I forgot to post this: The Internet Review of Science Fiction had a piece about up-and-coming writers, and had a profile on the Texan fantasist (and my classmate) Shawn Scarber. Check it out: The Ones to Watch.
Category: REVIEWS
But I Hope It’s Not Really Our Fate…
Stephanie’s post reminded me to go read “Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind” by Rachel Swirsky. And I gottasay, goddamn. It’s good. Really. Go read it.
Joe Sample & Randy Crawford
Quite a while ago, Lime discovered that the Seoul Jazz Festival was happening (I blogged about it here) and asked me what show I’d like to see. IF you look at the program, you’ll see that it’s dominated by Japanese jazz fusion and Pat Metheny (whose music I despise), so the sensible choice was to see whatever else didn’t fit that category. She ordered the tickets, and that was that. Well, the other night, the day finally arrived, so we went and saw Joe Sample and Randy Crawford, who were accompanied by Joe Sample’s son Nicklas Sample on bass and …
Read & Watched Lately (May 2007)
A back injury in mid-May landed me on my back, in pain. Which meant I got a lot of reading done this month, not only books I’ve been meaning to get to, but also the chance to catch up on my magazine subscriptions. Of course, I have a new copy of both Interzone and F&SF, but that’s a good thing, actually. Magazines: Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2007 I wasn’t crazy about the Gene Wolfe story, so all the articles in praise of him just sort of muddled things for me; I thought the best pieces were (definitely) the David …
April Readings / Viewings
It’s been a busy month, but I’ve managed to do some reading and to watch a couple of movies. Deeper discussions of the books, less so on the movies. Books: Korea Bug: The Best of the Zine that Infected a Nation, by J. Scott Burgeson. I’ve finished it! Not that it was a ponderous read, but that I feel like I have achieved something here. It’s a really fascinating text, actually — all kinds of interviews with people in whom I would have been interested, if I’d thought to think of them. The last gisaeng (Korean geisha)… a shaman… interesting …
Blackface Film Online
I’m reading John Strasbaugh’s history of blackface performance in America, Black Like You, and finding it fascinating, though I suspect that some of his arguments have angered a lot of people. (Even I feel vaguely uncomfortable with some of them, though others seem less objectionable that they are probably thought to be.) In any case, he mentioned a couple of blackface-styled cartoons that had been banned during the course of discussing blackface in films more generally. I thought I’d linkdump it, partly so I can find these links again. All This and Rabbit Stew (1941) Coal Black and de Sebben …
서울 재즈 페스티벌
While the selection of shows is disappointingly small — cheesy Pat Metheny, cheesy Japanese jazz-fusion, or a potentially cool concert with Joe Sample — those of you in Seoul might nonetheless might be interested in seeing something at the upcoming Seoul Jazz Festival. One interesting thing is that some of the local opening acts actually look better than some of the foreign ones. I’d much sooner see a show by Bae Jung-Eun’s trio than see her open for a trio show by Pat Metheny. But I guess I can see a Bae Jung-Eun show anytime, right? Right? Anyone know? I’m …
Lauritsen on Frankenstein, Bad?
For those who participated in the discussion of my post, Frankenstein, Bad? you may find Lauritsen’s response just as pathetic and feebleminded as Greer’s blatherings. How do they get people to publish this crap?
My Favorite 10 Short Stories… For Today
It’s a meme, y’all: scififanatic and jade park have both posted lists of ten currently favorite short stories, and I guess I feel driven to do the same. Maybe because I’m taking a grading break. 10 exams down, 20-something more to go. (And then the midterm essays.) One thing I have to say is that this is much like any list I make: very, very much related to my mood and memory today. On another day, I’d probably be writing another list, though some elements will be the same. The other thing: I’m going to list linked stories as one, …
Decent Derrida?!?!?
Okay, so I was discussing the pathetic understanding of science, and especially our developing scientific understanding of us humans, among the so-called scholars of the humanities, with a co-worker of mine. I was specifically panning Deleuze and Guattari, who have written some total claptrap about science, so bad I remember cheering when I finally found someone dismissing them wholesale over it. I have some patience for Foucault, though my respect was a little tarnished by discussions suggesting he based his work on, well, more on his own sense of how things were than on source materials and so on. Actually, …