DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OF A SCIENTIFIC OR PERSONAL NATURE?
Oh my, have we ever got a wonderfully odd and funny new thing for you to enjoy:
Animals of the Ocean, in Particular the Giant Squid
1932416390
by Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey
McSweeney’s, $18.00, cloth
This third installment of reference books by Dr. Doris & Benny Haggis-on-Whey details many fascinating, hilarious (and one might even say dubious) observations about marine animals, including squid dating dos and don’ts, the long-term effects of salt water on musical theater, and a Mid-Atlantic grey shark’s guide to installing floor tile.
For a deeper glimpse of the slightly askew Haggis-on-Whey worldview, including many delightful diary entries and the wonderful Haggis-on-Whey Automated Question Answering Machine, you simply must visit The Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance. Go ahead, click if you dare. And prepare to be greatly amused.
Edu-Core: Bang The Head That Does Not Read!
The Seattle heavy metal band BlöödHag was founded by Sci-Fi authors J.B. Stratton and J.M. McNulty to teach metal & punk-rock fans about the Sci-Fi roots of “The Metal Way.” From the band’s MySpace page.
“Our mission is to spread the gospel of Edu-Core. BlöödHag play really short Heavy Metal songs about Science Fiction authors [and] use Heavy Metal music to promote literacy and vice versa.”
What famous writers have said about BlöödHag:
“The oddest compliment I’ve ever received.” --Thomas M. Disch
“What an extraordinarily unusual thing for someone to do.” --William Gibson
Crowds at BlöödHag shows are often pelted with classic Sci-Fi novels. Your Edu-Core fandom cannot be said to be truly HEAVY until you check out this NPR interview, from which this might be our favorite quote:
“We’re kinda like the Oprah book club, except we’re cooler…. And we have way more umlauts.”
Speechless to express the awesomeness of this band, we can only point to their official website’s lyrics page, and share this quote:
“Michael Moorcock born in 1939!
The Sundred Worlds! The Wrecks of Time!
Moor…cock..cock…cock! Moor…cock...cock…cock!
Moorcock smoked pot with Lemmy
You think you wrote a lot of books, he wrote twice as many.”
Is that a banana in your book-bag or
are you just happy to see:
GORILLAZ RISE OF THE OGRE
ISBN: 1594489319
Riverhead, Cloth, $35.00
The wicked-cool new autobiography of Gorillaz, the “world’s greatest virtual band,” just hit our dock with a lovely thump. For the uninitiated, Gorillaz are a band featuring four animated characters, and are the brainchild of front-man Damon Albarn of the band Blur and comics artist Jamie Hewlett (creator of Tank Girl). To date, there’ve been two multi-million-selling Gorillaz albums (last year’s “Demon Days” sold over 6 million copies), and their videos are just great fun.
We predict hot demand through the holidays for this entertaining full-color tell-all, which is destined for hipster coffee-tables everywhere.
You might want to go surfing these Gorillaz links (strictly for research purposes, mind you, to help with the hand-selling):
For just a quick taste, here’s a neat little Flash intro for the book from the band’s official website.
For lots more multi-media fun, you may want to visit the highly entertaining—er, I mean, informative Gorillaz MySpace page (with sample music & videos!)
And you might as well take a peek at the collectible new Kidrobot vinyl Gorillaz toys (due out next week!):
Mission Accomplished
The new BUSH YOGA book (ISBN: 1596912359) is here, and all we can say is, please GO CHECK THIS OUT.
And be warned – after clicking a few of these little poses, you might just laugh so hard you’ll soil yourself.
This may just be the sharpest action-figure-related humor since, well, ever. (Or at least since Robot Chicken.)
New Objects of Desire
Hats off to GalleyCat over at MediaBistro.com for their early & continuing coverage of the wonderful new Penguin Classics deluxe editions featuring covers by stellar comics artists. They’ve just posted a poll asking your opinions on the new covers of two titles coming out later this month:
RASHOMON & 17 OTHER STORIES (new cover by Yoshihiro Tatsumi) ISBN: 0143039849, and
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (new cover by Frank Miller) ISBN: 0143039946.
(We love them both. Go and let your voice be heard.)
Musical mash-ups – with butter and gravy!
Lest you think this new Popazine blog is all about serious medieval literature and shiznit, we’d like to share a few music tips and links on what’s been tickling Popazine’s ear buds, lately:
Nerdcore Hip-Hop – a.k.a. Geeksta Rap
Thanks to a tip-off from the latest Wired magazine, we’ve been getting ourselves schooled in Nerdcore, the sub-genre of hip-hop music that’s created by self-professed nerds with songs about geeky pursuits like video games, computer programming, anime, comics, the internet, and technology. And consequently, we’ve been laughing out loud a lot. And spurting coffee out our noses. It’s messy, but empowering. We heartily recommend that you join in the fun. Nerdcorehiphop.org is the place to start. You’ll find a wealth of merriment therein, including lots of info on key artists and tons of free songs to download. Here are just a few of favorites we’ve discovered so far (links are to .mp3 format files):
MC Frontalot:
"Goth Girls"
MC Hawking:
"Rock Out With Your Hawk Out"
MC Frontalot vs. Baddd Spellah
"Nerdcore Hip-Hop 2006"
Beefy:
"Tub of Tabasco"
Much Respect! We bow down to your greatness, Nerdcore gods. (And yes, we admit we’re total noobs to this scene.)
And on a somewhat vaguely related note:
Have you heard about Real Otaku Heroes?
This website is the home of cult-fave songs inspired by the Bud Light, Real American Heroes and Real Men of Genius radio commercials, created by fans to celebrate the various Otaku heroes they’ve encountered over the years. There’s great goofy fun-poking to be found here, including these favorite samples:
"Mr. Unwashed Convention Attendee"
"Mr. Female Character Cosplayer"
"Mr. Shoujo Anime and Manga Fan"
We love these guys. If you’ve ever attended an anime or comics convention (or hung out with manga fans), you must hear these songs. But be forewarned – it’s best not to listen while drinking coffee (or you might fall prey to that nose-spurting problem we mentioned above).
Popa’s Got a Brand New Blog!
Kicking off POPAZINE’s occasional, informal journal on pop culture, nerdy bookishness, and various topics we find amusing (in hopes they might amuse you, too).
Cross Pollination is the zesty new marketing flavor:
Birds do it, Bees do it, All the cool kids in publishing are talking about doing it!
We noticed a nifty article by Calvin Reid in PW Comics Week recently about how Hachette and DC Comics are cross-promoting bestselling author Brad Meltzer’s prose and comics to his respective fan-bases, hoping to break down the traditionally perceived (and actually rather porous, we think) walls between fans of comics and fiction. Key pull quote:
“DC Comics v-p of marketing John Cunningham said the effort just illustrates developments in the reading marketplace. ‘We see a merging of markets. People in this business think that if consumers read one thing they won't read something else. But those lines are breaking down. The popularity of graphic material is growing and cross pollination is possible and inevitable.’"
We couldn’t agree more. In fact, cross pollination is Popazine’s rallying cry. We love us them bookish, nerdy fans in all their polyglot, omnivorous glory.
And speaking of cross pollination between the bookish lit crowd and the loutish pop-cult crowd:
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog,
E I E I O
And on his blog he pwned some noobs,
E I E I O
As spotted on Kotaku (one of our favorite guilty-pleasure gaming-culture & -news websites), Geoffrey Chaucer has a blog now.
Much droll hilarity may be found therein, including riffs on pirates, Henri le Potier (Harry Potter), and a recent post describing Geoffrey’s discovery of the distracting pleasures of video games when he finds his son playing on his “Exboxe CCCLX.” After spending all night playing games he concludes:
“It rockede, and from thenne on ich was caught in the trappe. Thus my Tales of Canterburye were on the back-burner yputte. The dayes aren fulle of reste, and the nightes fulle of games of video.”
Priceless.
|
Previous Posts
Posts of 2006
•Edu-Core: Bang The Head That Does Not Read!
•Is that a banana in your book-bag or
are you just happy to see•Mission Accomplished
•Musical mash-ups- with butter and gravy!
•Popa's Got a Brand New Blog!
Back to Blog Page
|
