Hello Heartless Tin Man! Brainless Scarecrow here. 🛢️🛢️🛢️I want to ask your heartlessness about The Beatles song I Want to Hold Your Hand. In the interval(s) between the opening guitars and the vocals there seems to be another type of rhythmic sound. No? I hear, and have long heard, a different type of instrument or… Read More Time Out. Tin Man and The Beatles’ “Secret Sauce”
“We’ll get you through your children.” —Allen Ginsberg, 1958. The core of the heresy of the Free Spirit lay in the adept’s attitude towards himself: he believed that he had attained a perfection so absolute that he was incapable of sin. Disclaiming book-learning and theological subtleties, they rejoiced in direct knowledge of God- indeed, they… Read More The Beat Generation… cultural catastrophe. By Roger Kimball
By Mallory Millet. Front Page Magazine. Feminist icon Kate Millett passed away recently in Paris at the age of 82. Her 1970 book Sexual Politics, called “the Bible of Women’s Liberation” by the New York Times, had a seismic effect on feminist thought and launched Millett as what the Times called “a defining architect of… Read More My Sister Kate: The Destructive Feminist Legacy of Kate Millett
I don’t mean to rain on Patrick Madrid’s (or anyone’s) parade. But consider. He writes in bold letters on ‘X’ that The Beatles are the “Greatest Band in History. Don’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like The Beatles!“. But the Beatles cast both genius and deepest shade. I’m in my 7th decade of life. I’ve loved… Read More The Beatles and Where We Are.
The events of 1968 had a strong bearing on his shift to a more conservative outlook. Excerpted from “POPE BENEDICT XVI: A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger.” (c) 2000 by John L. Allen, Jr.The Continuum. Joseph Ratzinger arrived at Tübingen [University] in 1966, still enthusiastic about the promise of Vatican II and ready to take his… Read More How the ’60s Changed Ratzinger
The Beatles were not just another Rock band. They were an Event with lasting cosmic effect across the entire planet, heralds of a new evangelium. Evangelium is a Latin term that translates to “gospel,” meaning “good news.” It is derived from the Ancient Greek word εὐαγγέλιον Here, in exquisite harmonies and creativity, The Beatles gave… Read More The (New) Word
Learning the First Notes All Over Again. In Fellini’s film “Orchestra Rehearsal” the Conductor suddenly found himself in the midst of a revolt. The musicians had long murmured against the Conductor on account of his rigorous methods, demands and practice sessions. The exchanges between them and he were bitter. And time did not heal the… Read More Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal.
“Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream”—John Lennon Photo by Yoko Ono. Perhaps it is one of those curious fearful symmetries that the words of John Lennon quoted above are found in the Beatles’ album titled ‘Revolver’…and that he was finally gunned down, shot multiple times in the back by a “fan”. I… Read More John Lennon and The Seductions of Beautiful Nothing
“All times of upheaval begin as surprises and end as clichés. Such is the fate of the great tidal swells of history—especially in a shorthand culture where insatiable media grind the flux of the world into the day’s sound bites.” I listened to some terrible prognostications recently from men and women who made me think… Read More Send in the clowns…
Or, dreams come true… In No Speed Limit, author and cultural analyst Steven Shaviro writes, “In his science fiction novel Pop Apocalypse, Lee Konstantinou imagines the existence of a “Creative Destruction” school of Marxist-Leninist thought. The adherents of this school “interpret Marx’s writings as literal predictions of the future, so they consider it their mission… Read More The Creative Destruction school of Marxist-Leninist thought.
Note: One need not care for Hollywood and its often amoral actors in the slightest to have sympathy for victims of addictions in general. Many of us know or love persons who have suffered—and made others suffer— from addictions. Christians are no more immune to it than their enemies. Some jump into it. Other slide.… Read More Johnny Depp and Substance Abuse. What we can learn.
Major cultural transformation. James Lindsay writes, “We are in the process of transitioning from an analog, objective, real, physical world into a digital, subjective, surreal world. In that transition into a digital subjective world, we are experiencing a transformation of what is accepted as reality, when it isn’t reality: it is synthetic. In this discussion… Read More Synthetic ‘Reality’ Made Flesh
By John A. Perricone | New Oxford Review, January-February 2021 The Deleterious Effects of a Subtle Inversion One of Hollywood’s more sybaritic starlets solemnly announced the other day that she was embarking on a 30-day “spiritual cleanse” in India. Since neither ecumenism nor eco-enthusiasm is my métier, I was bewildered. Could it be some novel… Read More “New Spirituality” & the Ghost of Catholicism
“Vilified by fellow Victorians for his sexuality and his dandyism, Oscar Wilde, the great poet, satirist and playwright, is hailed today, in some circles, as a “progressive” sexual liberator. But this is not how Wilde saw himself. His actions and pretensions did not bring him happiness and fulfillment. This study of Wilde’s brilliant and tragic… Read More The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. Joseph Pearce.
Andy Warhol’s self portrait (not the first photo seen here, but the purple thing…) sold some years back for $32.6 million. But that’s mere chump change; the highest price I’d seen fetched for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. Imagine. I mean, the pop painter, printmaker and so-called… Read More Perception as Value. Andy Warhol.
College is nothing like it once was. “Colleges have been scamming people for a long time and have burdened generations with trillions of dollars in debt. Isaac Morehouse is an expert in this field, and has made it his mission to help people escape the shackles of the Ivy League.” View the Discussion @ Tucker… Read More Tucker Carlson Takes On The College Scam
The Irish journalist John Waters writes in First Things (excerpts follow), “In 1972, the year ABBA was formed, an English journalist named Roland Huntford published The New Totalitarians, in which he exposed the underbelly of Swedish “progressivism”: a near century as a one-party state under the Social Democrats, featuring crude anti-family policies and rampant state incursion… Read More ABBA And The New Totalitarians
By Timothy Matthews, Catholic InsightIssue: March 2009 “Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has been previously experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal… Read More The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to corrupt
