And now, because even total feebs, geeks, nerds, dweebs, social retards and LOSERS need to laugh at someone, I call your attention to Lisa Katayama's article in yesterday's (Sunday, 26 July) New York Times Magazine, "Love in 2-D," which tells about the fad sweeping Japan's largely male otaku (often translated as "fanboy") population: body pillows ( Read more... )

Last week a guy in my department, who comes from Africa, gave me a mix CD, as we'd been talking about some "world music" artists (Cheb Khaled, Rachid Taha, Oliver Mtukudzi, Thomas Mapfumo, Kanda Bongo Man, etc.); he said that it there was some music by artists from his country on it ( Read more... )

Just read a very puzzling item in the April 2009 (Vol. 318, No. 1907) issue of Harper's Magazine, in its "Findings" feature, wherein the editors offer tidbits of the most interesting articles from various scientific and technical journals from the previous month:

"In western Iran, the growing popularity of taqaandan, a pastime in which the top ( Read more... )

1. After listening to about 20 mins. of Peter Bogdanovich's commentary track on the DVD of The Lady From Shanghai, I found out that the hall of mirrors sequence wasn't supposed to have any music (Orson Welles was apparently quite PO'ed at the composer that Columbia stuck him with), and that the funhouse sequence that briefly preceded it was ( Read more... )

While I have to give a tip o' the tam-o'-shanter to Matthew Polly, who, in a throwaway line in the first part of his travel piece on St. Petersburg, Russia in Slate, said, "Beyoncé, if you were a boy, I'd be a pedophile," I'm still feeling something like a night stroller passing by a huge, rambunctious house party ( Read more... )

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I saw the Coen Brothers' latest movie, Burn After Reading (which opened on Friday, 12 September) this past Friday (19 September) at a midnight showing. There were maybe 7 or 8 other people besides me in the theatre, although, to be fair, the showing immediately preceding it appeared to be filled to near capacity ( Read more... )

I've been listening to KEXP again, and have heard a few cuts off of the new album from My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges. One track I'm liking more than not is "Librarian," a kind of shoe-gazer erotic love ballad.

EXCEPT for the fact that the chorus goes, in part, "Take off those glasses / And let down your hair / For me."

Are.

They.

CRAZY?!? ( Read more... )

GET BIG WITH BRUNO!

( Read more... )

OR: "Who's your baby-daddy?"

This past Tuesday (20 May), CBC Radio One's Sounds Like Canada aired a segment in which show host Shelagh Rogers interviewed the Mohawk-Canadian athlete Waneek Horn-Miller, who first landed in the national spotlight thanks to having been almost fatally stabbed during the Oka Crisis of 1990, when she was participating ( Read more... )