Culture vulture

The year in review (with a nod to Larry King)
The distilled wit and wisdom of Culture Vulture 2004, winnowed from the 52 columns of the year now ending:

Culture Vulture is not a particularly strong believer in signs and portents, preferring in most cases to walk, or rationalize, our way around strange epiphenomena that seem overly weighted with coincidental connotations. (1.15.04)

The way people look has nearly nothing to do with the way they work, and it’s a wise business organization that recognizes that fact. (1.29.04)

With a good slicker and some plasticized rain pants and boots, even a downpour is merely a chance to interact with the elements in a more direct way than the average automobile-bound commuter does. (2.19.04)

To love does not equal to understand, thank goodness. (3.18.04)

Culture Vulture has become convinced that boredom, if it’s done right, is one of the pinnacles of human achievement. (7.15.04)

Memories are the adhesive that bond a community together. (9.30.04)

Any fellow who can go into rhapsodies over a well-served cheeseburger while simultaneously expounding on the subtleties of Parisian poulet roti and crème brûlé, with tangential commentary on the use of food as a literary motif in the works of Marcel Proust, is a fellow who can share a pitcher of Pale Ale with Culture Vulture any time and any place. (4.08.04)

There are few better feelings than passing along something you no longer have any use for to someone who will be happy to put it to use. (5.27.04)

Anything that can invoke spiritual contemplation and laughter simultaneously is a very good thing in Culture Vulture’s book. (6.03.04

There is nothing quite as fine in Culture Vulture’s opinion as sitting comfortably sated from a campfire-cooked dinner of fried fish and sautéed asparagus and staring meditatively into a well-tended campfire for a few hours while sipping on an ice-chilled Pale Bock. (4.15.04)

We can claim to be hard-headed, clear-eyed realists dryly declaiming the facts and nothing but the facts, but the fact is that the simple act of formulating words to convey meaning is an act of poetry for both the writer and the reader. (10.21.04)

It seems that politics has become a branch of the theater of the absurd. (10.07.04)

If you see a tall, gorgeous redhead hoisting a sledgehammer with a devilish grin spread across her face, step back and don protective eyewear, because you’re most likely going to need it. (12.09.04)

Mystery is all around us. (11.25.04)