| Exporting pop culture
Richard Poplak lives for pop culture. As a teen who grew up in South America, his experiences with The Cosby Show and censorship, with Mad Max and military training have become the seeds of his book, Ja, No, Man!, a portrait of Apartheid. The book launch was last week. Not content to bask in the glory, Poplak, is already working on his second: Omar Simpson says D'oh!, which examines North American pop culture in the Middle East. I.D. chatted with Poplak about Duff soda, radicalized Muslim youth and the virtues of apathy. Q Tell me about your new book. A What sort of nudged me is a piece I came across online that said a satellite television station in Egypt was doing an Arabized version of The Simpsons. I thought that was so strange, it was such a North American phenomenon, it's such a sophisticated piece of satire.
XMM-Newton pinpoints intergalactic polluters
Warm gas escaping from the clutches of enormous black holes could be the key to a form of intergalactic 'pollution' that made life possible, according to new results from ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory. Black holes are not quite the all-consuming monsters depicted in popular culture. Until gas crosses the boundary of the black hole known as the Event Horizon, it can escape if heated sufficiently. For decades now, astronomers have watched warm gas from the mightiest black holes flowing away at speeds of 1000-2000 km/s and wondered just how much gas escapes this way. XMM-Newton has now made the most accurate measurements yet of the process. The international team of astronomers, led by Yair Krongold, Instituto de Astronomia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, targeted a black hole two million times more massive than the Sun at the centre of the active galaxy NGC 4051.
Fans and filmmakers at New York Comic Con
The fringes of pop culture converged at the Javitz Center for the New York Comic Con last weekend, creating a fan-filled orgy of awesomeness. Mainstream celebrity appearances (for example, Stephen Colbert promoting his irreverent cartoon Tek Jansen) were less noteworthy than the sheer celebration of synthesizing imagination with entertainment. .
Hewoes Comic Book Satires NBC's Heroes
Parody Press Comics has announced the upcoming release of "Hewoes #1," a comic book satire of NBC's popular superhero drama, Heroes. The title is written and illustrated by longtime comics veteran Bill Maus and will ship with two different covers, a "Good Hewoes" cover and a "Bad Hewoes" cover. .
Trivia Night at Haggin Museum
STOCKTON - The Haggin Museum has teamed up with members of the Pacific Historical Society of University of the Pacific to host an entertaining and educational Trivia Night from 7 to 9 p.m. today. With inspiration from the mid-'90s Nickelodeon game show "Legends of the Hidden Temple," the evening event will challenge teams of players with questions about pre-Columbian culture, pop culture and more. The winning team and other participants will receive prizes. Admission is $5 per person at the door, and free snacks will be provided. Soda, mixed drinks and beer will be available for purchase. For more information, contact Eddie Hargreaves at (209) 940-6312 or info@hagginmuseum.org. .
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.
Redman keeps sense of humor
The average career life span of a rapper, even a seemingly searing-hot rap star, is about three albums, or if he's lucky about five years, before he either has to diversify (usually by going into acting) or risk fading into the land of ``whatever happened to'' hip-hop trivia. Reggie Noble, aka Redman, came to prominence in the early '90s as part of Erick (EPMD) Sermon's Def Squad and became a favorite of thugs, backpackers and casual hip-hop fans. He could infuse the standard tough-talk and boasting with an unusual and sometimes surreal sense of humor, and with a never-ending stream of pop-culture references and similes peppering his energetic rhymes (most of which aren't suitable for a family newspaper). A few gold albums later, he teamed up with Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man, and the pair discovered a chemistry that jumped from their 2000 platinum-selling CD Blackout! into movies (How High) and a mercifully short-lived and embarrassing Fox sitcom, Method & Red.
United States PBS : a documentary on boomers' generation
"The Baby Boom Century: 1946-2046" offer a panorama of the past, present and future of a generation that has been covered so often. Finding a new way to show this generation was one of the challenges of this documentary. Aiming at teaching about collective history, it covers from the Vietnam War to Sept. 11, but also civil rights, technologic revolutions. "The Boomer Century" deals with such topics as health, work, entertainment, money and family. PBS is inviting you to meet the baby boomers or perhaps reconsider them. Like the generation it depicts, the documentary "The Baby Boom Century: 1946-2046," is unpredictable, multilayered, inspiring and often overwhelming a testament to the heft of 78 million aging Americans.
Born from 1946-64, boomers have lived through a series of stunning social transformations while contributing to many of them.
|
