"The Japanese Tradition" was a series of nine short, parody "How To" videos that gently mocked the formality of Japanese culture, from comedy duo
Rahmens (
ラーメンズ) and Japan Culture Lab. They're
available on DVD, but nearly all of them can be seen on YouTube, including
Sushi and
Ocha (tea).
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 25, 2010 -
54 comments
Paula K. Shimatsu-u, who
worked behind the scenes at
Twin Peaks, has a book coming out with previously unpublished photos from on and off the set.
Wired has a gallery that boasts, among other delights,
Michael Horse reading a book beside a deer's head, and
Sheryl Lee with Sherilyn Fenn wearing, respectively, a lovely bobble cap and a very fetching jumper.
posted by Stan Carey
on Aug 14, 2010 -
15 comments
The history of Poland, in eight minutes,
in CGI, from the country's exhibition at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The film is full of blink-and-you'll-miss-it references - check the date at the bottom-left of the screen and see how many you can find!
[more inside]
posted by mdonley
on Aug 7, 2010 -
24 comments
I maintain that only an encyclopedic-archaeological turn can save an aging person's attachment to popular culture from descending into ridiculousness.
Against Eighties Music by Justin E.H. Smith
posted by xod
on Jul 26, 2010 -
144 comments
"I went and saw
Iron Man 2 today, pretty good, I read
Anathem too, yeah, not bad, I think, and I finally managed to work though those last two seasons of
The Wire": few personal cultural blogs are interesting.
with hidden noise is different. The blog of Dan Visel of the
Institute for the Future of the Book, it covers, regularly and in depth, reading material that's genuinely fascinating and often surprising — and he actually cares, seriously, about culture.
Some of the books covered include Nicholson Baker's
U and I, Aeschylus'
The Oresteia, Jean-Philippe Toussaint's
Self-Portrait Abroad and Donald Barthelme's
Paradise. (Also, his
immortal review of ulillillia's
The Legend of the Ten Elemental Masters, though it's not on this particular blog cannot be missed.)
posted by colinmarshall
on Jun 11, 2010 -
24 comments
A story of moose snouts, tenement animal husbandry and Crisco - the Lower East Side.
RAZ: Now, you describe the markets in this part of the Lower East Side, around the Bowery that Mr. Glockner's wife would often go to to find fresh produce, I was amazed to read about what you could get in New York City in the 1860s. I mean, there were a lot of choices.
Ms. ZIEGELMAN: You could buy bear. You could buy moose. And not only moose, you could buy moose snout. This was considered a particular delicacy.
RAZ: By whom?
Ms. ZIEGELMAN: That I don't know. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jun 9, 2010 -
11 comments
The rise of the f*** yeah tumblrs has been
noted on MeFi, but with the appearance of
Is it a F*** Yeah!?, it's easier to find curious FYTs. So in addition to the obvious
cats,
sharks and
what have you, one might happen upon
modernism,
Hamlet,
e.e cummings,
chinchillas,
archeology,
Romania,
The Kinks,
weather, and
ballet.
posted by nthdegx
on Jun 3, 2010 -
59 comments
Jane Graham in the Guardian on the
new wave of fan films, with links to notable examples. "... fan films have come a long way from two fat blokes with beards running through a forest waving pound-shop light sabres."
posted by nthdegx
on May 14, 2010 -
12 comments
The
American Academy of Pediatrics is proposing that
doctors be authorized to perform a “ritual nick” on the genitals of pre-pubescent girls in order to satisfy cultural requirements and hopefully stave off more invasive forms of Female Genital Cutting (FGC):
Most forms of FGC are decidedly harmful, and pediatricians should decline to perform them, even in the absence of any legal constraints. However, the ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is not physically harmful and is much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting. There is reason to believe that offering such a compromise may build trust between hospitals and immigrant communities, save some girls from undergoing disfiguring and life-threatening procedures in their native countries, and play a role in the eventual eradication of FGC. It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm. (source: PDF; not safe for work, contains line drawings of female genitalia.)
posted by Rumple
on May 7, 2010 -
162 comments
A web debate on cursing in private, public and online , part of a series of multiple perspective posts on the NYT called
Room for Debate, has several experts, including Georgetown U. Professor and author of
You just don't understand,
Deborah Tanner, yet no one mentions
George Carlin and his take on the seven words you can't say. Some
claim we've always cursed, while others
claim we curse on the web about as much as we do in real life and
there is data people, on average, swear .3% to .7% of the time and frequency per person has more to do with personality than class.
posted by Berkun
on Apr 13, 2010 -
118 comments
An unwilling Afghan bride's defiance leads to death. 'Frashta didn't want to marry her cousin, and she fled. In a land where tradition and family honor are everything, that sealed her doom. "So beautiful that no words could describe her face," said her uncle. A child of the provinces can never run far. She should have known this. Frashta, though, was headstrong. Two shots from a hunting rifle in the night, then they rolled her in cloth and tried to hide her, but some things cannot be hidden. She was found in the yard.
"A bad woman," said the cop.
[more inside]
posted by VikingSword
on Mar 26, 2010 -
63 comments
In the 50's and 60's, more than a thousand sled dogs were slaughtered by RCMP officers and provincial police, some of them killed in ad hoc gas chambers. A recent
report from retired Quebec judge Jean-Jacques Croteau states that Ottawa and Quebec should apologize and compensate the affected communities for 'turning a blind eye' to the slaughter. You can hear
Makivik President,
Pita Aatami talking about it on CBC's
As It Happens
posted by Bartonius
on Mar 25, 2010 -
9 comments
