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Electronica composer John Boswell remixes the preambles and perorations of Carl Sagan for a groovy take on the wonder-struck spiritual cosmology at the heart of the landmark PBS series Cosmos. With a guest appearance by […]
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“Who am I?” “You’re DAVE ARNESON (1947-2009), who some claim was the true visionary behind modern role-playing games — though your partner, the more business-minded Gary Gygax, has superceded you in RPG mythology.” “OK, I […]
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The last man standing of Sun Records’ early roster has been known to set himself among even loftier company. “Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and JERRY LEE LEWIS [born 1935]…. That’s your only four […]
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Same as last week, except Gladwell Moore’s Clunk enters the list at no. 8, knocking out Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven. 1) THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. (Penguin, […]
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Listening to NPR yesterday morning for the first time in a month of Sundays, I caught the puzzle segment with Will Shortz. While Will and Liane engaged in their smile-weary repartée and my wife sorted […]
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Blonde bombshell BRIGITTE BARDOT (born 1934) exploded onto the world stage in the 1950s. A woman with the neotenic features of a child, Bardot’s Bézier curves measured pure sex appeal, and have been templatized by […]
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The first thing to be said about the concept of the “oral history,” as it applies to rock biography, is that Sigmund Freud — damn him! — has triumphed again. For what purer display of […]
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JIM THOMPSON (1906-77) was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in a room above the jail, the son of a crooked sheriff. A good part of his destiny was cemented then and there. Early on he became […]
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One of my favorite children’s books, the madcap Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (1963), by SHEL SILVERSTEIN (1930-99), is about loneliness, friendship, and the perils of too much success — all of which turn […]
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A quick note about Neo-Dadaists and Pop Art. This item is excerpted from yesterday’s essay on the Postmodernist Generation. Neo-Dada artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Yves Klein were born between 1924-33. Reacting […]
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The popularity of apocalyptic fiction in the Sixties (1964-73), it has been suggested, indicates that SF writers had become bored and suspicious of utopian idylls promising that ameliorative reforms could right modern civilization’s manifold wrongs; […]
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