Some thoughts on our seeming inability to any long do the big technological things, from Neil Stephenson.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Big, Bold Science Fiction
Why we need it more than ever. I’ve read more than half of Glenn’s picks, but not all.
Inside The Tube
This is one hell of a surfing photo.
Remembering Earl Scruggs
Over at Garden and Gun.
Earl Scruggs
The king of the five-string banjo has finger picked his last. Along with Lester Flatt, Chubby Wise and of course Bill Monroe, he invented a new American jazz form. And of them, he was the last to go. If there’s a heaven, let’s hope they get their own instruments, and not harps.
[Update a couple minutes later]
(Transplanted Brit) Andrew Stuttaford remembers him.
Here he is (via Alex Massey), playing his signature classic with Steve Martin, who has some thoughts here.
[Late afternoon update]
I should add that, with all respect to Lester Flatt, he wasn’t the pioneer that the others were — he was just in the right place at the right time. He is known primarily for the “Flatt lick,” which he didn’t invent, but did popularize, but as any bio will tell you, he didn’t want to move into the sixties, and he wasn’t a real flat picker — he really just played rhythm. It took the likes of Doc Watson, Clarence White, Dan McCrary, Norman Blake, Tony Rice (and others I’m probably leaving out) to catch the guitar up to the rest of instruments in the genre, in terms of virtuosity.
Princess Of Mars
If that had been the title of the movie mistitled John Carter, I am confident that it would be doing much better at the box office. It was the title of the book on which it was based and, unlike Disney, Edgar Rice Burroughs knew how to sell books. It would help as well, of course, if the trailers had offered ample views of Lynn Collins rather than Mars monsters. It would have brought in the adolescent males by the hordes, just as DiCaprio brought the female tweens into Titanic.
We took the afternoon off (from normal weekend chores) to go see it at the matinee in 3-D IMAX, and we had a great time. Yes, it’s harder to suspend disbelief about the features of the planet than it was in E. R. Burroughs’ day, but it’s still a great story. Sadly, the theater was almost empty, both because of Disney’s awful marketing, and because it was competing with the opening weekend of a movie about teens hunting each other down.
I was amused to hear at the end someone talking about how it was a rip off of Star Wars. Obviously, whoever said it had no concept of what George Lucas was reading as a boy. I imagine that it was pitched as “Star Wars meets Gladiator,” but it’s a lot more than that. I highly recommend, and I particularly recommend it for families, who want a great role model for their daughters.
“Clunky, Anachronistic”
Judy Miller on the death of The Death of a Salesman. I had to read it in a literature course in college (Arthur Miller was a Michigan grad). I agree, it hasn’t held up well.
The Colliers Series
Started sixty years ago, introducing the American public to the coming age of space. It later led to a series of Disney short animations, shown on Sunday nights.
An Important Anglospheric Question
Is there an American equivalent for “snogging”? Is it different than smooching? If not, then should we adopt this side of the pond?
Terri Garr
Bravely battling multiple sclerosis. I’ve always liked her, going all the way back to that early Star Trek episode.