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, [...]
The Witch Is Dead
The hag has been put in hagiography. U.S. coverage of the death of Margaret Thatcher has been uniformly fawning, revisionist drool. I awoke to the news this morning, accompanied by Joe Scarborough’s fatuous and specious claims that anti-Thatcher sentiment was, and is something that could be confined to his classist idea of ‘the North’ of [...]
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.
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 [...]
McNeill and Burroughs: Ah Pook Is Here
OBSERVED WHILE FALLING: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me’ & THE LOST ART OF AH POOK IS HERE: Images From The Graphic Novel’ by Malcolm McNeill; Fantagraphics, November 2012. William S. Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, inaugural novel of what would become his “Nova Trilogy” (also including The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express) arrived on [...]
Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s Film About US Covert Warfare
Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter for the Nation and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful mercenary Army, has teamed up with director Rick Rowley for a new documentary called “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield,” which is being screened this weekend at the Sundance film festival. The film follows Scahill as he [...]
ANGELA CARTER’S THE PASSION OF NEW EVE
Angela Carter’s anti-mythic The Passion of New Eve (1977) is a novel that, for me, resides in easy company with Jean-Luc Godard’s new wave Weekend (1967) and Derek Jarman’s post-punk Jubilee (1978). Visually, with its hysterical sexually dimorphic revolutionaries, graffiti, machine guns, dystopian landscapes, surgical Sadomasochism and improvised guerrilla skirmishes The Passion of New Eve [...]
Brilliant New Cover Art For Orwell’s 1984
The cover art for Penguin’s latest edition of George Orwell’s classic dystopian tale is fantastic! Designer David Pearson said that the design went through numerous iterations as to, “Establish just the right amount of print obliteration. Eventually we settled on printing and debossing, as per the Great Ideas series [Why I Write shown, above], with the [...]
Short Documentary: Shteyngart Blurbs
First a tumblr dedicated to author Gary Shtengart’s blurbs, and now this short documentary by Edward Champion and narrated by Jonathan Aimes, makes it official - Gary Shteyngart is a blurb whore. Shteyngart has gone so far as to blurb his blurbs on Twitter. In fact, he blurbed this documentary:
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.
Lords of Business, Gods of Rape
Everyday you’re bound to hear someone make an asinine comment or say something vilely stupid, but no one does so with the hubris and particular grace of today’s GOP candidates – especially when talking about rape. They excel at the absurd, exclaiming such inanities as exemplary of exceptional leadership, valor, and public policy; these are [...]
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 [...]
Jones the Cat and the Litigation of ‘Alien’ and ‘The Terminator’
Of all the enigmas of Ridley Scott’s magnificent film Alien (1979), one with the capacity to genuinely cause fans and critics to sink into dejected catalepsy or fevered rage is the presence aboard the space vessel Nostromo – and the narrative consequences of – Jones the cat. My purpose here is to close decades of [...]
A Romney Administration Would Have No Democracy On PBS
Mitt Romney wants to end funding for PBS and NPR. Besides all of the educational programs which help close the gap in literary skills and elementary mathematics for low-income kids, countless specials such as The United States of Poetry, which aired this spoken word rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy,” would risk never being made. This [...]
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 [...]
Dead Voters
Let us be clear: in the United States, the squalid intimidations and Kafka-esque bureaucratic disenfranchisement surrounding the 2012 Presidential Election demand the presence of independent electoral monitors. The United States is witnessing a systematic attempt by right wing and Republican operatives to disenfranchise millions of its citizens under the pretense of preventing the propaganda phantom [...]
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 [...]
The Other Video Depicting Islam That Should Have Your Attention
There seems little challenge to the claims that what provoked the attacks on the US Embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, killing US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three of his staff members, was an angry mob incensed by a trailer for an obscurely made film, Innocence of Muslims. The 14-minute long video depicting the [...]
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 [...]
The Late David Rakoff’s “Christmas Freud”
After a long battle with cancer writer David Rakoff has passed away at the age of 47. His brillant, humorous and sincere storytelling will be greatly missed. Here he is on This American Life reading a story about being Sigmund Freud in the Christmas window display of a Barney’s department store. This episode starts with David [...]
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 [...]
No Sex Please, We’re Nerds: The Gernsback Continuum and the Neutering of Science Fiction
The sexual repression of science fiction began in what is now Tribeca, New York. More precisely: the wormhole, the vortex of this Bermuda Triangle of missing sex was located at 53 Park Place, New York, NY, the editorial address of Hugo Gernsback and Dr. Thomas O’Conor Sloane. It was from this address that Gernsback launched [...]
The Libor Scandal Explained
Trying to wrap your mind around the biggest, nastiest, most disturbing banking scam of all time? To help you grasp the basics, here’s Matt Taibbi talking to Eliot Spitzer about the Libor scandal along with a graphical attempt to explain, in simple terms, what the hell happened.
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 [...]
Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’: A Personal Boycott
Although I appreciate that I will not be missed, and I may live to regret this anticipatory despair, the following states the rationale for my personal boycott of Ridley Scott’s new Alien-derived film Prometheus. According to Scott, interviewed for The Hollywood Reporter: “NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we [...]
Apple’s View of the Future Circa 1995
This promo of ‘the future’ was included in a cd demo put out by Apple CEO John Sculley in 1995. Like the creators of the pager never suspected that it would primarily be used by drug dealers, Apple failed to predict that these advancements intended for education and business would instead be used for sexting, playing Angry Birds, and [...]
Doctorow, Amis and Atwood discuss America’s Global Politics
This year’s PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature brought roughly 100 writers from 25 countries to New York. One of the most fascinating talks was with writers E.L. Doctorow (Homer & Langley, Ragtime), Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin, Year of the Flood) and Martin Amis (Money, The Pregnant Widow) regarding America and its role in global politics, something the Sunday [...]
What More to Debate?
As the 2012 GOP Primary debates come to an end, one thing is certain: The Republican Party has gone mad, frothing from every orifice, Old-Yeller-in-the-corncrib-gnashing-at-the-hand-that-feeds, mad. For the casual observer this campaign season is just like all the rest. It’s the customary chest thumping of primates asserting they’re dominance. A few debates in I was about to [...]
Kathy Acker’s 4H Club
Tattooed, mastectomized, pierced, body-built and crew cut, Kathy Acker rode her motorcycle along the wet seam of the posthuman, defying and pirating the traffic of literature in her leather jacket and sunglasses. Acker was a mythographer, rewriting the corpus of literature, rewriting the body, writing through the orgasmic body and writing on and into the [...]
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 [...]
On My Back, On A Bed — Excerpt From Hold Your Tongue
That night before my mother tried to kill herself, I sinned. For a teenage Christian girl, living at the crotch of New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle, it was the most dangerous sin of all: sex. Not real sex, but safe counterfeit sex, the kind separated by a telephone wire. In my sweet, Christian heart, [...]
Is It Cold Out Here, Or Am I Just A Woman?
Climate change? A mild winter? I’d like to propose another theory about high and low temperatures hanging around Washington, D.C. this February: Mother Nature is working her tail off to thaw the recent avalanche of anti-feminist rhetoric freezing over decades of advances in women’s rights. This is not science. I’m making a metaphor… but then again, [...]
Confessions Of A Redeemed Burroughs Addict
One of the profound ironies regarding William S. Burroughs is his facility of attracting revisionist addicts to perpetuate the Burroughs hagiography, the Burroughs product, and therefore, the Burroughs junk. I consider William Burroughs to be one of the pre-eminent writers of the mid/late twentieth century. But just as a good drinker is one who knows [...]
Podcast
We did it! We’ve successfully polluted iTunes, and thus the airwaves, with the new Bold Type Podcast. At least once a month Deric Mendes and a rotating panel of guests will be humorously discussing current events and a dedicated topic. DOWNLOAD from iTunes DOWNLOAD Sans iTunes Episode #2: JOURNALISM Deric sat down with Hank Sims (Journalist, former editor of 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 [...]
Sing About the Dark Times: Bill Ayers Interview
Every year Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn spend a couple months residing in Northern California. Their modest cabin tucked behind the Redwood Curtain has been a perfect place to escape the media frenzy stirred up during the 2008 campaign, when former Republican VP candidate turned failed reality TV star, Sarah Palin, teamed up with Fox [...]
Bill Cunningham New York
(published, Dec. 15 2011, in the North Coast Journal) It’s good to know there are people like Bill Cunningham in the world. He’s happy. He’s kind and sincere. He has built a life doing what he loves and is acknowledged internationally for it. Richard Press’ charming and emotive documentary, Bill Cunningham New York, is a beautiful [...]
Occupy Books
“The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt Roughly a couple weeks into the Occupy Wall Street protest a group of activists in Liberty [...]
Police Brutality at Occupy Cal
While peacefully exercising their constitutional rights campus police took to brutally bashing tuition paying UC Berkeley students and community members today. The protesters, despite campus policy, had established an Occupy Cal encampment on Sproul Plaza to stand in solidarity with the Occupy Movement. Like many campuses participating in Occupy Colleges much of their protest has placed focus on the privatization of educational [...]
Occupy’s Three New Fronts
One of the main criticisms of the Occupy movement, voiced by supporters and adversaries alike, is that they’ve failed to make their message clear. At first to say so seemed unjust. After all, protesters are to raise awareness to a problem not to fix it, right? Wasn’t thinking the opposite part of the delusion of the 1960′s anti-war movement? [...]
Stéphane Hessel’s Time For Outrage
As published in the North Coast Journal (OCT. 20, 2011): It’s arguably a good thing some challenges are too immense to be tackled alone. Cooperation, reciprocation and compassion – the tempered tools of our species’ survival – when wielded against seemingly insurmountable struggles, remind us of what it is to be human. At the seasoned [...]
Up With Chris Hayes
Washington D.C. editor of the Nation and frequent substitute for Rachael Maddow, Chris Hayes, finally has his own show. UP with Chris Hayes airs Saturday’s at 7 AM ET and Sunday’s at 8 AM (that’s 4 AM and 5 AM here on the west coast). Yes, it’s an insanely early time to get up just [...]
Obama, Victim or Villain?
Psychologist Drew Westen’s NY Times op-ed, “What Happened to Obama,” caused a ripple throughout the blogsphere last week, splitting many progressives into two camps prior to the Republican Iowa Caucus. Some took to Twitter and Facebook jumping on the everything-would-be-in-its-right-place-if-the-president-told-better-stories band wagon. Others clung to the idea that Obama is a mere victim of a [...]
Rove’s Brain
Published in the North Coast Journal May 5th, 2011 Barack Obama announced his reelection campaign on April 5, and within hours Karl Rove, the crafty political strategist once famously dubbed “Bush’s Brain,” was on Fox news opining on the field of Republican candidates. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was cited as a leading contender. Was there [...]
Mobile Motion Pictures Featured at the 2011 Edinburgh Film Festival
The 65th Edinburgh Film Festival, in partnership with Nokia, featured film makers who shot their films entirely on phones. Eight pocket-sized productions shot on the Nokia N8 cell phone got a big screen premiere. The beautiful short film, Splitscreen: A Love Story, featuring a split screen narrative of Paris, London and New York, stunning cinematography [...]
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 [...]
Want Domestic Auto Manufacturing? Nationalize Healthcare
In 2008 General Motors held on to the title of the chief carmaker of the world. That same year, as the US entered into a recession due to Wall Street thug’s ponzi schemes in the subprime lending housing market, the auto industry –already in two decades of steady decline – plummeted. As even monks meditating [...]
So You Want to Play Nintendo? Ok. Let’s Play!
It’s no secret to those of us addicted to the internet that our attention spans are shrinking. People can’t seem to read for as long as they used to. Teachers are struggling to retain the attention of their students. News broadcasters are trying to get shorter stories out faster at the detriment of democracy. Just [...]
Can’t Hide Yo’ Wife, Can’t Hide Yo’ Kids From… Rapture Week!
It’s rapture week and Jesus is coming for you! This Saturday, May 21st is the moment we’ve all been waiting for: THE RAPTURE! Saved Christians will be swept away, the dead will rise from the ground, and erroneous warnings of impending doom will finally come to an end. ( Impending Doom is also an apocalyptic Christian [...]
Gapminder: Global Statistics visualized
Hans Rosling presents global statistics with the gusto of a sports announcer. A statistician and medical doctor, the Swedish Rosling earned his Ph.D. in 1986 by researching a paralytic disease, Konzo, which he discovered while working as a District Medical Officer in Nacala, Mozambique. From then on he’s been fascinated with statistics and the study [...]
Do or Do Not: The Neurosky Mind Set
I’ve taken the day off to take care of the family. I just got our 3 year-old girl down for a nap (no easy task) and I notice that there’s a package for me at the door. It’s the NeuroSky MindSet. Awesome. Perfect timing, I think. Getting a free moment to do anything becomes a [...]
Revolutionary Jokers
Recent revolutionary events have shown that simplistic western perceptions of a monolithic middle east are out of date, and even the very idea of a separated and distinct east and west hold little relevance in our connected modern world. But what form does this modern revolution take? Albert Cossery’s satirical novel The Jokers, recently translated [...]
Diary: Tim Hetherington 1970 – 2011
Camera + Directed by Tim Hetherington Edit + Sound design by Magali Charrier “Diary is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to [...]
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 [...]
The Meld #1: Google Street View
The Meld: a continuous multimedia art project dependent on your participation. Meld #1: Go to Google Maps, then to street view, find a place where something in your life took place, take a selective screen capture: Mac: Command-Shift-4, then select an area. PC: go here: http://www.pcscreencapture.com/ Save it and then write 140 characters about the [...]
