SUZE ROTOLO, 1947-2011
I think from the moment I saw this album cover in 1965 or 1966, without ever consciously thinking it or being able to articulate it, I wanted to be that guy, on that street, with that girl.
Pop Culture
“THE JAMES BROWN OF COMICS”
The website HiLowbrow.com has begun running a series called “Kirb Your Enthusiasm”, in which writers take a panel of the artwork of the great Jack Kirby and delve into its mysteries, ponder its meanings, extol its magnificence, or just diddle around in awestruck wonder. The series will continue through March 7th. I’m curious to see …
THE HUMILIATING CURVEBALL
Is this America’s most humiliating moment? The hubristic claque that ran our country–Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al–are revealed today to be ridiculous, ignorant goats. As revealed in The Guardian, “The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his …
JOHNNY STORM, RIP
The Human Torch, aka Johnny Storm, the young hothead of The Fantastic Four, is dead, killed in a battle against a horde of insectoid minions released by the super-villain Annihilus. His death comes in issue Number 587, which appears fifty years after the superheroic team’s debut. There will not be an issue Number 588.
THE PROBLEM WITH ELITES
In The Washington Post last Sunday, the social scientist Charles Murray wrote one of those uncommon articles that manages to intrigue and infuriate all at once. Murray’s thesis is that the America’s elite is out of touch with “the real America.” Writes Murray, “We know, for one thing, that the New Elite clusters in a …
PAUL NEWMAN, NATASHA RICHARDSON & LAUREN BACALL, 1999
Paul Newman, Natasha Richardson and Lauren Bacall, enroute to a party for Talk magazine, August 1999. Photograph by Daffyd Jones. Found on Jeff Wells‘s site Hollywood Elsewhere.
THE GREATEST BEATLES
The problem with picking the greatest Beatles songs, as Rolling Stone has done, is that the Beatles were not always Great–you know, capital G Great, as in profound, but not only profound, also peerless. They were, however, prolific, creative, innovative, imaginative, relentlessly cheerful, and over and over and over again, perfect. Songs like “Lovely Rita”, …