| Simon Pegg: Zombies, Cops and Ewoks?
Three decades before British actor and comedian Simon Pegg was smacking zombies upside the head with a cricket bat (Shaun of the Dead) or chasing down suspects in a not-so-innocent English village (Hot Fuzz), he was, like many kids of the '70s, completely enthralled by bizarre characters inhabiting a galaxy far, far away. "I was at my friend Chris's birthday party in 1977," Pegg says. "He'd already seen Star Wars, although at this point I had not. Someone had bought him a set of rub-on transfers of all the characters which I helped him apply to the Death Star diorama that came with them. I clearly remember being fascinated by the character names and not knowing who was who. I wondered why the old man's sword appeared to be on fire. It's the last memory I have before the day my parents finally took me to see the film.
Takashi Murakami at Gagosian Gallery
NEW YORK.- Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Takashi Murakami. This is Murakami's first exhibition with the gallery. Beneath its bright and playful appearance, Murakami's art is hard at work challenging established dichotomies. In his approach, high art and popular culture, East and West, present and past, humor and gravity, skepticism and belief are all sides of the same coin. Visually, his work merges the dystopic worlds of popular contemporary Japanese anim and manga cartoons with the ultra-refined techniques of traditional Japanese art. Operationally, he combines the work of the guild with that of the factory and production studio, resulting in a staggering body of work ranging from rare masterpieces to inexpensive, mass-produced commodities.
Departing from his well-known utopian and dystopian themes which feature masses of smiling flowers, elaborate scenes of toonish apocalypse, and the ever-morphing cult figures of DOB and Mr.
Ultimate Recipe Showdown will premiere in early 2008 on Food Network.
FOOD NETWORK (http://www.foodnetwork.com) is a unique lifestyle network and Web site that strives to be way more than cooking. The network is committed to exploring new and different ways to approach food - through pop culture, competition, adventure, and travel - while also expanding its repertoire of technique-based information. Food Network is distributed to more than 90 million U.S. households and averages more than seven million Web site users monthly. With headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Knoxville, Food Network can be seen internationally in Canada, Australia, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Monaco, Andorra, Africa, France, and the French-speaking territories in the Caribbean and Polynesia. The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP), which also owns and operates HGTV (http://www.hgtv.com), DIY Network (http://www.diynetwork.com), Great American Country (http://www.gactv.com) and FINE LIVING (http://www.fineliving.com), is the manager and general partner.
SAUL WILLIAMS WRITES OPEN LETTER TO OPRAH WINFREY
Poet and musician Saul Williams wrote an open letter to Oprah Winfrey, in which he states that there is no hatred of women in hip-hop music, claiming that the emcees of my generation are the ministers of my fathers generation.
Williams letter follows:
Dear Ms. Winfrey,
It is with the greatest respect and adoration of your loving spirit that I write you. As a young child, I would sit beside my mother everyday and watch your program. As a young adult, with children of my own, I spend much less time in front of the television, but I am ever thankful for the positive effect that you continue to have on our nation, history and culture. The example that you have set as someone unafraid to answer their calling, even when the reality of that calling insists that one self-actualize beyond the point of any given example, is humbling, and serves as the cornerstone of the greatest faith.
The Beatles and Philosophy
The Beatles and Philosophy, a collection of essays by philosophy experts (many of them university professors, all of them Beatles fanatics), is a new and sometimes tedious example of the latter. An entry in the "Popular Culture and Philosophy" series of books, which is now 25 volumes deep, The Beatles and Philosophy exploits the Fab Four's weakness for populist consciousness-raising by aligning their work to that of Kant, Heidegger, Aristotle, and a host of other great minds that don't necessarily have much to do with the band's music. A major problem with the collection is that it addresses the Beatles' lyrics only—understandably, seeing as there's no way to discuss Nietzsche and overdubbing with a straight face—an approach that inevitably treats the band as a one-dimensional unit.
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