Friday, April 28 2006
Death and Music
As my eyes locked on that stark casket, my mind tripped out. The cognitive dissonance of it all shut me down until they played Aunt Shirley's 'Here's to Life'.
Thursday, April 27 2006
Slowing Our Global Roll
What we have on the Internet at the moment is a global village with some dodgy side streets. Some international interests are advocating new 'construction', if you will -- using materials that are more to their liking.
Wednesday, April 26 2006
One-Potata, Two-Potata: The (Million) Dollar Logic of the NFL Draft
The draft, for all its baroque embellishment and glitz, essentially replays the same drama of bygone sandlot days.
Tuesday, April 25 2006
In Sickness and in Health
In Well, Lisa Kron asks, what is the difference between the healthy and the ill? And also, why does my mom keep fucking up my play?
Swimming Home
Sometimes, the written word can be far more evocative than the most memorable motion picture. Such is the case with John Cheever's classic short story about alienation amongst the sun-drenched swimming pools of suburbia.
Monday, April 24 2006
Why We Shouldn’t Bury Bonds
Like American society itself, baseball is governed by a win-at-all costs mentality that doesn't discourage cheating -- only getting caught.
Thursday, April 20 2006
On the Necessity of Listening As Confrontation
How can you possibly know why you 'like' something you assume you like unless you confront that which you have dismissed? Jenkins discusses the importance of spending time with the music that immediately displeases us.
Designs on Democracy
On The Great British Design Quest a new sort of made-for-TV entertainment/culture show, the best that Britain has to offer is at the mercy of the masses.
Wednesday, April 19 2006
Batman, Africans, and the Pope’s Superheroics
Bandes Dessinées (BDs, or drawn strips, bound in hardcover 'albums'), a Franco-Belgian cross between comics and graphic novels, are crazily popular in Paris.
Supercalifuckthesystemexpialidocious
Desperate for a symbol other than Fight Club's Tyler Durden to help 'realign your perceptions' on life? Look no further than Walt Disney's 1964 family classic, and a certain subversive nanny who understands rebellion all too well.
Tuesday, April 18 2006
The Learning Curve
Costambeys-Kempczynski imagines a French version of The Apprentice. The day after the first episode is aired, French employees would stand around the coffee machine, point at each other, and shout 'Vous êtes muté!'; that is, 'You're Transferred!'.
Monday, April 17 2006
The Time to Kill Is Now!
The least poetic of metal bands, Cannibal Corpse has gone to disturbing lengths to make gruesomeness its cold, calculated calling card.
Thursday, April 13 2006
The Attention Economy
Amatuer online blogs and MySpace pages give currency to a growing 'attention economy', wherein the most successful have garnered the most flattering friends - and advertisers.
Wednesday, April 12 2006
The Mid-Level Movie Star’s Guide to Staying That Way
Tired of striving for the A-List and failing? This month's insider look at the industry offers up seven lessons guaranteed to help the overreaching actor maintain his b-level mediocrity.
Tuesday, April 11 2006
An Open Letter From Dave Chappelle to His White Fans
Hey, white folks! Think the current king of racially reactive comedy enjoys your fawning fandom? Not according to this little heartbreaker.
Friday, April 7 2006
Yar Matey! Sailing the Pirate-infested Seas of Beijing’s CD Shops, or: Piracy: A Defence
The Beijing music-buying experience is daunting and disorienting, rife with clogged cardboard boxes, cut-outs, and pirated imports. In a highly censored market, the explicitly illegal discs may also be the most necessary.
Wednesday, April 5 2006
The Grindhouse’s Greatest Hits
It's time to slap another nickel in the naughty jukebox as this month's look at outsider cinema celebrates the music that made the exploitation genre a decidedly different kind of 'aural' experience.
Tuesday, April 4 2006
Am I Not a Role Model? Looking Back and Up to Kirby Puckett
Puckett made his team a winner and, by extension, made me one, too.
Monday, April 3 2006
Non-Tragic Mulatto
There is perhaps no better example of misguided melodrama than 1934/1959's Imitation of Life, and according to our cinematic scholar, no more culturally defining or disturbing character than its light-skinned, half-breed heroine.
Friday, March 31 2006
Meditations on the Festival of Mediations
The Japan Media Arts Festival succeeded in capturing the bedlam of multiplicities, the noise of creative expression, the messy complexity of negotiated meaning that is Art.
