Scott Coomes Archive - Plasma Pool

Stuff We Like

The Vice Guide to North Korea

This brilliant and disturbing documentary takes you deep into the shallows of Kim Jong Il’s hermit kingdom. Somehow, Vice Magazine’s Shane Smith (founder of VBS, Vice’s video division and star of their Guide to Travel series) and a clandestine-camera-wielding companion secure passage into North Korea from China -- pretending to be tourists, of course, because journalists go to jail. For an hour Smith explores the thin, saccharine veneer of majesty and might that the dictatorship uses to obscure the truth about the desperately impoverished and broken country. He mingles with eerily upbeat hosts, waitresses and tour guides, all hand-picked to chaperone him 24/7 during his stay (the pretense of which is to view and report on the Arirang Mass Games, a spectacular orgy of propaganda and gymnastics too baffling for words). Complete with a heartbreakingly awkward karaoke rendition of the Sex Pistol’s "Anarchy in the U.K.," this documentary is a must-see: a visceral primer for anyone interested in understanding the uniquely other-worldly yet backwards North Korea. -- Adam Schaefer
The Art of Marco Fusinato

Music, math, the interactive: these are three things that I really like, and Marco Fusinato's art includes them all. Mass Black Implosion is probably my favorite of his projects -- it reimagines musical scores, sometimes by overlaying them with scribbles of varying thickness (maps to some imagined territory), in architecturally-precise lines (an explosion into three dimensions), or as some kind of gloriously strange infographic for the world to come. Aetheric Plexus, in sharp contrast, turns audiovisual detail into interactive assault. It's difficult to get a sense of the scope of some of these works, but it's evident that Fusinato's gallery showings include a vast collaborative and musical component -- I'd love a chance to see some of this stuff live -- and I'm quite taken with his curatorial series You Don't Have to Call it Music, which tasks visual artists to create music. -- Lauren Caldwell
Dianne Wiest's Old Face

Dianne Wiest first struck me as the standout of Hannah and Her Sisters; then as the Law & Order DA who tells Sam Waterston what to do and how to think. She aged between these roles and now is even older, the offbeat beauty of her youth having morphed into a mature visage of both astonishing expressiveness and grandmotherly inscrutability — a crucial element of her facile and felicitous performance as psychotherapist Gina Toll on HBO's In Treatment. Psychotherapy is a delicate, hyper-pressurized encounter in which change rests on an enduringly empathetic therapist (who is also capable of being perceived as such) imbuing contingent actions and words with novel meanings and potentialities. Gina's patient Paul, a former protégé who returns for guidance after a decade of estrangement that began when Gina denied him a promotion, is ever probing Gina's face for nefariousness. A sleepy spider lying in wait, is what Paul calls her: What secret motives lie covertly in the fragile folds of her jowls, in the puffy bags beneath her eyes, etched on her weblike cheeks? Her enigmatic expressions initially offend Paul, whose history with Gina predisposes him to read any ambiguity in her mien as perfunctorily negative. Not sharing this pervading bias, we enjoy the virtuosic, Emmy-winning face of this gorgeous old lady whose allure and gravitas make me want to ask her to run for president. -- Kevin Hilke

From the Vault

Things that died in 2008.

Our president pledged as primary candidate to staunchly defend individual civil liberties and curb the domestic intelligence abuses of the Bush Administration. As the Democratic candidate, he hedged. As president-elect, he made stunning about-faces, notably on immunity for telecommunications companies who cooperated with Bush's illegal requests. Now, as president, he's continued as many of Bush's abuses as he's curtailed. Also, there was a time when John McCain wasn't an unprincipled, dishonorable bigot. He was quite the man, when he was a man. Then came a succubus to hasten his by then inevitable decline.

Scott Coomes

Scott is pursuing a master's degree in English literature at Stanford University. He is from Sacramento, California.

The Plasma Spring

Six or Seven Assistants

Pope Benedict has been drawn directly into the Church's ongoing pedophilia debacle. Father Gabriel Amorth, the pontiff's chief exorcist, blames the Devil, who he says is this very minute plotting papal assassination attempts from the shadows behind Harry Potter.
Israel Affronts World Jewry

A bill under deliberation in the Israeli Knesset, meant ostensibly to keep non-Jewish immigrants to Israel from taking advantage of the Law of Return, would, if passed, effectively invalidate the citizenship of people who converted to Judaism after arriving in Israel. The Diaspora is displeased.
Johnny Weir Too Big a Homo For Tangential Association With Smuckers

Lead by Smuckers and IMG entertainment, sponsors of the uber-commercialized Stars on Ice—worried about losing hold on the virulent homophobe demographic in the jam and movie markets—have threatened to pull sponsorship if insufficiently "family friendly" champion American Olympian Johnny Weir is allowed to participate. God bless America.
I Is Everyone I Know

New research suggests that as Facebook gets more complex and cavernous, your private life will become less private (duh) and you will become easier to predict—unless you hide your friend list from nosy supercomputers.
It Took Him a Year To Get Here?

Senate majority leader Harry Reid (finally) tells Congressional Republicans he's done screwing around with their healthcare reform hypocrisy: "Though we have tried to engage in a serious discussion, our efforts have been met by repeatedly debunked myths and outright lies. At the same time, Republicans have resorted to extraordinary legislative maneuvers in an effort not to improve the bill, but to delay and kill it."
Anatomically Incorrect

Good news for all the little girls in the world who watch ennui-soaked adult dramas: look for Mad Men Barbie dolls in stores soon. Don't ask me why Joan and Betty have the same build.
Hannukkah Wallace vs. Spartacus Bernstein

Good news everyone: the endlessly hilarious Name of the Year bracket is almost set. My favorite so far is Dinero Fudge, but that may change in the next five seconds.
The Lost Boys

Corey Haim is dead, and celebrity doctor Drew Pinsky thinks it's just awful he didn't get a chance to exploit him on television.
What Passes for "Science" In Psychology

Video games make kids dumb, says new research bolstered by the increasingly politically motivated Association for Psychological Science. Unfortunately for the researchers, as John Grohol says, everything else makes kids dumb, too; the most concrete conclusion they can draw is that kids dislike homework. Eureka!
You Can Play If You Want To

A cute kid discovers same-sex marriage while asking for hand-washing advice: "But this is the very first time I saw husbands and husbands! So funny! So that means you love each other!"
Hitting for the Cycle

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick says that Chief Justice John Roberts can't pretend that his patently partisan criticism is inherently nonpartisan just because he's from the branch of government that's supposed to be inherently nonpartisan.
How Were We Supposed To Know

From Sex Gulag, academics and law enforcement officials say the public has unrealistic expectations about the ability of tools like Megan's Law to prevent sex crimes.
Poor Bill Buckley

Ezra Klein looks at just how insanely stupid ("The Soviet Union [reformed healthcare], and we know how that worked out"! etc.) what passes for intellectual seriousness on the right is today.
Give the Press Handjobs

David Gregory, host of Meet the Press, is more a warmup comedian for pandering partisan blather than any sort of intellectual referee. E.J. Dionne tries to keep his head from exploding.
The Power of the Sun Is 0.3 Hellawatts

The Sacramento Bee reports on Austin Sendek, a UC Davis physics student who has started a petition to establish "hella" as a scientific prefix.
Talking Punts

Sarah Palin, pandering in Calgary, argues against herself: “My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse [Yukon Territory, Canada]. Believe it or not—this was in the ‘60s—we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse." Stephen Harper should appoint her to their Senate!