Very funny stuff. I can see now why Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem didn’t give Animal more lead vocal parts…he gets a little confused sometimes.
Archive for November, 2009
The Muppets Do Bohemian Rhapsody
Friday, November 27th, 2009Book Review: My Wild Kingdom
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009My Wild Kingdom is the autobiography of former Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom host (and Lincoln Park Zoo director) Marlin Perkins. The narrative is linear, starting with his Missouri boyhood and moving on to far-flung expeditions scuba diving with sharks and snowmobiling alongside reindeer migrations.
The early parts are compelling, as Perkins remembers a pre-Depression childhood, conjuring an era and setting that still carry a whiff of the frontier. He works his way across the country, starting his career with animals by dropping out of college to take a job at the St. Louis Zoo.
As a narrator, Perkins is confident and straightforward, offering recollection without much reflection. His lifelong love of animals–particularly snakes–is tempered with a blunt collector’s approach that can seem exploitative today. While the book bogs down a bit at the close with details of filming Wild Kingdom, he remains intriguing and approachable throughout, particularly for fans of animals.
Spinning the Shooting Spree
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Cartoonist Matt Bors has another excellent comic, this time in response to the Fort Hood shootings. Click on the photo to see it full-size on his web site.
Ayn Rand: Overwrought Garbage Becomes a Worldview
Monday, November 9th, 2009“Atlas Shrugged” never offered any serious alternative to the social order; whatever Rand’s intention, the novel was not a call to arms but an invitation to escape. The book could never, in fact, have been any shorter, because it needed to feel like a whole substitute world, a full-blown reassuring place—you’re right, they’re wrong; you’re special, they’re not—into which the discoverer can jump, as into a magic wardrobe, and then live, happily, airlessly, for weeks of reading and rereading.”
Thomas Mallon has an entertaining takedown of Ayn Rand’s caterwauling, tone-deaf fiction in the New Yorker. A subscription is required to read the whole thing, but it’s worth tracking down, if only for the line, “The O. Henry she describes bears more resemblance to the candy bar than to the story writer.”
A more thorough takedown of the Goddess of Greed is available in Ayn Rand: The Comic.
Pandora and Prometheus
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009FLYMF’s Greatest Hits contributor Glen Golightly made a film, “Pandora and Prometheus,” which screened Oct. 22, 2009 at the Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre as part of Flicker L.A.s Attack of the 50 Foot Reels festival. The movie was shot on Super 8 film and edited in camera, meaning the sucker was shot in the sequence you see it. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.