The Chicago Sun-Times, a Tumblr, and the Thoughts of A Wannabe Photog
Last week the Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire photography staff. Now the Sun is in the process of “training” reporters to shoot with iPhones. Whether this is the future of journalism or just a sign of another great American paper in decline, no one knows for sure. Perhaps the best thing to come out [...]
Fire in Istanbul, Rain in Vienna: An Inside look at Unrest in Turkey
This protest, in its rapid expansion, has grown to defy any specific cause. A list of several might do the job: A park under peril from construction, dead protesters – or rumors of dead protesters – and police brutality in general, especially after the extreme violence of the May Day gatherings. Then there’s Prime Minister Erdogan’s [...]
The Cuban Doctor and His American Taxi
I’ve been to Cuba three times. On each trip I planned to visit the island from one end to the other, but the attraction of Havana always ended up putting pay to such plans. Even so, I still made it to Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Viñales Valley, Cayo Largo and Varadero. Arriving in Havana can mark visitors [...]
An Anarchist Outsider Amongst Türkiye Komünists
Istanbul exists separate from Europe and Asia. From Tophane, where the Bosphorous meets the Mediterranean, or the Eurocentric streets of Taksim, it’s easy to find oneself staring at the horizon from a roof terrace, ringed by fresh skyscrapers and the lofty spires of mosques as the evening prayer surrounds you. The calls are dissimilar and [...]
Are We There Yet? A Reading of Paul Legault
Near the end of his prescient 1990 essay, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” David Foster Wallace discusses who the new “real rebels” of American fiction will be after postmodernism, and what their writing will look like, speculating that, “The new rebels might be the ones willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, [...]
Chanté, You Stay: Pride in the LBC
Sunday’s Pride parade demonstrated the fact that Long Beach is truly one of the most diverse cities in the world. All colors of the rainbow were beaming as they took to the streets. The Dikes on Bikes roared by, fists raised in the air. Gay veterans marched in step honoring the country they served, as [...]
Help Us Tell The Stories of Syrian Refugees
Everyday nearly 2,000 Syrians enter Jordan to escape the brutal civil war. With your help I plan to travel to the Syria/Jordan border this summer to document their stories. (for more information about my project click here). My colleague Jordan Hattar and I will be blogging daily at Bold Type, and our work will be featured in any publications interested in [...]
Honor Students Treated Like Criminals
For more information on students like these and this film, go to: Ilegalmovie.org
Neil deGrasse Tyson Says The US Has Stopped Dreaming
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that without better funding for NASA the imagination and technological future of the United States is in jeopardy. What do you think? Part 2.
Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking
Amanda Palmer made some waves with her talk at TED 2013. The big controversy: she explained that the key to getting people to pay for something the can get for free is simple – all you have to do is ask them. The big idea of her presentation is that superstardom has been a relatively new way of life [...]
Oscar Pistorius and Journalism by Archetype
Now that Oscar Pistorius has been charged with the murder of his ‘model girlfriend’ Reeva Steenkamp, the appellation given him, Blade Runner, is too ironic for good taste. The crass mythic characterization of Pistorius as ‘the Bionic Man’ and Nike’s ‘Bullet in the Chamber’ and now, according to some very unpleasant Internet mythography, as ‘the [...]
Big Data And Why Spielberg Don’t Know Dick
A problem with philosophically charged reviews of sci-fi films is that they often treat technology as either an extension of an ancient question or secondary to the quandary at hand. Upon a recent viewing of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian thriller Minority Report, based on the Philip K. Dick short story, my online hunt for a review venturing beyond [...]
Should You Quit Smoking For the New Year? Bertrand Russell Claims Smoking Saved His Life.
A father of modern logic, Bertrand Russell humorously attributes surviving a plane crash to smoking. The morals of this story 1.) A New Year’s resolution to give up your vices could kill you. 2.) Smoking on planes saves lives. 3.) When a logician makes an illogical statement he’s trying to be a comedian.
Best Republican Facebook Freak Outs From Last Night’s Election
Once it was announced that Obama won the election Facebook was flooded with posts from crazy Republicans freaking out about the coming apocalypse. Here are just a few of the glorious ones we stumbled across… It must be a cold day in hell. “Now you know why Biden had that Silly grin.” Well yes, but [...]
The Dismantling of David Mamet
“Please remember that we have the secret ballot and, should you, on reflection, vote in secret for a candidate you would not endorse in public, you would not be alone.” – David Mamet So ends playwright and filmmaker David Mamet’s opinion piece “A Note To A Stiff-Necked People” published this month by Jewish Journal. Whatever [...]
Who Won Last Night’s Debate – Before It Happened?
Jimmy Kimmel’s crew hit the streets a few hours before the debate with the question, “who won last night’s debate?” What they found: much like Mitt Romney, uninformed citizens are completely comfortable lying their asses off on national television.
Treme’s New Character Based on A. C.Thompson and his Invistigative Story: Katrina’s Hidden Race War
Tonight’s season premiere of Treme, written by David Simon and Anthony Bourdain, featured a new character based on Pro Publica journalist A.C. Thompson. In 2009 Thompson published an investigative story in The Nation on police officers who where ordered to shoot looters. In the wake of Katrina officers not only opened fire killing unarmed civilians in [...]
Woody Allen Q & A with William F. Buckley
December 27th, 1967, Woody Allen hosted a televised variety show titled “Kraft Music Hall: Woody Allen looks at 1967″‘ Despite having little creative control over the content of the sketches, hilariousness ensues as conservative intellectual Buckley sits down with Allen to field questions from the audience. Allen’s response to Israel giving back the West Bank [...]
Mitt Romney sits down with a veteran and loses a vote
If you have yet to see this video, watch it now.
Recipe for an Ayn Rand Novel
While digging deep in the back of a kitchen cupboard I found the recipe for an Ayn Rand novel: In a large mixing bowl add a dash of pseudo-plot, preferably with the seeds removed as to cut down on the spicy aftertaste, to a cup of utopian daydream. Pour into a large skillet. At a [...]
When Vaccination Backfires
An acquaintance of mine, lets call her Ruth, has been saturating my Facebook ‘news feed’ with pictures of her child. It started slowly. Photos of backpacking trips with her future husband and nights out at the bar, turned into pictures of a bridal party and a recently purchased home. Overnight a henna painted belly and [...]
Gore Vidal’s Wittiest TV Appearances
Gore Vidal once said, “I never miss an opportunity to have sex or appear on television.” Before apathy and old age beseeched the once virile Vidal, he didn’t. His appearances along side William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer are legendary. His cantankerous charm and acerbic wit led Johnny Carson to offer him a spot as a guest host of “The Tonight [...]
Fran Lebowitz is New York: Watch her takedown Bloomberg and NYU
The always insightful and righteously pissed off Fran Lebowitz takes down Michael Bloomberg, NYU, and all the greedy bastards gentrifying New York. Lebowitz’s passionate rant has been brought on by NYU’s plan to construct four new buildings in Greenwich Village creating six city blocks (1.6 million square feet) of massive concrete structures. The Village is one of the rare [...]
Get Jiro! Anthony Bourdain at SDCC
Noted chef, author, and world traveler Anthony Bourdain has finally released his graphic novel “Get Jiro!” Vibrantly illustrated by Langdon Foss and José Villarrubia, “Get Jiro!” features a raging sushi chef in a near-future Los Angeles who casually slashes and decapitates militant vegans and soy sauce slathering sushi noobs. Besides his two hit shows “No [...]
Return to the Bayshore Mall
Two weeks after I wrote “Death Stalks The Bayshore Mall,” Wal-Mart opened, and the North Coast Journal sent me back to see if anything had changed… “AFTER WAL-MART“
More Meth at the Mall
One week after “Death Stalks the Bayshore Mall“ From the Eureka Police Dept: On 06/07/12, at about 12:30 PM, the Eureka Police Department’s Problem Oriented Policing Unit (POP) served a search warrant at a motor home parked on a property off Bayshore Way, Eureka (1200 block of Bayshore Way adjacent to the mall). The warrant [...]
Death Stalks The Bayshore Mall
This afternoon Eureka California’s Bayshore Mall is bathed in a hue of desperation and ennui that no amount of sunlight pouring through skylights can brighten. More than half the storefronts are vacant. Shoppers are scarce. Roof tiles are dangling. Employees are daydreaming. Sales are dwindling. With many corporate stores going bankrupt or leaving the mall [...]
Paul Fussell (1924-2012): Excerpt From ‘Wartime’
Paul Fussell, literary scholar, professor, and author of many works, most notably his book on World War I ”The Great War and Modern Memory,” died Wednesday morning at the age of 88. A veteran of World War II, Fussell tackled the absurdity of war romanticization and journalistic censorship with a keen experiential and literary eye. This unsettling and brilliant excerpt [...]
Congregation Defends Pastor’s Call to Torture and Kill ‘Queers’
The bigoted, bloated, vile pastor of Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina, Charles Worley, is proof that you can get away with saying and doing the most heinous things if you just claim it’s in your holy book. In fact, like Worley, anyone who wants to shackle their leadership to a religious intolerance may be able to [...]
North Korea’s Official Tourism Website
Ready to travel to the land where Christopher Hitchens said you can read the Pyongyang Times through the soup, the tea, or the coffee? Well, you can. North Korea has added a tourism portion to its official website. Time to take that romantic getaway you’ve been dreaming about and go see the monuments celebrating the “people who [...]
Contraception, Historical Amnesia, and a Call for Reproductive Justice
As the 2012 GOP presidential primary draws closer to selecting a nominee for the general election, the topic of women’s reproductive rights is quickly becoming a central focus of the discourse regarding social issues in America today. Indeed, legislation introduced at the state level that restricts access to abortion increased 42% in 2011 from the [...]
Lifetree Cafe: The Rise of Atheism
Earth tones of tan and green, dark wood tables, the fragrant welcoming of coffee and cupcakes, such familiarities would lead any unsuspecting being to jam a knuckle in their eye to wipe away the crusty residue of sleep and prod any recollection of deliberately entering a Starbucks. But where is the barista with the flat-ironed [...]
Video: Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011
The day Christopher Hitchens passed away I received a considerable amount of calls and emails offering condolences. It was a bit odd considering that I never knew the man though, admittedly, I do have an entire shelf dedicated to his work. That said, the internet has been flooded with people both mourning his death and taking the opportunity to bash him [...]
Occupy Art
“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” – Henri Matisse Every cultural movement leaves in its wake a sea of art. Over the past two months the Occupy Movement has not only brought the world some stunning photos, it has inspired quite an array of posters, prints, and paintings. Although many [...]
Appropriation of an Occupation
Corporate appropriation. It happens to every subculture, movement, and edifying idea in America. This time the corporate entity forging to capitalize is Viacom’s MTV and their new product is Occupy Wall Street. MTV’s not the first to capitalize off of OWS. Shortly after the occupation began several venders set up shop in Liberty Square. Some [...]
Crowdsourcing a Constitution
Iceland is rewriting its constitution through 21st century methods — social media. Last year Iceland elected 25 people to sit on a constitutional council. Upon meeting, the council opened the process to the nation’s 320,000 citizens via a website, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Being that over two thirds of Icelanders are on Facebook, most citizens can [...]
Canonizing the Corpse
Pope John Paul the second was shot on Wednesday, May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square at Vatican City. He was swiftly taken to AgostinoGemelli University Polyclinic for medical attention. Upon arrival the skilled physicians initiated five hours of emergency intestinal surgery, which required transfusions and a temporary colostomy. Once stabilized, he decreed that he [...]
Thinking Outside The Bun
Is it the way they end “why pay more” with an exclamation point instead of a question mark? Is it the multiplicity of the Spork? I’m not sure. I’m not sure why I’m willing to drive for at least twenty minutes — each direction — past a dozen or so family owned Mexican restaurants, past the [...]
Books: Foreshadow of the Singularity?
“The enlightenment has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment of possibly going beyond them.” – Michel Foucault ENTER EMBEDDED SYSTEMS [...]
How I Identify, Not My Identity
“I’m gay.” It’s hard for me to think of a phrase that carries more undeserved weight of emotions. After all, the first thing so many people think of is a man. That, in and of itself is rather unfair. For me, I will always think of when I was fourteen and I stumbled upon an [...]
Haggard’s Heuristics
Colorado Springs, CO –- As Pastor Ted Haggard embraced me a broad smile stretched across his face. With a New Year blessing he welcomed me to his recently founded fellowship, St. James Church. Conversation amidst the nearly three-hundred parishioners was filling the cafeteria at Timberview Middle School as Haggard and his wife Gayle greeted everyone [...]
