This week: The last pig in Afghanistan, shit blowing up in Pakistan, anal torture in the UAE, face transplants in the USA, and Joe the Plumber is an assclown. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll come and go. Episode 20 coming later today.
BOOKS: Q&A With FOUND Magazine’s Davy Rothbart
BY ADAM BONANNI Davy Rothbart’s first window into the lives of others came in a note mistakenly stuck to his car from a pissed off girl to her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend Mario. The excitement of his find sparked Davy to create FOUND magazine, which he dubs a public art project where people submit objects they found that tell a story of their owners. Notes, photographs, drawings, and other forms of personal memorabilia are collected between the covers of FOUND, forming a kind of bread crumb trail to the quiet desperation of hidden lives. Some are funny, some are inspirational, and others are […]
WEEK IN REVIEW: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #19 The week that was in just five minutes! Prepare to smile. You know you wanna.
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In his new documentary, called simply Tyson, filmmaker James Toback turns his camera on Mike Tyson — the controversial former heavyweight boxing champion. Tyson, infamous for taking a bite out of Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1997 — and for his 1992 rape conviction — talks directly to Toback’s camera, telling his own story in between excerpts of archival footage from his life and career. Toback, the screenwriter behind Bugsy and director of films including Two Girls and a Guy, has been Tyson’s friend since the boxer was 19 years old; Tyson premiered in 2008 at the Cannes Film […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #18 Oh noes!
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Author Craig Yoe explores the risque art of the man behind Superman in his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art Of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster. As Yoe explains, artist Joe Shuster did not earn much money for his part in the creation of the man of steel. After suing D.C. Comics over the copyright for Superman, Shuster drew art for an obscure series of magazines called Nights Of Horror. In Secret Identity, Yoe collects Shuster’s racy drawings and details the scandal and murder trial related to Nights Of Horror. The author of over 30 books, Yoe runs […]
WEEK IN REVIEW: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #17 Better late than never. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you might even learn something.
RIP: Author J.G. Ballard Dead At 78
THE GUARDIAN: The novelist JG Ballard, who conjured up a bleak vision of modern life in a series of powerful novels and short stories published over more than 50 years, has died after a long battle with cancer. MORE THE TIMES ONLINE: Pinteresque, Dickensian, Shakespearean. Not many writers are so distinctive and influential that their name becomes an adjective in its own right. J.G. Ballard, who died yesterday morning after a long battle with cancer at the age of 78, was one of them. “Ballardian” is defined in the Collins English Dictionary as: “adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (born […]
BOOKS: Joe Queenan, Maximum Q&A
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Oscar Wilde famously postulated that all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Writer Joe Queenan wasn’t born in the gutter — actually it was somewhere near the false bottom of the Irish Catholic working class of Philadelphia circa 1950 — but you could see it from there. His father was a study in boozy failure and casual brutality whose self-inflicted setbacks would drag the family Queenan — Joe, three suffering sisters and an emotionally-remote, enabling mother — down to the ranks of the lower class for a four-year […]
EARLY WORD: Book ‘Em, Danno
The Free Library Festival—a burst of books, music, and inspiration on the Parkway—will take place Saturday and Sunday, April 18 and 19, 2009. Join us at the Parkway Central Library for two days full of stimulating talks by award-winning writers, live music, children’s entertainment, and a bustling literary marketplace thronged with booklovers and booksellers. A fun, free way to spend the day, the Free Library Festival connects booklovers from throughout the mid-Atlantic region with the culture makers of the literary world. MORE And look for an exclusive Phawker Q&A with the mighty Joe Queenan later this week! Joe Queenan | […]
WEEK IN REVIEW: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #16 It’s back! The week that was in just five minutes, read by a stoned daisy with the obligatory voice of gawd. Even better than the real thing.
BOOKS: Everybody’s Got Something To Hide
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Joe Shuster was paid the princely sum of $130 by DC Comics (then called National Comics) for all rights and ownership of Superman — which he invented in his bedroom in Cleveland with the help of Jerry Siegel, his high school buddy from down the street. Even back in 1938, that wasn’t a lot of money, but Shuster was just glad somebody had finally bought into the concept of the Man of Steel after years of knocking on the doors of publishers, to no avail. Shuster and Siegel were tasked with creating future episodes of Superman, which, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR British actor and comedian Russell Brand is known for his outspokenness, his outlandish appearance and his wit — not to mention a series of raunchy on-air prank calls that ended his tenure as host of a BBC radio show. But he’s best known in the U.S. for his role as a caddish rocker in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and for hosting the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Recently, he’s put his over-the-top persona on the page with his memoir My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-up. My Booky Wook chronicles Brand’s struggle with addictions […]