People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance. -Bill Watterson Modern art is… Read More Quick Review: Velvet Buzzsaw
In History, the details are always hard to catch, yet always worth knowing. This long post at History for Atheists, worth absorbing in full, makes a number of discordant points about the Myth that the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed by a Christian mob in 390 AD, thus setting science and technology back a… Read More Myths of the Great Library
I almost wrote a whole blog post about Leaving Neverland, the new documentary about Michael Jackson accusing him of pedophilia. I didn’t. Because ultimately I decided I didn’t want to wade into that morass. I don’t know if Jackson did anything. I wasn’t there. Rumor is less than truth and accusation less than proof. He’s… Read More So Barbara Streisand is a Monster…
I like Nada Surf. They’re a band. And I like them. I own precisely one of their records, an EP. So why do I say that I like them? Honestly, it’s because I like the name. Nada. Surf. What does it mean? The absence of surfing? A specific kind of anti-surfing? The surfing of the Great Nothing?… Read More Nada Surf and the Importance of Band Names
Sometime I create music as well. I consider them sonic doodles. Learning to play an instrument or absorb music theory feels like work. Because it’s work, and with you as your own taskmaster, inevitably you will be ridiculously lenient on yourself. So creating little sonic doodles and throwing them out on to the wild free… Read More Butterfly Figure Skater: Duke Bike Rider on Soundcloud
If Rolling Stone aspired (after somewhat “underground” beginnings) to be the Rolls Royce of rock magazines, CREEM was by contrast the Volkwagen band-van: pungent with reefer, speed sweat, and last night’s groupie action. The hubris that had it self-dubbed “America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine” was strictly of a working-class, sex-drugs-and-you-know-what variety that ridiculed all… via… Read More SXSW Film Review: ‘Boy Howdy! The Story of CREEM Magazine’ — Variety
A recent viewing of the film Inherent Vice led me to try to finish The Crying of Lot 49, which I abandoned out of frustration some time ago. I’ve made a small amount of headway, but am bored again. Action is not being built. The plot is not going anywhere. The woman with the ridiculous… Read More My Pynchon Problem
Book Awards are becoming increasingly ridiculous, an extension of Twitter rhetorical battlefields with some side-talk about literature. You should read it in full, as it nicely encapsulates the descent into madness that has resulted from the beachhead politics has made into fandom and entertainment. But this in particular amused me: I’ve tried understanding American politics… Read More Sri Lankan Author Finds Himself on Nebula Ballot, Completely Baffled By American Political Discourse
James Lileks finally found a way to inculcate his classic Screeds into his regular blog, calling it the Wednesday Review of Modern Thought. This past Wednesday, he groused about the overuse of “crisis”: One of the manifestations of twitchy, sullen, self-righteous miserabilism is the desire to see every problem as a crisis, and every crisis… Read More When Everything in the Machine is a Crisis, The Crisis is What Feeds the Machine
Owen Glieberman, pondering in Variety, avoiding the point like it carries Bubonic Plague. And that’s why, more than not, I’m with Steven Spielberg on his likely proposed change to the Academy guidelines. He is not dissing what Netflix does. He is trying to isolate and hang onto the DNA of cinema — to preserve an essential definition… Read More Movies Have To Be Seen in a Movie Theater, Because Something Something Nostalgia Something Something
Content Blues 