Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

‘Omit Dead Ends’ … Yes, Please

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At the urging of my staff of thousands, examples from Gerard Bellaart’s word-based series of artworks have been a continuing feature of recent blogposts. Other stenciled texts of his that have appeared so far include “Artaud Fragmentations,” “tric trac du ciel,” “Throws Up Words,” “ROT NOT,” and “No Mind Fits 5.” There are more to […]

Free Lynne Stewart: Save Her Life

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UPDATES BELOW … Back in 2005, when Lynne Stewart was prosecuted for aiding terrorists in her role as a civil rights defense attorney representing Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up the United Nations building in New York, it was clear the feds were aiming to fry her. […]

From a Townhouse to the Vasty Deep

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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? Glendower: Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the Devil Hotspur: And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the Devil By telling the truth. […]

Queen of the Arms Trade

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“Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is one of the world’s richest women, worth £17 billion. Her investments in the arms trade include firms that produce the uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells. The deployment of these shells by the US military in its attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 is believed to […]

An Amazing Act of Filming

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I’m late on this, but I can now say that the widespread praise for this revelatory documentary is deserved. It is not — yes, NOT — an exploitation flick, but if you’re innarested in kinky you MUST see it. “The Act of Killing” is kinky to the 10th power. Not sex kinky but life-and-death kinky […]

Back-to-Back Writings From Underground Dos-à-Dos

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+++ Incidental Intelligence: Anyone who cherishes raw truth, and especially those of us who were warmed by Carl Weissner’s friendship, will appreciate EINE ANDERE LIGA as a mammoth achievement. But Milena Verlag ought to correct two claims on its Web site: 1) that this posthumous collection of his underground writings has a foreword written by […]

Brecht Never Taught at Podunk College

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Two staff messages the other day led me to compare them. One went like this: I have a colleague who reads manuscripts for a literary magazine. Recently, I spent two hours looking at the contributions she has to vet. God, the bulk of them are awful. Actually, what makes them awful is their mediocrity. None […]

‘It’s a Boy!’

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Someone asked what I thought about the royal birth in Britain. Nima Shirazi said it for me. And let’s not forget this: +++ Or the latest addition to the Royal Babylon video archive on YouTube: Inheritance. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Herbert Huncke, Beat Hipster Sans Pareil

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I see that Hilary Holladay will be reading from American Hipster, her biography of Herbert Huncke, in a multimedia presentation at The Beat Museum in San Francisco. Tipped by my staff of thousands, I also see that she’s due the next night at Alley Cat Books. This brings back memories … One morning there was […]

Connecting Kim Dotcom and Edward Snowden

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To have a staff of thousands that keeps me informed is one of the privileges of this blog. Had I not been tipped about the projection of Kim Dotcom’s face with the words “United Stasi of America” on a wall of the U.S. embassy in Berlin, I would not have made a connection between N.S.A. […]

The Fine Art of Book Promotion

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“If this is the literary equivalent of groupies throwing their bras on stage, I’ll take it,” he says. The author, who goes by the name Supervert, was talking about a nude photo shoot with an “alt” model, which, he was pleased to learn, uses two of his books as a prop. It’s not the first […]

This ‘Auteur’ Made Some of Hollywood’s Best Films

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I just caught a screening of “Dodsworth” at the New York Historical Society, where Catherine Wyler mentioned in a pre-screening interview with AMERICAN MASTERS creator Susan Lacy that there are two new Wyler books due out soon: one by Gabriel Miller, the other by Neil Sinyard. She hoped it signals renewed interest in her father’s […]

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