Dec 7, 2010 0
The absurdity of much of Freud leads many to dismiss his proposition that analysis might in some cases be interminable as poppycock. Web Therapy, an improvised web series produced by Dan Bucatinsky and star Lisa Kudrow, takes this anti-therapeutic protestation to its cathected extreme, embodying it in Fiona Wallice, a woman who holds no psychological [...]
Nov 22, 2010 0
Dan Gordon-Levitt, also known as fire-dancer extraordinaire “Burning Dan,” passed away in early October. As a nod to Dan, who mentored me and countless other students, this Stuff We Like is about fire-dancing. Fire dancing’s tribal origins (fire-dancers will often point to the New Zealand Maori people) syncretized with circus-style object manipulation and filtered through Burner culture [...]
Nov 22, 2010 0
Three-time Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston gets the bulk of the praise for Breaking Bad’s greatness, and he is no doubt excellent. But Aaron Paul, as 20-something meth-dealer Jesse Pinkman, is the show’s top superstar. Cranston is no doubt excellent as teacher/meth-chef Walter White. Yet every week, Paul is forced to play a far wider range of [...]
Nov 22, 2010 0
The stifled, envious subject of Jack Spicer’s early poem “The Dancing Ape,” was, for Spicer’s late-’40s Berkeley classmates, just Jack: an awkward, anguished, failed homosexual. One says (in Spicer’s biography) that “nobody was interested” in “a Neanderthal man” like Jack. Another: “He’s so ugly he doesn’t deserve to have sex.” A friend adds that he was “too apish, or animal-like, to [...]
Sep 22, 2010 0
It feels a bit silly to heap effusive praise on a show as beloved and acclaimed as Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I also know that its being a children’s cartoon on Nickelodeon has prevented a significant number of people from giving it the chance it deserves. The series chronicles the adventures of Aang, an [...]
