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Rumpus Articles
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column: Is Pau Gasol Big Bird?
Pau Gasol reminds me of Big Bird. Maybe if the Lakers didn’t have bright yellow in their uniforms I wouldn’t make this connection, but with the yellow, the Sesame Street association is unavoidable. Gasol is gangly, tall, with feathery hair…
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The Rumpus Interview with Hirokazu Koreeda
“Actually, after Still Walking was made, I was asked to write a novel version. I accepted eagerly, but then about a month into it I realized how difficult writing a novel can be.”
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Harvard Study ‘Punctures Twitter Hype’
That’s the claim of a BBC News article which quotes the study’s lead researcher, Bill Heil, as follows: “Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends,” and “it looks like a few people are creating content…
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Zach Galifianakis Is Absurd
John Wray, author of the novel Lowboy, recently wrote “The Making of Zach Galifianakis” for The New York Times Magazine. Wray takes a long look at how the scruffy comedian, who leans more on performance art than old school stand…
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Paul Madonna’s “Small Potatoes” Exhibit, June 12 in San Francisco
Paul Madonna & The Rumpus Celebrate “Small Potatoes” Opening art exhibit of large multi-panel cartoons Ritual Coffee Roasters June 12, 2009 7-9pm For the Ritual Roasters exhibit, Madonna has made a series of large-scale multi-panel cartoons, furthering his comics as…
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Blue Collar: A 1978 Film for 2009
While catching up on my long-neglected film reading, I found this fascinating article by Saul Austerlitz about Paul Schrader’s debut film, Blue Collar, which stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto as auto-plant assembly line workers driven to robbery…
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The Rumpus Interview with Kate Christensen
At what point in a writer’s career does their writing become able to be characterized? I mean specifically the point where you get to add “ian” or “esque” at the end of someone’s name
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The Chronicles of Narcissists
Hal Niedzviecki explores the motives, technologies, and consequences of Peep Culture.
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Food Party (No, You Will Not Learn How to Cook)
It’s hard to overstate how endearing Thu Tran is. I mean basically when Pee Wee’s playhouse came to end, so did surrealism in TV. But now it’s back, and Thu Tran might be the most adorable person on the planet. …
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The Myth of Mary and the Mother of God
We encounter images of the Virgin Mary constantly: in churches, tattoos, and local news stories reporting frequent visual manifestations of her iconic form.
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Newspapers dying? Maybe it’s just the cities they mythologized
An interview on New American Media with writer Richard Rodriguez has a fascinating take on what’s happening to American newspapers. Using the famously provincial San Francisco Chronicle as an example, Rodriguez says, “I don’t think the Chronicle is dying so…