My first exposure to zines was courtesy of The Paper Plant, a downtown Raleigh new & used bookstore and literary press in the late ’80s that featured weekly open mic nights and lots of local and national zines. I was fascinated by the homemade, raw energy of these little paper pamphlets. It was probably from there …
Continue reading “My haul from the April ’16 Zine Machine Printed Matter Festival”
In my office, under a table, has been sitting a white cardboard banker’s box for several years. It contains assorted comics, magazines, and graphic novels or collections that I want to get rid of but that I can’t bear to throw out till I’ve read them first. Marie Kando would say, “If you haven’t read …
Having been swayed by Critical Mas’s post on the potato hack and read the (e)book on the subject, I wanted to see if I could strain Penn’s book for ideas, tips, or just some new thinking. Presto! is Penn’s memoir of losing 100 pounds in 3 months — how he did it, why he did …
We have a strict rule: no playing of Christmas music until we’re driving back from my Aunt Carolyn’s Thanksgiving dinner. From then until the evening of December 25th, Christmas music plays pretty non-stop at home. The music we listen to may be good only to our ears; we’ve had some of these CDs for so long …
We saw the theatrical streaming of the Globe Theatre’s The Merchant of Venice recently, as that’s Liz’s favorite Shakespeare play. It’s a play that always raises more questions than it answers. There is no catharsis. The tragedies may be littered with bodies by their bloody ends, but there is the sense of an ending, of …
Continue reading “Globe Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice””
More Fool Me is Fry’s third book of memoirs, and covers roughly the years 1986-2001, when he was professionally and personally flying high, not least due to incredible quantities of cocaine and vodka that fueled his addictive, rather needy personality. I listened to the audiobook version, as read by Fry, and it’s a far better experience …
Continue reading ““More Fool Me” by Stephen Fry (audiobook)”
Four movies, three TV shows
In their ads read during the local morning NPR news, Playmakers Rep touted its “new take” on Chekhov’s Three Sisters. What on earth does that meaningless phrase mean? This is my third production of Three Sisters and it didn’t look anything like some of the wilder Shakespeare productions I’ve seen. Chekhov plays are so rooted …
In response to Michael’s post of recommended films, here’s my list of the various media we’ve been ingesting (movies, TV, books, performances) the last several months. Not all are enthusiastically recommended. But maybe you will get a sense of what I like and don’t like, and can then judge whether to trust my appraisals. This is one …
We had an unintended, somewhat depressing, Netflix theme going recently: documentaries of forgotten women who led enigmatic lives. Given the attention they have received in recent years, it’s as if their lives only became interesting after their deaths. You can certainly read all about the stories of Joyce Vincent and Vivian Maier on Wikipedia, but …
Continue reading “Documentaries: “Dreams of a Life”, “Finding Vivian Maier””
Brownstudy's Blog