News & Things: Your week in awful (and I’m not talking about Forever 21)

News

MTV Geek Closes Up Shop
What does it meeeean? After AOL ditched Comics Alliance earlier this year, the news that MTV Geek is headed to the blog afterlife (there’s always Internet Archive!), surely has the paid geek-blogosphere wringing hands. Splashpage will remain in operation.

Steven Soderbergh’s Twitter Novella Is Now a Hardcover Book (But You Can Read It Online)
Soderbergh tweeted a novella last year. It’s called Glue, and now it’s a book. And a free e-book. Is it good? I don’t know. The Verge called it “thrilling”.

Lost Art of the McCarthy Hearings
Pentagram Design to release Drawing McCarthy, a book of previously-unpublished sketches of the 1954 McCarthy Hearings by Arline Simon Oberman.

Forever 21 Launches ‘Bats & Cats’ Fashion Collection
Forever 21’s new line of clothing and accessories for women based on DC’s Batman and Catwoman and their iconography.

bats and cats

Commentary

Animated open letter details how to make ‘Star Wars’ great again
Prescott Harvey and the agency Sincerely, Truman outline four rules JJ Abrams would do well to follow, to bring Star Wars back to its roots.

David Gilmour has badly damaged the U of T’s reputation
You may have heard about David Gilmour’s disdain for books written by women, Chinese people, and Canadians. He refuses to read them, and especially to teach them in his University of Toronto classroom. Heather Mallick skewers the writer (and previous Giller Prize winner) but good.

Minnesotans cancel Rainbow Rowell’s book visit after parents’ complaints
Because apparently teens shouldn’t read about bullying if it involves the use of the f-word. Due to a small minority of concerned parents, Rowell’s frank depiction of the harsh realities faced by her two teen protagonists in Eleanor & Park lead to Anoka County library cancelling her visit, even after the author offered to appear for free.

And a bonus read from Salon: Stop saying it’s easy to come out! Now that it’s more common for celebrities to come out the media seems to have decided that coming isn’t even a thing. Not for celebs, and not for ordinary people. Some, like Dan Savage, go so far as to argue that coming out is a moral duty. Not so, says Salon:

Coming out is easier or more difficult for one person versus another because of an individual’s circumstances — including such variables as class, race, region, and religion. Crucially, coming out can also be easier or more difficult for the same person depending on circumstances at a given moment. For example, is she with people she knows and trusts, or dependent on strangers, as someone might be at a hospital emergency room? The variability and uncertainty about how any coming-out scene is going to go are inherent to what it means to be in, or out, of the closet, no matter the circumstances.

 

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Megan Purdy

Megan Purdy

Publisher of all this. Megan was born in Toronto. She's still there. Philosopher, space vampire, heart of a killer.

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