Thankfully I live in world half ignorant of media. I miss a lot of things, occasionally I follow a thread to some discovery only to realize that only three million people watched this. Ah, so. and So it goes.
This was my experience with JFC (John From Cincinnati.) Wikipedia could fill in some of the blanks, but after my experience of “discovering” the show I didn’t want to read what other people had said about it. I had been looking for a new series to watch on DVD. I am in the middle of the (5th?) season of THE WIRE, which I love, but THE WIRE is tough for me to sustain an interest in. Why? It’s so realistic, it’s depressing. I’ve heard the authors are liberal guys, but where is the hope? Damn. It paints a picture of corruption and human frailty that makes every character an anti-hero. Bare bones comic relief. Mostly just hardcore living in a world of greed, betrayal and failure. It’s just something I’m always prepared to watch and call it fun.
I’m waiting for the next season of BREAKING BAD to come out on DVD, as it hasn’t reached the addictive stage where I have to download it from iTunes, like I do for MAD MEN and LOST. Yes, I confess. I love BREAKING BAD, but again, it’s pretty damn dark. A guy with terminal cancer, with a pregnant wife and no money decides to supplement his high school chemistry teacher salary by becoming an (excellent) meth cooker. I can’t even make that sound light by telling saying there are tons of fun, quirky characters. Dark, dark, dark. Read More »
I can’t understand why this movie “wastes” the amazing performance of Mr. Day Lewis on a script that is relentless, predictable, and completely unredeeming as satisfying fiction. It’s very close to being a good (possible excellent) movie, but its faults–no change in the character from beginning to end, undeveloped secondary characters, no climax, no resolution–make is seem like someone (who? the writers? director?) was in a hurry to show the EVILS of OIL. “Oil” obviously is the only plot that makes sense: it’s evil, and it makes you evil if you try to make money on it. I smell global warming funding.
For me one of the problems with this book is that it’s too broad a complaint. It dilutes energy. For starters, I have my doubts about the video game demonization (that’s a whole other discussion that includes how comic books, rock music and once upon a time novels were considered serious social problems). Two of the five bullet points, the ADHD drug discussion and the more exotic “endocrine disrupters,” locate the author in the somewhat fringey environmental movement. On the drugs, it could be true, but it’s an issue that parents and doctors, etc. have to monitor very closely. It’s typical of this kind of “expert” that he falls himself into the devaluation of parents–they’re not all Homer Simpsons. He could also be “right” about the endocrine thing, but it’s exotic, and distracting, and global. More apocalyptic than helpful. I do FULLY AGREE with him on devaluation of masculinity and feminization of education, though even here there is a “South Park” backlash in play where the boys are insulating themselves from the most deleterious effects by tribalizing around video games (!), sports and yes, defensive cynicism. Watch “Knocked Up” and “Superbad” for evidence of this reaction. But if Mr. Leonard Sax concentrated on the education thing and the devaluation of masculinity, my sense is he could be much more effective.
The biggest issue I had with the book was the author’s relationship to the “literal” Catholicism of his main character, Scobie. Was Scobie a true believer or was he already so deeply wounded (by the loss of his child, I suspect) that his religion is a legalistic “shell” he lives inside of. In this sense he “believes” the Church’s teachings but not so much with his HEART (title reference) but with this HEAD. Read More »
A great site for those interested in carnivals, Carnivale, sideshows and all of that. They create individual galleries for artists with circus-related art. Check out the page they made for me, it includes some pieces not on the www.mnartists.org site.
I’m a Shrek fan, perhaps not the most enthusiastic in the world, but a fan nonetheless. I value the good laughs I got mainly from Shrek II, but I value them more because I could enjoy them with my entire family. That’s rare for us. I’m also a fan of THE OFFICE. We’ve been downloading the third season of The Office and my two sons and I have been watching them around the computer.
Ken Bloom, curator of Duluth’s Tweed Museum, has selected C.B. Murphy’s painting LECTURE ON HUMANS to be included in his digital collection for his guest curatorial assignment for this month’s access+ENGAGE publication.
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