Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 66

The Vanishing Artist

(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates)

I'm eternally fascinated by great artists who seemingly fall off the face of the Earth. Many disappear because they lose battles against their demons, but others simply decide to change paths and opt for stability. Bettye Swann certainly falls into the latter category, as detailed in this excellent 2005 piece from Las Vegas City Life:

Dressed in her church clothes, Swann brings me what looks like a blue plastic lunch box containing maybe a dozen photo...

Hogs and Dogs

(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates)

There's controversy brewing in southern Mississippi, where Jackson County recently approved a hog-dog bay. That's an event in which a hunting dog corners a boar in a pen, to the ostensible delight of onlookers. To those who oppose the practice, it comes perilously close to an interspecies take on dogfighting; to its fans, it's simply a regional spin on rodeo. (Want to decide for yourself? Here's some video.)

Though the hearings on the bay brought out tons o...

A Tooth for a Tooth

(Cross-posted to Ta-Nehisi Coates)

In certain precincts of Albania, where familial ties still mean everything, minor grudges have a way of spiraling seriously out of control. Take the the sad case of the Morevataj clan, which has been embroiled in a decade-long blood feud thanks to a drunken spat that ended in murder. According to the Kanun, the 15th-century legal code that still governs certain aspects of Albanian society, vengeance for such a crime can be exacted not only on the perpetrator ...

"When Getting Even Just Isn't Enough"

In the name of holding our blogging cards close to our chest, so that next week's TNC guest stint is something special, we're gonna be taking you straight into Bad Movie Friday on this lazy summer morn. Some of our closest friends would argue that Avenging Force doesn't deserve a place in the schlock pantheon, given Michael Dudikoff's excellent performance and the sharp Reagan-era spin on The Most Dangerous Game. (Spoiler: It's man.) But while Avenging Force certainly has its moments, it...

Called Up to the Bigs

Apologies for the dearth of posting both today and this week, but we have solid excuses: we're still doing press for the Alcoholics Anonymous piece (as evidenced by the above clip from today's The Brian Lehrer Show), and we're saving our choicest cuts for next week's guest stint over at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog. Yes, we've been called up from the blogosphere's equivalent of...

Thou Shall Not Pass

It would take a rock-hard heart not to be moved by the plight of the Iroquois national lacrosse team, which has been frustrated in its efforts to attend the world championships in England. The team's members hoped to travel on passports issued by their tribal government, but the British have refused to recognize the documents—despite the State Department's written assurance that the athletes will, indeed, be let back into the United States.

Though we sympathize with the Iroquois, they really s...

What We Fear Most

By the time this post goes live, we'll be sitting in a dentist's chair, getting our teeth scraped and sandblasted for the first time in well over a year. We've consumed vast quantities of dark coffee and sugar over that period, so we expect a very rough experience. Considering our natural fear of dentists, we go into this experience with heavy hearts. Please, think good thoughts for us.

The Art of Product Placement

The armed forces obviously have to deal with a lot of requests from Hollywood, which is why the various military branches all have entertainment liaison offices. If your forthcoming production is supposed to depict military personnel, or you want to film on a base, you need to go through an elaborate clearance procedure that occasionally ends in tears. According to this compilation (large PDF) of weekly reports from the Air Force's entertainment liaison, for example, you're unlikely to get...

Grand Delusion

One of the creepiest things about Burma's ruling junta is its insistence on creating the trappings of prosperity, even as the vast majority of the nation grapples with desperate economic circumstances. Take the recent Yangon Auto Show, which followed the Western blueprint to a T with scantily-clad models draped across shiny new vehicles. Yet the cars on display were little more than symbols of Burma's foolish economic policies, which stress self-sufficiency to an absurd degree:

Ko Sai, the...

Satan's Salad Dressing

We're in the process of trying to find an insightful passage to read at a pal's forthcoming wedding. (Suggestions welcome, by the way.) It's taking us much longer than anticipated, in large part because we keep getting sidetracked by old favorites we've discovered while ransacking our overstuffed bookshelves. Case in point: Lawrence Wright's Saints and Sinners, a collection of profiles of larger-than-life religious figures. Upon finding the book, we immediately flipped to the passage that is ...