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SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: if you have anything important to do, do not start watching The King of Kong. This 2007 documentary about competitive classic videogaming is absolutely mesmerizing—much to my chagrin, I missed this when it came through the theaters; [...]

Ta-ra! Ta-ra! It’s my first TWITTER CONTEST!
My lovely wife has graciously donated a brand new Breaking Bad S2 DVD box set. I am, of course, a fan of anything that keeps her gainfully employed, but my enthusiasm was cemented by the season three premiere party we went to on Tuesday night at Hollywood’s hangar-like [...]

Stanley Kubrick is one of my favorite directors, and I spent most of my teens watching and re-watching his greatest films in pot-scented, sticky-floored arthouse theaters. Even today, my mother and I seem to watch one or two every time I come back for a visit. A conversation enroute to the premiere of “Breaking Bad” [...]

Last night I fooled around a bit with this 3-D movie site, Xtranormal.com. I made a movie, which is embedded below. It’s a bit hard to make out some of the computerized voices, so I’ll paste the script below that.

Civet: So, Broccoli Man…is this your first superhero convention?
Broccoli Man: Yeah. Sucks we have to take [...]

Spontaneous “Hey Jude” in Times Square subway station, 3/6/10

Hey Jude Times Square Subway Station from 39forks on Vimeo.

In the fall of 1990, I had no interest in World War I; then as now, I studied history for the story of it, and there didn’t seem to be any narrative in that conflict. No personalities, no resolution, just four years of static, blood-drenched dress rehearsal for the much more satisfying sequel played out [...]

This Friday’s documentary, originally aired by the BBC in the late 90s (?), tells the strange, dramatic, and ultimately quite sad story of acid guru Timothy Leary. The question with Leary—and perhaps with all such larger-than-life characters—is this: what was behind the surface we all saw? What was inside him? What made him different from [...]

Beatles and Lennon fans worldwide are in a tizzy over the ad below, which repurposes a John Lennon interview from 1968 to hawk Citroëns.

Is that dubbed? Or just really garbled? Anyway, son Sean has tweeted that the ad was designed to keep his dad in the public consciousness. “Look, TV ad was not for [...]

You might know Bob Harris as a writer (Who Hates Whom) or a  contestant on Jeopardy! (Prisoner of Trebekistan), but to me, he’s a kvetching partner. Every six months or so, Bob and I meet for coffee at a place up the street and spend a liberating hour in the Santa Monica sunshine, lamenting the [...]

Outside of the magazine business, few have heard of editor Clay Felker (1925-2008). Some of this is the nature of the product; magazines tend to age like eclairs, and when was the last time you heard of a famous baker? But from 1963 to 1977, Felker’s weekly New York was always hot and fresh, and [...]