At home with the cannibals

Paul Raffaele, from this month’s Smithsonian Magazine:
For days I’ve been slogging through a rain-soaked jungle in Indonesian New Guinea, on a quest to visit members of the Korowai tribe, among the last people on earth to practice cannibalism. Soon after first light this morning I boarded a pirogue, a canoe hacked out of a tree [...]

Pepsi Jazz and "Their Satanic Majesties Request"…no, really.

Tried the new “Pepsi Jazz” tonight.

It’s essentially Diet Pepsi with new natural and artificial flavoring that promises to let you “Indulge Your Senses” without pouring another 200 calories down your throat.
As there’s only so much water I can bring myself to drink and I’m trying to bike, eat less junk and generally improve my [...]

Guns, Knives, Tasers, Truncheons! But please…no cameras

Gun and Knife Show at the Coliseum.
Not as entertaining as the Baptist Convention — and I’m afraid I don’t have as many good pictures.
Apparently people who are selling Nazi flags, bronze busts of Hitler and Rommel and stocking “The Turner Diaries” in the non-fiction section (all of which we saw) don’t like having their pictures [...]

Will they have an evening gown competition?

Am on my way to the Gun and Knife Show at the Coliseum with my buddy Chris Lowrance today.
He’s doing a Framed on it. I’m just going out of morbid curiosity.
Am wondering if I can find one of these there.

Internet meme: "Have a Chronicles of Narnia DVD, let Focus on the Family pick up the tab…."

This meme on swindling Christian evangelical group Focus on the Family out of money and products has been floating around. I looked into it and apparently it does work. Of course, this means you have to wade through a lot of their “There’s no such thing as evolution!” and “Cure your homosexual children!” literature, videos [...]

New Smoking Popes tracks

New demos from The Smoking Popes on their MySpace page.
After having broken up before I could see them in high school the Popes re-united last year and we saw them at Greene Street in downtown Greensboro a few months ago.
The thought of a new Popes album after all these years makes my left arm [...]

"Why are you in the office?"

Interesting post from Dr. Andrew Cline at Rhetorica:
“I once had a job as editor of small magazine. It didn’t last long. And the magazine has long since folded. My job didn’t require me to be in the main office. The editorial content was written 100 percent by freelancers. The job was going just fine for [...]

Warren Ellis: Drinking and Smiling

CHARLOTTE — It’s 2 p.m., and Warren Ellis has just ordered his second Maker’s Mark and ice.
He is sitting in the upstairs bar at the downtown Hilton. He pushes aside his laptop and lights up a British Silk Cut cigarette.
Ellis smiles, takes a deep drag and sips his bourbon.
It’s a jet-lag June day [...]

Two good reasons to buy this week’s Rolling Stone (there’s always at least one)

Two interesting things in this week’s Rolling Stone (three if you count pictures of a scantily-clad Christina Aguilera all got up like a pornographic 1940s USO girl):
1) Profile of Kurt Vonnegut. When I was in high school I only knew one other person – my friend Amanda – who liked Kurt Vonnegut. It seems his [...]

The Old Gray Lady revealed!

Satirical site that imagines how the far right views the New York Times. Pass your mouse over each article/advertisement to have it transformed…or to be enlightened!
My favorite is the section at the bottom, where the Food Section’s “In Search of the Perfect Paella” becomes “Cooking with Placentas and Cocaine” and A&E’s “The New Klimt in [...]

The debate over digital comics

GREENSBORO — Among comics fans, Wednesdays are sacred. New comics day.
As comic shops all over the country stock the week’s new arrivals, fans flock to get the latest issues of their favorite titles and contemplate life’s big questions.
Like who would win in a fight: Superman or the Hulk?
But more fans than ever are [...]

Soundtrack for the evening

powered by frazy.com

A special message from Patton Oswalt

This is one of those jokes that nearly destroys your brain with dispirate emotions.
Also…Patton Oswalt’s script for a faux Punisher fruit pie ad (like these old ones featuring Marvel and DC superheroes), which he sold to Marvel but was never used, has been turned (word for word) into this strange little film.
I still think it [...]

It’s going to be a good year for Dick

It seems there may be not one but two Philip K. Dick biopics in the works.
Dick was the eccentric sci-fi author of the books and stories that were adapted for the screen as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly.
The first, Panasonic, may star Bill Pullman as Dick.
The second (which seems more [...]

The decade that keeps on taking

Gretchen loves all things seventies.
The music, the movies, the clothes, the awful burnt-orange and avocado green color schemes, the design, the slight sleaziness that so permeate the entire decade that now even old episodes of The Brady Bunch look like they might take a sharp right turn into porn.
This page of horrible seventies decorating is [...]

Great Iron Man interview

Great interview with Jon Favreau, who is set to direct the Iron Man movie (preliminary poster above), at Comic Book Resources.
He makes a good point about Iron Man being hard to define. You know what Captain America stands for. You know why Spider-Man fights. Super-Man and Batman are both pretty easy to peg in a [...]

Who thought it was clever to compare Sabbath to "Cattle Decapitation?"

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Heavy metal singer Chris Barnes didn’t know what people would think of “Amerika the Brutal,” an anti-war song he wrote after his cousin deployed to Iraq in 2003.
He heard a number of complaints — but also received supportive e-mails from American troops in the war zone.
“It kind of sent a shiver [...]

Seeking safety in Greensboro downtown clubs

GREENSBORO — Downtown on a Saturday night is all about crowded sidewalks and streets choked with cars, motorcycles and limousines. The lines outside the bars and clubs on Elm Street — more opening all the time — can stretch a block or more until after 1 a.m.
And at each door, as they check IDs and [...]

You only live twice. And then your books are re-released forever

I own all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. All the Bond movies, too.
This should come as no surprise to people who know me or read the blog regularly. I’m a huge geek and I love good spy and detective fiction.
Most of the copies I have are old, second-hand editions bought cheap in used [...]

Wal-Mart exec sentenced, begs off of jail citing laundry list of ailments

FORT SMITH, Ark. (Reuters) — Tom Coughlin, the former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. vice chairman who admitted to stealing thousands of dollars from the company, was sentenced on Friday to 27 months of home confinement.
Coughlin, who joined Wal-Mart (Charts) in 1978 and worked closely with legendary founder Sam Walton, had faced up to 28 years in [...]