Three thoughts from outside my stated purview of popular culture:
Fine art: Went to the Wyeth exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum (I get around! From town to town! I'm a real cool head! I'm spendin' all my bread! Don't know how I'm gonna heat my house in the winter! Ahh, the Beach Boys probably never had that particular problem), and my feelings were mixed. For one thing, our tickets only allowed us to enter the exhibit at 11:30, which I kinda assumed meant I wouldn't have to fight my way through ten people to see each painting. Wrong. Some of the paintings were great--"Jack Be Nimble" was probably my favorite--but, overall, I mean, Jesus, you've seen one off-white empty room, you've kinda seen 'em all. Oooh, this one has boots in it! Look, some dishes that are not holding food! I mean, okay, it's kinda creepy and death-obsessed, which I like, but would it kill you to use some freaking color once in a while?
In the food realm: Go see the Amish people at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market for the best soft pretzel on earth. I ate two. With butter.
And, randomly, a sports thought that people who write about sports have probably said about a hundred times already, but here goes: if baseball's Golden Age of Steroid Abuse cheapens the achievement of hitters in the last ten or fifteen years, how much more amazing is the achievement of pitchers who were able to be dominant during this time? I mean, if you look at Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, even, though it pains me terribly to say this, Roger Clemens, just imagine what their ERA's would have been if they weren't facing musclebound, shrunken-testicled cheaters who could turn fly ball outs into home runs?
