gender-inclusive group of mostly Japanese-American photographers pioneering photography as fine art around the start of the[…]
ConnectArt in Cuba
Last week I was blessed to have an amazing opportunity I had never even dreamt of –to travel to Cuba. My wife was being featured as a part of a group of Columbus area artists[…]
A Statistic of One
This is a repost of a powerful poem by my late uncle John Gilmore, who was a US Marine in Vietnam, a substance-abuse counselor in civilian life, and a gifted poet in both realms. A[…]
Christian Humanism – Is it a Contradiction?
This is the text of an address I delivered in 2007 to The Ohio State University “Students for Freethought” student organization on the topic “Christian Humanism: Is it a Contradiction?” Good evening. I am here[…]
Long Division
I first encountered author Kiese Laymon when I read his essay “You are the Second Person,” an unapologetically bridge-burning reckoning of his encounter with a assimilationist editor who tried to deracinate his work. What stuck[…]