Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 142

“I Still Need Him for Shooting!”

As previously noted this week, Microkhan recently re-watched the great Fitzcarraldo as part of his ongoing screenplay research. Of particular interest was the second half of the film, in which Klaus Kinski’s aspiring rubber baron encounters a tribe of Amazonian headhunters. Since Now the Hell Will Start contains a similar culture clash, we wanted to learn how the great Werner Herzog handled the mashup of languages, social mores, and religions.

The best scene involves Kinski and his crew anxiousl

Satellite Saviors

The Bouvet Rames Guyane is arguably the most grueling race on the planet. Solo contestants must literally row across the Atlantic Ocean, from Senegal to French Guiana. Yet even the strongest seafaring Frenchman is no match for Mother Nature, as Remy Alnet discovered about 400 miles from the finish line:

I was inside the cockpit and wanted to play the music louder. I was opening the hatch of my cabin when a wave larger than the others totally flooded the inside. The boat lost it’s balance and caps

Headhunting in the Balkans

The practice of headhunting is typically associated with pre-colonial Southeast Asia, and for good reason: Prior to 1700, approximately one-third of the region’s populace engaged in the sadistic pastime. But the ritualized lopping off of skulls had its fair share of devotees in Europe, too. The tribes of Montenegro were avid headhunters, primarily targeting Ottoman Turks (who took heads of their own). But they would settle for fellow Montenegrins in a pinch, especially when the decapitation coul

Whatever Happened to Zezozose Zadfrack?

The recent leak of this Charles Manson mugshot got Microkhan thinking about his youthful obsession with Helter Skelter, still a classic of the true-crime genre. The way that Vincent Bugliosi slowly reveals the paranoia at the Family’s core, as well as the crazy Beatles link, taught us a lot about narrative pacing—not to mention the wisdom of avoiding self-professed messiahs who distribute tabs of LSD and fancy themselves musical geniuses.

Even the updated version of the book contains little info

Pushing the Hunger Envelope

The hunger strike is the most universal form of human protest, employed by kings and commoners alike, for reasons ranging from the noble to the mundane. Today brings news of actress Mia Farrow preparing to try her hand at hunger, in the admirable name of bringing attention to Darfur. According to her Farrow’s publicist, she’ll forego food “for as long as [she:] is able to survive.”

But how long might that be? Over the past few years, the aggrieved have perfected the art of the hunger strike, prolo

The Pinnacle of Science

A Viennese chemist solves a riddle that’s vexed mankind since time immemorial:

The hypothesis presented herein says that abdominal hair is mainly responsible for the accumulation of navel lint, which, therefore, this is a typically male phenomenon. The abdominal hair collects fibers from cotton shirts and directs them into the navel where they are compacted to a felt-like matter. The most abundant individual mass of a piece of lint was found to be between 1.20 and 1.29mg (n=503). However, due to

From the Heyday of Amp

Microkhan’s under super-intense pressure to crank on the screenplay this afternoon, so I’m jetting a bit early today. See y’all in the a.m.—or, if the blogging pull is just too much, later tonight after Microkhan Jr.’s been deposited into Slumberland.

In the meantime, enjoy the vintage Ken Ishii video above, a staple of MTV’s late, great Amp—not to mention America’s ever-so-brief love affair with Japanese techno. Those were the days…

The Somalia of 1855

A dispatch (PDF) from the pirate-filled waters off Canton (present-day Guangzhou). The parallels to modern accounts from Somalia are pretty eerie, especially when you consider that China was undergoing its own brand of internal turmoil during this period:

The pirates, who have always been very numerous and very formidable in these waters, have lately increased to an alarming extent. No sufficient punishment has been inflicted on them, and they have grown audacious beyond measure. They muster by t

The Madden Killer That Wasn’t

Microkhan is one of the few (American) football fans who doesn’t lament the retirement of longtime TV announcer John Madden. For far too long, the noted fried-food enthusiast has filled airtime with nothing but head-thunkingly obvious comments. His typical pre-kickoff riff over the last decade has gone something like this: “To win, I think they’re gonna have to score some points. But they’re also gonna have to play well on defense.” Thanks, Scoop.

Madden’s departure does, however, revive memories

Black Death Rethink

Have plague-infected rats (as well as their attendant fleas) gotten a bad rap in the history books? A pair of Georgia-based geographers think so. Their rather unconventional theory is that an unknown viral condition, rather than bubonic plauge, was responsible for Europe’s Black Death:

“The Black Death went so fast, but we knew bubonic plague in India in 1903 moved slowly, even with modern transportation,” said Welford, a native of Suffolk, England, where the epidemic hit especially hard.

“(Black