Interview: Lileks Meets the PJ Lifestyle Blog

“Lifestyle blogs often have a PC bent; it will be refreshing to have one for the rest of us.”

— Dr. Helen Smith, in her first post here at the new PJ Lifestyle blog.

Speaking of which, welcome onboard! This is the place where we’ll be discussing movies, TV, music, the sort of food and tobacco products that would cause Michelle Obama and Michael Bloomberg to have a serious case of the vapors, and anything else that doesn’t fit into the rest of the PJM homepage or the Tatler. Not to mention the pop culture of the past, and the gadgets of the future. As you can see on this section’s homepage, you’ll be hearing from many of our PJM and PJTV all-stars on these topics.

And we’ll be having a fair amount of video and audio podcasts as well. First up, to give us a sense of the pop culture of the past and present, and the seismic shifts in the culture over the years is columnist, pioneering blogger and multimedia maven extraordinaire James Lileks:

(18 minutes long; 16.3 MB. Want to download instead of streaming? Click here to download this week’s show. Or click here to download the 5 MB lo-fi edition.)

James and I discuss:

• How much can you learn about a time and a place by observing its pop culture?
• What is the “Overculture” — and what is its current state of health?
• What an era’s fashions say about it.
• And Interior Desecrations, both then — and now.

For more from James, stop by The Bleat at Lileks.com, and his daily Pop Crush blog at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Skinny ties optional; no jacket — with or without skinny lapels required.