The FBI had more than 500 pages of records on Barnette. Now, nearly five decades later, he and his family got to see those pages.
Read Moreblog
Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Americans view death way differently than other cultures. This woman wants to change that. →
"Americans want the good without the bad," Ebenstein says. "Life without death. Pleasure without pain. Light without dark. But that doesn’t exist."
Read MoreShe wanted Muslim women like her to have the world. So she gave them an entire universe. →
"'Saudi Girls Revolution' is an attempt to show the rest of the world that there’s a lot more to us as Arab women," Ahmed said. "We’re strong. We’re powerful. We know we overcome. We’re badass. We’re so many other things."
Read MoreBrighten Your Day With Reverse-Nude Photography
Trevor Christensen is a Utah-based photographer who had the brilliant idea to take nude photographs. As in, he himself would be nude, and he would photograph people (with their permission, obvi). Hilarity ensues.
From the artist's statement:
As a photographer I’m deeply interested in the experience subjects have during portrait shoots. When I guide subjects through the process of making their photo, I seek to create a calm, comfortable environment where they can be at ease in front of the camera. Despite my best efforts, subjects often feel a sense of vulnerability during the process. No matter the scenario, this power imbalance seems like an almost inescapable part of the experience.
The photographer/subject paradigm is one of inequality. Nude Portraits is about leveling the playing field in an unorthodox way. Instead of focusing on bringing the subject to a place of ease, where I am, this project brings me to a place of vulnerability.
This vulnerability is achieved by making portraits without clothing. These are nude portraits in the sense that I, the photographer, am nude, while the subject is not.
Take a look below. And oh, fair warning — totally safe for work.
How Ferguson Showed Us The Truth About Police
Written/drawn/narrated by Molly Crabapple for Fusion. Presented without comment.
Writing Process Blog Tour: June 10, 2014
I'm on vacation this week, but my Clarion comrade / favorite robosexual Patrick Ropp tapped me for this Writing Process Blog Tour, so as long as my fiancé is still napping, of course I must oblige.
Me and Patrick (with Eliza Tiernan in the middle) battling to the death in a water gun fight against Robert Crais & Kim Stanley Robinson
1. What am I working on?
Too many projects, all the time. I'm working on a novel, tentatively titled either The Good People or Dirty Old Town, which I usually describe "Magical Realist Irish Folklore Punk Rock Noir Set in Modern-Day Boston." Yes, I know, it sounds like pretty much the most stereotypical Thom Dunn project imaginable — but hey, write what you know, right? This story started as a short story at Clarion, though the idea had been bouncing around in my head for a while.
I'm also working on a play based on a short story I wrote (which I'm also editing to send out) called Autojektor, or Experiments In the Revival of Organisms, which I similarly describe as "Gay Russian Zombie Jew Ballet," and thus requires no further explanation. Then there's Evil Academy, a young adult graphic novel series I've been working on with my friend Dave about a private high school for aspiring supervillains. It's a black comedy, with each storyline basically taking the shape of a "Very Special Episode" of a high school sitcom, but it goes to some pretty dark places, and at the center of it explores what it's like to fight against the system when the system that you're inside of already claims to be fighting a system, but is still a system in and of itself (I don't know, I have authority issues).
Just a little sneak peek at Dave's artwork for Evil Academy
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
That's a great question that I'm not sure how to answer without coming off as pretentious about my own work, but sure, I'll try. Because of the nature of my hypomanic brain, my stuff tends to be, well, pretty ADHD, and/or very high concept. I draw as much from (post-)postmodernism as I do from magical realism and speculative fiction. Coming from a background in theatre, I tend to use a lot of snappy dialogue as well, regardless of the medium I'm working in. I like to think I'm pretty witty, too, even when I'm going to dark places. On the more thematic side of things, I've always leaned towards stories about outsiders and people or cultures who don't quite fit in, even amongst their own subversive subcultures. The outsiders amongst outsiders, I guess. I've also had that inclination, but as I've gotten older, it's made me more attuned to diversity and inclusion in my work. I pull a lot from my own subcultures of indie / punk rock and comics / nerdy pop culture. Of course, I've never felt completely comfortable in those worlds either, which probably explains my I gravitate towards characters that don't fit in to a world that already doesn't fit in with the rest of the world. I also draw a lot from my Irish-Catholic upbringing — I'm agnostic, but I have an intimate understanding of Biblical symbology (I'm less interested in blatant religious metaphors than I am in the archetypal symbols that have permeated all religions and cultures), and I draw a lot from Irish literature as well, whether it's folklore, oral traditions, or the black humor of writers like Martin McDonagh.
I also just got this sweet 1985 Word Processor, though I haven't quite figured out how to fit it into my workflow yet.
3. Why do I write what I do?
I think I kind of covered this above. But I write because I have to, because no one is telling the stories that I want to experience. That's kind of a cliched answer, but there is a lot of truth to it. I'm a very curious and also very empathic person, so a lot of times, I'll happen upon a situation — something I read in the news, or a story told to me by a friend — and I start to wonder how it got to that point, or why a person might have made those decisions (or, sometimes, how the opposite situation could have worked out). And I want to know the answers, and I want to understand them, even if I don't like them. So I write to make that happen.
4. How does your writing process work?
As far as "where ideas come from," a lot of mine spring up when I'm reading things in the news or hearing about my friends' lives. I read or hear or see a story, and (as I said above), I wonder how it got to that point, and then I start to wonder, "Well, what if...?" Sometimes it's "What if this horrible person was actually the good guy?" or "What if this technology had gone this way instead?" or "What if she had left for the party on time?" and then I extrapolate. I hook into a person caught in a situation, and then I go from there. How did they get there? Why? Where do they go from here?
As far as the actual act of writing is concerned, I do most of my first drafts by hand in a composition notebook. This prevents from self-editing too much; I get into a flow, and then I just keep pouring stuff out. Sure, there's a lot of crap that comes out that way, and only so many times you can scribble out a page, but I write a lot of notes to myself in the margins, that are often as simple and straight-forward as "Make this better" or "Less shitty next time" or "No, you idiot, of course she's going to lie about that." Then I start to type it into my computer using Scrivener (which has made my life / writing so much better and I could not recommend more highly) or a simple .txt file in PlainText on my iPad, taking my margin-notes into consideration as I go. A lot of these early by-hand drafts read like plays, even when I'm not writing a play — there's a lot of dialogue, with a mention of some action whenever it happens, which I then flesh out when I'm actually typing it into the computer.
Also I just kind of compulsively consume liquids as I go. The art of WHICH liquids to consume, well, that's a delicate balancing act.
I think I was supposed to plan ahead and tape some other people to write this for next Tuesday but uhhhhh I forgot to do that. So if anyone wants on, let me know!
A Comprehensive History of Amanda Palmer Being Absolutely Awful
I've established a bit of a reputation for myself as a Professional Amanda Palmer basher, ever since I wrote an angry little parody poem in response to her "Poem for Dhzokhar" which ended up exploding onto BuzzFeed and The Guardian UK. I was never particularly fond of her, even before that — some of her music is fine, sure, but her Neutral Milk Hotel Jukebox Musical left a very sour taste in my mouth1, and her production of Cabaret at the American Repertory Theatre was the single worst (not to mention most masturbatory) professional theatre production I have ever experienced — but it wasn't until recently that I really started seething at the mention of her continued existence on our shared plane of reality. That might sound a little extreme — she hasn't, you know, killed anyone or anything — but the cognitive dissonance between the message that Amanda Palmer conveys and the things that she actually does fills me with such insipid anger, that I feel the need to articulate the ongoing problem that she continues to present. I'm choosing to write about this now is because I've had a number of people bring my attention to her latest blog post about Justin Bieber's arrest, all saying that they awaited my snarky response to it. And while sure, I could do that (hell, maybe I still will), I thought it would be better for me to take the Amanda Palmer approach and express myself my feelings in a rambling blogpost which I can then in turn proclaim to be "art" and thereby diminish any and all criticisms of my own shortcomings by blowing a raspberry at my detractors and say "IT'S JUST ART YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND I'M JUST TRYING TO EXPRESS MYSELF AND THAT IS BEAUTIFUL."
Read MoreWho Watches Alan Moore?
Alan Moore has a reputation. Besides being crazy, he's also famously curmudgeonly. If there's a problem with my grammar and use of adverb in the preceding sentence, then, well, Alan Moore can cast some crazy black magic spell on me. I don't really care. There's been a lot of news and opinions spewed forth around the internet regarding the recently announced Before Watchmen from DC Comics, a collection of prequel miniseries based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' universally acclaimed Watchmen. When it all comes down, Moore may have been screwed (multiple times) in the past, but DC currently has every legal right to make this happen, and, well, comics have a history of picking up from someone else's characters and making a run for it.
But that's neither here nor there. This post is just to tell you to check out my latest post on Five By Five Hundred, which was inspired by a comment made by Alan Moore in the video embedded below (which, fair warning, is a two-and-a-half hour long interview in which he is not surprisingly verbose and curmudgeonly and also crazy black magic wizard plus beard).
"Adventure Capitalism" on FiveByFiveHundred.com
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/36211102 w=450&h=264]
Writing, Writing Everywhere, and Not a Drop To Read
I have to apologize for the radio silence here at ThomDunn.net over the last few weeks. Layne Anderson, a close friend and former roommate of mine, passed away unexpectedly on April 7th, and as much as I've kept up with everything (well, almost everything), time has been rather a blur. I've chronicled the situation as impersonally as possible over at FiveByFiveHundred.com in two posts — Shark Grief, about my own grieving process, and iWake, which as entirely fictional account of a some inappropriate gallows humor inspired by the situation of which Layne would have most certainly approved. Meanwhile, this week's entry steps away from the morbidity and explores the quantum mechanics of one night stands as interpreted through Bell's Theorem, using the Shrödinger's Cat experiment as a proof. Hopefully, that sounds ridiculous (and ridiculously intriguing) enough for you to check out Shrödinger's Cat Call, also over at FiveByFiveHundred.com.
Also in the last two weeks, we've officially opened Sons of the Prophet at the Huntington, which is then moving to the Roundabout Theatre Company Off-Broadway in the Fall. Plus, I did some filming for Art & Design of the 20th & 21st Centuries and the Boston Print Fair, did a small reading of my new play, True Believers (which is set at a Comic Book Convention and features a cameo by the Cyborg Head of Stan Lee, among other things), and started rehearsals and arrangements for my (wait for it) all-male hard rock Lady Gaga tribute band, Alejandro & the Fame, which is going to be every bit as ridiculous as it sounds. Come check us out on May 20th at the afterparty for Propeller Theatre Company's all-male production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at the Huntington's B.U. Theatre.
Woo. Okay. I think that's it. Tune in next week for your regularly scheduled programming.
Genesis
This week on FiveByFiveHundred.com, I explore and re-interpret the story of creation as told in the Bible, revealing the true roots of human history.