A few weeks ago, to commemorate Independence Day, Anis Shivani, who started a minor shit storm in comment fields across the internet with his very funny list of the most overrated writers in America, released his list of 20 books on independent presses you should know about, which includes my friend Matthew Henriksen’s debut from [...]
More ...Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Hayes Carll at Slim’s, May 14, 2011
May 18, 2011
1:53 pm
Criticism, Field Reports, Music, Reviews
Filed under:"rugged individualism", america, beatnik shit, country music, hayes carll
On stage at Slim’s in San Francisco last Saturday night, Hayes Carll sounded like the real thing, a bona fide Texas troubadour in the tradition of Steve Earle or Carll’s idol, Ray Wylie Hubbard. Obviously enjoying himself–more so as the free drinks arrived–Carll inhabited a stage persona somewhere between that of the drunken poet in his [...]
More ...Rednecks in Indieland: With ‘Go-Go Boots,’ the Drive-by Truckers–a great American band–return to form
Mar 03, 2011
9:08 pm
Filed under:"copperhead road", "rugged individualism", "sweet home alabama", drive-by truckers, eddie hinton, lynyrd skynyrd, mike cooley, patterson hood, randy newman, rednecks, shonna tucker, steve earle, the south
Perhaps Andre Dubus was right when he called New Hampshire the most redneck state north of the Mason-Dixon line because I’ve always heard my teenage years in Alabaman-cum-Athens, Georgian band the Drive-by Truckers’ hard luck narratives. Then again, high school in America being the experience it is, most of us who are of a certain [...]
More ...WWW: Writers on writing on the Web
As a software developer / code monkey / geek, I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow, the programmer Q&A site run by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. It’s a slick and easy-to-use Web site that attracts a (mostly) positive group of thoughtful developers / monkeys / geeks. They recently opened a new version of the [...]
More ...Aftershock (The Movie)
Aug 12, 2010
9:37 am
Filed under:aftershock, hollywood crap, hong kong, people's liberation army
I recently went to the Broadway Cinematheque in Mong Kok to see a new movie from China, apparently a kind of sensation, called, by it’s English language title, Aftershock, directed by Feng Xiagang, who, as far as I can tell, has built a decent career as a filmmaker in mainland China, and also, I think, [...]
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