Recent blog posts

I’m not an admirer of director Christopher Nolan’s work (except for The Prestige, which had a pleasant combination of gorgeous period detail and clever plotting), but Inception started me thinking about the conventions of film narration in Hollywood, and narrative formulas in general.

For the Jun/Jul/Aug issue of Bookforum magazine, Paul La Farge published a sketch of the utopian ideal, and the conceptions of utopia today. This is a quick response I shared with the editors of BF.

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Mr. La Farge’s sketch of a utopian ideal as analogous to a game is intriguing, but the claim is misleading. The underlying premise for his game concept is distinctly Western (and especially American?), thus leaving the experiences of much of the rest of the world out of the conceptualization.

It's a pre-school kid's dream fantasy - a two-story Lego House made up of 3.3 million lego bricks. James May, the host of UK's "Top Gear," collaborated with 1,000 volunteers to put together the mammouth project last fall and this vid shows the final outcome.

Unfortunatley, despite a Facebook protest to keep it alive, the house eventually was torn down in September after Lego found it too expensive to move over to its theme park and no one came forward to take it. 

How can not one pre-k school in the world step up and put a bid down on this?

Shouts to Josh Spear

Gyongyos, Hungary -- While running for a parliamentary seat in Hungary's April elections, far-right candidate Gabor Vona made one campaign promise that was controversial even by his standards: If voted into parliament, the 31-year-old extremist would report for duty wearing the insignia of his outlawed paramilitary organization, the "Hungarian Guard" -- a taboo symbol that, with its ancient, red-and-white-striped emblem, bears a striking resemblance to the flag of Hungary's Nazi-era fascist party, Arrow Cross.

It's not entirely clear why Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Egyptian, was approached by police on June 6 while sitting in a cyber cafe in Alexandria. Nor is it known why those particular security officers felt compelled to drag Said outside and, without any sort of provocation, beat him to death. 

Victoria Sanford is an associate professor of anthropology at Lehman College, she is also a member of the doctoral faculty at City University of New York.

BRATISLAVA – That’s what the Slovak commentator screamed from the TV.

Goodbye, Italy!

How about ‘dem Slovaks?! Our scrappy Central European friends today sent the reigning champion – mighty Italy – tumbling out of the World Cup, 3-2. Even I cheered in the pub today.

“After you, France … Want to share a taxi to the airport?”

This is an elegant and classy way to play the soundtrack to a gaming classic. I didn't grow up in a 3-D gaming world like these spoiled newbie youngans, all I had was this game and a zest for Princess Toadstool. If you ever felt the same, this vid will bring a smile to your face for sure.

Major props to Japanese violinist Teppei Okada for the eloquent rendition and salutes to NY Mag for the find.

Since its 2 weeks in and it should be my natural "cultural" responsibility to ramp up the coverage on the World's greatest sporting event here at the Mantle, this picture is my first contribution. If this was 03', a Chappelle skit definitely would've been in order. 

Props to Foreign Policy