The Cinema of Whitney Houston (with Bradford Nordeen)
Kevin Killian02.23.12
Fanzine arrived at Moby Dick in San Francisco just in time to see Whitney sing Step By Step on February 11th in a televised tribute to her own life, as happens with celebrity, the product outliving the person, a self-made monument. Fanzine took the long way home, reflecting, and stayed up late watching her films. Kevin Killian’s 2008 essay, with fellow fan Bradford Nordeen, analyzes her mythic presence through her movies, locked in the vice-grip of fame, of performance, of the voice.
Prologue: This Fragile Fortress
Thomas McBee01.19.12
Thomas Page McBee is running––down a street in Oakland, down a stretch of history, down a thread like an ant in the description of a tesseract. In the prologue of his (as yet) unpublished memoir "about crime, family, and masculinity," This Fragile Fortress, McBee brings his hands together in a flash––a boyish Mrs. Who––and the ant passes from who Thomas was into who he is about to be. Oakland, California: 2010.
Top 10 Moving-Image Events of 2011
Bradford Nordeen12.29.11
From feature to porn to trailer to meme, Bradford Nordeen assembles his 10 favorite "moving-image events" of 2011.
What Not Sleeping Starts To Make: Blake Butler’s Nothing
Ken Baumann10.15.11
The late great David Foster Wallace was once interviewed on European TV and said he can’t own a TV because that’s all he would be doing. Like in the pot scene from Infinite Jest in the first bit of that epic novel. He also said he writes in a difficult way to try and battle this tendancy in himself. Too easy is self defeating. Blake Butler, the author of Scorch Atlas, Ever and two books on Harper Perennial this year, the novel There is No Year and Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia, released this week, is an inheritor of Wallace. Everything Butler writes is difficult (a good thing), beautiful, dark, and oft funny. Friend and copublisher of the literary mag No Colony Ken Baumann recently interviewed Butler. It is no less challenging than Butler’s fiction, or non.
Post-Hotdog, Sober, Mr. Lee
Linh Dinh05.12.11
Decorated with fake skulls and Phillies pennants, Linh Dinh’s favorite dive bar Dirty Frank’s is, in truth, not so much a drinking establishment as an elaborate shrine to a pair of twin lost causes—art and picking fights with bouncers. Here, Dinh explains the similarities between the two and, like a series of snapshots of a night when you were blackout drunk, reminds you of mistakes you didn’t know you’d made.
Sponsored in Part
Malina Saval03.26.11
Malina Saval is the author of The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens. She is also a member of Al-Anon. A sponsor-less member, much to her desperation, as she struggles alone with her husband’s addictions, her family life, her own anxieties and moments of self-doubt. As someone once said, "I’ve been out to sea a long time." This is the first column of Malina’s that will chronicle her search for an Al-Anon sponsor.
Love and Tranquilizers in Madagascar
Michael Thomsen02.07.11
Michael Thomsen’s rough transition into life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar was punctuated by pine cone braziers, snorted barbituates, mistaken-identity cunnilingus, the terror of isolation and, of course, zebus. Accompanying photos of Madagascar courtesy of Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak, Simone Giovanelli and Massimiliano (Nacchia).
Just So Stories: Stories We Tell About Africa (And Those We Don’t)
G. Pascal Zachary01.24.11
G. Pascal Zachary, author of Married to Africa, examines the narratives that construct our understanding of Africa including, of course, the concept of Africa as a unitary entity. Rather than contributing to our understanding of the diverse cultures, communities and political forces at work there, Zachary argues that these narratives render contemporary realities more opaque. Along the way, he examines an array of the figures who have shaped the discussion, including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Mugabe, Isak Dinesen, Yossou N’Dour, Langston Hughes, Kwame Nkrumah, Maya Angelou and LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte.
Invisible Missive Magnetic Juju: On African Cyber-Crime
Louis Chude-Sokei10.24.10
Using William Gibson’s Neuromancer as his guide book, Louis Chude-Sokei, author of The Last Darky, examines the culture surrounding Nigerian internet scams, often known by the name "419" derived from the Nigerian legal code. Along the way, we see Colin Powell dancing to African hip-hop, the largest bank theft in history, a series of corrupt military dictators, Frantz Fanon, smoldering piles of e-waste, the most trusted man in Nigeria and the kidnapped star of the Nigerian film adaptation of Things Fall Apart.
Adam at the Races: the NASCAR Air Guard 400
Adam Ganderson09.26.10
Adam Ganderson takes us on an outsider’s trip to the last race of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup series, which is kind of like the end of the regular season before the playoffs start. It’s also the weekend of September 11th when Adam arrives like Hunter Thompson at the Kentucky Derby, his partner-in-crime at the ready. It’s a weekend full of American Pride, BBQ grills, cheap beer, and leathered sun-burnt skin. Oh yes, and the scream of 48 race car V8 engines revving at high power for 400 laps. It’s NASCAR and it’s as big as country music and bigger than the NFL. Photographs by Adam Ganderson.
