Monday, September 12th, 2011
Gone But Not Forgotten
8

The "Entourage" Epilogue: Ten Years Later

| September 12th, 2011

E and Vince climbed up over the rim of the hill, and there they stopped to gaze down upon the ruins of the city below. Thirteen years since the SAG/AFTRA split-up and the city was still burning. Vast sections of the canvas below were nothing but charred smoldering dirt. And higher up, by the shell of the old Hollywood sign, they could make out the screams of anguish, the clatter of swords, the unholy battle cries of the Test Audiences as they stampeded down toward the deserted boulevards in search of fresh hot blood. A decade after they had fled, the marauders looked more zombie than human; more creatures infected [...]

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True Lies
110

'The Social Network' Is a Pack of Lies That Conveys Nothing About Our Time

| January 17th, 2011

Picture, if you will, the opening scenes of next year's blockbuster, The Quagmire—a dramatic account of America's descent into the war in Vietnam.

The film opens on young Lt. Lyndon Johnson of the U.S. army. He is stationed in Tokyo in the 1950's. As the opening credits roll, he is sulking away from the base’s fancy officers' club, his application for membership having been rejected. He realizes that try as he might, with his poor Texas upbringing, he will never be one of them. Stung, he ventures out into the field, across the Asian continent, turning over those stones that the well-to-do ne'er-do-wells back at the club couldn't be [...]

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The End of the World
1

The Laws of a Year of Blessed Silence

| December 27th, 2010

In humanity’s last year of existence, the people of Planet Earth finally achieved the goal that had eluded them since the dawn of civilization, that prize that since men first gathered around fires had hung like a Holy Grail just beyond reach their reach. With one year left to live, mankind at last learned how to shut the hell up.

For centuries, from the earliest known communities through medieval times until the mid 90’s, the free exchange of human ideas had seemed a manageable annoyance; like cockroaches in high tech office towers, the specter of people sharing their thoughts was disgusting to look at, but relatively harmless. To many, [...]

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Teaching the Controversy
9

Handicapping the Grammys: Best New Age Album

| December 2nd, 2010

The nominees are in. And at first glance, the overwhelming, almost prohibitive favorite here in the "Best New Age Album" category has to be considered Zamora's "Instrumental Oasis Vol. 4," which is astonishing considering where we've been with him. After "Instrumental Oasis Vol. 3," there were many, myself included, who felt that with that bone crunch of an album, the Magical Places genre had nowhere else to go. I mean, not to get fanboyish, but six years later, every time I play the "Midnight Mystery" track (for the thousandth or two-thousandth time), I still find new things in it. That an artist working in Magical could [...]

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