Culture

Joshua Witchger 5-07-2012
The Hill and Wood. Photo via Facebook www.facebook.com/thehillandwood.

The Hill and Wood. Photo via Facebook www.facebook.com/thehillandwood.

Tributes to The Beastie Boys -- Wilco's legendary album revisited -- water droplets dance on speakers -- Patton Oswalt's band names -- Stephen Colbert interviewed on Letterman -- and the Virginia indie musicians The Hill and Wood perform a house show at Jim Wallis' former home... see this and more in today's Links of Awesomeness...

Joshua Witchger 5-07-2012

The Audio Motherload (Part 1):Radio documentaries, comedy, and interviews about mothers and women from John Hodgman, This American Life, Radiolab, Mom's Open Mic, and Anne Lamott ...

http://youtu.be/3nVzjorJktg

Joshua Witchger 5-07-2012

From bands singing about their mothers and songwriters promoting women's empowerment, to songs about reference mothers and girls and odes to the divine feminine, we give you Music for Mother's Week (Part 1) with contributions from Dawes, Iron & Wine, Bob Dylan, J. Tillman, Roger Waters and Sinead O'Connor and U2.

http://youtu.be/ZvRWo8CXTpc

 
the Web Editors 5-07-2012

The Beastie Boy's Adam Yauch (aka "MCA"), died from cancer late last week at age 47. Take a look at a Sesame Street tribute to the vanguard musicians.

Nicole Higgins 5-07-2012
Dave Hogan/Getty Images

R Jonathan Ross, Jeremy Renner and Robert Downey Jr. at the European premiere of The Avengers. Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Ladies and gentlemen, summer has arrived.

This past weekend I joined the ranks of moviegoers and saw the action-packed and highly anticipated superhero movie, The Avengers, and the film lived up to its hype.

To those more familiar with the comic book storylines, please forgive me for any glaring reduction of the plot. I stand with you in my enthusiasm for the film, and I appreciate your full understanding of the respective stories leading to this reunion. 

Joshua Witchger 5-04-2012
Star Wars family portrait via Steven Quinn / Star Wars blog.

Star Wars family portrait via Steven Quinn / Star Wars blog.

May the 4th be with you! Today we present some of our favorite bits of Star Wars floating around the cybersphere.... Yoda talking in proper English -- C3-PO and R2-D2 give a public service announcement -- the galaxy's guide to yoga -- cello wars -- Dr. Suess' take on characters -- Darth Vadar as a good father -- and many more in today's Links of Awesomeness...

Joshua Witchger 5-03-2012
Anderson Cooper and Aziz Ansari with their look-a-likes

Anderson Cooper and Aziz Ansari with their look-a-likes. (Can you tell who's who?)**

Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari fools Anderson Cooper with a look-alike -- a child and a lion encounter one another at a Portland zoo -- Virgin airlines debutes new ice cubes -- Bruce Springsteen honors Levon Helm andThe Band -- and zingers in new form: Ayn Randers. See these and more in today's Links of Awesomeness...

Cathleen Falsani 5-03-2012

++ Join us in showing our appreciation for Catholic women religious (aka nuns or "sisters") on Thank-a-Nun Day, May 9. Click HERE to send a thank-you note online. ++

Silly and serious, strict and kind, profoundly faithful and sometimes hilarious — Catholic nuns are evergreen characters on the big (and the small) screens. Here's a list of some of our favorite portrayals of Catholic women religious from film and television.

1. Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) in Dead Man Walking

http://youtu.be/ih8z1jMnPbc

2. Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood) in The Sound of Music

http://youtu.be/EoCPuhhE6dw

Joshua Witchger 5-02-2012
DIY mirror project via Dans Le Townhouse Blogspot

DIY mirror project via Dans Le Townhouse Blogspot

The constructive mirror makeover -- the theology of Reinhold Bieber -- the most elaborate one-man-band you've ever seen -- Father John Misty -- and urban plant tags. See more in today's Links of Awesomeness...

the Web Editors 5-02-2012

First, there was Ryan Gosling.

Then came Bon Iver.

And now ... at last ... Hey Girl, it's Paul Ryan surfaces on tumblr.

the Web Editors 5-02-2012

If you're part of the generation who spends half the day (or more) online, it can be painful to explain new media to those who aren't as up-to-date, aka parents.

But don't worry, Fuse has created a public service announcement called, "How to talk to your parents about Spotify."

A playlist for the working class: Ten songs in honor of May Day and workers everywhere.

John Lennon, "Working Class Hero"

This song from John Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album, 1970's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, is about working class folks being "processed" into the middle class or the "machine," according to what Lennon told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview the same year the album released. "A working class hero is something to be," is the song's mantra and refrain.

Joshua Witchger 5-01-2012

Melvin the Traveling Mini Machine -- Kickstarter's transformative mission -- and "A History of Whisteling," in today's Links of Awesomeness...

LaVonne Neff 5-01-2012
Almost Amish by Nancy Sleeth

Almost Amish by Nancy Sleeth

If I had seen just the title of Almost Amish, I probably wouldn't have been attracted to it: I'm not a fan of Amish fiction, and I've heard too much about Amish puppy mills.

If I'd also noticed the name of the author, however, I might have picked it up: several years ago I met the Sleeths at the home of mutual friends, and I greatly respect the choices they have made about a simpler, more hospitable lifestyle.

Denial
This has nothing to do with blackness.
This has everything to do with blackness.

Anger
I could break things
but everything is broken.

Bargaining
Maybe I should have left
with the slave catchers.

Debra Dean Murphy 5-01-2012

ELECTION-YEAR POLITICS reveal the struggle faced by people of all political persuasions: how to meaningfully engage a process that increasingly sows division, disappointment, disgust, and even despair. Americans, no surprise, are more cynical than ever. Our elected officials are spectacularly unpopular. While there has never been a golden age of American politics, the current levels of vitriol, fear-mongering, and childish bickering have unsettled even the most jaded of political observers. And the corruption wrought by money? Let’s not even go there.      

Navigating the intersection of religion and politics in such a toxic environment poses an even more acute challenge. What’s a person of faith to do? That, of course, depends on whom you ask, since the political battle lines in religious communities are often drawn as rigidly as they are in the culture at large.

Four recent books, each dealing broadly with religion and politics in contemporary America, offer insights on these and other pressing questions.

In Testing the National Covenant: Fears and Appetites in American Politics (Georgetown University Press), ethicist William F. May takes the historical approach, examining two competing accounts of America’s origins—the contractual and the covenantal—and the prospects and promises held out by each. He notes that the preamble to the Constitution begins with a given identity—“We the People”—followed almost immediately by the acknowledgment of ongoing work (to form “a more perfect union”). May argues that this “American identity of gift and task” is best held together by the concept of covenant. The nation, he says, “is both a community and a community in the making.” May is a keen observer and an eloquent chronicler of the “runaway fears and appetites” that have driven a good deal of self-deception in American public life, and he reckons honestly with the harm done to our national character and, more urgently, to decision-making in policies both foreign and domestic. His final chapter, a moving discussion of immigrants and undocumented workers, brings the theme of “keeping covenant” to bear on one of the most pressing moral and political issues of our time.

Debra Dean Murphy 5-01-2012

Sidebar to "Bearing Witness in Contentious Times"

Richard Vernon 5-01-2012

NICK HARKAWAY’S second novel, Angelmaker, is out now through Knopf. His first, The Gone-Away World, found favor with fans of boisterously literate science fiction. Angelmaker is, in many ways, tipped from the same mold as its predecessor. It is unapologetically fun (with a particularly English sense of humor familiar to fans of Stephen Fry and Douglas Adams), stuffed full of blisteringly creative ideas and digressive subplots, and shot through with darker undernotes. In it Harkaway asks some large questions about (among other things) the nature of identity, who owns the truth, the dark side of the will to power, and the true cost of the preservation of stability. The novel also makes a strong case for the power of compassion, courage, and the glory of imagination used well.

Angelmaker follows two alternating threads. In one an irreverent and intelligent orphaned girl, Edie Banister, is recruited into wartime secret service with the Ruskinites, an order of men and women devoted to beautiful craftsmanship who have been roped into weapons development. She rescues and falls in love with a genius who is using microscopic clockwork to build a supercomputer that will reveal the truth and end war. This “Apprehension Engine” (the titular Angelmaker), is baroque and bizarre; the force field of truth is to be disseminated by mechanical bees swarming from clockwork hives around the world. Naturally, an unreconstructed dictator wants to use it as a weapon of mass destruction.

The second thread is the present-day tale of Joe Spork, as he attempts to lead a humble, honest life until he is manipulated into adventure by the elderly Banister and pursued by the now-corrupt and terrifying Ruskinites.

Julie Polter 5-01-2012

Four novels with nothing in common except storytelling done well.

Ed Spivey Jr. 5-01-2012

BELATED CONGRATULATIONS to North Korea’s new leader, the 20-something Kim Jong Un, whose exact age is being withheld while government officials review celestial events to choose which one specifically heralded his immaculate birth. This precedent was set earlier by Kim’s charismatic father, Kim Jong “Let-A-Smile-Be-Your-Umbrella” Il, who, according to North Korean textbooks, was born during the appearance of a new star. North Korean textbooks also stated that Il was an excellent golfer and that he produced no urine or feces—a helpful combination if you’re playing 18 holes without a cart.

The young Kim’s inauguration was done in typical North Korean modesty, with thousands of identically dressed people filling the square in Pyongyang, moving in perfect synchronization to honor the new leader and, secondarily, to celebrate the fact they’d all eaten beforehand. Regular meals is what they get in Pyongyang, as opposed to citizens in the rest of the country, who eat—as human rights groups have documented—less often.

Kim reportedly had very mixed feelings about the impending death of his father and his quick return from the Swiss boarding school where he had been living. He’ll miss his dad, of course, but he got out of final exams. And as any college student can tell you, it’s better to be in the history books than stuck in a campus Starbucks reading them.

I’m wondering if Kim will continue the powerful reminder of his nation’s nuclear capability by adopting his dad’s mushroom-cloud hairstyle. I notice this kind of thing because I, too, have bad hair. But, sadly, I have no nuclear weapons to casually mention to people making fun of me at a party. “Oh yeah? What’s your address again? Anywhere within a 50-mile radius would be fine.”