Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 128
June 12, 2009
It Was a Different Era…
The response to yesterday’s post on smoking ballerinas got us thinking about other examples of folks who make their livings with their bodies, yet continue to puff away. And that train of thought inevitably led us to Phillies great Dick Allen, whose between-innings habit would never fly today. Then again, it’s unclear to us whether smoking is more harmful than the ingestion of massive quantities of human growth hormone.
June 11, 2009
Heading to Bed-Stuy
We’re checking out a bit early today, as we’ve got to prepare ourselves for a long-awaited Now the Hell Will Start reading at Bed-Stuy’s primo Browntsone Books. Event details here; please come support The Cause if the spirit moves you.
Crime of the Cave Bear
We’re in the midst of reading our pal Ulrich Boser’s book The Gardner Theft, which has taught us a heckuva lot about the art-crime world. One of the tome’s essential lessons is that 99.99 percent of art thieves are not experts, a la Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment. They instead tend to be lunkhead robbers who target paintings, statues, and fossils because such items are rarely well-guarded. Alas, this means the crooks usually have no idea how to care for the goodies they swipe—and, in many in
“A Monster of the People”
As things get ever-weirder in the Hermit Kingdom, it’s worth remembering the gobsmacking tale of Shin Sang-ok, a Japanese filmmaker kidnapped by Kim Jong-il. Even if you’re already familiar with Shin’s ordeal, it’s worth revisiting this harrowing account from 2003. We could scarcely imagine a more savage indictment of Dear Leader’s crippling megalomania.
Forced to make movies for his captor, Shin’s most infamous work from his DPRK days is Pulgasari (above), a Godzilla-inspired mishmash of Korean
Why Are These Ballerinas Smoking?
Because they have unsually high discount rates (PDF)—which is econo-speak for, “Don’t give a sufficient damn about their future wage prospects.” Of course, if they knew what was good for them, these ballerinas would be studying actuarial science instead of practicing their arabesque positions.
(Image via George Simhoni)
June 10, 2009
Frankenstein in Space, with Kinski
We know we’re still a few days away from the week’s finale, and thus from the joys of Bad Movie Friday, but we couldn’t resist posting the trailer above. We’re in the midst of watching Werner Herzog’s My Best Fiend, a documentary about his rather insane working relationship with Klaus Kinski. From what we’ve gathered (and previously posted about), Kinski had a couple of screws loose; Herzog describes him as a total egomaniac, whose idea of perfect beauty was his own face.
We wonder, then, what t
The Anteater Ritual
Jonah Lehrer, one of our most brilliant Wired colleagues, just posted about the infectious nature of bad dancing. Checking out his hilarious video evidence, we couldn’t help but think of this fictional antecedent. Who knew you could learn so much ’bout neuroscience by watching terrible ’80s sex romps?
The Winner in the Quagga Mess
Despite mankind’s best efforts, the ultra-aggressive quagga mussel continues to spread unabated across our great land. Gorgeous Lake Tahoe is the latest victim, while the shellfish invasion’s in full swing over near Cleveland. And could the mussels even dim the Sin City lights someday? Nothing, it seems, can stop the quagga mussel, given the species prodigious talent for reproduction—a single critter can lay upwards of 40,000 eggs.
But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up trying. And that’s surely g
The Visigoths Are Not to Blame
We were elated to arise this morning and discover that the Stanley Cup finals are headed toward a seventh and deciding game. This isnt because we’re huge hockey fans—in fact, we must confess general ignorance when it comes to the fastest game on ice. Having decided to go whole hog in support of Premiership laggard Sunderland these past few years, soccer has replaced hockey as our fourth sport. And the human mind just doesn’t have the capacity to go otaku on any more sports than that.
But we love
June 9, 2009
The Stuff of Kiddie Nightmares
We’re dog tired today due to Microkhan Jr.’s recent sleep woes. He woke up screaming at an ungodly hour, obviously having suffered through a terrible nightmare. And as we rocked him back into the Sandman’s embrace, we got to thinking—in our Reagan-era days as a wee bairn, what caused us to suffer similar night terrors?
One letter kept on popping to mind: V, a terrifying (albeit slightly cheesy) TV series about man-eating aliens who come to Earth under the guise of friendship. Seriously, there’s
