RAVING RANDOMS
middle kingdom, not middle earth
VISUALS
- Fans of the Thai action flick Ong Bak can soon catch more of Tony "Wire-Fu Is For Pansies" Jaa in his upcoming film, Tom-Yum-Goong, a period melodrama based loosely on Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, set in the bucolic countryside of 19th century Thailand. There's no fighting but apparently, there are some nice sonnets. You can hear some of the poetry when you watch the trailer.
- Designer Eugene Kuo has put up a kick ass site of his photography. That's one of his pictures of China above and he also covers Turkey, Syria, Japan, France, Peoria, etc. (Ok, not really Peoria but I'm sure that will be soon).
- The Village Voice's Nick Sylvester rings the death knell for Live 8. My favorite line: "Every three seconds, a child dies in Africa from hunger," explained the Fresh Prince, who then waited three seconds and snapped his fingers symbolically, then waited another three and did it again (and again, and again, etc.). Then he got the crowd on that for a minute, staring grimly down the camera and hoping we knew from his face that he, who on this very day in 1996 co-led a defensive against aliens destroying planet Earth, was dead fucking serious.
- Eric Arnold writes on Lyrics Born for the East Bay Express.
- Monkeyfunk interviews Steinski, one of the nicest dudes you'll ever meet (and oh yeah, he makes cool music too).
- The Arabic Assassin loses his job at the airport. Houstonsoreal, indeed.
- Those wacky Freakonomics dudes take on child seat safety in the NY Times Magazine and determine that sometimes, a seat belt will work just as well as those fancy-schmanzy car seats that over-anxious parents drop Franklins on.
- Annalee Newitz looks at a pressing, push-button (*nudge nudge*) issue in human sexuality and corporate pharmaceutical interests: how to sell the female orgasm. Forget Viagra for women - they're trying to engineer orgasms in a pill, no faking necessary. Resist the temptation to snicker - this is a great example of science journalism (not surprising since it appears in Wired) that isn't just interesting but illuminating on how the quest to understand women's orgasms brings together a collision of cultural, social, business and scientific values and interests.
- Black and Latino students face off in an L.A. high school. Given that the changing demographics of California schools is at least one of the factors involved in some of these tensions, the next 10 years will be a proving ground for how well community folk and school officials will be able to keep tensions from flaring again.
--O.W.
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