PicoBlog

People often do what they do because of prejudices they have. They make false stereotypical assumptions about a group because that assumption is prevalent in their society, and their behaviour concerning members of that group is based on those assumptions. One sort of thing they do on the basis of prejudice is to adjust how confident they are in a proposition in the light of what someone from the group in question has told them about that proposition.

On an island of lava and glaciers, the capital city of Iceland can look old and new and ageless, depending on where you are. The Hallgrímskirkja church spire looks like a rocketship and the downtown malls are black marble and glass; restaurants repurpose old postal buildings, brick rowhouses look like vague postwar Europe, and some buildings date to the mid-1700s. Not far from the dome of the Pearl is a park with hiking trails amidst the ruins of bunkers and defensive installations built during World War II to protect Iceland from invasion.

In 2003’s X2, the sequel to the first X-Men film, mutant Bobby Drake aka Iceman, comes out as a mutant to his parents in a scene that’s a clear parallel to queer folks coming out to their families. His mom replies by asking the age old question, “Bobby, have you tried…not being a mutant?” “I thought it might be fun to get an analogy with the way some people are picked on by bigots,” is a direct quote from the former head of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, in a video clip you can find floating around social media that’s from 90s.

It’s been a few weeks since I had any real faith that the Cardinals would sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Once the market for the 25-year-old ace posted out of Japan hit a roiling boil that took estimations past $200 million and into the $300 million range, I knew the Cards’ efforts, to whatever extent they undertook those efforts, would come to grief. And so they have, as Yamamoto late Thursday night agreed to a 12-year, $325 million pact with the Dodgers, who have now committed more than $1 billion in guaranteed salary this offseason – all toward improving an already juggernaut roster.

Hi! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here. The best of Japan’s rap in 2023 showcased a scene tapped into the most current styles bubbling at a global scale. Drill overtook trap as the popular sound, club rap spread into the mainstream, and more artists have been feeling the rage. The underground crews solidified their respective styles, whether they were embedded in dance, emo-rap or hyperpop, while growing their base outward from their respective niche.

In the final days of writing Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career, a publicist from Neon contacted me and asked if I’d like a screener of Cage’s upcoming film, Pig. Of course I did, but I was a little wary. I’d mostly completed the text of the book, but could still squeeze a capsule into the Cageography at the end, which would contain starred capsule reviews of all of Cage’s films.

Hi there. I’m still collecting my thoughts on what lessons I learned from my recent sabbatical, attempting to put them together into a few essays worth sharing. It’s not been easy. How do I tell you about getting fired for not wanting to work over Christmas or ending up lost in the woods all night without flashlight, phone, or compass? I don’t know. What about living phone-free for a month and trying to navigate life, travel, and restaurants without apps or QR readers?

Last week, the results of Sight & Sound’sGreatest Films of All Time list were released, a decennial event since 1952, when 63 critics voted Bicycle Thieves the best film ever made, only four years after it came out. (Six films on the list were from the silent era, however, which was surely the retort on Ye Olde Twitter when the participants were accused of “recency bias.”) The 2022 edition polled 1,639 critics, up from 846 in 2012, which itself had exploded in growth from 2002, when the number was just 145.

SHIIIIIIIIIIII-BAALLLLL! Ah yes. The profane music to my ears, when screamed mid-concert by Min Yoongi. Or in recent cases of D-Day: the Final, D-1 and D-2, screaming “FUCK” in Korean with extra oomph. Even in front of his allegedly bemused parents in the crowd. (D-1) (And of course they are not shocked, c’mon, Agust D is their youngest baby boy.) Many words have been spilled about the Yoongi/Agust D/Suga multi-content concert tour, focusing on his artistry, set list, intensity and sophisticated staging.