If José González is any kind of football fan, even with Sweden not even qualifying for this year’s World Cup (in the admittedly über-competetive European division), he’s got the luxury of rooting for formidable Argentina, homeland of his parents. I mention this only because culturally Swedish/ethnically-other people I find fascinating. González’s girlfriend, Little Dragon singer [...]

Unless you’re living under an U.S.-sized rock, you know that the Greatest Show on Earth, the Football World Cup starts (”kicks off”) today in South Africa. And even the Americans are supposed to have their best team ever this year—though we’ll see how that pans out in the Brit v. Yank match tomorrow. Here, a [...]

Once upon a time there was a guy named William F. Buckley. He was sharp, opinionated, well-spoken and avowedly conservative. But he was a delightful sparring partner and obviously considered his positions—even if you disagreed with every last one of them (though he was for legalizing marijuana — can you imagine a conservative taking a [...]

The Beatles did it. Johnny Cash did it. But Marvin Gaye? Singing in German? Seriously? Seriously.
Decades ago it was common practice for record labels to have their top artists record foreign language versions of their hits. A new record from Hip-O Select, Motown Around the World, collects French, German and Spanish versions of songs by [...]

In March, Viggo Mortensen spoke at the occasion of Dennis Hopper getting his star on Hollywood Boulevard. In honor of Hopper’s fearlessness and honesty, he dedicated this poem by William Stafford, a fellow Kansan, whom he called “perhaps the finest and most honest poet that state has produced.” I thought it was pretty good, too.
For [...]