The Cultural Gutter

the cult in your pop culture

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Is that a gun in your sweatpants?
Art, morality and The Superbowl

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I told my 3 year old that I’d find a bed for his google-eyed dinosaur. “I promise, sweetheart.” Then, after 45 minutes of ducking in and out of his room with him crying and the senile cat howling in the background while I tried to write an article, I threw the dinosaur across the living [...]

“A Book’s Natural Fate”

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So you’ve written a book that fits the current vogue perfectly – let’s say it’s a grimy cyberpunk novel in the mid-1980s – does that mean you’ve guaranteed long-lasting fame for yourself? Probably not. But don’t worry, a lot of your compatriots are suffering the same fate. Oh, and I just happen to have an [...]

SHOPPING FOR PANTS WITH MARTIN KOVE

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There’s a pair of pants in the bottom drawer of my dresser. They don’t fit me. In fact, they’re kind of ugly. They’re chocolate brown with thick vertical half-hound’s-tooth white stripes, a trio of faux-bone oblong buttons (non-functional) running up the side of each pocket and belt loops wide enough to accommodate a belt half [...]

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    Kate Elliott asks, “How much sex is too much sex in your science fiction and fantasy?” (Thanks, James!)

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    NPR’s Monkey See blog shares a look at Adventure Time. “Adventure Time insists on emotional honesty.” (via @profmdwhite)

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    Recent shenanigans The Cultural Gutter has been involved in: The lost Drive-In Mob Movie S.P.E.C.T.R.E. on Monster Island; a transcript of the Shaitani Dracula tweetalong organized by The Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit; and the ongoing Twitter game/story, “Tonight On Mad Men.”

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    At Vern Reviews The Films Of Cinema, Outlaw Vern offers “one Seagalologist’s perspective on the ‘vulgar auteurism’ debate”: “The practitioners are trying to bring recognition to artists who they think are marginalized, but they’re accidentally creating a ranking of ‘vulgar auteur’ beneath ‘actual auteur.’ And that also shines a spotlight on the idea’s most glaring weakness: even the most establishment of the critical establishment have always worshipped directors who were at some point considered lowbrow–Hitchcock, Fuller, Peckinpah, DePalma.”

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    Pornokitsch finishes determining essential epic fantasy, with statistics, graphs and lists of their selections. Nice to see Homer in there.

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    David Simon shares the best deleted scene from the fifth season of The Wire. (via @pornokitsch)

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  • Spilling into Twitter

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    From ETC Press

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