Blog Archives
Dream Machine
Recorded the 95th episode of the Coincidence Control Network podcast today. This week it was just me and Lil’ Ray, and I had some technical difficulties on my end, but I think we had a pretty good chat. I lifted some stories to talk about on the show from my Flipboard project. The last thing [...]
Snakes, Meat, Sex
Unforgivable is the title of a new book that looks back on the life and works of pioneering performance artist Carolee Schneeman. I found out about the book from an article I flipped into our Flipboard magazine the other night. Here’s a bit from The Guardian… Don’t bring your underaged children or grandchildren. Don’t bring [...]
Rothko Conspiracy
I’ve been reading a new book on abstract expressionism that I’m planning to review in an upcoming post. That and a second viewing of a television program episode about Mark Rothko’s last paintings has me thinking a lot about that great painter and his suicide. In 1983 the PBS series American Playhouse dramatized Rothko’s bloody [...]
Sci-Fi Vice
Last Thursday night, if you were in Nashville watching election returns you had plenty to laugh about. Suffice to say that an offensive, elitist mayoral candidate was used as a mop by our new mayor. The loser’s concession speech was a shambolic display of the same kind of ineptitude and lack of will that had [...]
Instant Instance
Yesterday night I went to an exhibition of instant photography at Third Man Records here in Nashville. The show was a collaboration between the label, The Impossible Project and three of Third Man’s shutterbug allies to show-off The Impossible Project’s new Third-Man-inspired, limited edition black-and-yellow instant film. The Impossible Project is the only company in [...]
Mitch Hedberg: Writer
Mitch Hedberg was one of my favorite contemporary comedians before his death from a heart attack in 2005. Hedberg had only just solidified a national reputation and looked to be on the verge of breakthrough stardom when news of his death hit the airwaves. Hedberg combined a stoner sensibility with the obtuse observations of Steven [...]
Basquiat’s Downtown
The following review originally appeared in The Contributor newspaper in Nashville, TN… Music Box Films’ new DVD release of Downtown 81 offers a fitting occasion for revisiting the iconic film as well as the music and art scenes it captured on celluloid. It also dresses-up the cult flick with a menu of extras and the [...]
Gonzo Wonderland
This year we celebrate the sesquicentennial of Alice in Wonderland — a landmark of kid lit and a cornerstone of psychedelic fiction. This probably won’t be my last post about Alice. As a fantasy for the wee, Alice inspires illustrations, and it’s assumed that Walt Disney owns that territory. Little did I know that Ralph [...]
Writing on Walls on Film
I just turned in my column for next week’s Contributor, reviewing the new DVD release of the Jean Michel Basquiat film Downtown ’81. While Style Wars is often mentioned as the first hip-hop documentary, Downtown ’81 was shot a few years earlier even though it wasn’t released until 2000. The film is actually fictional, but [...]
Vintage John Lennon Cartoon
Recently, I was browsing through stories via Flipboard and I came across this delightful piece about a vintage animated short film based on John Lennon’s instantly recognizable cartoon doodles. Here’s a bit from the Brain Pickings site… …six years after the beloved Beatle’s assassination, Ono commissioned independent animator John Canemaker to create a short animated [...]
