A Riot Of One’s Own: Women & Guitar Culture

By Kai Shuart

OK now, I’m gonna spout off about something very, very near and dear to my heart. Since I was about thirteen, I have loved guitars. I own a few. I play them. I find them sexy. You want to really see me geek out? Get me in a Guitar Center. I’ve been told I drool. Yet, while I have worshiped guitars from a very early age, there has been something I don’t worship: Guitar culture.
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Taking Aim: Is The Avengers A Chick Flick?

By Lisa Anderson

Jeremy Renner in The Avengers

As fan of comic book movies and of Joss Whedon, this is a great summer for me. I’m thoroughly enjoying all the buzz over The Avengers, which opens in the US at midnight tonight. Every once in a while though, I’ll come across something that I can’t get on board with, even though it’s essentially positive. A recent piece by Bill Gibron at Pop Matters is a good example.
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Christmas: A Celebration Of A Birth Marked With Death

By Maureen

Everyone has their favorite holiday classics to sing along to while trimming a tree, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, or traveling to be with loved ones. But has anyone ever stopped to think about what’s actually behind most holiday songs?

One in particular has always struck me as incredibly confusing. “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” is heard all over the world in many different iterations, but the gist is always the same. This is the least-festive holiday song ever! Someone’s grandmother is killed in a freak accident, and their first question is what to do about her presents?! It’s like the Asshole National Anthem. (more…)

Want To Start An Instant Argument? Let’s Talk About ’70s Fenders!

By J Howell

In the exhaustive (and frankly exhausting) world of Internet forum guitar dorkery, few topics seem as sure-fire a heated debate-starter as the mere mention of Fender’s output in the halcyon days of the 1970s. To be fair, even in the mesozoic Internet days of the late ’90s, when I was working in a mostly-vintage-and-used guitar/hi-fi shop, plenty of—ahem—discussion was to be heard nearly any day of the week when it came to Fenders of that period.
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Arkham City: World Of Echo

By Paul Casey

Arkham City, released October 21, is an important Batman story. While perhaps not as unexpected as its predecessor, Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady have turned in a Batman game that builds on that one’s many successes. As someone who has been obsessed with Batman for a couple of decades, with changing degrees of intensity, Arkham City is literally a dream come true.

To have an interactive slab of Gotham City with such extremely detailed and well observed parts of Batman’s long history concealed for your own brand of detective work . . . well, it makes me feel both old and lucky to have been around this long. That the game is actually a wonderful, expertly paced, physical experience is something else entirely. As with Arkham Asylum, it still seems quite unusual to have a great comic book like Batman finally tap into why video games are such an exciting medium.
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The SMiLE Meme

By Paul Casey

Smile logo
by Mark London

“SMiLE music is sacred. It is not to be messed with. Isn’t anything sacred anymore?”
—Sheriff John Stone

The Smile Sessions, released on November 1 from EMI and Capitol Records, marks in a significant way, the end for those who have centered their lives around the SMiLE Meme. The myth of the Perfect Album. The myth of the Lost Album. The myth of The Beach Boys (and their insecure fans) besting The Beatles (and their satisfied fans). While the reality of the music of SMiLE and the journey it went on is far more interesting to this writer’s ears, some continue to covet the picture in their head with fetishistic pride.
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In Defense Of Television

“There are only two things I love in this world: everybody, and television.”
—Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
—The Bhagavad Gita, as quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer

TV is bad for you, right?

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In Praise Of Joel Schumacher And Batman Forever, Part Two

By Paul Casey

Since Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, has begun shooting, we thought it appropriate to revisit the frequently maligned Joel Schumacher film Batman Forever, which was released on June 16, 1995. Click here to read Part One.—Ed.

Joel Schumacher is obviously not the most well-read Batman fan ever. This is apparent from some of his befuddling mistakes in the commentary on the Batman Forever Special Edition DVD. He does however, apparently independent of “the rules,” have a very solid understanding of the appeal of the character:

I think the one unique thing that separates him from a lot of super-heroes is that he’s a man. He’s not a super force from another planet; green lasers don’t shoot out of his fingers. And he has all the vulnerabilities and all of the flaws and all of the human drama, that any human being has. He’s not perfect and he’s not impenetrable; he’s a man, not a superman.

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In Praise Of Joel Schumacher And Batman Forever, Part One

By Paul Casey

Since Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, has begun shooting, we thought it appropriate to revisit the frequently maligned Joel Schumacher film Batman Forever, which was released on June 16, 1995.—Ed.

First, a bit of background.

To many fans, Christopher Nolan’s work with the Batman franchise has served as a legitimization of the artistic worth of comic books. As both a comic book movie and also as a signifier of the depth of the character and the source material (from which the film’s subtleties originated), The Dark Knight laid down the gauntlet, setting the critical and financial standards by which every comic book movie will be judged in the future.
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In Defense Of Elizabeth Gilbert

By Lisa Anderson

Elizabeth Gilbert seems to be a rather divisive literary figure. Her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love told the story of the year she lived abroad after her first marriage ended. It spent almost two hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and was praised by Oprah Winfrey. At the same time, it received a lot of criticism in the blogosphere. The gist of the criticism is that many people have problems starker than Gilbert’s, that very few people have the resources to travel for a year as she did, a and that to use other countries as the backdrop for her personal salvation was imperialist at best, racist at worst.

I don’t think that any writer is above criticism, and I’m not trying to silence anyone. I certainly agree that racial and cultural sensitivity are important. However, a lot of what I’ve heard said about Gilbert misses the point of her work, and some critiques are quite sexist. I’d like to point out a few of the things that I’ve heard and explain why I don’t believe they apply.
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