Infiltration
“The rawhide thighs of the canyon straddling the knobbled blue spine of the sky:” Check out these springy selections from Monica Youn’s Ignatz, poems inspired by George Herriman’s Krazy Kat cartoons (h/t Stephen Burt)
Initially, the idea made no sense. “If the hyper-intelligent evil machines of the future were going to create a killer cyborg to infiltrate the rebel human population, why would they make it look like a steroidal freakazoid with arms the size of culverts?” Peter Sagal explains how director James Cameron decided to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.
“Leaving her BLEAK HOUSE, MADAME BOVARY picked up A HANDFUL OF DUST and threw it at THE GOOD SOLDIER. It was OVER, THE END OF THE AFFAIR:” Norm Geras challenges you to tell a very short story using the titles of novels.
In advance of the Academy Awards, Adfreak compiles the best film taglines of the last 30 years. Some favorites: Catch Me If You Can (“The true story of a real fake”), A Fish Called Wanda (“A tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood”).
Nowadays, Foreign Policy reveals, we use video games to recruit solders, to train them how to think in challenging situations, even to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from overseas. Makes you wonder why we bother having real combat at all.
“Dear Janie: School is over and I am now a man of liesure. (Is that the way you spell it?)” When she was a teenager in the 1940′s, noted Egyptologist Jane Sellers corresponded with her high-school pal, Hugh Hefner.
Finally, at Smart Set, Jason Wilson reports that purchasers of the coveted Brunello di Montalcino can now check its authenticity by text message. That’s great, says Wilson, because tasting wine is “no different from study in any of the other humanities — reading works of Russian literature or looking at German Expressionist paintings or listening to Rigoletto.” OMG.
