News
I’m pleased to announce that Jacob Canfield is joining HU as a regular columnist. His bio is here. Welcome aboard Jacob!
On HU
From the Archives: Sean Michael Robinson interview Gerhard.
From the Archives: Jog on the Drifting Classroom without children.
Me on how Julia Roberts had to get old to get her best role.
Me on how Wonder Woman’s costume is booby-trapped.
RM Rhodes expresses skepticism about the storytelling in Heavy Metal magazine (prompting a really long thread.)
Domingos Isabelinho on Matt Marriott, one of the great comics westerns.
Matthew Brady on Hellraiser and Cloud Atlas.
Bert Stabler on Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Audition, vengeance and despair.
Me on the supposed feminism of Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body.
Robert Stanley Martin argues that DC treated Siegel and Shuster fairly.
Sarah Horrocks on sci-fi, horror, and Richard Corben.
Subdee on why Gangnam style rather than some other Kpop ditty.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Loyola Center for Digital Ethics, Violentacrez, Amanda Todd and sexism online and off.
Two at Splice Today:
David Brooks is an awful Republican partisan hack.
Jonathan Chait is an awful Democratic partisan hack.
Other Links
Roseanne Barr vs. trans women.
This Week’s Reading
Finished rereading Phillip Pullman’s forthcoming Brothers Grimm book of fairty tales; also finished Ronald Firbank’s Vainglory. Started “Ward Six,” a fantastic collection of Chekhov short stories/novellas which I bought in college more than 20 years ago and somehow never read. Better than many things I’ve read instead over those 20 years….
I’m reading about museum metadata for a Grad Skewl project that is breaking my will, not because it is so hard, but because it is so hard to understand the professor’s instructions. She’s quite clever and fun to converse with, but if she were teaching a culinary class she’d have the students wondering if they were supposed to make a cake or a casserole. Also, I leafing through Vitamin P and its sequel, two collections of contemporary painting reproductions. Diverse samplers, sure to have something for anyone with any interest in paintings. Also sure to have loads of stuff you won’t need, but so it goes.
I’m not reading anything new this week, since I read stuff slowly, but I did watch the movie Bunraku, which is a weird sort of noir/western/samurai/storybook thing starring Josh Hartnett, the Japanese pop singer Gackt, Woody Harrelson, Ron Perlman, Demi Moore, and Kevin McKidd in a brightly-colored about a guy (or two guys, in this case) coming to a town ruled by a crime lord and fighting his way through various goons until there’s a final showdown with the big boss, with lots of stylish fighting and costumes, an interesting origami look to the settings, occasional comics-like animation, jazzy big-band music, and narration that’s trying to be cool. It’s ambitious as all hell, but it ends up being kind of muddled and not very satisfying, lots of fancy decoration built around a hollow, boring, woodenly-acted core. It’s worth a look on Netflix, but I wouldn’t go nuts trying to hunt it down or anything. Hell, you could probably get as much of the full experience as you need just from watching the trailer.
I’m still reading up on Set Theory and Matlab for classes, but my other reading is starting to pick back up a little bit from a molasses trickle earlier in the semester.
I finished The Galley Slave (mentioned last week). I’m a hundred or so into The Prague Cemetery (Eco – not that into it so far), Return to Eden (Harry Harrison cavemen vs. advanced lizard people scifi – not that into this either, I liked the first book but I guess I just don’t need more of it).
Nonfiction: reading Fernand Braudel – Memory and the Mediterranean.
Comics – finished Pogo vol. 1, re-read Dark Knight Rises (good) and Strikes Again (not good), getting into Cross Game. Also read the Plunder Island plot in Popeye vol. 4.