Delivering a keynote in San Diego, this coming Thursday (March 20), at “The Sacred & The Profane,” a conference at San Diego State University. Official Blurb: In Case of Rapture, Car Will Be Driverless: Waiting for the End of the World in ’70s Southern California In this lecture, equal parts personal essay and cultural critique, […]
We interrupt the unending torrent of comment spam (“Hello people, your site is best! Nice site look this: teen lesbians showering!”) to flog our product. The latest, insect-themed issue of the cultural quarterly Cabinet is in bookstores and on newsstands now, and includes my essay on the ginormous Jerusalem Cricket, which is, in fact, neither […]
As mentioned earlier, the Sept./Oct. issue of Print magazine includes my feature on Mexican-American visual culture. Last summer, I interviewed cholo, Chicano, self-styled “pocho,” and expatriate Mexicano illustrators and graphic designers in L.A., San Diego, and Tijuana; this article draws on those interviews, as well as an extensive conversation with the brilliant Chicano cultural theorist […]
Tomorrowland rocket ride, Disneyland, circa 1960. Courtesy The Imaginary World. © Dan Goodsell 2005. My essay, “In Search of Ancient Astronauts: A Requiem for the Space Age,” appears in the new Cabinet magazine, issue 18. Key Concepts: Ray Bradbury, “Rocket Summer,” aeronautics workers in Southern California in the ’60s and ’70s, Tomorrowland, children’s books on […]
Believe it or not, people are still having sex. The religious right’s jihad against sexual expression hasn’t put a lid on the American libido. (Note: The following article originally appeared, under the same title but with different photos, in the spring/summer ’05 issue of Vogue Hommes, pps. 244-7. Under the inspired, focus-groups-be-damned guidance of Editor […]
Sunshine/Noir: Writing From San Diego And Tijuana, edited by Jim Miller, is out, and I’ve got a lengthy essay in it, titled “Loving the Alien: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become Californian.” It’s an autobiographical rumination on the ontological migraines I suffered as a palely loitering lit geek, growing up among San […]
Erik Davis: hermenaut; bearded Led Zep exegete. Photo: Mindstates II website. In Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3/ Continuum International Publishing Group), Erik Davis manages the neat trick of making Robert Plant’s cosmic-dirthead lyrics sound like outtakes from The Mabinogion. (This, remember, is the man whose idea of rock poesy is “I got my flower/ I […]
My essay, “Dead Seas: The Psychogeography of Southern California,” appears in the new Cabinet. This is the latest in a series of essays I’ve been writing about growing up in the San Diegan suburb of Chula Vista, in the late ’60s and ’70s.