William Gibson is the first-generation cyberpunk fictionist (Neuromancer, “Johnny Mnemonic”) who coined the term “cyberspace” in a short story, first used “the matrix” to describe the web, and is credited with inventing the concept of virtual sex, all before any of this was realizable, and a decade or so before he even had a computer […]
William S. Kowinski
Posted inArts + Scene
Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch: Living Sustainably in a Connected World
Why do we glorify the “Midas Touch” and forget the rest of the story? That everything King Midas touched turned to lifeless gold, including his daughter? Leslie Paul Thiele points out that this is a cautionary tale about unintended consequences, which pretty much characterize what we’ve done to our society and our planet. With many […]
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Living Language
In The Language Archive by Julia Cho, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, George (played by Craig Benson) is a linguist studying dying languages, while the language of his marriage dies unnoticed. He does catch on that his wife Mary (Terry Desch) is crying constantly: (“She cries making the salad. She cries in […]
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Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology
If a stream of recent books are correct (I’ve reviewed several here, by David Orr, Bill McKibben and Paul Gilding), much of this century is going to be significantly and catastrophically different from today, due primarily to energy and ecological limits amplified by the climate crisis. The authors all made strong cases for what is […]
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Working Class Anti-Hero
In 1956, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger transformed British drama almost overnight. With its non-upper class characters and setting, and its contemporary street sensibilities, it played throughout England and catapulted British theatre into the modern age. It helped ignite a new generation of playwrights in England and America, from Harold Pinter to Edward Albee, […]
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Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
Best known for his book What’s the Matter With Kansas?, analyzing the paradox of middle class Americans voting against their own interests, Thomas Franks turns his attention to the recent Tea Party phenomenon, and that monumental paradox of victims of a Wall Street-induced Great Recession rallying for unfettered free enterprise at the precise moment it […]
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Exit Laughing
Laughter On The 23rd Floor, a comedy by Neil Simon now onstage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, is about a roomful of writers for a 1950s comedy-variety TV show. Joe McCarthy and the Blacklist lurk in the background, and troubles with the network animate the plot. But mostly it’s about the characters […]
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Eagles: Taking It To The Limit
Jackson Browne’s recent appearance in Arcata reminds us that the California stars of the 1970s are still around and remembered. I may have witnessed their collective apex when Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles played at the Capitol Center in Washington, DC, in a benefit for the presidential campaign of Linda’s boyfriend, Jerry Brown, in […]
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Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930-1965
California’s population is getting older, and more people are leaving than arriving. That’s the opposite of phenomena that defined California in the 20th century, when good jobs, sunshine and possible stardom attracted millions of California dreamers. There are two photos in this book that tell the growth story: One shows a huge expanse of Los […]
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Winter Stages
There’s been a lull on local stages since the holidays, but that’s about to change. Over the next month or so there’s a parade of comedy (including commedia) and drama (classic, modern and contemporary), all beginning with a radio show. This coming Saturday (Jan. 21) Redwood Curtain presents the latest in this locally favorite form […]
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Coffee Talk: The Stimulating Story of the World’s Most Popular Brew
Since a book on coffee is likely to be read mostly by coffee fanatics, there are several requirements. First, it must provide glowing detail about how wonderful coffee is, and how good it is for you. Fortunately, the latest health studies have been very positive, so that’s not the problem it used to be. Morton […]
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Year Out, Community In
Bad economic times are more than a theme in at least four recent North Coast stage productions. They are a fact of life that local theatres face. From anecdotal evidence, it appears that the economy is injuring some theatrical organizations more than others. But in hard times particularly, all these theatres depend on the strength […]