4 November 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly Special Catch-up Extravaganza

• From Hell Yeah Dude: Don’t smother inspiration by not expanding to other mediums.
• Vote for the Science Fiction B-Movie Hall of Fame!
• Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner defends the show's anachronisms.
• GalleyCat wonders why women don't write "big-idea" books. Big-idea book writer (and woman) Virginia Postrel responds.
• Remembering Katharine Hepburn: "Kate was my godmother, and the Kate I knew and loved paid scant lip service to self-analysis. Her thinking was much too selfless, clear, level-headed and straightforward to waste precious time pondering the 'what-ifs' of the world. She was singularly unimpressed by our modern obsession with self-importance."
• Amy Hoy dissects the "where are the women in programming" question.
• In the face of the trend of pharmacies refusing to do their jobs and keeping legal contraception from customers, the ACLU has a handy guide of what to do if faced with a refusal at pharmacy. Pass it on.
• 10 ways to avoid hipster baby names.
• I'm on record with the opinion that we should just let all the sleeping, incoherent bits of the Beat generation's unpublished writing lie - however, here's the "new" book by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.
• Having said that, I also just read John Leland's recent book Why Kerouac Matters, and it is excellent.

A new design is in the works, along with a return to more regular and extensive blogging. Just so you know.

17 October 08 | tags: weekly | 1 comment

The Weekly for 17 October

• Columbus Alive profiles the designers of Columbus, OH's burgeoning fashion scene, including our two season 5 Project Runway alums.
• If you've been around here for a little while, you might know that the intersection between art and science is a particularly favorite topic of mine. Laura without Labels has also just taken it up.
• Amanda Marcotte talks about Springsteen populism.
• 50 beautiful movie posters.
• Hail Fredonia! - Anne Thompson looks at Hollywood depression economics, including the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.
• Stephen Fry in America.
• I am inordinately excited about the prospect of Muppet noir.
• DigitalLabz included me on a list of 100 designers to follow on Twitter. Thanks!

10 October 08 | tags: weekly | 2 comments

The Weekly for 10 October

• Washington City Paper has declared content bankruptcy. (Hat tip: Maura.)
• Slow fashion: "Much as local and organic eating is only beginning to shake off the stigma of yuppie luxury and become a slowly-growing cultural norm, so too must clothing with a provenance."
• The Zen of punk rock: a primer from NPR.
• Jamelah describes why Gmail's new Mail Goggles are a much-needed service.
• The ten worst directors in Hollywood.
• Advergirl looks at some of the best Columbus creative spaces.
• A resource on how to get independent healthcare for writers, artists and filmmakers.
• Mad Men's Font Problems. Does noticing anachronistic fonts and props impact enjoyment of the show? Not really. It's just a fun game to play on the side.
• Top ten other catastrophes that fundamentalists blame on gay people.

3 October 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 3 October

• Sometimes, Jezebel annoys me. Sometimes, though, they get it exactly right.
• Bill Maher tore it up at the Daily Show this past week. Hopefully, I'll see and report on Religulous soon.
• 26 actors who deserve better careers.
• Dear Old Love: "When I see you, what I really want to ask about is your vagina. It'd be in same spirit as inquiring about a beloved dog. 'How is the vagina? What's it up to? Any adorable mischief lately? Please pass along my best!'"
• The Mid-Ohio Comic Con released their first ever indie film festival schedule. The Con takes place this weekend.
• John Waters and Bruce Springsteen are both going to be in Columbus this Saturday. Not at the same event, though. That would just be weird.

26 September 08 | tags: weekly | 1 comment

The Weekly 25 September

• This is how I roll - super blogger Pamie talks about becoming a derby girl.
• Interesting: Young people who use landlines are more conservative than those who use mobile phones.
• Need relationship advice? Obviously, you need to talk with John Hodgman. (Hat tip: Daily Bedpost.)
• The Girl's Guide to Being a Noir Heroine.
• Pointed out by Coudal, a BBC documentary on The Third Man.
• Speaking of which, the Noir of the Week last week also covered The Third Man.
• In praise of Carrie Fisher. Word.

19 September 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 19 September

• In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Pink Raygun lists the Top 10 Geeky Hispanic Characters.
• I have a bad feeling about this: Artemis Fowl scribe to write 6th Hitchhiker's Guide book.
• I wonder when folks are going to realize that the "OMG! the ladies play video games?!" tale has been told a few times before.
• Here's a love fest for black and white film* ...
• ... and here's a call for some new silent films, which I think is an idea worth exploring.
• The Sixth Annual Akron Independent Film Festival is now accepting submissions.

12 September 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 12 September

• Maurice Sendak hates God, Salman Rushdie, and cloying cartoons, not necessarily in that order. (Hat tip: Bookninja.)
• Is there a future for indie film?
• A defense of adverbs. (Hat tip: Alas, a blog.)
• Author Mike Heppner is publishing four novellas in different formats: the second as a super-small press product, and the fourth as a free digital download. One and three TBD.
• There's a film about the Eliot Ness and the Cleveland Torso Murders in the works, with Matt Damon signed on as Ness, and, more importantly, David Fincher signed on to direct. Since I'm a bit of true crime geek, and from NE Ohio, the Torso Murders are a topic I know far too much about, and am curious to see how Fincher spins this similarly unsolved case differently than the Zodiac.
• Ridiculous design rules: not all ridiculous, but a caution to never follow any rule off of a cliff is generally a good thing.

5 September 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 5 September

• Pixar director Andrew Stanton visits NPR. I hope he continues to be recognized as a good director, and not just a good "cartoon" director, because, like Brad Bird (or Chuck Jones), he is.
• A Point-by-Point Evaluation of My Build-A-Bear Workshop Experience.
• For those of us who still nostalgically fetishize the word "alternative" when it comes to music - a pretty great 90's downloadable mixtape. (Hat tip: IFC's Indie Ear.)
• Hollywood's 5 Saddest Attempts at Feminism.
• Bruce Campbell is personally bringing his new movie, My Name is Bruce, to the country. And he's scheduled to hit Columbus.

29 August 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 28 August 2008

• 17 simple rules for going to the cinema with me. If you go to the movie theater and see this printed out and plastered all over the place, uh, it wasn't me.
• A new Red Dwarf special? Yes, please!
• Target settles the lawsuit over their site not being blind-accessible. The end to a long saga that never should have happened in the first place.
• Good Magazine traces famous world trips, "from Magellan to Kerouac."
• The Movies about Movies Blog-a-thon was a rousing success. Some great pieces there.

22 August 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 22 August

• Creatives in the wild: ten personality traits of a creative person. Hat tip to Dissociated.
• Disney princesses of Sin City.
• Photoshop and Save for Web issues: if this drives you crazy too, September Third has some thoughts and suggestions.
• John Oliver's Literature Rodeo.
• Two members of my new rock 'n' roll crush, the Hold Steady, popped up on The Sound of Young America.
• Call for submissions for September Scientae, the blog carnival for women in science, technology, engineering and math.

15 August 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 15 August

• I keep holding out hope that new Star Wars offerings are going to at least be okay, if not a bit of return to former glory. But the evidence keeps piling up against it.
• "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J." The 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Award winners are out.
• Some horrible examples of global blogger imprisonment. To make horrible light of the subject, I only support repercussions for bloggers when they post regular pictures of their lunches.
• Cinematical's Geek Beat looks at the summer's movie heroines (or lack thereof).
• How to stop being a lazy designer.

8 August 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 8 August

• Manic Pixie Dream Girls are the scourge of modern cinema. I think this is one of my favorite articles of the entire year.
• Rethinking cookie cutter websites: "Really nothing we do is original or new. We’re always riffing off of each other. When somebody does something which is NOT copying and adapting from others, then things don’t work."
• 15 geek novels to read before you die.
• There seems to be some debate about whether or not this film is truly in the public domain, but, regardless, the very wonderful Tod Browning horror classic Freaks is available to watch online. Watch it now in case they take it down soon - it's completely worth it.
• Pointed out by Coudal Parnters: a list of the worst films ever.
• Spyjournal posted a survey from me as a Geek Girl Blogger.

1 August 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 1 August

• New study: women outnumber men on social networks.
• Director's follow-up to Helvetica will be Objectified, which explores industrial design. Nice little blog design too, eh?
• The top ten most ridiculous undergarments worn by women in video games. (Via Rayna.)
• There was a reunion of sorts at Comic-Con with the entire cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Film School Rejects talked to Joel and Jim about the show's past, future, and related projects.
• I Rock Cleveland has a fantastically-thorough video rundown of songs sampling the Clash, with some pure Clash tracks thrown in for good measure.
• Freakazoid out on DVD - I don't agree with Doctorow that this was that great of a cartoon, but I did love it.

25 July 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 24 July

• Social stigma makes more women than men regret their tattoos.
• Are you as sick as I am of hearing about how the internet and technology is making all us young'uns dumb? Alan Reiter is.
• Yesterday, July 24, was Raymond Chandler's birthday.
• You must Flickr every meal: Baby's First Internet.
• Where are the women in programming? .51 points out a lengthy, if seemingly underpublicized, list.
• I watch very little TV, and even fewer brand-new shows. So it's pretty momentous that I'm waiting anxiously for the second season premiere of Mad Men this Sunday night. Even though it's on too late for me and I'll probably just get it online the next day.

18 July 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 18 July

• I love Tilda Swinton for many reasons, and the fact that she just founded a film festival that charges baked goods as admission and asks guests to sit on beanbags during the films is just one more reason to add to the list.
• Retro Wall-E Prints - I missed a small chunk of this movie due to a certain toddler jumping from seat to seat, but what I saw was magnificent.
• Jane Austen and Boredom - Just to clarify, this is a paper about boredom in the works of Austen, not possible boredom caused by Austen's novels. Also to clarify, I am not bored by Austen in the slightest, but I would like to distance myself from the type of Austen fan that generally sees no farther than Colin Firth.
• Ten Best Neo-Noir Films, from AMC.
• Pamie's 'Open Letter to My Cat' - "Are we currently starring in some kind of romantic comedy together?"
• Drive-In Movies: A Primer. From GreenCine.

13 June 08 | tags: weekly | 3 comments

The Weekly for 13 June

• IFC rounds up the 50 worst sex scenes.
• A very good article about single motherhood and coparenting.
• Jello Biafra and the politics of punk: "But that [his anarchic stance] doesn’t automatically mean that I'm filled with naïve hope for our future ... I figure every available tool should be used relentlessly to fight the powers that be."
• 100 Movies in 100 Days - I've definitely added a few more cult films to my must-see list after reading through this. (Thanks to Coudal.)
• Start Here journals - lovely little notebooks to which you can easily add pages. (Hat tip: Good Magazine.)
• For the locals: PodCamp Ohio is looking for volunteers; plus, Columbus Startup Weekend is looking for some more good women participants - register here.

6 June 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 6 June

• Audrey Hopkins, the first transgendered employee to be hired into Eaton Corp.'s IT department, discusses her experiences. (Via Think Girl.)
• Eco-fashion label releases designs under Creative Commons.
• Graphic Leftovers - a site for reselling unused logos and graphics. Looks to be handy.
• Dial S&M for Marnie. Lauren Wissot unpacks the Hitchcock thriller as a piece of erotic art. She has this dead on. Marnie has always been one of my favorites.
• Things Universal lost in the fire.
• Violet Blue collects some great moments in fake sex news.

30 May 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 30 May

• The Guardian looks at the advertising world then and now, through the lens of Mad Men.
• Lucrative salaries in the trades are opening up a new array of jobs for women.
• Five members of 1st Inclusive Women Expedition scale Mt Everest.
• Possible remake of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space. Oh noes - what if they ruin it!?
• Wow, Karina Longworth and Jeff Wells hate Sex and the City even more than I do.

23 May 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 23 May

• Why Graphic Designers Don't Get Tattoos. Except for the ones that do. I'm only partially a "graphic designer," but I do admit I'm particular about my body modifications when it comes to things like symmetry and that. Designer instinct or mild OCD? You decide.
• Us MSTies mourned last week for John Phillip Law. If you don't remember him from Space Mutiny or Danger: Diabolik, maybe Barbarella will do the trick.
• Exene Cervenka interview in Columbus Alive.
• The now-defunct Ohio band Miranda Sound releases their last album as a free .MP3 download.
• Are you an anti-authoritarian in MN? Maybe you might want to join the "welcoming" committee for the RNC.
• "Thousands of discarded computers from western Europe and the US arrive in the ports of west Africa every day, ending up in massive toxic dumps where children burn and pull them apart to extract metals for cash." Make sure to find computer recyclers you can trust.

16 May 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 16 May

please ignore

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9 May 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 9 May

• Help Me Obi Mom: Five Ways to Grow a Fan Girl/Boy, from Pink Raygun.
• Shalom Auslander lifts a glass to (good) anger and reminds us that all capital-L Love gave us was Celine Dion.
• Why Chipotle Insists on Humanely Raised Meat. Well, excepting their beef - but, still, step in the right direction. I'm slowly making the switch to eating only meat from local, ethical farms and eating vegetarian when I can't verify where the meat comes from, but it is not that easy, especially when I'm simultaneously trying to put on extra weight. Also, the first Skepchick Chat (which I was unfortunately not able to attend) covers some of the same ground.
• Columbus's The Other Paper looks at Columbus bloggers and new media folk. Frankly, the author's tone seems a little condescending to me, but I'm just a blogger - what do I know about what "real people" think.
• 15 great examples of web typography.
• A 1958 audio interview with Dorothy Parker.

2 May 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 2 May

• Who do you trust more: corporations or government? Tiffany B. Brown raises the point that the Net Neutrality debate is not necessarily as simple as many on the internet seem to think it is.
• In case you've been following the case of Hans Reiser, he was convicted on Monday of his wife's murder.
• The decline and fall of quality on Digg.
• The Digg clone for girls, Sk*rt, is changing its name.
• Celebrating Lou Reed's Berlin.
• Bruce Campbell's My Name Is Bruce: on track (finally) for October.

25 April 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 25 April

• Gordon Lee, the comic book store owner arrested after a minor received an "objectionable" Free Comic Book Day comic book in his store, has had the charges against him completely dismissed. Good news indeed.
• What a lovely way to burn. An appreciation of Raymond Chandler.
• Ugh. They're still pushing forward with that film version of Atlas Shrugged with Angelina Jolie. Todd Seavey looks at the bright side.
• 5 Principles And Ideas Of Setting Type On The Web. Smashing Magazine presents a handy guide.
• Magicians and the Paranormal: A survey by Professor Richard Wiseman (who also wrote Quirkology) is the first regular guest post over at Skepchick.
• The Internet work how they're supposed to - Liz Henry discusses the recent kerfluffle of the Open Source Boob Project, and how the feminist blogosphere countered it.

18 April 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 18 April

• The Feminist SF - The Blog talks about gender and science fiction publications.
• One of the last original Walt Disney animators, Ollie Johnston, passed away at age 93
• Shock jocks suspended over slur against Alaska Native women. Making sexually inappropriate jokes is always especially funny when the ethnic group of women targeted in the joke has the highest instances of rape and sexual assault in the entire US.
• Can the French really ban pro-thin websites? A look at the politics and ideas behind squashing pro-anorexia websites.
• Why Superman will always suck. I'm so geared up for all the Batman happenings this summer. Seen the Gotham Knight trailer yet? Awesome.
• Evidently, Spielberg thinks Cate Blanchett made her character the best Indiana Jones villian ever. My geek is showing when it comes to this summer's movies, isn't it.

11 April 08 | tags: weekly | 2 comments

The Weekly for 11 April

• Is designing better on a Mac or PC? Designers, for a good reason, usually gravitate towards pretty Macs. But, in the end, it's just a tool, and it only works as well as you make it work. If a PC suits you, run with it. (Via David Airey.)
• Why dyslexics are good computer programmers. I'm not dyslexic (or a good computer programmer - maybe there's a connection?), but as someone interested in both language and computers, this is fascinating.
• A group of leading skeptics are putting together a TV pilot a la Mythbusters: The Skeptologists!
• Girl Power? A retrospective, feminist look at the Spice Girls.
• Since I mentioned Kim Peirce's new Iraq War film Stop/Loss, here's the Women and Hollywood blog's take on it. (Word on the internets is that the film's not that great.)
• A statistical analysis of Star Trek red-shirt deaths. This might be the geekiest thing I've ever seen. And that covers a lot of ground.

4 April 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 4 April

• Dr. Seuss kindly requests - in verse, of course - that Hollywood knock it off with the movie adaptations already.
• Margaret Atwood shows some love for Anne of Green Gables. Side note: as much as I love Anne, I found as I grew older the Emily books richer, and they remain my favorites. Check them out if you haven't.
• The Hermione Granger in me has to give props to this smart fifth-grader who found a mistake in a Smithsonian display. Oh, and his name is Kenton Stufflebeam. So fantastic. (Via The Park Bench.)
• Filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. kicks off a series of articles on film for GreenCine with a thoughtful look at Orson Welles and the monolith that is Citizen Kane.
• Also at GreenCine: an interview with one of the directors of Girls Rock!.
• Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. No comment on that one.

28 March 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 28 March

• Annalee Newitz checks in on the Twitter color wars. Right on.
• Save the Developers. Won't you, please? Please?
• A new British Film Noir Guide covers that particular portion of the genre.
• The industrial wedding complex marches on. Remember to resist the princesses.
• And - Stuff Dead People Like.

21 March 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 21 March

• One of my favorite people in the universe, Ricky Gervais, is now blogging the production of his directorial debut, which also features John Hodgman and Tina Fey.
• Nicky Crane and the Skinhead Closet. An interesting article about the intersections of skinhead, oi, and gay subcultures.
• "Kelis Rogers: Magnetism against the Lactic Euphemism." Nikolay Saveliev's PopMatters, faux-academic makeovers of pop music. (Via ISO50.)
• Legal battles between Beatrice Welles and Turner Entertainment are apparently holding up the DVD releases of classic Orson Welles films, which is why the only way you can get a copy of one of the best films ever made, The Magnificent Ambersons, is to buy it on VHS. Swell.
• We Make Money Not Art profiles the life and work of the Billboard Liberation Front.

14 March 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 14 March

• DevChix posts a long, lovely biography of female computing pioneer Lady Ada of Lovelace.
• The Independent Film Channel website has relaunched, and, in addition to a new incarnation of their film blog, has created blogs for music and politics.
• A dazzling gallery of vintage horror movie posters, via Coudal Partners.
• Speaking of IFC film blog, there writer Alison Willmore pointed out this Radar piece about recent years of movie misogyny, No Country for Fat Chicks.
• The MPAA now pays off people to snitch on others recording films in the theater. They're also luring kids away from a life of piracy with cute puppy dogs. Yeah, that'll solve movie piracy, for sure.

7 March 08 | tags: weekly | add a comment

The Weekly for 7 March

• Girls and Legos - The CEO of Lego claims girls aren't into Legos as much as boys because boys are "genetically" predisposed to building things. Does that mean all those hours I spent building intricate Lego worlds (seriously, I did it well into high school, and they were awesome) marks me as genetically aberrant?
• New Book from Jack Kerouac - This is unnecessary. I will always have a sincere, romantic fixation on his work, but there has been so much of his stream-of-consciousness crap published since his death that I have a hard time believing this book will be at all worthwhile, even with Burroughs's contributions.
• NASA Needs To Be Cooler - Very well put. Part of modernizing their image needs to be encouraging more participation from women and minorities (get Uhura back on the job!). It makes me sad that such an exiting field is losing its luster.
• The Man She Forgot to Google! - Priceless.
• Oh, and In Case You Missed It ... - Neil Gaiman is now offering a free digital copy of his novel American Gods, a very great book, and it has also opened up some good discussions about free digital content on his blog.
• And in Related News ... - Trent Reznor released his new album with various download options, including some free, and made $750k in less than a week. Anyone from the record industry listening?