I am not a digital native. I was born 1975 and didn't send my first e-mail until I was a sophomore in college. I spent my junior year abroad, where e-mail came in handy and Internet porn would have, if only I had known about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Luddite. These days I love the Web like Joan...

The golden jubilee of a diamond-bright icon is upon us as the Barbie doll, introduced at the American International Toy Fair of 1959, passes a milestone on March 9. This presents an occasion to praise her timeless charms, to damn her anti-feminism, and, for those wired for negative capability, to ho...

Why does Hollywood take our favorite novels and turn them into crap? [more ...]...

"Creation is original freshness related to God," said Ol' Dirty Bastard. No, wait—it was St. Thomas Aquinas. Could have been ODB, though: No one doubted his original freshness, and the entropic rapper was quite as prone to a theological outburst as he was to one that was deranged or dirty-bastardl...

While the world is watching Barack Obama's inauguration, I expect I'll be distracted. Instead of listening to the speech, I'll be straining to pick out the new president's Secret Service detail. That's because, like many consumers of lesbian romance novels, I have developed a bit of a thing for the ...

In 1927, the Rev. A.W. Nix, a preacher from Birmingham, Ala., entered a recording studio to commit several of his sermons to wax. He intended to release them commercially on the burgeoning gospel-music circuit. A Southern Baptist, Nix had an ear for the musical possibilities of oratory and a taste f...

With the near-simultaneous theatrical premiere of War Inc. (First Look Studios)—a strange, scruffy, black-as-pitch little comedy about the occupation of "Turaqistan"—and the DVD release of Grace Is Gone (the Weinstein Co.)—last year's critically praised but scarcely seen drama about a military...

What would you do if a bully—let's call him "Joey Giggles"—kept snatching your ice-cream cone? OK, now what if Joey Giggles then told you, "If you pay me five bucks a month, I'll stop snatching your ice cream." Depending on how much you hate getting beaten up, and how much you love ice-cream con...

Casually browsing the music blogs not long ago, I read that the Roots are putting out a new album at the end of this month. Good news, I thought. I like almost all of their previous work and had recently watched them rage through a highly entertaining two-hour show full of new material, so as far as...

For comic-book fans, Fredric Wertham is the biggest villain of all time, a real-life bad guy worse than the Joker, Lex Luthor, and Magneto combined. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Wertham was the intellectual spearhead of the anti-comics crusade, arguing in many articles and his 1954 best-seller...