In case you're wondering what Buddy Lembeck has been up to these last ten years, here you go:

Bibleman is a children's video series about ordinary guy Miles Peterson who puts on the full armor of God to become Bibleman. Along with his side-kick's Cypher and Biblegirl, Bibleman fights evil in the name of God, quoting scripture as his primary weapon.

Official website here.

(via Meesher's boyfriend Ben)

# posted by Anonymous @ 12:43 AM  |

We are seeking essays about, but not limited to, the following subjects: Family, Career, Sex, Society, and Self. Be specific. Be unique. We want you to tell us—and, by extension, the entire world—something we haven’t heard before, something that defines you as a member of this burgeoning generation. Make us laugh, make us think, make us mad—just don’t make us yawn.

We are seeking Poetry, Fiction, and Non-Fiction by Latino & Latina writers that that is well-crafted and lively, has an intelligent sense of form and language, assumes a degree of risk, and has consequence beyond the world of its speakers or narrators. We also welcome interviews with established writers. Content that addresses political, social, and cultural aspects of the Latino and Latina identity and community are welcome but not a pre-requisite for consideration. Our intent with this issue is to showcase the vibrant and diverse voices of new and established Latino and Latina Writers.

# posted by Anonymous @ 9:53 AM  |

1. You have been overheard to say, regarding What the Shadow Told Me, "This is the greatest book I have ever read. It has changed my life." Explain.

2. T. Coraghessan Boyle has written that What the Shadow Told Me "redefines black humor." Given that Boyle himself is a black humorist and assuming that What the Shadow Told Me redefines black humor in the best possible way, Boyle is acknowledging that everything he published prior to June 27, 2002 -- the date of his comment -- is by definition inferior to What the Shadow Told Me. Given this, should American readers rise up en masse and demand that Boyle relinquish to Kurtis Davidson every literary honor that he received before that date? And royalties, too? Justify.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:53 PM  |

The baby's large eyes settled on him, and though this had been one of his happiest nights in his whole life, it made him melancholy. He had read somewhere that babies are instinctively drawn to faces, that they will fixate even on drawings or abstract, facelike shapes, and round objects with markings that might resemble eye-mouth-nose. It was information that struck him as terribly sad, terribly lonely -- to imagine the infants of the world scoping the blurry atmosphere above them for faces the way primitive people scrutinzed the stars for patterns, the way castaways stare at the moon, the blinking of a satellite. It made him sad to think of the baby gathering information -- a mind, a soul, slowly solidifying around these impressions, coming to understand cause and effect, coming out of a blank or fog into reality. Into a reality. The true terror, Jonah thought, the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die, but that we were all born, that we were all once little babies like this, unknowing and slowly reeling in the world, gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist and then, through no fault of our own, we had to.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:30 PM  |

The reruns and question-answering are designed to promote "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" -- AMP's huge, three-volume, 23-pound collection of all 3,160 "Calvin and Hobbes" strips that ran in newspapers between Nov. 18, 1985, and Jan. 1, 1996. The hardcover, slipcased set -- which will be released Oct. 4 with a first printing of 250,000 -- also includes new art and an introductory essay by Watterson.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 2:28 AM  |

Jack: "What happened to you, Stephen?"

Saunders: "I was abandoned by the people I worked for, as you'll be someday."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:06 PM  |

Team KD exhibits the wild creativity of Thomas Pynchon (I thought of “Vineland” quite often) in the made-up song lyrics, plays on pop culture, and intricate plot connections of every character. I found it required less head scratching than Pynchon, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Instead of post-modern dilemmas, the satire in this novel is self-directed. Writers, literary agents, creative writing teachers, university administrators, and editors are spared no mercy in the attack.

When [literary editor] Malcolm Day is asked what he thinks of Alice Walker’s writing, he says, “The Color Purple is one of my favorite films. Oprah shines in her cinematic debut.”

Kurtis Davidson gets away with pushing humor to the limit. Each chapter begins with an excerpt from the nonsensical pidgin English translation from the Tamil translation of the original English. A gangster rapper releases an album of pornographically reworked Christmas carols that end up being freebies to toddlers at a cancelled Black Santa appearance. Luke Perry, Dom Deloise, Olga Korbut and Strom Thurmond are among the dozens of celebrities name checked.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:40 PM  |

I sold my car the week after she moved down there and now use Jaimee's car.

Tom took his car back to Ohio after moving in with Jennifer. Uses Jennifer's Goblin.

Patrick just sold his car after taking the license plates off six months ago. Uses Casey's sweet ride.

Ezra was using Fay's car until it broke down.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:27 PM  |

"Admirable if wicked entertainers . . . an aggressive, devil-may-care satire that flies like a Scud missile in the face of political correctness."
--Julia Glass, National Book Award Winner, Three Junes, 2002

"One wild ride of a novel . . . redefines black humor."
--T.C. Boyle, Inner Circle, Riven Rock, and Drop City

"Put an insider-mystery worth of Dick Francis through a Dave Chappelle blender, and you'd get What the Shadow Told Me. Funny as hell."
--Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:49 PM  |

Then we got to Beast. "It was the best man for the job. The name is... Kelsey Grammer! If you would have seen his read. It is kinda weird when you think about it for a second, and the key was with the X-Men movies is get the best man for the job. He blew us out of the park. Yeah, yeah, and he's also my neighbor..." As we laughed, Arad reassured us that the "Frasier" star is the right man for the job. "When you look at it you see how again we are continuing with inspired choices."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 4:47 PM  |

The original movie was abstract and non-specific, and therefore it colonized the day dreams of a whole generation of children. It would not be too much to say that it put us in contact with the Deep Structure of Story, a framework on which we could and did hang almost anything we wanted. It is instructive to compare, say, the 1977 Marvel comics 'sequel' to Star Wars with Splinter of the Minds Eye or even the notorious Christmas Special. They are referring to different universes.

The prequel trilogy, on the other hand, is specific and crowded; and therefore, it will colonize the day dreams of no-one at all. We can internalize the simple structure of Star Wars and therefore feel that we are inside it: Attack of the Clones overwhelms us with specific detail. However exhilarated we may be, we are only ever on the outside looking in.

The prequel trilogy is supposed to provide a backstory for the originals. But the original films had their own back story, and it was a good one:

'A young Jedi named Darth Vader who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil helped the Jedi hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Your uncle didn't hold with your fathers ideals; thought he should have stayed at home and not gotten involved. Your father's lightsaber. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade, the same as you father'

Clear, coherent meaningful, and infinitely suggestive. Once upon, on a farm, there were two brothers, Owen and Anakin. One day, Ben the wizard came along, and asked them to become Jedi Knights and fight against the evil empire. Anakin went, but Owen stayed at home. Anakin had a baby son, and he left it with his brother to look after. Anakin was the best star pilot in the galaxy, and a good friend to Ben. He was not, in any sense, the messiah or the saviour of the universe. Ben also had another young apprentice, Darth. Darth was jealous of the master's hotshot new apprentice. He was consumed by the Dark Side of the Force, and murdered Anakin. He betrayed the Jedi to the evil Emperor. The dying Anakin gave his lightsabre to Ben, to pass onto his son. But when Ben goes home, Owen won't accept the lightsabre, and won't even tell the boy how his father died. The boy grows up in ignorance of his father, even though the scar on his forehead is purely metaphorical. And then, one day…

This is rather a good story, and its existence is an important part of the original power of Star Wars. The main purpose of Phantom Menace is to annihilate it: to make us forget we ever even imagined it.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:29 PM  |

The key thing to keep in mind that while the overall idea hasn't changed (you guide a civilization from the dawn of time to the near future, and you'll explore the world, found cities, research technologies, and compete against rival civilizations), the formula has been overhauled in a way that it hasn't been before. Johnson told us that they wanted to get rid of the things that have always not been fun in Civilization, such as having to constantly clean up pollution or battle corruption or things such as that. In their place are a slew of whole new gameplay features and ideas that have us excited about a Civ game like never before.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 6:28 PM  |

Poetry
1st Place: Becky Cooper, "This is What I Know"
2nd Place: Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, "goat song"
3rd Place: Joanne Lowery, "Worry, the Giraffe"

Fiction
1st Place: Alika Tanaka, San Francisco, CA: “S”
2nd Place: Dave Housley, Wheaton, MD: “On Sunday Will Be Clown”
3rd Place: Julia Ridley Smith, Roxobel, NC: “The Ugly Cousin”

Poetry Finalists and Semifinalists
Eric Amling, "Madam, I'm Atom"
Jill Beauchesne, "Almanac"
Rupert Fike, "At the Art Brut Show"
Anna Fulford, "A Bird in the Hand is Worth $1.50/hr"
Marty Hebrank, "Sadly to the Marrow"
Armine Iknadossian, "The Return"
Chad Parenteau, "The Dead Won't Stop Moving"
Lynne Potts, "Whole Worlds Had Already Happened"

Fiction Finalists and Semifinalists
Jacob Appel, New York, NY: “Sand Castles”
Sarah Blackman, Tuscaloosa, AL: “We Can Be Jack and Sally”
Timothy Croft, Tuscaloosa, AL: “Unlike Cheoung Ek”
Lisa DeCook, Bowling Green, OH: “Andy or Just a Few of the Things That Could Have Happened Instead”
Christopher Harris, Amherst, MA: “The Astonishing Adventures of the Redeemer”
Teague Whalen, Harbor Springs, MI: “Drivin’ Up to Denver”
Jennifer Witt, Elon, NC: “Confidence”

# posted by The Editors @ 12:00 AM  |

Just what bill of goods are we being sold, between the frames?

Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn't be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.

"Good" elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.

Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.

True leaders are born. It's genetic. The right to rule is inherited.

Justified human emotions can turn a good person evil.

That is just the beginning of a long list of "moral" lessons relentlessly pushed by "Star Wars."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 6:42 PM  |

That the writing workshop, the sort led by an established writer and populated by aspirants, is a site of human longing and despair is undeniable. Fear and loathing, the grosser undercurrents of hostility, fratricidal and patri- or matricidal impulses, fox-in-henhouseish preying on one's own potential successors, those are more like secret poxes--venereal flare-ups, to use a metaphor beloved by Dahlberg. The famous teacher who steals from his students--that's a story going around. Alternately, one hears of the writer with the former protege, one extensively favored with opportunities, opened doors, who's now, after publication, brushed his mentor off but only after making an unacknowledged appropriation of signature aspects of the elder writer's live-performance shtick. Typically, in our correct, passive-aggressive era, hostility has gone underground. The last remaining interrupters, ranters, tantrum-artists--and a handful do still roam the creative-writing landscape--are mentioned with the tittering that disguises our uneasy awe. No one approximately my own age will tell even his or her worst students, as Dahlberg often apparently told even his very best, that they are simply not a writer, that they ought to give it up. And every one of us feels a queasy guilt at this hesitation; are we perhaps only leaving that job to be done by some subsequent disenchanter--an editor, or a series of rejection slips, a teacher braver than ourselves? Are we like bogus farmers, raising crops already scheduled to be destroyed in some government buyout?

No one can say. So we smile in the classroom and work out murkier feelings among ourselves. Tongues scarred with bite marks, then loosened by a little red wine, wag in late-night gripe sessions. A few teachers circulate excerpts from the laughably inept, others memorize the unforgettable lines. A prize-winning poet shocked me years ago, explaining casually, almost sweetly, that the majority of her students could be shown how to write an adequate, competent poem--the problem was that few of these poems would ever be anything but too "boring" to read. The ferocity and finality of that modifier wasn't lost on me. A cheery type (at least by Dahlbergian standards), I like many of my students personally. Their striving mostly stirs me, often inspires me, sporadically breaks my heart. Yet I participate in the venting, too, and the whispered framing of guilty questions: Is it for more than the paycheck that we go on propagating this farce?

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 4:07 PM  |

There has not, in fact, been a good Star Wars movie since the first one. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, despite the presence of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, the hologram of Alec Guinness and the voice of James Earl Jones, are rote elaborations of a story arc that was pretty thin to start with. Like the prequels of the last six years, they were made primarily to gratify a marketing line and, possibly, their creator’s ego. Yet, although their props and characters—from Cloud City to the Ewok Village—ultimately seemed to have been designed with toy stores firmly in mind, Empire and Jedi still managed to convey a sense of Mr. Lucas’ childlike thrall to all things gadgety and goofy, a loss much lamented in a Simpsons episode that lampoons the diminutive director of a Star Wars–type movie.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:44 AM  |

Even very low levels of a chemical found in plastic containers and tin cans boosts risks for prostate abnormalities in mice, and may do so in humans as well, researchers report.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 3:08 PM  |

9. Perhaps inevitably, Opening Day -- July 17, 1955 -- was a disaster. Asphalt poured just hours before guests arrived hadn't fully dried, and women's spiked heels sunk into Main Street. VIP passes were widely counterfeited, and double the expected number of people showed up. Rides broke down. Because of a plumber's strike, Walt Disney had to choose between drinking fountains and bathrooms. He opted for the latter, telling a reporter, "People can buy Pepsi-Cola, but they can't pee in the street."

15. Disneyland is home to feral cats -- nobody knows how many -- that come out at night, after visitors leave. Years ago, more than 100 were discovered living inside Sleeping Beauty's castle.

37. Conspicuously missing on Opening Day: the Matterhorn. In its place was a two-story-high pile of dirt from the excavation of the castle moat. It was billed as "Lookout Mountain." The Matterhorn didn't open until 1959.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:46 AM  |

It's not that I'm complaining about the male attention; that would be an unwise thing for a single girl to do. But this type of man - the sort who sends you running to the Oxford English Dictionary for the precise definition of 'stalker' - wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Despite my obvious reluctance, these men seemed sure that I was their ideal woman, as long as my personality didn't come into it. I was a blank canvas onto which they could project whatever odd, antiquated ideas they had about men and women. I was to be a romantic heroine from a Victorian novel, coughing blood into the occasional handkerchief while he, the melancholic hero, carried his burden bravely.

I suppose for a certain type of man, the idea of a disabled girlfriend carries a number of advantages. "Well," they think, ""he'll always need me, she'll be grateful, and it'll be hard for her to run off with anyone else." Through friends, I also heard that a couple of men (30 years older than me, and of no fixed abode) thought that, while I'd be out of their league normally, they'd be in with a chance because of my disability. It seems your market value slips when you're disabled, and going for a disabled woman means you'll be able to get one who's a bit prettier, cleverer and younger than you would otherwise. A win-win situation, really.

After a few years of going out and meeting men in bars and pubs, I became quite cynical. It started to seem as though men's reactions to me could be fitted into three categories. The stalkers - those of the porn-and-emigration tendencies, for whom my disability was an advantage; the bottlers, who could hardly look at me once confronted with my disability; and those who were simply in denial and secretly believed that, given the chance, they could 'heal' me.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 5:08 PM  |

Booker ends his 700-page treatise with a diatribe against literature of the past two centuries. Modern fiction has "lost the plot," he argues. Moby-Dick initially may look like a heroic Overcoming the Monster tale, but in the end we do not know who is more evil, Captain Ahab or the whale who kills him. While the ambiguities of modernism trouble Booker, some of his readers will be even more disturbed to find "E.T." and Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies extravagantly lauded in a book that disparages the complex moral pessimism of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" and the achievement of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Times Past , which he dismisses as "the greatest monument to human egotism in the history of story-telling."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:54 AM  |

The classic heritability research paradigm is the twin adoption study: Look at IQ scores for thousands of individuals with various forms of shared genes and environments, and hunt for correlations. This is the sort of chart you get, with 100 being a perfect match and 0 pure randomness:

The same person tested twice: 87
Identical twins raised together: 86
Identical twins raised apart: 76
Fraternal twins raised together: 55
Biological siblings: 47
Parents and children living together: 40
Parents and children living apart: 31
Adopted children living together: 0
Unrelated people living apart: 0

After analyzing these shifting ratios of shared genes and the environment for several decades, the consensus grew, in the '90s, that heritability for IQ was around 0.6 - or about 60 percent. The two most powerful indications of this are at the top and bottom of the chart: Identical twins raised in different environments have IQs almost as similar to each other as the same person tested twice, while adopted children living together - shared environment, but no shared genes - show no correlation. When you look at a chart like that, the evidence for significant heritability looks undeniable.

Four years ago, Flynn and William Dickens, a Brookings Institution economist, proposed another explanation, one made apparent to them by the Flynn effect. Imagine "somebody who starts out with a tiny little physiological advantage: He's just a bit taller than his friends," Dickens says. "That person is going to be just a bit better at basketball." Thanks to this minor height advantage, he tends to enjoy pickup basketball games. He goes on to play in high school, where he gets excellent coaching and accumulates more experience and skill. "And that sets up a cycle that could, say, take him all the way to the NBA," Dickens says.

Now imagine this person has an identical twin raised separately. He, too, will share the height advantage, and so be more likely to find his way into the same cycle. And when some imagined basketball geneticist surveys the data at the end of that cycle, he'll report that two identical twins raised apart share an off-the-charts ability at basketball. "If you did a genetic analysis, you'd say: Well, this guy had a gene that made him a better basketball player," Dickens says. "But the fact is, that gene is making him 1 percent better, and the other 99 percent is that because he's slightly taller, he got all this environmental support." And what goes for basketball goes for intelligence: Small genetic differences get picked up and magnified in the environment, resulting in dramatically enhanced skills. "The heritability studies weren't wrong," Flynn says. "We just misinterpreted them."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 4:55 PM  |