With more platforms than ever before, entertainment dollars are stretched thin these days. Everything from live entertainment and cable television to smartphones and physical media such as DVDs are fighting for a piece of your expendable income. In this entertainment tug of war, few industries are struggling to hold their
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June 18, 2014 by justin
in Food Dude
As surely as the first strawberries follow asparagus and morels, every spring the food media declares the latest trends. If several such recent stories are correct, then kale and bacon are still somehow rising in popularity. I’d rather note less obvious trends. This week’s column continues three happy themes we
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June 18, 2014 by justin
in Civic Skinny
The circulation of The Des Moines Register is continuing its free-fall. Combined print and digital circulation of the Monday-Friday newspaper in the six months ended March 31 totaled 86,982, down 6.7 percent from the 93,304 of a year earlier. Two years ago, the figure was 101,915. Five years ago it
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June 18, 2014 by justin
in The Sound
Listening to The Goddamn Gallows is not a passive experience. You don’t sit quietly in your seat and watch the band play. You do not attend a Goddamn Gallows show like an evening at the cinema. The band is too loud, too raucous, too fun for such disengaged interaction. They
Read More →Last week’s Iowa Arts Summit was the biggest event of its kind in my memory. First Lady Chris Branstad presented awards and scholarships. Our daily paper covered it with multiple stories and an editorial. Delegates left with the confidence of acknowledgment. Richard Florida’s relentless advocates had conquered Iowa. Florida published
Read More →NINTENDO AT E3 The 20th annual Electronic Entertainment Expo kicked off last week at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where game developers from all over the world converged to showcase their wares. As usual, Nintendo had a large presence on the show floor, but for the second year in a
Read More →She doesn’t want to call it vindication, but Bonne Finken is starting to see the payoff of trusting in herself. After years of doing things her own way — often to what others perceived as her detriment—Bonne’s newest album, “Fairytails/LoveAffairs” is taking her to the ever elusive next step. “I
Read More →Marking Japan’s latest unfathomable social trend, two paperback photo books — both consisting only of portraits of the rear ends of hamsters — have experienced surprising and still-growing printing runs. Japanese society has long seemed easily captured by anything considered “kawaii” (or “cute”), according to a May Wall Street Journal
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Jesus the candidate: Soft on crime, He’ll tax and spend
Consider yourself cursed for the next 850 days or so. With the November election 120 or so days away and the 2016 election adding 731 more to the total, you’ll be cursed with tens of thousands of messages of hate, lies and stupidity — all appealing to the worst that
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