The Top 10 Ways the George W. Bush Administration “FUBARed” the United States of America (2000-2008)

[This is an essay I wrote years ago at the end of the George W. Bush administration. Not a lot of people talk about him now.]

No one knows what will happen between now and November 10, 2009, but one thing is certain - George W. Bush’s Presidency will end. And with an approval rating hovering at or below 25%, it looks like Bush will finish his eight years in office as one of the least popular Presidents ever.

It seems almost tasteless to rehash the many things this administration has done to warrant such a degree of condemnation from the general pubic. I think it’s critical that we do think about these things, though, if only as a warning to future citizens as to what can happen when arrogance, greed, zealotry, and incompetence meet at the top and rule the world.

The Irritating Optimism of “Happy-Go-Lucky”

originally written and published by me sometime in the late-2000s. This is one of the first movie essays I've ever written for my blog.

Mike Leigh’s film Happy-Go-Lucky had been sitting in my Netflix cue ever since it came out last year. I wasn’t really in a hurry to see it. While Sally Hawkins was getting rave reviews for her lead performance as Poppy, the movie itself was not exactly getting a huge amount of praise from critics.

When I watched it, I was skeptical at first. For the first 20 minutes or so I thought I was being subjected to the same trippy magical realism of Amelie, a film that’s not on my all-time favorites list. Right away I could see why others would find the main character so annoying. But after watching the entire film, it left an impression on me, and I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since.

Was "Malcom in the Middle" Fox Network's Most Successful "Black" Sitcom?

[Originally posted August 2013]

Malcom in the Middle, which ran on the Fox Network from 2000 to 2006 and can still be seen in syndication, follows the exploits of a young genius (played by Frankie Muniz), his parents, and three (later four) brothers.

The show was created by Linwood Boomer, a writer and producer of other well-known sitcoms like Silver Spoons, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Night Court, and loosely based on his personal family experiences. It was one of Fox’s most successful live-action sitcoms.

I liked the show a lot for its manic energy, clever storytelling, and the surreal touches it employed, such as how throughout the series neither Malcom and his family’s last name nor their specific city of residence is revealed. (In the pilot episode one of the sons wears a name tag on his uniform that shows the family last name, but all subsequent episodes were careful to never show or mention that information again.)

Separating the Art From the Artist

[originally written and posted January 2014 by Clarence Ewing]

Despite the tabloids’ best efforts, it appears that the general public’s interest in Michael Jackson’s death has pretty much run its course. Although Jackson’s musical and cultural influence had been on the wane for the last few years, mainly thanks to his self-imposed semi-exile to exotic lands, his passing brought up a lot of feelings from both pro- and anti-Jackson camps in the US.

To his fans, Jackson was a musical genius and one of the best entertainers the world has ever seen. There are a lot of people, though, for whom Jackson’s tumultuous personal life, especially his alleged involvement with young children, outweighs anything he did on stage or in the recording studio.

Eight Things You Should Know About an Employer BEFORE You Send Them Your Resumé

by Clarence Ewing

Researching a potential employer is one of the most important things you can do when looking for your next job. But if you’re like most people, you don’t have time to write a book about the business you’re interested in.

Some job hunting guides advise putting together detailed dossiers on a company’s history, their employees, their clients, their competitors, their suppliers, and their financials before approaching them for a job.

Not only does this kind of research take a lot of time, it also has a high “opportunity cost” – the effort you put into gathering all the information that you may or may not use is time you could be spending, for example, reaching out to other potential employers or working on your network of contacts.

A Random Walk Down Clark Street (2009)

[This article was originally posted in 2009, during the middle of the Great Recession.]

I think it's now safe to say that we are in a recession. Despite the constant media references to soup lines and 1929, no one knows how long it's going to last, though, or how bad it's going to get.

To get a sense of how things are going in my neck of the woods, I took my camera and shot photos of one of the business corridors in my neighborhood, Clark Street in Andersonville from Ardmore Avenue on the north to Winona on the south.

I specifically wanted to document vacant buildings, so I could get a sense of the economic mood of the area.

In this article I present the pics, as well as my two cents about them...

Thomas Dolby’s “The Golden Age of Wireless” and “The Flat Earth”

Written by Clarence Ewing

This is an essay I wrote for CHIRP Radio that also appears on their blog. Have a listen to this great community-based independent radio station!

Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska in the mid-1980s, before the existence of the Internet and MP3 players, meant you had to look a little harder to find new and interesting pop music.

Fortunately I had a sister who was plugged in to the few places in town where one could find new stuff that wasn’t featured on Casey Kasem’s Top 40.

One day she got hold of two albums on cassette tapes that I dutifully sponged off of her and that introduced me to the brilliant synth-pop of Thomas Morgan Robertson, a.k.a. Thomas Dolby.

In these days of ubiquitous electronic equipment, it’s easy to forget there was a time when it wasn’t possible to just push a button and have coherent sounds (or songs, or albums) come pouring out.

Digital music didn’t come off the shelf; they had to be built from the ground up and made into something useable, hopefully by someone who knows what they’re doing, musically and technically. Dolby was one of those people. His skills enabled him to make two of the best pop albums to come out of the New Wave era.

How Many Possible Birth Charts Are There?

written by Clarence Ewing

Part of the elegance of astrology is the sheer number of configurations of signs and planets that can make up someone’s birth chart.

The moment you were born, the planets were all set in a specific way that is very much unique to you based on the date, time, and location where you came into the world.

This goes far beyond the simple newspaper horoscope that divides humans into 12 categories and then provides advice based on that. If that was all that was needed to define a person’s nature, there would be a lot more people walking around who are just like you!

Since this is clearly not the case for anyone, we have to take into account the seemingly unlimited details provided by the limited number of planets, signs, and houses available to use.

This got me wondering just how many possible combinations of planets, signs, and houses are there? Let’s use math to construct a basic birth chart and find out.

2009 Pitchfork Music Festival Review

Pitchfork is the first of Chicago’s two major summer rock/pop/hip-hop music festivals, the other being Lollapalooza. Pitchfork is the smaller of the two and, as I’ve written before, the superior festival-going experience. For 2 ½ days they take over Union Park on the west side and deliver an assortment of veteran and up-and-coming local, national, and international acts. Every year I feel I’m getting more than my money’s worth, and this weekend was no exception. This year the weather was fantastic (no typical Chicago mid-July heat and humidity this time), which made it even easier to focus on the music.

5 Job Interview Questions That Mean You’re Not Getting Hired…And One That Means You Are

written by Clarence Ewing

Over the years I’ve worked for a couple of great companies and a bunch of mediocre to awful ones. Of the skills I developed during this time, one of the few I feel qualified to speak on at length, is the job interview process.

I have lost count of the number of interviews I’ve done, both applying to new companies and changing jobs within a company. I can say with confidence that in our capitalist system, job interviews are the most unpleasant, stressful, and awkward part of employment. At best they are a necessary evil.

Many job consultants and books that discuss the “hidden job market” agree that the best way to find a job is to bypass the interview process altogether usually by finding someone at a company who can hire you directly. Most people, though, have to do a standard interview in order to get their foot in the door.

Job interviewing is a ritual in our society, and as with any ritual there are prescribed behavioral patterns. Interview locations, dress codes, and demeanor are all fairly standardized by industry. So are the kinds of questions asked of interviewees.

13 Rule-Breaking Films

written by Clarence Ewing

For all the creativity and innovation that goes into making Hollywood films, there are also a lot of ideas that get recycled time and time again. I’m not referring to stock characters or the "sequalitis" that hits multiplexes every summer. I’m talking about the basic building blocks of storytelling that are ingrained in the movie-going experience.

Every once in a while, though, a film will come along that takes an assumption about how movies are supposed to be made and changes it, sometimes resulting in something truly memorable.

Producers who want to make a film that breaks one of the unwritten rules of mass-market entertainment risk a lot – studios might not want to fund the film, theaters might not show it, audiences might not respond to it. The reward for taking the chance, though, is recognition for being a really interesting experiment or, in some cases, taking your place among the greatest films ever made.