Culture vulture

Raising a glass
One of Culture Vulture’s favorite activities is touring the local thrift shops. Of particular fascination is the glassware selection. I love finding an odd drinking receptacle and have very few preconceived criteria for selecting whatever may become the latest addition to the Culture Vulture World Headquarters collection of interesting beverage conveyances.

A while back I went through a phase of collecting oversized beer mugs, an interest that coincided nicely with the Grocery Outlet’s stocking of Grolsch beer that came in half-gallon-sized bottles. There’s something inherently amusing about pouring a giant beer into a giant glass. And if doing so causes the eyebrows of an unsuspecting companion to shoot up as you intone deadpan, “I’m limiting myself to one beer a day lately,” you have achieved a level of domestic slapstick that even the great W. C. Fields himself would beam upon with approval.

Column subheads yet to be
Below is a list of 12 topics that have appeared scrawled on various torn-out pages of Professional Reporter’s Notebook paper, scribbled on the backs of assorted business cards, chicken-scratched on wadded up bar napkins and, in one case, printed in legible handwriting in the margin of a publicity release from a book publisher. All of them are things that at one time or another seemed like worthy subjects for this weekly excursion into the realms of hyperbole, extrapolation, conjecture and projection.

And yet for one reason or another—usually because I got distracted or forgot what the original notation referred to—none of them have been the focus of an actual column. And so, in the spirit of interaction that is so essential to the continuance of this literary enterprise, I offer you this compendium of potential future writings. If you see one of particular interest let me know through the e-mail address above or drop me a line care of this paper, and I will address the topic thoroughly. You are, of course, also invited to submit any topic of your own choosing.

1. Why Culture? Why Vulture?
2. Wormtongue vs. Legolas
3. Noms de plume and secret identities
4. Photos of mass destruction
5. When the whole is divided, the parts need names
6. Richard Brautigan: The honeycomb king on the crabapple side of the creek
7. The cult of achievement
8. Do soybeans know nirvana?
9. Why don’t women rule the Earth?
10. Publicly funded art: filtering the community soul
11. The land of privilege and remorse
12. Nothing is beyond compare