Coming this October, a poetry magazine called Knockout. Co-founding Editor Brett Ortler says “we’re donating half the money we get from our first issue to Sudanese relief organizations. Our lineup for #1’s pretty good — it’s all poetry, and it includes a number of former US Poets Laureate, National Book Award winners, in addition to unpublished writers.”
Melton L. Duncan on Tolkien’s Work
Melton Duncan has a lengthy review of The Children of Hurin which he closes with an “Abridged Guide to Evangelicalism as Middle Earth.”
No Tolkien work ever gets published without a fascinating appendix. So why shouldn’t a review about Tolkien. For those of you who have been struggling to “contextualize” this review into postmodern applications the following is for you. Tolkien detested allegory of all kinds, so please keep in mind this is just a hyper technical, completely accurate application of Tolkien’s world to the modern evangelical scene.
Could be a long inside joke, but you may want to scan it anyway. No potshots are Lutheranism that I see.
Veggie Cola
“We wanted a flavor that makes people think of keeping cool in the summer heat,” said the spokeswoman for Pepsi in Japan. “We thought the cucumber was just perfect.” Pepsi Ice Cumcumber is in Japan this week. Now Pepsi has “the refreshing taste of a fresh cucumber.”
What would Larry say?
Darn This Body
Debbie Rocker writes, “Want to be physically fit and mentally agile, svelte and sharp, athletic and articulate? Then exercise – simply exercise.” Yeah, yeah . . .
Sci-Fi Writers of America Flails About on Copyright Complaints
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America seems to have overstepped its bounds. Earlier this month, it sent a notice of violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to Scribd, a text file sharing site. The noticed intended to name pirated works by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, but included several non-pirated works including Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.” Doctorow explains the mess they made.
More importantly, many of the works that were listed in the takedown were written by the people who’d posted them to Scribd — these people have been maligned and harmed by SFWA, who have accused them of being copyright violators and have caused their material to be taken offline. These people made the mistake of talking about and promoting science fiction — by compiling a bibliography of good works to turn kids onto science fiction, by writing critical or personal essays that quoted science fiction novels, or by discussing science fiction. SFWA — whose business is to promote science fiction reading — has turned readers into collateral damage in a campaign to make Scribd change its upload procedures.
The SFWA President has apologized. “Unfortunately, this list was flawed,” he said, “and the results were not checked.” I can understand making a mistake, but not checked a complaint like this seems irresponsible very much like forwarding urban legends to all your friends. [via Paul Jessup]
Paglia: Fine Art Must Rediscover Its Spiritual Roots
Mars Hill Audio points out an article by Camille Paglia in which she says the arts can be saved if they return to religion. Liberals, she says, need to let go of their harsh secularism and Marxist outlook while conservatives “need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.”
Stream of consciousness, in search of a wetland
Oh man, I’m useless tonight. I’m kind of worried, because I didn’t see my renter at all yesterday, and today there’s a message on the answering machine, asking why he didn’t show up for work.
You might pray that he’s OK. His name is John.
Talking of early television, that’s a subject I can discuss with some authority, being one of the first kids to grow up with the thing. And I’m not going to tell you how it blighted my mind. Television and my grandmother were about the only good things in my life when I was a kid. TV was the only friend I had that didn’t beat me up. Television got me interested in history and in Shakespeare.
For those of you old enough to appreciate it, or just curious, here’s a YouTube clip of the opening of the old Howdy Doody Show, one of the delights of my early life. Buffalo Bob Smith (the guy, unaccountably, in a pith helmet in this clip) was one of the great pitch men of the medium. He pushed Hostess Cakes and Wonder Bread and Tootsy Rolls, and a whole mess of other products, to gullible kids like me, and our parents hated it, but on the other hand the show kept us quiet for a while.
All those great kids shows died when the government “for the sake of the children” passed legislation forbidding characters on children’s programs from endorsing products. Almost immediately there were no more national or local children’s shows, and the programming space was filled with loud, violent, badly animated cartoons.
Thanks a lot.
Buffalo Bob’s real name was Schmidt, by the way, and most of his life he was a Lutheran, though he seems to have ended up a Presbyterian, for some unaccountable reason.
Note to anyone from WWTC Radio in the Twin Cities who happens to be reading this: The background jingle on that carpet commercial you’re running just now is a vile earworm, and probably toxic and dangerous to the general public. If it runs much longer I may have to take unilateral action. And nobody wants that, do they?
On the Early Days of Television
Delanceyplace has an excerpt on television today. College professors in the 1950s didn’t buy TVs, thinking they were a waste of time. James L. Baughman writes:
Columbia University historian Allan Nevins was surprised to learn that his colleague Richard Morris had purchased a television in 1951, ‘one of the first I have seen in the home of a real intellectual,’ Nevins wrote. ‘Most reading and reflective people abominate them.’ The ‘television snobbism’ at Princeton University was so great, history professor Eric Goldman remarked seven years later, that a distinguished colleague had to sneak into Goldman’s house to watch TV.
Getting Shakespeare Wrong
In an Aspen, Colorado, performance of “Scenes From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,” Brutus stabbed himself.
Brutus: “Stoop, Romans, stoop, and let us bathe our hands in Cæsar’s blood up to the elbows . . . Oh my. I seem to have stabbed myself.”
Trying to Ruin the Land of Oz
A while back, a guy came out a line of figurines called “The Twisted Wizard of Oz.” Variety called it “a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight.” Now, another guy is writing a screenplay for this alternate Oz, and apparently Warner Brothers is going to run with it. From Variety:
“I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do,” Olson told Daily Variety. “The appealing thing about the Baum books to me is how wildly imaginative they are. There are crazy characters from amazing places. I want this to be ‘Harry Potter’ dark, not ‘Seven’ dark.”
Help us. I guess reworking something established and popular has better chances of getting off the ground than creating something similar but new. That’s how I explain the Camelot and Robin Hood rewrites.