Here’s the other quote from Chuck Klosterman IV that I mentioned earlier, this one from an essay in Esquire on people who feel betrayed by pop culture: Do you want to be happy? I suspect that you do. Well, here’s the first step to happiness: don’t get pissed off that people who aren’t you happen… Continue reading Deep Thoughts from Pop Culture II
Category: Pop Culture
Deep Thoughts from Pop Culture
It feels a little silly to quote Chuck Klosterman as some sort of Deep Thinker– this is a guy whose whole claim to fame revolves around the expression of weirdly absolute opinions about pop culture ephemera, after all. Then again, the best political reporting being done these days is done by a pair of comedy… Continue reading Deep Thoughts from Pop Culture
Hugo Awards 2006
This year’s Hugo Awards (either the Oscars of the Golden Globes of the science fiction/ fantasy field, depending on who you ask) were announced last night at the Worldcon in LA. Pleasant surprises abound: 1) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson won the Best Novel Hugo. As I’ve said before, I think it was far and… Continue reading Hugo Awards 2006
A Squabble of Kerfuffles
Well, it’s as good a guess at a collective noun for “kerfuffle” as any other… There have been three moderately heated bloggy controversies that I’ve been following over the past week, that I haven’t commented on. Mostly because I don’t really have that much to add to any of the arguments, or at least, not… Continue reading A Squabble of Kerfuffles
Genre Follow-Up
Technorati reveals a bunch of responses to my weekend post on genre fiction, and I wanted to at least note a few of them here. Over at Brad DeLong’s, he highlights my comments about story pacing, which sparked some interesting comments. A number of people object that books and movies are too long these days,… Continue reading Genre Follow-Up
Total Eclipse of Futurism
Over at Making Light, the Nielsen Haydens stumbled upon a video of the Hurra Torpedo version of the Bonnie Tyler/ Jim Steinman kitsch masterpiece “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which absolutely boggles the mind. Of course, the weird thing is that their re-invention isn’t actually any weirder than the original video, which Teresa also attempts… Continue reading Total Eclipse of Futurism
The Sorry State of Genre Fiction
Yesterday saw the posting (or at least the arrival on my RSS reader) of two different discussions of the current state of genre fiction. I have issues with both discussions, but reading them together makes for an interesting effect. First, there’s Charlie Stross complaining about the state of SF, and once again lamenting the lack… Continue reading The Sorry State of Genre Fiction
Cartoons!
Over the last few months, Kate and I have fallen into a Friday evening routine involving the watching of Japanese cartoons. We started out getting discs of Fullmetal Alchemist from Netflix, and then taping the later episodes off the Cartoon Network, and then Samurai Champloo from Netflix, and most recently finished Vision of Escaflowne (a… Continue reading Cartoons!
You Are Not Lloyd Dobler
Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer Ouellette offers dating advice for the geek set. Mostly, this reminds me again how happy I am to be married, and not worrying about this stuff any more, but her advice seems reasonably sound, save for one point: There’s nothing sexier than a man who’s confident and comfortable in… Continue reading You Are Not Lloyd Dobler
Handicapping the Hugos
There’s a comment to the most recent Open Thread at Making Light asking why there isn’t more handicapping of the Hugo Awards. The commenter, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, makes reference to a comment on John Scalzi’s “Please Vote” thread, that suggested there was a clear favorite in the balloting: There is a certain book on the… Continue reading Handicapping the Hugos