sex is culture
SEX/CULTURE
Alfred Kinsey: Liberator or Pervert? Includes many luridly details (he self-circumcised himself a year before he died) and a back-story of controversy (Dr. Laura Schlessinger and others tried to put an ad in Variety denouncing the film) surrounding the new Kinsey biopic.
Slate.com (Dahlia Lithwick): Why post-feminist women enjoy Trading Spouses and Wife Swap. I sorta hope this one becomes controversial.
Upcoming on VH1: When Stars Get Scammed.
The Gawker interview guys get recognized at the Hustler Club.
Library Journal: Porn Star(s) in the Library?
Confessional blog post on watching The Weather Channel: Am I Watching The Weather -- Or Porno?
Slate.com: Will male birth control ever become a reality?
Who was the gay Simpsons character? Nope, It Isn't Smithers. It also isn't Cynthia Nixon's lover.
POLITICS
Cool debate word frequency tool.
George Soros, blogger.
I missed this one. Jessi Klein of "Best Week Ever" (one of the best pop culture shows on tv) blogged the debate for CNN.com. And so did Douchbag Novak, which was quite possibly the worst blog ever.
PUBLISHING
So the "new" NY Times Book Review came out this week. Its new-ness is questionable, but there is the okay review of Web Sites for People Who Read, which includes some of my current fave blogs such as Bookslut and Maud Newton.
Speaking of new, I believe The Guide is part of the Sunday Times Arts section's attempt to stay ahead of New York and the weeklies. (The rest of the section is full of font changes this week, but I can't find anything else significantly different.) Choire Sicha is the byline, so it's not full of mainstream crap. It's the first thing I've seen in a while that made me want to live in NYC.
Nerve.com: Michaelangelo Matos interviews John Leland, author of the new book Hip: the History. Looks like the book will be good.
EW: Our Favorite Phillip Roth books.
GAMES
Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions ended last week with a Double Jeopardy category called "Blogs." The question to the $2000 answer was Margaret Cho. Other questions included Lawrence Lessig and Howard Dean.
Wired News playing catchup on Video Mods. (One important thing I didn't point out about the new Sims 2: it has the ability to record your gameplay into a video file. This has extraoridinary viral opportunity, such as allowing one to potentially create their own Video Mods. See next entry.)
The same people who made Red Vs. Blue, a machinima series using the Halo rendering engine, have recently started to release The Strangerhood, a new machinima using the Sims 2 engine. [via Slashdot]
DIGITAL MEDIA
Denton is launching three new sites today: Kotaku.com (gaming), Screenhead (entertainment), and Jalopnik (cars).
Smart CEO Alert! PaidContent is doing a series called Context Next, featuring guest blogs by leading industry thinkers. Jeremy Allaire's grabbed my interest, but Don Katz (CEO of Audible.com) has been the hidden diamond. Speaking tech execs, I saw Mark Cuban tell Howard Stern last week that he once slept with seven women at once. Take that Trump! (I feel pure midwestern guilt for saying this, but I like the cheesy gold-laced Trump more than the awwww-shucks Cuban. I have an entire essay in me about these two, but it's basically the dichotomy between camp and faux-earnestness.)
Wired News: Google News Ain't Makin Dough.
T-SHIRTS
My Frat Is Cooler Than Your Frat.
GILF.
MUSIC
This week, Subterranean on MTV2 was all about the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. Good stuff by TV on the Radio, Dizzee Rascal, The Streets, Wilco, Nellie McKay, Air, and more.
Times Mag profiles Nonesuch records, home of Wilco, Steve Reich, Emmylou Harris, Laurie Anderson, The Magnetic Fields, and Kronos Quartet.
Mark David Chapman is up for parole.
Dan The Automator to produce next Franz Ferdinand.
FILM
Let's just get it over with and call it the best film of the year. Days of Being Wild trailer is out.
ART
Does anyone read Art Forum anymore? New issue on Pop After Pop might be the first I buy in several years.
Tokion Magazine's Creativity Now conference looks like it would've been fun. Speakers included an eclectic cast like Brian Eno, Kim Gordon, Christopher Doyle, and Joe Trippi.
LOCAL
Yes, I'm glad we talked at Sound Unseen this weekend. You'll be at the rest of the events this week, right? Good. I'll see you there.
Margaret Cho on her appearance in Minneapolis last week.
Chuck is finishing up work on Blogumentary. I can't wait to see the final film, which seems like an impossible task to complete given the unstable nature of its topic.
