"America's Oldest Teenager" died last week at the age of 82. Dick Clark, who hosted American Bandstand for decades (and rang in New Year's Eve in his later career), taught many people of a certain age "how to be a teenager." 

In his Big Tent column for AdAge magazine, David Morse poses the qustion, "Is there such a thing as a common Hispanic culture?" 

One of the many issues to arise from the tragic Trayvon Martin shooting is racial identity. Not just the obvious one, that 17-year-old Trayvon was black and wearing a hoodie (apparently the apparel of criminals - we could do dozens of blogs about the stupid things pundits said about black youths).

A new book, Taco, USA, explores how American culture came to embrace Mexican food (or make that, invent and co-opt supposedly traditional Mexican foods) over more than a century.  Arellano explains that what most of us think of as Mexican food was invented in America, and it has a lon