And if you think about it, pretty much everything that made the twentieth century bearable was invented in a California garage: the Apple computer, the Boogie Board, and gangster rap.

They were unironic enthusiasts for all the mass pleasures the culture offered: television, NASCAR, cruises, Disney World, sports, celebrity gossip, and local politics. Szabo often wished that he could be as well adjusted as Melinda's family, but he would have had to be medicated to pursue her list of pleasures.

If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.

'Gangsta rap' is a derogatory label.

Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.

I'm interested in youth culture and popular culture.