Category: culture
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Sealed with a Commission (SWAC)
Today I’ll spend the day in Glendale attending the 31st Southwest Arts Conference (SWAC), a gathering of artists, arts leaders, and arts administrators from across the state. SWAC always has an interesting agenda; last year, Cheech Marin provided the keynote and discussed pieces in his collection of Latino/Latina art, the largest collection in America. This […]
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And now for a non-shoe crisis!
“The social quality of literature is still visible in the popularity of bestsellers. Publishers get away with making boring, baloney-mill novels into bestsellers via mere PR because people need bestsellers. It is not a literary need. It is a social need. We want books everybody is reading (and nobody finishes) so we can talk about […]
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Four Major Studios Cancel Writers’ Contracts
LOS ANGELES – Four major studios have canceled dozens of writers’ contracts in a possible concession that the current television season cannot be saved, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The move means the 2-month old writers strike may also endanger next season’s new shows, the Times said. January is usually the beginning of pilot […]
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Dumbledore, we hardly–ah, never mind.
So along comes Rowling with Dumbledore—a human being, a wizard even, an indisputable hero and one of the most beloved figures in children’s literature. Shouldn’t I be happy to learn he’s gay? Yes, except: Why couldn’t he tell us himself? The Potter books add up to more than 800,000 words before Dumbledore dies in Harry […]
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30 Days of Night
Vampire flicks come and go; the mythology itself seems to fall in and out of fashion with abandon. As my colleague Aimée noted recently, “Vampire stories aren’t about seduction and surrender anymore; they’re about blood.” (I’m paraphrasing) And it’s true. For the Victorians, the urge of sexual surrender was so strong and so taboo that […]
Charles Jensen | Writer 