Carl Scott

Our apologies for not having Constitution Day material here at Postmodern Conservative. I can amend things a little by reporting on the talk held at Washington and Lee University, where the esteemed presidency scholar Michael Nelson spoke. His talk was a general review of what the convention . . . . Continue Reading »

Where we left ALMOST FAMOUS was with a question I say the film deliberately raises: How is a rock-writer like a groupie? 1)In the film, the rock-writer character is made very similar to them: William is “on the bus” and is underage. Yes, the latter fact is from Cameron Crowe’s life, . . . . Continue Reading »

The last Songbook post considered rock Fame and its relations to Celebrity and Honorable Ambition with plenty of help from political philosophy, and a little from ALMOST FAMOUS, too; moving back to the film (which is proving rich enough for, look out, two more parts after this!), this part will be . . . . Continue Reading »

We left off the analysis of ALMOST FAMOUS at the key point, where we were about to get into what it says about Rock and Fame. That is a complicated subject, because you need to consider the phenomenon of Fame itself, before you get into what Rock does with it. Bowie’s deliberately sour song is . . . . Continue Reading »

Keep the Louisiana parishes in your prayers this week . . . looks as if Isaac didn’t hurt NOLA so much, but out in bayou and Cajun country, tough times. And since, alas, our Louisiana trip has been delayed, I can only musically travel there via you-tube. Unlike some, taken in as per usual by . . . . Continue Reading »

Well, it was just a conference that didn’t go, and these things have their annoying and ugly aspects, which David Brooks once described accurately in his Bourgeois Bohemians book; nor, I am having to go through a tropical storm/hurricane, as the residents of New Orleans currently are, but . . . . Continue Reading »

Well enough worryin’ and map-surveyin’ for the moment, let’s at least get the tunes set. Impossible to even hope to survey the Jazz contributions—just stand around in the NOLA airport diggin’ the vintage Pops—so we’ll start instead with 50s-era, or 50s-esque . . . . Continue Reading »

Andrew Ferguson tries, really tries, to dig into the Romney literature to find out why he dislikes him, to find the arrogant thread running through his life that he did so memorably with Newt Gingrich and others . . . and he comes up with: nothing, except plenty of evidence of Mitt taking Matthew . . . . Continue Reading »

So, the American Political Science Association annual meeting this year is in the Big Easy. Peter Lawler and I have a panel on the 2010 TRUE GRIT movie, 8am Saturday for those of you who will be there. Peter’s paper is called “Stoicism and the South,” or something along those lines. . . . . Continue Reading »

We move now on my list of best pop music films from THE DOORS to ALMOST FAMOUS, a natural progression in rock time to about 1973—the next step will be to THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. 1) DISCO and ALMOST FAMOUS have two points of comparison.  First, both are about the ineradicable desire, even . . . . Continue Reading »