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Sights

Back to Baghdad: “Nice Bombs” Targets Life During Wartime

In January of 2004, just as dawn was breaking, Chicago-based filmmaker Usama Alshaibi bribed the guards on Iraq's Jordanian border and drove back into the country he hadn't seen in 24 years. He brought along his American-born wife, Kristie, and a video camera. "Nice Bombs: My Journey Back to Iraq," an award-winning documentary, is the result of his journey.

Virtual Victories: Hezbollah’s “Special Force 2″

Last year's July War between Israel and the Lebanese Shia militia group, Hezbollah, ended on the ground after a little more than a month. For Hezbollah, the war continues with the Aug. 16 release of the video game "Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge."

Young, Hip and Deadly: The Changing Face of Teen Drama

It all started with Sunnydale and Capeside. In 1998, a few years into its existence, the WB network introduced "Dawson's Creek," a teen drama set in a fictional small coastal town in Massachusetts, to its Tuesday night line up.

Searching for a Real Gay Man

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy feels like an especially well-executed marketing campaign for homosexuality -- but it plays it too stereotypically safe.

Alternative America

A new documentary amplifies voices of dissent
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Sounds

Fall Out Boy’s Biggest Faggot Fan

While I want to welcome Fall Out Boy with open arms, something about FOB Culture feels too calculated and commercial. Who are these boys, and what do they want from us?

Tell Me What Democracy Looks Like: John Mellencamp Negotiates an All-American Voice

When John Mellencamp and Dan Rather sat down to film an interview, they could probably already hear the derogatory denunciations from the Fox News cult: "Two crazy, anti-American left-wing liars in conversation? I'd rather attend a lecture on evolutionary biology."

Muzak for the Masses?

Radiohead and Steely Dan reach the limits of their experimentation

Bandwagon

How pro-war songs help sell Country

The Most Original and Most Appropriable Girl

Avril Lavigne tells Newsweek, ''I hate sex-object music.'' So do her fans, all dressing up like her to fight the system
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Words

The Mystery of Place, Memory and Rock Kicking

The Heroes Have Gone: Personal Essays on Sport, Popular Culture and the American West by Jim W. Corder Edited and with an afterword by James S. Baumlin and Keith D. Miller Moon City Press (February, 2008) 185 pp. $15 Those who heard the voice of the late Jim Corder, professor of English at Texas Christian University, will hear it [...]

The Whitman (Walt not Slim) of Popular Culture

Poetry is not generally thought of as a vehicle for posing the eternal question, "Ginger or Maryann?" or to contemplate the centrality of "Hawaii Five-O" within the cultural milieu of our postmodern existence. For David McGimpsey, however, these are just the sort of subjects that are most suitable.

Surrounded by Strangeness

After the success of The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen probably could have published a cookbook and it would have been guaranteed an audience. Fortunately, he had previously published essays to draw from instead

Updike’s Triumph

With his short story in The Atlantic, Updike assumes the comforting role of a parent tending to a child shaken by a nightmare: While neither the evil nor its memory goes away, the narrative restores reality and lets us sleep through the night

The Sideshow Rebels

What is the connection between political radicalism and sideshow arts? Two recent books, Sideshow, U.S.A. and Jay's Journal of Anomalies, help to provide answers about the genre's appeal and its politics
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