Arden Rogow-Bales
Arden Rogow-Bales
Recent Stories
Doomed to dance with myself
My alarm-clock radio only gets one station with music: KC101, Southern Connecticut”s Number One Hit Music Station. The first words I have processed every morning for the last two months have been either “You’re a womanizer” or “You’re my experimental game,” or, on good days, “A disease of the mind, it can control you.” The first voices I’ve heard have been Britney Spears’ and Katy Perry’s and Rihanna’s.
We’re impressed, not moved
Machiavelli’s “La Mandragola” is a play with a very simple plot: boy wants girl; clever friend helps dupe inconvenient-obstacle old man; boy and girl end up happily ever after. All you need to do is make the audience want the young man to win and the old man to lose, and you’re golden! This leaves a lot of room for goofing off and showing off, and everyone in the show certainly does. But though the actors and director Leah Franqui ’09 absolutely deserve our admiration, they never earn our sympathy.
Thinking With David Foster Wallace
Wallace, author of ‘Infinite Jest’ and ‘Consider the lobster,’ died last week at 46
The same friend who introduced me to David Foster Wallace once mused that one way to appreciate an artistic work was to realize all the ways it could have been stupid but managed not to be. To my mind, DFW is an important example of how a writer, and specifically a writer from our own academic and cultural milieu, can avoid the particular pitfalls that we here are likely to face when we try to think and write and not be stupid.
25 years of Thrills, now with Fergie
If you’re wondering why anyone bothered to re-release “Thriller,” check out Kanye West’s remix of “Billie Jean.” You know the original. The drums. Then the looping bass groove. Then the “doot, doot” synth figure. It’s an amazing call to dance, but such a delicate build that each finger snap is an event.