It’s been a little more than a week since Slate published a piece that — across your Old Professor’s little corner of the Internet, anyway — touched off a firestorm….
PopSmarts
22 Articles
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Jack Feerick
11 Min Read
Critical objectivity can be difficult to sustain. As members of the family, we have an implicit contract with our readers to consider each work on its own merits, without undue…
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Jack Feerick
13 Min Read
There’s a feeling you get. You know the one. You’re listening. It’s a song you’ve heard before, maybe many times. Heard it, but really never listened. One of those songs…
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Jack Feerick
9 Min Read
The second season of Vikings, last year’s basic-cable breakout hit, is coming into its homestretch, and the intrigues are piling up. Handsomely shot on locations in Ireland and Canada, and…
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Jack Feerick
10 Min Read
There’s a new top dog on the Young Adult block. The film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s bestselling YA novel Divergent opened a couple of weeks ago to stellar box office…
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11
Jack Feerick
11 Min Read
The art of film involves many collaborators, the most important of whom — as I’ve written before — is the audience. We are more than passive receivers. It is we,…
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Jack Feerick
15 Min Read
It’s a holiday tradition; the low murmur of the stereo in the corner of the kitchen, filling the house with the sounds of Yuletide cheer. And in our house that…
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Jack Feerick
7 Min Read
Thanks to the fortunes of History and the inevitable bending of the Universe’s moral arc towards justice, our children, gay and straight, are growing up in a world where it…
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Jack Feerick
8 Min Read
I talk about a lot of different iterations of pop culture in these columns — film, literature, music, comics — but even the casual reader will notice that there’s a…
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Jack Feerick
16 Min Read
We’re well into Movember now, the month-long event wherein thousands of men worldwide grow mustaches to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Count your humble Old Professor among that number….
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13
Jack Feerick
13 Min Read
We who take it as a vocation to criticize the efforts of others must take great care to keep our own behavior above reproach. It is particularly bad form to…
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Jack Feerick
9 Min Read
So this week the geek world (Doctor Who division) is abuzz over the announcement that cussy Caledonian Peter Capaldi has been cast as the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor. Capaldi…
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Jack Feerick
5 Min Read
It’s high summer, and we’re in the midst of wedding season. And if you’re going to a wedding this summer, then there’s a chance you’re going to find yourself doing…
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Jack Feerick
8 Min Read
I’ve been catching up on the Entertainment Geekly podcast this week (which is my own damned problem, I suppose), and I was struck by an odd conversational turn during a…
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Jack Feerick
6 Min Read
Like a lot of people, I have trouble taking Sting seriously — as seriously as he takes himself, anyway. But I must admit that I greeted the news of his…
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Jack Feerick
8 Min Read
One of the most anticipated television events of the summer is Under the Dome, a 13-week summer series adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name. Under the…
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Jack Feerick
6 Min Read
Last week saw the anniversary of one of the most horrific events in American history, the shootings of four unarmed college students by National Guardsmen on the campus of Ohio’s…
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Jack Feerick
6 Min Read
It’s not a revelation to anyone, anymore, to point out that Hollywood is no longer in the business of original ideas. It takes a great deal of money to make…
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Jack Feerick
9 Min Read
The works of William S. Burroughs are often lumped in with the Beat school; but although he was friendly with leading figures in the movement, his works were far more…
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Jack Feerick
8 Min Read
And so we come, by the turning of the year, to the end of Shrovetide and the beginning of the Christian liturgical calendar. When I was a choir director, these…
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Jack Feerick
4 Min Read
It’s coming on St. Patrick’s Day now. That’s when all the amateur Irishmen come out for a night on the piss and an annual flirtation with Celtic folk music. In…
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Jack Feerick
8 Min Read
I’ve always been a know-it-all. I was the kid who actually did read the encyclopedia for fun, and I carried my reputation as a fount of useless knowledge into adulthood…
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