It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
Pro wrestling’s seen a lot of unusual venues — Pyongyang comes to mind. But I never thought I’d hear about a lucha libre match held at the Tate Gallery. That’s surreal above and beyond the call of duty. The wrestlers are the real deal, too; could be a fun little match.
The artist, Carlos Amorales, apparently uses a lot of lucha libre in his work. I found a few scraps of info (Quicktime video) on him. Pomopro wrestling.
Via Die Puny Humans, The 25 Best American Comic Book Covers. Also includes the 12 worst. Beautiful stuff.
I finally got around to reading David Neiwert’s book on the Patriot Movement, In God’s Country. I’d expected it to be scholarly, given the publisher, but it turned out to be a pretty journalistic work. I suppose that’s not surprising, given that Neiwert’s a journalist.
Anyhow, it makes for a really accessible read. The bulk of the book is comprised of stories about Patriot Movement members of various stripes in the Pacific Northwest, from Oregon to Idaho. Neiwert is from the area, which makes a big difference. It’s never a book by some outsider telling stories about the rural whackos. Rather, it’s a book by a guy who knows what the area is like, and knows what independent-minded people are like, and can explain what’s different about the extremists who’ve come to infest the area. He speaks with an authority that (say) an East Coast journalist would lack.
The book also covers the history of the movement in the Northwest, going back to the Silver Shirts and beyond. Plenty of good context for what’s happened more recently. He talks about Ruby Ridge, Bo Gritz, and plenty of lesser-known incidents and people. There are no grand conclusions or predictions; there’s just a picture of what’s going on, some reasons why, and some questions that can’t yet be answered.
What’s missing: I’d have liked to have seen more about the links between the Patriots and the Christian Identity movement. He notes that many Patriots are Christian Identity believers, but I’d like to have seen more on financial connections and so forth. (Bonus points for linking in Scaife and Coors.) Admittedly, it might have diluted the focus of the book, but I’m still curious. I know a lot more than I did about specific instances of the Patriot Movement but I don’t know enough about the structure behind the structure. Maybe that’s another book.
Still, it’s very readable and very informative, and I’ll probably give away a few copies for Christmas this year. If you don’t really know what the Patriot Movement is beyond “those militia weirdos,” this is a book you ought to read.
Here and there, I’ve seen some snide commentary about Madonna and copyright, thanks to this article. Madonna’s been putting out decoy MP3s on the filesharing systems lately. Wendy Seltzer argues that since trademarks are intended to “protect consumers by defending a source’s association with quality goods and services,” Madonna may be diluting her own trademark by associating “Madonna” with the decoy files.
Um, yeah. So if the next Matrix flick really sucks, Joel Silver will lose the trademark on “Matrix” as it applies to movies? Does Garth Brooks know that putting out crap albums will make it impossible for him to keep his name trademarked?
There are times when we arrogant geeks should just get over ourselves, and this is one of those times.
The Hugo nominations are out. Pretty classy field this year. I’d have to choose The Scar for best novel, but it’s a close call over Bones of the Earth, and I kind of think the latter will win. Michael Swanwick has three other nominations — could be a very good year for him.
Oddly, the Sci Fi Wire list is different. They have “Liking What You See: A Documentary” (by Ted Chiang) in the Best Novelette category instead of “Madonna of the Maquiladora”, by Gregory Frost. Normally I’d believe Locus, but Ted Chiang not getting nominated seems so unlikely.
I didn’t think much about the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt” (Quicktime video) when I heard about it. I figured it’d be a kind of novelty thing, like most of the aging star covering once-edgy alternative music songs are.
OK, I was wrong. It’s amazing. Go watch the video. Wow.
Whoops, I forgot to natter on about Bend It Like Beckham. Well, let me fix that.
It’s a cute little romantic comedy about a cute Sikh lass who wants nothing more than to become a football player. (It’s British, so not the NFL.) There’s love, there’s an improbably attractive football coach, and there’s a remarkably sexy best pal. Family concerns get in the way of our heroine’s needs but all is resolved in the end. I’d call it a sterling example of the genre and recommend it.
My brother’s tres hip internationally acclaimed (really!) design group, Release1 (warning: Flash site, but it’s cool, and it’s my family, so don’t complain), opened the McDonald’s Project tonight. I just got back. Awesome opening — the place was packed, quite literally. There was a line of people outside waiting for people to leave, cause the gallery was over capacity. It’s down at the Berwick Research Project, in Boston, and runs through next weekend. It’ll be in New York in August.
It’s cool stuff. The intention is not culturejamming, although there’s a bit of that — it’s a light-hearted look at ways to use the McDonald’s brand. I’d recommend going on down and taking a look if you’re in Boston.
Rules of Attraction rocked; thought you’d like to know.
Nah, really. It’s glossy and terribly calculated, but it’s also stark and unflinching, and I like that in a movie. The plot isn’t exactly much but you wouldn’t complain if it was a romance with this little plot. Think of this as the anti-romance. Come to think of it, pair it off with The Talented Mr. Ripley and maybe Igby Goes Down and you’ve got yourself a nice thematic trilogy.
Basically: three students at Bennington College (I mean Camden College, not really based on Bennington, really) have varying degrees of unrequited love slash lust for one another, and matters proceed poorly because what do college students know about healthy relationships? The students are played by the cream of the WB teen drama crop, and they do a surprisingly good job. The roles are the kinds of roles you expect to see Ryan Phillipe playing, except these guys do it better and with real energy. Some of the directorial tricks fall flat, but some are perfect. (That energy thing again.) Watch for the split screen.
For the trainspotters, I will note that a) the real Bennington does not have a cheap Burning Man ripoff party, and b) the real Dress To Get Laid party wasn’t that wild the one time I made it up there. Then again, I’d have been one of the sneered at Ivy League interlopers, so maybe I missed the real fun. But that’s not the point, really; Rules takes place in the hyperreal. Inhale.
I watched a couple of episodes of CSI over the weekend. Wow. Now, that’s what I call a cop show for the new millenium.
It’s really one of the most overinflated things I’ve ever seen on television. Every single image is saturated with color, usually blues; the cast is shot so as to be both gritty and polished at the same time. It is, in fact, a pretty good embodiment of Vegas. The show doesn’t take place on the strip, but the design ethos is still very Vegasesque.
The dialogue, likewise, is as stylized as it comes. “There is no room for subjectivity in this department.” “We’re just a bunch of kids that are getting paid to work on puzzles. Sometimes there’s a piece that’s missing; sometimes, we solve it in one night.” “People leave us clues, Nick. They speak to us clues in thousands of different ways. It’s our job to make sure we’ve heard everything they’ve said.” All utterly deadpan. These guys talk in Capital Letters, cause they do a Very Important Job.
The terrifying thing is, I kind of liked it. Kind of. I mean, it’s a total Bruckheimer production in all ways, but if you just pretend that it takes place in a hyperreal Morrisonian world it’s pretty entertaining. The science is OK, even though no police department in the country has as much gear as these guys, and the mysteries are generally cute.
Come to think of it, it’s almost the television equivalent of those old Gardener Fox Flash stories. The ones with the science facts in every issue. Not altogether surprising, since Barry Allen was after all a police scientist. Going with the Morrison theme, one might well remember that those Flash facts were one of the things Morrison loved about Flash, and were in fact one of the reasons he did a 12 issue run on the book. So there you have it: Flash, the very first CSI.
