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A Snowy Day's Grab Bag of Loose Topics

Zugaldia photo via Flickr Creative Commons

Tony Bagels and Vinnie Carwash.

Why is Enfield constantly the battleground for First Amendment issues? (Remember this was the town that gave us the graduation-in-a-church case.)

David Brooks hearts Joe Lieberman. I could argue specific points with him, but it's always helpful to understand that there's another more or less reasonable way of looking at things besides one's own hardened point of view.

I am noticing a new, epic level of dissatisfaction with the cold and the snow. (Language warning.)  Reading Susan Campbell's Facebook threads, I was remonded that the weather does not have to be a boring topic. Led on by Susan, her commenters were quite colorful and far-ranging on the subject.

How many pieces of information can you hold in your brain simultaneously? Three or four? Seven?

I just discovered this site, which I like a lot.

I guess I have a man-crush on Nick Carr today.  I love this topic.What is the power of allusion when you can look stuff up? There's also that exquisite tension between just enough and too much obscurity. One of BIll Curry's in-family editors used to tell him the references in his column were too obscure if a reader had to look two of them up.  But Curry was puzzled by two references in one of my recent columns. He didn't know who who Urkel was or what a Garmin is. If the references had been to Aeneas and T.S. Eliot, he would have been fine. So one man's obscurity is another's common thought.

I'm not much of an "American Idol" fan, but watchinga little of the new season, I was made aware of the degree to which any delicious tension in the past derived from Simon vs. the World. I never though much of Simon. He seemed a very poor man's Oscar Wilde. His bons mots were never very bons. And underneath the pose of rigor, of course, there lay a trafficker in cheesy, crappy, ill-crafted pop music. But I see now that Simon was a very good villain and a good conveyer of disdain. He was the show's Tiger Mom.  He would tell you you were garbage. He was the antidote to the current vogue for unwarranted self-esteem. 

I want me some Hartford Jeans
Great piece by Coach T, and make sure you click through Wolfie's slide show.

Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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