Critic's Corner
Dolly Parton & Tim Curry
Dolly Parton and Tim Curry were two of the most culturally important people alive. Both were icons that encapsulated the American spirit in such a rock ‘n’ roll way. They were over-the-top, groundbreaking, and amazing at what they did. They also were both amazing people. They say that celebrity deaths happen in threes, but I think Dolly and Dr. Frank-N-Furter had enough personality to cover the third one. I was devastated to hear of their passing. I called my two best friends and we all cried and talked about what they meant to us in our lives and childhoods.
Dolly Parton gave us anthems, books, an amusement park, and Duncan Hines banana pudding cake. Tim Curry gave us three rock albums, Clue, the Sweet Transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the best scene in Home Alone …
Candy Bars of All Fifty States
Alabama — The Big Hog – A log of Hog Guts swirled in caramel and coated with chocolate makes the ladies swoon.
Alaska — Moose Droppings – Caramelized salmon bits with moose.
Arizona — The Old Timer – Treats urinary incontinence.
Arkansas — The Moonshiner – Yummy chocolate filled with liquor, keep it away from the revenue man.
California — Edibles.
Colorado — Rocky Mountain High – You’ll get high.
Connecticut — His and Hers Viagra Hearts.
Delaware — Bank candy.
Florida — Ten-inch Mango Surprise.
Georgia — Nutty Buddy – Chocolate-covered peanut brittle. Strippers love it.
Hawaii — The Luau – Candied pineapple with hash …
Front Porch
We are heading into a future that no one can see, mediated by powerful new technologies that will exert unprecedented power over our lives — whether for good or for ill, and probably both. Change is coming.
Yet we Americans, conservatives and liberals alike, tend to have very shallow imaginations when it comes to imagining societies other than the ones we grew up in. Cultures and religions are not all the same underneath, except to the extent that we force them to be so. Other countries are not exotic versions of America, with their own versions of our same strengths and our same faults. Some of them are radically different.
The Aztecs, for example, believed in the necessity of daily human sacrifice and other nauseating cruelties, not because they were primitives — their urban centers were more beautiful and more advanced in their structures and planning than equivalent cities at …
