Katherine Ehlers

 
Cruel Summer
 It's officially the unofficial start of summer! If you watch your local news, you know this is an extremely confusing time for Americans. We have no idea how to comport ourselves after the third week in May. Your local ActionCast FactCopter team is editing their twelfth summer safety tips segment of the week at this very second. And just in time....
Flexicon: A Contrarian Lexicon, Part 1
 Autozombiography: an autobiography published posthumously per the author's instructions, which causes a cultural resurrection of its subject. Mark Twain's autozombiography is forthcoming. Bangst: the sensation of losing one's identity upon encountering someone with a haircut similar to one's own. Bangst reaches epidemic levels at rock shows...



“As the oily fish spit out their oily prey…”
   I hereby declare "Cellz" the official song of the BP disastrophe. DOOM, with a little help from ol' Charles Bukowski. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKum7WWeq0Y Other nominees? Submit 'em in the comments.
No Love Lost: Breaking Up With the Worst Best Show on Television
 I remember the ads for the premiere of "Lost." Network television was a wasteland that year — and I mean even wastelandier than usual. (Here’s the network schedule from 2002-2003, the season before "Lost" premiered in fall 2004. The highest-rated shows are highlighted. Now do you believe me?) I wasn’t interested in "Lost." It looked to me like...



Decisions I Decided: A Message from George W. Bush
 What up ya'll! I'm just maxin and relaxin lol!!! I have to write this essay about when I was the president of Texas and I'm sooo bored haha. A lot of you a-cracks have asked me if I'm writing this bitch by myself. Yeah right! What am I, some nerd? Do I look like Brock Obama to you? He probably writes ten books a day! Science books! Because he's a nerd....
Back to the Howling Old Owl in the Woods: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is Still Awesome
 Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" was released in 1973, and I was released in 1979, so I don't consider it an exaggeration to say I have loved this song my entire life. It's one of those tunes I didn't quite understand as a kid, but got to me anyway. Because that's what the best songs can do: get you in your gut even if your brain can't figure...



Midnight Snack
 This is not about the sweaty, coked-up, gold-toned 1970s music and comedy performance television show, "Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special." Nor is it about Guthy-Renker's DVD collection of said program. This is about the infomercial for said DVDs of said television show. There is no possibility I will ever buy the DVDs. There are nineteen of them....
Xmas in the Drunk Tank: In Search of Decent Holiday Tunes
 It's officially Holiday Month. Nothing you can do about it. The harder you try to tune it out, the louder your grocery store will blast Paul McCartney's feverish, surreal, so-terrible-it kinda-blows-your-mind-and-becomes-awesome "Wonderful Christmastime." Let's face it, most Christmas songs are not good. Well, the hymns can be quite beautiful — think...