I watched Hustle and Flow last night, and the quality of that film somehow doubled the disappointment I felt when watching Black Snake Moan. I didn’t exactly expect Black Snake Moan to be, you know, good, but I thought I could be some sort of interesting post-exploitation thing. It was not. Watching Hustle really drove […]
The above is a video I have cited as an example of a pre-internet viral video. This brief news report on what happened when a dead whale was blasted as a means of removing it from a public beach has, for years, circulated offline via video and rumor. Now, in the era of digital, it’s […]
The results of a study of more than 1,000 of the brightest five per cent of young people will come as relief to parents whose offspring, usually long-haired, are devotees of Iron Maiden, AC/DC and their musical descendants.
Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent “metalheads” are […]
Last night, I got to see a new print of The Holy Mountain (1973). The director of the film, Alejandro Jodorowsky, has a cult following and actually performed the marriage of Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Tees. Jodorowsky once said that he wants from film what most people want from drugs, and I’ll buy that. […]
The above is 30 minutes of openings for cartoons from the ’80s spliced together into one overwhelming montage. If there’s one lesson that can be taken from this, it’s that synthesizers are awesome. While I had never seen a good number of these, I have fond memories of a number of them. My favorite […]
The above is Joe Rogan taking Carlos Mencia to task for stealing other comics’ jokes. Even worse than the joke stealing, though, is the fact that Mencia really just isn’t very funny. His act is more “racist” than “racial,” and his humor about women is of the cheapest, sexist brand. Dr. Jorge Mariscal, writing during […]
May 5 is 2007’s Free Comic Book Day. Free Comic Book Day is more or less exactly what it sounds like — a day on which comic book stores let you come in and pick up (for free) special titles released for the occasion. Obviously it’s still a ways off, but in the meantime, the […]
I forgot to mention that I attended the always excellent Flatstock on Saturday. The show hits Austin during SXSW every other year, and I’ve picked up a few beautiful things there over the years. Several have been given as gifts, but I’ve obtained some art of my very own. I’m particularly partial to pieces […]
I swung by the Vice party last night, which had been last-minute moved to the Elk’s Lodge, which by this point in the week has a distinctive post-party odor. I’m sure it got all crazy and “Girls Gone Wild” later in the night, but when I got there, it was mostly just an orgy of […]
The above is a fabulous clip of John Waters telling theatergoers not to smoke during the movie. I have a deep, unshakable love of John Waters. This is in part because in high school, a time when many people turn to musical subgenres whose practitioners have become critical successes and get called “seminal” all the […]