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© 1999-2008 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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May 9, 2008 Happy Birthday, Annie Banks! |
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Born This Day William Tenn (1920) Left The Planet Tenzing Norgay (1986) I’m Glad You’re Dead, You Rascal, You Ulrike Meinhof (1976) |
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“ ... this Podkayne's story is not a Shavian-Voltairean satire but a nicely traditional combination of bildungsroman, alien contact, planetary adventure, and disaster scenario featuring a smart, mouthy young person as narrator and stirrer-up-of-plotpoints. ” Russell Letson, Locus |
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“ ….it's a sweet space romance, a kind of comic idyll following on Red Thunder and Red Lightning, the hard SF actioners that preceded it. Sure, there's action, and there are amazing, mysterious, musical aliens that only Varley could create. But mostly it's the Freaks and Geeks-style story of a late teenager discovering herself, getting laid, and starting a band. ” |
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Varley's quote du jour |
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Marcel Duchamp abandoned object making, moved to Buenos Aires, and took up chess full-time. The game, he remarked, “has all the beauty of art, and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer.” At first glance Duchamp seems to be lamenting the corrupting power of money. Really, though, he’s being much more subversive than that. He is in fact destroying the conventional boundaries of art, arguing that all forms of expression—all of them—are potentially equal. Painting is the same as chess, which is the same as roller skating, which is the same as standing at your kitchen stove, making soup. In fact, any of these plain old everyday activities is better than conventional art, better than painting, because it is done without the sanctimony of anointing oneself “an artist.” There is no surer route to mediocrity. |
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Today's Videos |
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THE CHAMBER by John Grisham |
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Smart boss + smart employee = profit Smart boss + dumb employee = production Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime |
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Francine's recipe du jour |
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Lee's Soapbox |
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Even the embedded media, so valiant in their attempts to cast the American presence as well-intentioned and, you know, doing the best it can (under the circumstances), couldn’t help but convey, as they reported on the investigation of the Blackwater killings, the humanity of the grieving Iraqis. In so doing, the coverage hinted, unavoidably, at the truth about the occupation: that we are, to put it mildly, the bad guys, that what we’re doing there is barbaric, racist, insane. Robert Koehler |
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PLEASE BUY THESE BOOKS!!!
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April 28, 2008 - The BCAM at the LACMAIf the above acronym soup is confusing to you, let me translate: BCAM is the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, and LACMA is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (We Angelenos say it as “The Bee-cam at the Lackma.”) BCAM is a new building at LACMA, the first part of a three-phase expansion plan. It opened in February. |
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March 24, 2008 - John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Part 7: PixarlandStop the presses! Hold the phone! You’ve got mail! Disney’s California Adventure is getting a new parade … and we were invited to see the preview! |
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Latest Movie Reviews |
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Varley’s been compiling a list for a while now, hoping eventually to have a review of all the movies he’s seen, ever. |
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April 2008 ● Black Sheep ● Bowfinger ● Fido ● Heroes ● Horton Hears a Who! ● Live Free or Die Hard ● Mission: Impossible III ● The Mist ● Mr. Bean's Holiday ● Mr. Woodcock ● Nim's Island ● Norbit ● Spiderman 3 ● Transformers |
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March 2008 ● 10,000 Black Men Named George ● The Amateurs ● Black Sheep ● Cloverfield ● The Darjeeling Limited ● Death at a Funeral ● The Kite Runner ● Margot at the Wedding ● Martian Child ● Rendition ● The Spiderwick Chronicles |
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Go to Movies we’ve seen |
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