This section of the MISC.Media site gathers book, movie, and music reviews and essays. You can buy the stuff directly from that online-retail colossus, Amazon.com.

Here's what's in the Culture Corral:

LITERATURE and LITTER-ATURE
NONFICTION and CULTURAL CRITICISM
MOVIES and VIDEO
MUSIC and NOISE

LITERATURE AND LITTER-ATURE

• 'THE LITTLE HOUSE'
  A recently-translated, 18th-century French story brings to mind the lost seductive powers of architecture.
• BAD EXAMPLES
  A noted author bemoans the sorry state of what's assigned to teens to read in school these days.
• BETTER EXAMPLES
  What the kids should be taught instead--examples of Great Kickass Writing.
• ANYTHING BUT 'HIDEOUS'
  David Foster Wallace's new story collection, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, uses long, compulsive thoughts to explain the limitations of long, compulsive thoughts.
• A TRIUMPH OF UNDERACHIEVEMENT
  Benjamin Amastas's novella An Underachiever's Diary is an elegant work of finely-polished prose, something its insistantly-losing narrator would never have bothered to create.
• THE PICTURE OF TOGETHERNESS
  Thoughts on the decline of the softcore pinup image, as Penthouse magazine sneaks in an apparently real sex scene.
• YOURGRAU, MYGRAU, OURGRAU
  Barry Yourgrau's last short-short-story collection deconstructed lust. His new one, Haunted Traveller, just as elegantly deconstructs wanderlust.
• TELL IT TO McSWEENEY
  Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern uses retro whimsey and exquisite copy writing to rescue the idea of "reading for pleasure" from the puritanical Defenders of The Word.
• GOING TO 'THE DOGS'
  Rebecca Brown's The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary is a lot more than a mere casualty of the publishing wars. It's a dark modern fairy tale whose lessons and morals are hidden within its delicate prose.
• TOO CLOWES FOR COMFORT
  In his new collection Caricature, cartoonist Daniel Clowes uses visual precision to convey very imperfect characters.
• HER THROBBING VOLVO
  A British book-critics' contest to "honor" ridiculously-written sex scenes in mainstream fiction serves as my excuse to explore the good, the bad, and the blandly vapid in modern upscale "literary erotica."
• THE 1999 MISC. WORLD READING LIST
  Short-short essays, fun-experimental writing exercises, Bertrand Russell, "branding," and much much more.
• THE 1998 MISC. READING LIST
  A veritable verbal feast includes Lorrie Moore, Slavenka Draculic, Mordecai Richler, Don DeLillo, Asian pop culture, what's wrong (still) with Hollywood, and the psychic lives of refrigerator designers.
• THE 1997 MISC. READING LIST
  Assorted recommendations include maximalist David Foster Wallace, minimalist Barry Yourgrau, WWI Austrian intellectual Karl Kraus, Oregon historian Stewart Holbrook, the Great American Bathroom Book, and lots lots more.
• 'THE GIRL IN THE FLAMMABLE SKIRT'
  Aimee Bender goes around the bend to bring you stories of women who do things other women might find completely icky.
• ROSS SHAFER GOES 'POLITICAL'
  The local comedian and sometime TV host keeps vying for the big time; this time with a Clinton-bashing comedy CD.
• 'THE RUINS'
  Ms. Trace Farrell constructs an invisible city from a real Seattle supper club, as her setting for a metaphoric tale of old working-man values out of place amid affluent decadence.
• NORTHWEST LIT
  A search for the true taste and feel of the Northwest in everybody from Richard Hugo and Beverly Cleary to los bros. Wolff and Stacey Levine.
• JET CITY LIT
  The same topic, discussed back in 1991; mentioning Earl Emerson, Jim Bouton, Jonathan Raban, Lynda Barry, and many more.
• 'SEX, DRUGS, ROCK 'N' ROLL'
  A wildly uneven collection of "Stories to End the Century."
• NONE BETTER THAN BESTER
  Alfred Bester's story collection Virtual Unrealities shows the way great sci-fi gets made.
• THE COLOR GRAY
  The Factory of Facts, Belgian expatriate Luc Sante's memoir of growing up neither fully Euro nor fully American.
• THE SEATTLE COMICS SCENE
  A short history of how Seattle became the mecca of 'alternative' cartooning in the mid-'90s.
• JESSE BERNSTEIN
  The first of two posthumous collections by a writer who plumbed the depths of interior terror, not for cheap thrills but for priceless insights.
• DIANE WILLIAMS
  An exclusive interview with the short-short fiction master.
• AVANT POP
  Just what comes after postmodernism?
• INDIE-ROCK EXPLOITATION FICTION
  It had to happen, and it's not pretty.
• MARVEL'S INCREDIBLE SULK
  When superhero comic publishers become villains.
• DILLARD'S DULLARDS
  Who's more condescending to Northwest readers, author Annie Dillard or The Seattle Times?
• 'WAR WITH THE NEWTS'
  A '30s Czech sci-fi classic with a currently portentious title.
• 'NUMBERS IN THE DARK'
  Some of Umberto Eco's Italian magazine essays, translated and compiled.
• 'TABLOID DREAMS'
  Richard Olen Butler turns outrageous headlines into fantastic tales.
• 'BLUE MONDAYS'
  Lonely young Dutch man spends his life savings on hookers.

NONFICTION AND CULTURAL CRITICISM

• 'FASTER,' JAMES GLEICK! WRITE, WRITE!
  Yeah, some aspects of life are getting ever-faster, like this author claims. But other aspects still meander like they used to.
• THAT'S RATHER ODD, BY JOVE
  Cambridge-educated Mike Dash's book Borderlands offers a brisk tour of strange phenomena of all sorts, all treated with droll Brit understatement.
• THE CYBERKIDS ARE ALRIGHT
  In Douglas Rushkoff's Playing the Future, today's Wired Generations extremely bright, quick-to-learn, and suspicious of overblown hype--including, perhaps, his own book.
• THE IMP'S NOT LIMP
  Zine editor Daniel Raeburn concocts the perfect profile/tribute to Chris Ware's comics of elegant sadness.
• GAME OVER (AND OVER AND OVER)
  J.C. Herz wrote her video-game history and book of praise, Joystick Nation, two years ago. Does this make it already passe?
• WHAT'S AT STAKE
  In The Stakeholder Society, two Yale law profs propose giving all U.S. 22-year-olds $80 grand. The idea's bound to become a hit in certain sectors of the media. Imagine--even more young-demographic spending power!
• THE TRUTH IS WAY, WAY OUT THERE
  Harper's Magazine discovers Loompanics Unlimited, the Port Townsend publisher-distributor of outre how-to paperbacks and alternate-worldview literature.
• MCLUHAN MADE SIMPLE(R)
  An educational comic book about the life and philosophies of Marshall McLuhan: A redundancy? Not really.
• ALL THE WORLD'S A MULTIPLEX
  In Life, the Movie, Hollywood biographer Neal Gabler joins the chorus of media-haters. But he's far less articulate about what he might actually like.
• I WAS A TEENAGE COMPUTER GEEK
  David Bennahum's Extra Life recalls those past simpler times of 8-bit computers a young boy could learn to program himself.
• 'REDHOOK, BEER PIONEER'
  What's the esteemed literary publisher Four Walls Eight Windows doing with a lightweight volume of corporate PR?
• 'CIRCUS OF THE SCARS'
  Life on the road with the original Jim Rose Sideshow troupe.
• WORDS AGAINST WORDS
  Two new books take over 750 pages of dense prose to say The Word is overrated and The Image is the progressive communication metaphor for the new millennium.
• VAUDEVILLE VS. BURLESQUE
  An olden-days 'culture war' that speaks volumes about our own.
• 'THE MICROSOFT FILE'
  Investigative journalist Wendy Goldman Rohm promises the secret goods on Bill Gates' monopolistic practices, but delivers little more than old material in narrative form plus some Ken Starr-like sexual innuendo. Meanwhile, National Lampoon vet Henry Beard and pals offer similar allegations in fictionalized form, via a 'humor' book purporting to be the contents of Gates' own PC.
• THINGS TO LEARN AND DO
  A Kama Sutra-inspired list of the 64 arts and disciplines a modern person oughta know.
• REVOLUTION ONE OF THESE DAYS MAYBE!
  If the current American system (or even large pieces of it) does get overthrown, who would do it, when, and how? And would it serve any real good? (Now with reader responses.)
• TIPTON BIO NEVER DRAGS
  Billy Tipton, minor Spokane jazz figure, created a male identity for herself years before the release of Mulan or Quest for Camelot. But was s/he a disguised lesbian or a lifelong pre-op transsexual? (Yes, some people care about this.)
• 'THE CRISIS OF CRITICISM'
  If 'everybody's a critic,' then everybody'll care about these essays on critics' role in today's bigtime culture world. If not...
• 'BARBARIANS LED BY BILL GATES'
  An ex-Microsoft programmer writes a memoir with many of the features, and many of the bugs, of Microsoft software.
• CONTROL AGENTS
  'Civil society' pundits, philosophers, corporate media, and Microsoft supporters are all advocating a more centralized, less free world in the name of 'unity.'
• LANGLEY'S LADIES LEFT LONESOME
  The Seattle Art Museum agrees to show some relatively-tame images from Erika Langley's peep-show-dancer photo book, then chickens out.
• REBELS WITHOUT AN EFFECT
  Why the left-wing 'media analysis' clique would rather complain about the corporate news biz than do anything about it. Featured: The anthology We the Media, James Ledbetter's Made Possible By, and Bob McChesney's Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy. Plus short reviews of Tom Frank's '60s-advertising history The Conquest of Cool and Stephen Duncombe's zine-culture study Notes From Underground.
• THE HIGH-TECH BOYS' CLUB
  What happens when women infiltrate the ego-and-greed-driven cyber elite? Not much, at least not from Esther Dyson's Release 2.0, Celia Pearce's Interactive Book, or Carla Sinclair's Signal to Noise. Plus: Short reviews of Steven Johnson's Interface Culture and Jim Carlton's Apple Computer hatchet job.
• 'CLOSE TO THE MACHINE'
  Ellen Ullman just might be the only San Francisco nonfiction writer who's not a complete egomaniac.
• MICROSOFT 'R' US
  A ruthless outfit bent on global domination coming from 'polite' Seattle? Not as strange as it might seem.
• WRITERS AT MICROSOFT
  Poets, novelists, and painters working day jobs in the heart of the beast.
• IN-BOUNDS PASS
  Bob Blackburn Jr. (son of the SuperSonics' original radio announcer) fulfills a longtime dream by meeting legendary fetish model Betty Page.
• HEAVING LAS VEGAS
  An askew look at America's greatest collection of shrines, all to America's state religion: consumer spending and the concentration of wealth.
• DI(sne)Y
  The biggest entertainment company in the world tells you how to start your own band or zine.
• SOLID GOAD
  Jim Goad's Redneck Manifesto.
• 'THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BOOKS'
  Even in the early '50s, tastemakers worried that too few Americans read books! A look at the alleged golden age of U.S. publishing, via a government-sponsored industry survey and promo guide.
• YOU MAY ALREADY BE A FOOL!
  If the mere activity of reading's supposed to make folks wiser, why do magazine-subscription sweepstakes companies attract so many of the easily-deceived?
• A STAR AND HIS BUCKS
  Coffee king Howard Schultz's pep-rally memoir.
• 'THRIFT SCORE'
  Ms. Al Hoff tells all about beer living on a Night Train budget.
• 'JET DREAMS'
  The beautiful, nonrepresentational glory days of Northwest modern art.
• 'THE PIN-UP, A MODEST HISTORY'
  The (male) editor of this pictorial collection claims cheesecake illustrations demean women. The illustrations themselves say the opposite.
• SMARTY PANTS
  Instead of Dating for Dummies, maybe they should've published Dating for Smarties instead.
• PLANE SPEAKING
  Eugene Rodgers's history of Boeing; Crichton's ponderous unthriller Airframe.
• UNABOMBS AWAY
  The Unabomber Manifesto compared to the thoughts of other noted industrialism-bashers.
• THE ROAD AHEAD LESS TRAVELED
  The information age our way.
• NOW 20 PERCENT OFF!
  How I lost one-fifth of my former weight, with no Jenny's Cuisine and no Zones.
• READER'S DIGEST'S CONDENSED PROFITS
  When the "hip" becomes the new mainstream, what role does a defiantly square publishing empire have left?
• WHERE THE SUCKERS MOON
  The laff-a-minute tale behind the making of some dumb Subaru ads.

MOVIES, VIDEO, AND PICTORIAL MOTIONS

• ANIME-IA
  A traveling exhibit on Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka reveals the origins of storytelling techniques still loved by the global manga/anime cult.
• A TALE OF TWO MOVIES
  Online "word of mouth" publicity helped The Blair Witch Project, but may also have singlehandedly kept The Iron Giant from going direct-to-video.
• DISHING IT OUT
  With potential cable-modem profits persuading local cable companies to finally upgrade their systems, are home satellite dishes still of any value?
• WHO'S AFRAID OF DIGITAL MOVIEMAKING?
  Only cineasts who can't stand democratization of the cinema.
• POSTMODERN MATURITY
  Two new documentaries, Bingo and The Lifestyle, offer very different visions of oldsters enjoying their golden years.
• TOMORROW'S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE
  To create an endearing, enduring world for his sci-fi cartoon Futurama, Matt Groening had to go back to yesterday's futurisms. Today's tomorrows just aren't funny enough.
• YOU'RE IN HIGH SCHOOL AGAIN
  In the movie Never Been Kissed and the Comedy Central cable series Strangers With Candy, two grownup women get to re-live their high school years for lessons and laffs. But which will be the "popular" girl nobody really likes, and which will learn it's OK to be her own nonconformist self?
  
• A LIFE MORE ORDINARY
  Nicholas Barker's staged documentary Unmade Beds gives us a quartet of glamourless, heavily-accented New Yorkers who whine on and on about their romantic unsuccess, oblivious to the way their own deliberately-developed "street smart" attitudes keep them alone.
  
• ON YOUR MARX
  East Side Story, the documentary about obscure Russian and East German movie musicals, ponders whether the tragedy of Soviet repression would've been different if Eastern Bloc governments had better tolerated song and dance. My answer: It would've been different, but not necessarily much better.
• BETTER THAN A POKEMON IN THE EYE
  The Pokemon phenomenon's taken the worlds of video games, kiddie TV, and associated merchandising by storm. It's something that could only have come from Japan; American media companies never would've accepted such a complex premise.
• KURT AND COURTNEY AND NICK
  Nick Broomfield's Kurt and Courtney is less a documentary about the rock-star icons (one unintended, one very intended) than about Broomfield's failure to make such a documentary. But it does include some telling remarks and images about the horrible things fame does to people who try to get it and succeed, don't try to get it and get it anyway, or try to get it and utterly fail.
• YA GOTTA HAVE HARTLEY
  Director Hal Hartley has almost singlehandedly established the Sundance/Miramax 'indie' film (i.e., white guys standing around talking about their dead-end lives) as a standard formula genre. But after his latest, Henry Fool, should he consider moving on to something newer?
• THE RATIO OF 'ALPHA' TO 'PI'
  The art-film classic Alphaville and the recent indie-hit Pi reflect the different dimensions of trepidation associated with the old and new phases of info-technology.
• CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?
  Cable shows I can finally get but some of you still can't, including Win Ben Stein's Money, the Fitness America Pageant, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and Star Trek: The Sci-Fi Channel Special Edition.
• MISO HORNY
  The heroine of My Fair Masseuse represents a new direction for Japanese anime sex starlets--no longer the passive waif or victim but rather an eager-to-please entrepreneur. Sex object, or object lesson for her country's economic turmoil?
• 'A BUCKET OF BLOOD'
  Why Roger Corman's made-for-cable remake is not only slicker but more coherent than his original horror farce.
• A LOVELY MAT FINISH
  Today's pro wrestling shows reveal as much about the current American zeitgeist as Jesse "The Body" Ventura's election as Minnesota governor.
• NOT THAT PLEASANT
  The not-all-that-hidden connections between the movie Pleasantville and Reader's Digest.
• A DISASTER FILM AND A FILM DISASTER
  A double-feature-from-hell with one of the most poignant disaster movies ever made (Stanley Kramer's On the Beach) and one of the most ludicrously disastrous movies ever made (Bob Dylan's not-on-video Renaldo and Clara).
• PATRICIA ROZEMA and JENNIFER MONTGOMERY
  Two directors in search of the all-yin film.
• ANDY SIDARIS
  Perhaps the only currently active, American-born action director worthy of criticism.
• CANNIBAL MOVIES
  The tastes that satisfy, from Night of the Living Dead to How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman.
• SAVE THE MOVIES--KILL HOLLYWOOD
  Do we really need any more cinematic gun orgies?
• THE GAUL OF THEM
  Why the French Ministry of Culture is right to economically defend indigenous European filmmaking.
• SEXFILM
  The next last refuge of B filmmaking. (The second most popular page on the entire site.)
• NFL FILMS
  An exclusive interview with producer Steve Sabol, who turns team players hidden in face-hiding helmets into warrior heroes.
• 'CLASS OF 1999'
  A tacky teen shoot-em-up filmed in a collapsing former high school--a school now open again.
• DOWN IN FRAGGLE ROCK
  What Jim Henson's '80s puppet show says about the '90s "alternative" subculture.
• 700 DIVIDED BY 3
  Watching the Three Stooges shorts on Pat Robertson's cable channel.
• STAN BORESON
  A neglected genius of Scandinavian-dialect humor and kiddie TV.
• 'CLUTCH CARGO'
  A short-short review of the bizarre limited-animation known as Synchro-Vox.

MUSIC AND NOISE

• SOUNDING GRUMPY
  Some of the music everybody but me likes.
• THE MYRTLE OF VENUS
  Boomer-nostalgia obsessives rant on and on about Jimi Hendrix's Dionysian "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, apparently forgetful that the tune was originally a celebration of drinkin' and lovin'.
• WORDS ABOUT MUSIC
  A dozen or more fun music-related Web links from all over.
• HOW LIMP WAS MY BIZKIT
  I wouldn't blame all these new White-Gangsta-Wannabe bands for the Woodstock 99 rapes, but still....
• AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
  Part one of an interview for an Italian magazine about the Seattle scene; here's part two.
• SENSITIVE-SMART-BOY MUSIC
  Rusty Willoughby and Marc Olsen show how a man can love a woman without hating himself. Plus: Ambient king Jeff Greinke goes ethereal with the help of Sky Cries Mary's Anisa Romero; and classic country music fails to shoo kids away from hanging outside a McDonald's.
• MAKE A PLAYFUL NOISE
  Amy Denio's Greatest Hits collection shows off a composer and multi-instrumentalist who does a lot of different things on a lot of different devices, but always with a sense of accessability and artful entertainment. Plus: Sue Ann Harkey's newest studio band Fulcrum, and the Wellwater Conspiracy's odes to early- and late-period acid-pop.
• HOW GREEN WERE MY PAJAMAS
  Jeff Kelly's band Green Pajamas still makes some of the happiest melancholy ballads ever recorded.
• THE JOY OF JOI
  I dislike it when world music's rehashed for laid-back-and-mellow western consumption. So why do I like this instance of world music rehashed for high-energy-dance western consumption?
• SARDONIC POP AND HYPNOTIC BALLADS
  The Gigolo Aunts' bouncy pessimism returns after a five-year hiatus; Mia Boyle's multitracked vocals and guitars take you to a hypnotic space of quiet, downbeat hope.
• HOORAY FOR BOLLYWOOD
  A new compilation CD gives western listeners a great intro to the funky, genre-smooshing world of India film music.
• TIFFANY ANDERS
  Solo debut of an electric singer-songwriter-guitarist with great industry connections.
• LO-FI TURNED INTO HI-TECH
  How to make a slick electronic "remix" CD using Scotland's jangly-guitar Pastels as source material, while remaining faithful to the band's aesthetic.
• ROKY ERICKSON
  Home tapes by the psychedelic pioneer, some recorded while he was in a psychiatric hospital.
• END THE BEGUINE, ALREADY!
  Why freelance writer Juliette Guilbert's wrong to disparge the retro-swing tribe.
• LOCAL BANDS ON PARADE
  Five Seattle-Tacoma bands, including at least one good one.
• WORK (OUT) MUSIC
  A selection of tuneage for increasing productivity at your home office.
• 'LESBIAN GUITAR TEACHER'
  A want ad placed by a self-described "lesbian guitar teacher" leads to ponderings on why lesbian musicians don't get more respect as instrument players instead of merely as statement makers.
• MEMORIES OF FAKE I.D.
  Local '80s power-poppers the Cowboys and the Heats finally re-emerge via CD retrospectives. But should anybody who wasn't there the first time listen to them now?
• LIFE AFTER LOUNGE
  Combustible Edison tries to survive the Cocktail Implosion by turning into a semiserious progressive-pop band.
• 'BEST OF ANIME'
  It's not really the best, but Rhino Records has at least assembled a good sampling of Japanese animation theme music.
• AIRING IT OUT
  A tour up and down the Seattle radio dial in search of non-stupid programming.
• PERE UBU, ON THE ROAD AGAIN
  David Thomas returns from his British exile long enough to explore the lost landscapes of America.
• 'HYPE!'
  Pre-release review of the great Seattle music movie.
• OUTRE MUSIC, PART 1
  I asked readers to nominate once-popular musical genres that hadn't yet been "revived" by modern-day hipsters. Some of their suggestions: Accordians, political folk, gospel, ragtime, pan flute, real Muzak, Lawrence Welk, marching bands.
• OUTRE MUSIC, PART 2
  More reader suggestions: Calypso, traditional Hawaiian, Indian ragas, truck-driving songs, bluegrass.
• THE 'SEATTLE SCENE' CHESS SET
  From January 1994, an attempt at the ultimate satirical statement on the whole G-word media mania.
• SMEGMA
  Oregon's venerable pioneers of difficult-listening music.
• SAUL ZAENTZ and JOHN FOGERTY
  How Hollywood's favorite 'indie' film producer built a mini-empire off of the exploited and probably cheated genius of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
• COCKTAIL DIVERSITY
  How the lounge-music revival reflects the progressive optimism of the first Age of Integration.
• GOODNESS
  A great band that deserves a better shake than it's gotten from the music biz to date.
• JOE MEEK
  Recalling the pioneer UK indie record producer, the genius behind "Telstar" and one of the most offbeat creative forces pop music's ever seen.
• COUNTRY DICK MONTANA
  The late great pioneer of low-voiced country punk.
• 'PLANET SQUEEZEBOX'
  Accordion music from all over; perhaps the most energetic, most fun "world music" record yet released.
• BIKINI KILL R.I.P.
  The band that helped make "riot grrrl" a mass-media cliche in spite of its own anti-mass-media stance.
• COBAIN-DEATH FRENZY
  Fans mourned; media vultures and conspiracy buffs swarmed.
• WHERE IS THE LOVE?
  A "completely unauthorized biography" depicts Courtney Love completely as a Celebrity, not as a performer or artist. Which might be the way she likes it.

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