Archive for the 'Culture' Category

Duran Duran Hussein Obama, Reptile Reptile

Bob Barr may have become Libertarian (as noted in yesterday’s entry, in lieu of a debate this week — this month’s will be on the 22nd), but Kathryn Lopez noted recently that John Taylor of Duran Duran (a band she may well like even more than I do) says he’s become pro-Obama (albeit British).
I hope […]

Faster, Pussycat! Blog! Blog!

With America’s most patriotic holiday coming this week, it seems a fitting time to note my favorite bit of dialogue from the movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Our heroines — homicidal go-go dancers — drive their cars to a rural gas station and converse about their travels:
GAS STATION ATTENDANT (STARING AT TURA SATANA’S IMPRESSIVE CLEAVAGE): Now […]

Tin Machine, Time Machine

Heading to New Hampshire to see college pals and their spouses tomorrow naturally turns a man’s thoughts to the music of his college years — and so it strikes me that everything that was new then is around twenty years old now. Take the first Tin Machine album, for example, with the song “Under […]

Is America Ready — for a Teenage President?

Today brings the second issue of Final Crisis, a DC Comics series partly about DC’s many parallel universes. But does one of the universes in their multiverse (as currently depicted) contain the Earth on which their early-70s comic book Prez took place? That was the all-too-plausible series about the then-new development of eighteen-year-olds […]

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night, and the White Witch (or Is That White Queen?)

Since I couldn’t quite fit a trip to Bali with a group of very attractive and warm-hearted people into my schedule last month, I was very gratified and honored by some info from the two people at the heart of the trip, Sandy Partowidjojo and Nicole Partowidjojo — formerly Nicole Beaver, who participated in my […]

Shrugged, Unwanted — UPDATED

I’m about to head off to an advance screening of the likely-mediocre comic-book-based movie Wanted (not that I’m ungrateful for the opportunity), but I have bad Angelina Jolie-related news (which will greatly disappoint my fellow libertarian Katherine Taylor, who likes Jolie so much she still speaks fondly of Tomb Raider — not that I’m knocking […]

If It’s Sunday, It’s Satan

One week ago, I heard punk singer Tibbie X read poetry at a gathering organized by poet Michael Graves — but not the architect Michael Graves, nor the Misfits singer (and Republican) Michael Graves, though it’d certainly be cool if they were all the same person.
•But perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was […]

In Media Res –

– all the more thrilling for seeming to start in the middle, chaos and conflict already in full bloom! It often works in telling stories. It has become almost a cliche in popular history books — start with some poignant, reflective moment late in [whoever]’s career and then flash back to tell us […]

Dystopia Gallery: Louisiana, Brown U., New Hampshire, and BioShock

I. I have but dim memories from Brown of Bobby Jindal, whose consideration for McCain’s v.p. slot led to Jindal being an answer at the Jen Dziura/Michael Malice-hosted trivia contest last week. Not everyone in the crowd yet knew his name, which may not be good news for him but helped me score […]

Meanwhile, in Europe…

Emir Kusturica’s “Pitbull Terrier.”

More Then-vs.-Now Rock n’ Roll

Some glimpses of rock across the ages:
•I mentioned Meat Loaf yesterday, and speaking of rockstar weight-gain, here’s Ann Wilson with sister Nancy in the 70s and three decades later (here looking better than she sometimes does, I think), again with Nancy. One half of Heart, still fabulous, the other, a living simulacrum of […]

Total Eclipse of Subtlety

It’s all connected: I think we knew songwriter/producer Jim Steinman’s songs (such as Meatloaf’s best-known stuff) are Wagnerian. What I didn’t realize is that he got his start in college actually writing an updated version of a Wagner opera. Since then, his stuff has been distinctive enough that I correctly guessed the man […]

The Crisis Continues

This has to be some sort of record for time elapsed before revising old DC Comics stories: Grant Morrison declares last month’s finales of Death of the New Gods and Countdown to Final Crisis “apocryphal” — and I don’t blame him. As I said in an earlier entry, he clearly wrote his stuff first, […]

Laugh at Hillary Clinton While There’s Still Time

With this week being the time when Democratic leaders — crucially, leaders other than Hillary Clinton — have said people should make up their minds between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, we may not have HRC to kick around much longer. That’s why I’m wearing my anti-Hillary t-shirt (“Re-Defeat Communism [in] 2008”) at every […]

Epilogue to the Month of the Nerd: Final Crisis

Just as nerds typically juggle several mythologies in their heads — Marvel, animean, Narnian, UFOlogical, to take this month’s four big filmic examples — any fantasy universe with multiple writers is likely to show many mythological influences. Grant Morrison went a step further with the first issue of the comic book Final Crisis, though, […]