Josh Indar is the author of “Rough & Ready Island”, a high-voltage mashup of Jim Thompson and Robert Louis Stevenson. He lives in a little college town in Northern California, where he tutors homeless & foster youth, writes something every once in a while and plays in a band called Severance Package. He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Antioch University, Los Angeles.
Features
Tuesday, October 25 2011
Now Hear This!: The Street Eaters
"I've only sliced my hands and scalp open 10 or 20 times!" This, as well as musings about whether cockroaches are more evolutionarily intelligent than humans, dominate the discussion with this fierce Berkeley twosome ...
Tuesday, August 30 2011
Run Red Run: Funny Song, Serious Message
The Coasters aren't thought of as particularly revolutionary, yet a single they released in 1959 was the first pop record to challenge the racism of post-World War II America.
Tuesday, May 10 2011
Hyphenated Bosch: A Mike Watt Interview
“I know it’s weird. All these little creatures… It’s almost like a mirror in my head broke into 30 pieces." Minutemen and Stooges bassist Mike Watt talks with PopMatters about life as a middle aged punker and his new rock opera, Hyphenated Man
Friday, June 19 2009
Bumming Smokes in Paris and London: George Orwell’s Obsession with Tobacco
Cigarette smoke so permeates George Orwell’s stories it almost leaves stains on one’s fingers when reading his books.
Columns
Tuesday, May 8 2012
Jerks Are My Heroes, Thanks to 'Jerks' Like Steve Martin
My folks are probably still kicking themselves for taking a seven-year-old to see Steve Martin’s profane and ridiculous first film, The Jerk, because that was the day I gave up on strong, upstanding heroes and decided that I wanted to be like Navin Johnson.
Monday, March 29 2010
Going Solo: The Return of the One-man Band
Maybe it’s the crappy economy, or just an extension of the long-term trend in popular music toward smaller and smaller ensembles, but it sure seems like there are a lot of one-man bands out there lately.
Reviews
Wednesday, November 17 2010
'Virtual Words': Strange Things Happen When Words Collide -- Online and In My Mind
The barrage of new words spawned by the Internet can make anyone feel like a grumpy old man, ineffectively ranting at these young steampunks to get off our damn cyberlawn. That’s where Virtual Words by Wired magazine columnist Jonathon Keats comes in.
Wednesday, September 15 2010
To Kill a King 'Assassination: A History of Political Murder'
The logic of the act seems simple: kill the head and the body will die. Yet whether perpetrated by lone kooks, G-men or secret cabals, the blowback caused by a successful assassination can be intense and uncontainable.
Tuesday, July 6 2010
Unlikely Allies: How Not to Run a Revolution
A wily, cross-dressing Dragoon captain, a spiteful American land speculator, a few dozen British spies, a crazy Scottish arsonist and the absurdities of French aristocracy -- this makes for a great historical tale.
Friday, May 28 2010
This Film Noir Encyclopedia Pulls Noir from the Shadows
Film noir distills postwar anxiety into an existential cocktail that can still induce the spins, and this encyclopedic text, updated from previous editions, is a great place to start drinking.
Monday, May 10 2010
Black Sabbath's Old Riffs Sound Much More Evil Than Their Contemporaries'
Black Sabbath invented metal. There was no metal, and then there was Sabbath, and now there is metal. If you need more proof than that, it can be found in this overly-academic book.
