High Definition: Persons Unknown Review
The first thing you should know about NBC’s new summer miniseries Persons Unknown is that its creator Christopher McQuarrie also wrote The Usual Suspects. I would have probably been ready to give up after one episode if McQuarrie hadn’t provided one of the most satisfying resolutions to a film in the last couple of decades. I’ve been down this road before, and I’m not sure I could handle another sideways purgatory, dream sequence or alternate reality to explain away what I’ve invested my time and attention to.... read more
Listen Up: On Crying and Having Absolutely No Idea Why
It wasn't all-out boo-hooing... read more
The Booky Man: Walker to New Orleans
New Orleans is America’s most European city. It seems fitting that our most European novelist would call New Orleans home.... read more
Ciné Files: Fear and Loathing in Lawndale
If there’s one thing the television show Daria is famous for, it’s the theme music—the opening section of the song “You’re Standing on My Neck” by the all-female alternative group (in the mid-90s sense of “alternative”) Splendora. That was about the extent of Splendora’s fame. Maybe it’s because they were one-hit wonders, or maybe because, like so many other bands who produce awesome theme songs, they were eclipsed by what they helped create.... read more
Start Press: The Floating Gun Barrel
I watched the dawn of the first-person shooter genre in third person. It was my older brother Trey obsessively playing id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D at the family computer, while I skeptically eyed the proceedings over his shoulder. I had no interest in playing the game myself, steering that floating gun barrel down one indistinguishable stone corridor after another. Every few seconds he’d plug a Nazi or an attack dog. I never stuck around to see if he got a chance to nestle a bullet in Hitler’s pencil-thin moustache.... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 5
I was wrong! read more
Ciné Files: The Empire Strikes Back, Strikes Back
The Empire Strikes Back, now three decades old, was probably my least favorite of the original-trilogy Star Wars movies when I was a kid... read more
Start Press:
Groundhobbit Day
So I’ve finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Demon’s Souls. It’s been out long enough for me to glean its reputation for being an adamantium-tough nut to crack in terms of gameplay difficulty, just a smidge less forgiving than the God of the Old Testament. But I’ve also been assured that it amply rewards patience and dedication. Both assessments have proven entirely accurate. I spent my first 4-5 hours with the game logging a series of failed attempts at scaling the outer ramparts of Boletaria Castle, a gorgeously imposing bulwark that has presumably driven many an... read more
High Definition: Crystal Bowersox is my American Idol
I’ve never been drawn to reality shows or contests on TV, but with two pre-teen girls in my house, I’ve watched the last few seasons of American Idol. Austin City Limits is more my speed, so I’ve usually just been content to hear a handful of songs I loved in their original form made “relevant” or “current” by the contestants (to use two of executive producer/surly judge Simon Cowell’s favorite words). But this season, I’ve become an unabashed fan of one of tonight’s finalists, Crystal Bowersox.... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 4
Going into my fourth week of rap self-education, a moment of trivial triumph! read more
Start Press: Herding Scapegoats
Once upon a time, rock ’n’ roll was controversial. To concerned parents and clergy, Elvis Presley’s dance moves on late-night television prefigured some hip-swiveling apocalypse that would bump traditional moral values right off the planet's outer rim. In 1985 there were even Senate hearings (Senate hearings!) in which Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister were forced to answer for rock’s moral transgressions before Tipper Gore and her colleagues in the Parents Music Resource Center.... read more
The Booky Man: Carried Away by The Things They Carried
Back in the early 1980s, I took a part-time job working for a jeweler in Mobile, Alabama. I was just home from a year in Europe, where I played organized baseball in northern Italy. I found a jewelry-repair job to help with finances while I finished work on a college English degree.... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 3
As a person―and as a woman―it bothers me. As a student, though, I know it's just par for the course... read more
Ciné Files: Dr. Strangelove's Real-Life Doomsday Machine
Like so many people who enjoy watching (and overanalyzing) movies, it was inevitable that I would fall in love with the films of Stanley Kubrick. It started with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it wasn’t long before I discovered my favorite movie of all time, and one that I think is a strong contender for Greatest Film of All-Time: Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.... read more
Shop Talk: 10 Reasons Adorable Singing Cats are the Future of the Music Industry
In case you haven’t heard, the music industry is dying. This statement may not be based in numbers or statistics or, well, actual fact, but all the boo-hooing about illegal downloads and MP3s and streams and shareables and niches and Internets has to mean something, right? We need a savior of sorts, a force to give all us sad journalists and PR reps and label managers and Apple CEOs a little extra financial boost. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you cats.... read more
Start Press: How I Learned To Love The Plot Spoiler
As I played through Remedy’s thriller Alan Wake (check out our review of the game here), I kept thinking about the gaming community’s paranoia over inadvertently reading plot spoilers. Just a few hours before the board of CrispyGamer.com sent the most talented editorial team in online game journalism packing, a feature by journalist Tom Bissell went up on Crispy’s homepage entitled “Spoilsport: On Gaming’s Unhealthy Obsession With Spoilers.” At the Game Developers Conference earlier this year in San Francisco, Crispy’s former managing editor Elise Vogel shared with me the urgency she felt in getting this particular piece up on the site... read more
High Definition: Late Night Music on the Telly
Jay Leno might have fended off Team Coco to win the late night war on NBC, but along with Conan O’Brien—and, many would argue, America—the loser of this battle was music. Last night, just before Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show on CBS hosted Wilco, Leno welcomed the members of Limp Bizkit onto his Tonight Show stage. Last week, the musical guests included Michael Bolton and Godsmack. The week before that featured Creed.... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 2
I may have overstated my ignorance... read more
The Booky Man: Does public reading sometimes seem anachronistic?
Does public reading sometimes seem anachronistic?... read more
Ciné Files: Dawn of My Dread
Zombies are my number-one existential fear. That sounds preposterous, I know—the idea of an apocalyptic uprising of ravenous, flesh-hungry undead is more than a little silly, and scientifically implausible besides. But the fear is still there, ever-persistent, lurking on the outskirts of my subconscious and rudely brought to the forefront of my mind every time I hear the wail of police sirens, or see a helicopter buzzing overhead, or hear the latest breathless proclamation on the nightly news about how civilization is near the breaking point, for reals this time. This all began with one movie: zombie auteur George Romero’s... read more
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