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« Previous EntriesAron Ralston and Chuck
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010I stumbled on this movie trailer today, and it took me until 1:10 to realize I was watching a biopic of Aron Ralston:
Back in 2003, Ralston had the bad luck to be mountaineering alone in Utah when he got his right hand caught between a large rock and the side of Blue John Canyon. After [...]
Google and the Failure of Mechanical Whimsy
Sunday, August 15th, 2010From Holman Jenkins, Jr.’s Aug. 14 Wall Street Journal article, “Google and the Search for the Future,” which quotes Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” [Schmidt] elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”
Back in ye olden days of 2003, I [...]
The Celebrity Interview of Unstoppable Doom
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010In December 2008, I interviewed the comedian D.L. Hughley. The one and only Ian Spanier shot some amazing portraits for it. But the interview never ran; two weeks after I turned it in, the assigning magazine decided to implode.
Undeterred, I emailed another editor I knew, who evinced great enthusiasm for the concept. One week after [...]
The Incredible Mystery Herb
Sunday, August 8th, 2010“What sort of phone do you carry?”
This question pops up with fair frequency. I’m a tech writer, after all, among other things—surely I must be carrying the newest iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy S or the Droid X, or some other wonder-phone capable of toasting bread or remotely launching a nuclear weapon in addition to [...]
Playing in Limbo
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010I don’t usually play video games, but I’ve watched this trailer for this one, “Limbo,” three times and I’ve fallen in love with the art—it’s as if American McGee and Alfred Kubin had a bastard love-child, and armed that degenerate spawn with a box of charcoal and extensive knowledge of C++:
Independence Weekend Weirdness
Monday, July 5th, 2010You know you’re about to have one of those small-world moments when, in the midst of an artists’ loft party in Bushwick—perched on a crumbling concrete shelf beneath a string of blinking Christmas lights and a porcelain doll’s head on a stick, sipping a cup of water against the all-crushing heat, listening to a pair [...]
The Coney Mermaids’ Apocalyptic Beach Boogie
Sunday, June 20th, 2010The best views of Coney Island are from street-sign poles. You shimmy up those steel trees—bracing one boot against a nearby trashcan or phone-switch box for that extra few inches’ worth of leverage—in order to see above the crowd, and into the chaos rolling down the Avenue in the form of the annual Mermaid Parade.
At [...]
Jonah Hex and the Death of the Summer Blockbuster
Thursday, June 17th, 2010There’s a section near the end of David Weddle’s biography, “If They Move…Kill ‘Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah,” that blames the death of Hollywood’s ‘70s auteur era on the rise of the modern blockbuster. In some ways, that’s a fair argument; once studio executives realized they could make millions from movies like [...]
The Peter Max Affair
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010The one and only Randall Lane autopsies Doubledown’s Peter Max affair in this month’s Vanity Fair. The 30-second summary, for those anxious to click back to Chatrouette: my former publishing company, which produced Wall Street-friendly titles like Trader Monthly, entered into a deal with Peter Max to create portraits of various financial titans. The deal [...]
Private Air Clips
Monday, May 31st, 2010So here I am, grafting steel toes onto my Vibram footwear whilst wondering whether I can (via the magic of the Internet) secure a t-shirt with Ice Cube’s snarling face in time for Jury Duty tomorrow morning—when the realization hits: my Website’s Clips page is looking about as lively as Michael Jackson.
Fortunately, this revelation coincided [...]