March 19, 2012
Gary Shteyngart (b. 1972) is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR. Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times. Shteyngart spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia; (he alternately calls it ‘St. Leningrad’ or ‘St. Leninsburg’). He comes from a Jewish family and describes his family as typically Soviet. His father worked as an engineer in a LOMO camera factory; his mother was a pianist. Shteyngart emigrated to the United States in 1979 and was brought up with no television in the apartment in which he lived, where English was not the household language. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14.
Shteyngart took a trip to Prague, and this experience helped spawn his first novel, set in the fictitious European city of Prava. He is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics, and Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing. Shteyngart now lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He has taught writing at Hunter College, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University and Princeton University. Shteyngart’s novels include ‘The Russian Debutante’s Handbook’ (2002), ‘Absurdistan’ (2006), and ‘Super Sad True Love Story’ (2010).
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March 19, 2012
Mike Daisey (b. 1976) is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues, particularly ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.’ The story was subsequently retracted following allegations that many of the events were fabricated. ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’ (2010) is a one-man show. It debuted at Portland’s TBA Festival in 2010
. It purports to examine globalization by exploring the exploitation of Chinese workers through the lens of ‘the rise and fall and rise of Apple, industrial design, and the human price we are willing to pay for our technology, woven together in a complex narrative.’ Excerpts from the show were presented as an exposé of conditions at a Foxconn factory in China on the Public Radio International show ‘This American Life’ in 2012. After it was retracted, Daisey apologized for presenting his work as journalism, saying it is actually theater, but refused to acknowledge that he had lied — even in the face of obvious discrepancies.
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March 18, 2012
The Space Traders is a science fiction short story by Derrick Bell (1930 – 2011), the first tenured African-American Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and one of the originators of critical race theory (which argues that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society). Published in 1992, its subject is the arrival of apparently benevolent and powerful extraterrestrials that offer the United States a wide range of benefits such as gold, clean nuclear power and other technological advances, in exchange for one thing: handing over all black people in the U.S. to the aliens. The story posits that the people and political establishment of the U.S. are willing to make this deal, passing a constitutional amendment to enable it.
‘The Space Traders’ was adapted for television in 1994 by director Reginald Hudlin and writer Trey Ellis. It aired on HBO as the leading segment of a three-part television anthology entitled ‘Cosmic Slop,’ which focused on minority-centric science fiction. In the run-up to the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the story became the subject of political controversy. A review of the TV adaptation on the conservative news site Breitbart.com argued that it ‘captures the stupidity, paranoia, and shameless race-hustling of the people that Obama embraces.’ In ‘The Atlantic,’ Conor Friedersdorf replied by arguing that the story’s critics ‘would do well to acknowledge that for many decades of American history, including years during Professor Bell’s life, a majority of Americans would have voted in favor of trading blacks for fantastic wealth, unlimited energy, and an end to pollutants.’
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March 18, 2012
A Princess of Mars (1917) is a science fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Barsoom series. Full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th century pulp fiction. It is also a seminal instance of the planetary romance, a sub-genre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western. The story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment. This vision of Mars was based on the work of the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose ideas were widely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Barsoom series inspired a number of well-known 20th century science fiction writers, including Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and John Norman, and was also inspirational for many scientists in the fields of space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life, including Carl Sagan, who read ‘A Princess of Mars’ when he was a child.
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March 18, 2012
Sergio Leone [lee-oh-nee] (1929 – 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the ‘Spaghetti Western’ genre. Leone’s film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His movies include ‘The Last Days of Pompeii,’ ‘The Colossus of Rhodes,’ the Dollars Trilogy (‘A Fistful of Dollars,’ ‘For a Few Dollars More,’ and ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’), Once ‘Upon a Time in the West,’ ‘Duck, You Sucker!’, and ‘Once Upon a Time in America.’
Born in Rome, Leone was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone (known as director Roberto Roberti) and the silent film actress Edvige Valcarenghi (Bice Waleran). During his schooldays, Leone was a classmate of his later musical collaborator Ennio Morricone for a time. After watching his father work on film sets, Leone began his own career in the film industry at the age of 18 after dropping out of law studies at the university.
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March 17, 2012
Okayplayer is an online hip-hop and alternative music website and community. The group was co-founded by The Roots’ drummer Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson as a loose musical collective in 1987, and evolved into an online community in 1999. In 2004, Questlove launched Okayplayer Records as a spin-off of the community, in partnership with Decon. The community is made up of recording artists (who keep their official internet homes there) and message board users. Artists and staff, as well as those who post to the site’s message board, call themselves ‘okayplayers’ or ‘OKPs.’
Okayplayer has been identified as an online community that allows people to bypass traditional media. An example of such a collaboration fostered by the site is the Foreign Exchange project, with Little Brother’s vocalist Phonte Coleman and Dutch producer named Nicolay meeting on Okayplayer, and making an album together by sending tracks and verses back and forth over the Internet. The album, ‘Connected,’ was released before the pair had met in real life. Okayplayer organize regular tours and an annual ‘Roots Picnic’ all day event. Okayplayer artists include: The Roots, Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Common, Erykah Badu, India.Arie, and RJD2.
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March 16, 2012
‘The Fusilli Jerry‘ is the 107th episode of the sitcom ‘Seinfeld.’
This was the 21st episode of the sixth season. It aired in 1995. Working titles for this episode were ‘The Move’, ‘The Proctologist,’ and ‘The Assman.’
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March 16, 2012
‘Pass the Dutchie‘ was a song recorded by the British group Musical Youth from their 1982 album ‘The Youth of Today.’ It was a major hit, holding the number one position on the UK singles charts for three weeks in 1982 and selling 5 million copies worldwide. The song was a cover version of the song ‘Pass the Kouchie’ by The Mighty Diamonds, which deals with the recreational use of cannabis, ‘kouchie’ being slang for a cannabis pipe.
For the cover version, the song’s title was bowdlerized to ‘Pass the Dutchie,’ and all obvious drug references were removed from the lyrics; e. g., when the original croons ‘How does it feel when you got no herb?,’ the cover version refers to ‘food’ instead. ‘Dutchie’ is used as a slang term to refer to a food cooking pot such as a Dutch oven in Jamaica and the Caribbean. It has since become a drug reference in itself, denoting a blunt stuffed with marijuana and rolled in a wrapper from a Dutch Masters cigar.
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March 16, 2012
The Black List is a survey published every year on the second Friday of December since 2004. The survey includes the top screenplays that went unproduced.
The website claims that it is not necessarily ‘the best,’ but rather ‘the most liked,’ since it is voted on by studio and production company executives. Some of the screenplays are then selected off of the Blacklist to be put into production such as ‘The Social Network’ and ‘Cedar Rapids.’
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March 16, 2012
Zigaboo Modeliste (b. 1948) is an American drummer best known as a founding member of the funk group The Meters. Considered to be one of the most innovative, and highly acclaimed drummers ever to hail from New Orleans. Modeliste is a pioneer of second-line funk. He remains a strong influence for drummers and his syncopated style is the source of a great many hip-hop and drum and bass samplers.
He also cofounded The Wild Tchoupitoulas and has worked extensively with other musicians, notably Keith Richards, Robert Palmer, and Dr. John. Zigaboo released his first solo CD in 2000 – ‘Zigaboo.com.’ In 2011, he released his fourth solo album entitled ‘New Life.’ This record has elements of rock, funk and blues and features such artists as arranger Wardell Quezerque and Trumpeter Mic Gillet of Tower of Power fame. He resides in Oakland, California and continues to teach, release records, as well as manage his publishing Company Jomod Music and record label JZM records.
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March 14, 2012
The Upper Class Twit of the Year is a classic comedy sketch that was seen on the TV show ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus,’ and also in a modified format as the finale of the movie ‘And Now For Something Completely Different.’ It is notable for its savage satire on dim-witted members of the English upper class. The sketch features horse race style commentary by John Cleese about an obstacle-course race among five stereotypical, upper-class twits (imbeciles), to determine the 127th Annual Upper-Class Twit of the Year.
The obstacles include: Kicking The Beggar (the Twits must approach a beggar with a tray and kick him until he falls over); Reversing Into The Old Lady (the Twits must get into their sports cars and reverse them into a cardboard cut-out of an old lady, then speed off; into Waking The Neighbor (the Twits must drive their cars forward and then try to wake up a neighbor (who is attempting to get some sleep) by slamming their doors, tooting their horns, etc. Finally, the Twits approach a table with five revolvers on it. The winner is the first Twit to shoot himself. The three coffins of the winning Twits are placed on the medal rostrum and medals are draped around them. Cleese ends his commentary by remarking that ‘there’ll certainly be some car door slamming in the streets of Kensington tonight.’
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March 14, 2012
And Now for Something Completely Different is a film spin-off from the television comedy series ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ featuring favorite sketches from the first two seasons. The title was used as a catchphrase in the television show. The film, released in 1971, consists of 90 minutes of the best sketches seen in the first two series of the television show. The sketches were remade on film without an audience, and were intended for an American audience which had not yet seen the series. The announcer (John Cleese) uses the phrase ‘and now for something completely different’ several times during the film, in situations such as being roasted on a spit and lying on top of the desk in a small, pink bikini.
This was the Pythons’ first feature film, of sketches re-shot on an extremely low budget (and often slightly edited) for cinema release. Some famous sketches included are: the ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch, ‘The Lumberjack Song,’ ‘Upperclass Twits,’ ‘Hell’s Grannies,’ and the ‘Nudge Nudge’ sketch. Financed by Playboy’s UK executive Victor Lownes, it was intended as a way of breaking Monty Python in America, and although it was ultimately unsuccessful in this, the film did good business in the UK. The group did not consider the film a success, but it enjoys a cult following today.
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