by Brad Warner

Everybody’s talking about this new book on sex. According to Dan Savage it’s “the single most important book on human sexuality since Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior of the Human Male on the American public in 1948.” That’s pretty strong praise. And I’m a fan of Dan Savage so when I was in New York a couple weeks ago I bought myself a copy of Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. And while it’s very good, I’m not sure it’s quite as massive as they’re all saying.

The basic premise of the book can be stated pretty simply. The authors contend that the story we’ve all been told that human beings are by nature monogamous or pair-bonding creatures is wrong. The evidence they’ve collected leads them to conclude human beings evolved as sluts and playboys, that our bodies tell the story of animals designed by nature to have as much sex as possible with as many partners as we can lure into our caves. This, they contend, explains why monogamy is such a difficult thing to accomplish. It clarifies why marriage has always been protected by the threat of dire punishment even death, and why so many people chose to risk everything just for a little piece on the side.

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by Ryan Stewart

“The level of desperation was a lot higher than I’d thought…”
– J.W. Rinzler

Few films in history have been as meticulously pored over as the Star Wars trilogy, which is why the best compliment owed to The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is that it feels completely fresh. An exhaustive, official biography of one of the most beloved films of the past thirty years, Making Of runs a sprawling 350 pages, is replete with interviews and insights from George Lucas and dozens of other contributors, and contains over 1,200 rare photos, including conceptual art, storyboards, candid set photos and special effects designs. More importantly, it’s a smart and candid history that doesn’t shy away from the underlying sources of drama that fueled Empire’s production, from Lucas’s brush with financial ruin when the self-financed film went massively over budget, to on-set bickering between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, to creative tensions between the producers and their hand-picked director, Irvin Kershner.

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by AJ Focht

The music industry has won the day as file sharing program Limewire has been forced to stop its “searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality.” Limewire was ordered by US courts to shut down its services after being found in violation of mass copyright infringement.

This major file sharing service may have closed down but it is only a temporary block until its users find another site. The music industry has been fighting internet pirating sites since Napster, and for each victory they win another hundred sites pop up in their place. The Internet Industry Association says, “the music industry needs to focus on new business models.”

With that in mind, could MySpace be the answer the music industry is waiting for? With the launch of the new Myspace reboot, the site has taken a step away from the social networking world and is going in a new direction.

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by Nicole Powers

“It’s like a really bad trip.”
– Camille Rose Garcia

Growing up in the shadow of Disneyland, artist and illustrator Camille Rose Garcia spent a lot of time contemplating the reality of fantasy and the fantasies that make reality palatable.

Just as the white paint flaked and the wood decayed in the once-perfect picket-fenced suburbs that surround Disney’s Orange County Fantasyland, on canvas and in print, Garcia’s brightly colored fairytale tableaus are juxtaposed with darker elements, as real world forces impinge on her perfect dream worlds.

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by Brett Warner

The Girl Who Played With Fire – the second film in the series based on Stieg Larsson’s best-selling “Milennium” Trilogy – arrived in stores on DVD and Blu-Ray this week. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest will be in select theaters this Friday, though you’re unlikely to hear much about it because the name on everybody’s lips is not Swedish director Daniel Alfredson, or even the late Mr. Larsson himself – it’s David Fincher. The Fight Club and Seven auteur is currently filming a big-budget, Hollywood remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with young actor Rooney Mara (aka Mark Zuckerberg’s fabricated girlfriend in The Social Network) replacing Swedish actress Noomi Rapace in the role of Lisbeth Salander, valued Hot Topic customer and computer hacker extraordinaire. With the films finally seeing a stateside release and the books available at every book store, grocery store, and drug store in the country, it begs the question: Why do we need this? Along with this year’s Let Me In, why does the world need an American remake based on a fantastic film based on a very readable book? Does the same imperialist, We’re Number One mentality that informs our country’s foreign policy also dictate the movies we produce, or are we simply just as dumb as the big studio producers seem to think we are?

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by Fred Topel

“I hope one day Poison will make another record.”
– Bret Michaels

Reality TV rarely represents anything viewers would recognize as actual reality. The Bachelor uses real people but puts them in a dating pageant that never seems to result in any actual marriages. Survivor drops them on an island where no one’s life is actually at risk, and it’s just a popularity contest in the end.

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by Brandon Perkins

It probably wasn’t the smartest move to get in the ice cream truck and go — especially with the needle nearing “E”— sometimes though waiting just don’t cut it. We may have been safe inside that garage, but that safety only felt temporary: the zombie clowns kept gathering and it was only a matter of time before they found a way in. Once we broke through the garage door, it took approximately 2.5 seconds for us to run over the first of those smiling undead, red-nosed motherfuckers. This one’s hair had sprouted into an orange frizz that splattered on the ice cream truck’s windshield and his stretched-long floppy foot snapped off at the ankle under our back right wheel, steaming a fuscia-colored mist in the rear view mirror. My day had already gotten better.

“They’re everywhere!” my girlfriend screamed. “Do we have enough gas to outrun them? What if we get a flat tire? Can they get in here? Do these doors lock? What happens if they get in here?”

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