Chapter 1 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 2 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 3 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 4 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 5 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 6 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 7 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 8 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 9 of Rage Quit is available here.
Chapter 10 of Rage Quit is available in .pdf format here.

“Randal, you need to come up here right now,” PB said, without even a hello.

“What’s wrong?” Randal asked. He’d been in Markos’s cubicle and had run across the room to answer when Philip had pointed out to him that it was his phone ringing.

“Everything’s going to hell up here.”

Gratuitous violence. Even more wanton nudity. A storyline centering on an escaped denizen of Hell, his vendetta against a psychotic Satanic cult leader, the Devil’s accountant looking to clean up the mess, and blond bombshell waitress with iron fists and a souped muscle car. If it sounds like a ‘70s exploitation classic, you’d be right…and wrong. Indeed, this is Drive Angry, a 2011 experiment in excess that argues for the viability and vitality of the drive-in dynamic in a post-modern (and millennial) world. Director Patrick Lussier, who cut his teeth with previous kings of the genre like Wes Craven (of the original sleazoid classic Last House on the Left) and startling remakes (the excellent My Bloody Valentine update) is dropping the whole monsters and mayhem shtick to go full blown balls to the wall with blood, breasts, and bombast. The end result reminds the viewer of a time when movies both pandered and took peculiar, often eccentric chances with its intended demographic.

In this case, we meet the long dead - but recently “revived” - John Milton (Nicolas Cage - no, wait…he’s actually very, very good here…), a former criminal who escaped from Hell’s Prison with a magical gun and a head full of hate. He is after Devil-worshipping DB Jonah King (Billy Burke), a fiendish false prophet who killed our hero’s daughter and husband and stole their infant child. The villain intends to use the baby at the next full moon, hoping the sacrifice will bring about the coming of the Antichrist. Along the way, Milton picks up a sweet young thing named Piper (Amber Heard). She has a chip on her shoulder and the keys to a revved up black Buick Riviera. As he pursues his prey across the American Southeast, he is followed by an equally malevolent figure known as The Accountant (William Fichtner), a sharp dressed man with an underworld contract to fulfill.

I don’t like looking into mirrors much at all and generally try to avoid catching my reflection in windows, an occurrence that usually spoils my equanimity for hours—“Look at that gangly oddball. Oh, me.” I can feel sort of fully solipsistic up until that point I see my image and realize that I have an objective presence in this world that needs monitoring. My illusory transcendence bursts and I’m deeply conspicuous again, subject to the decoding glances of anyone who is passing by. Not knowing how I look actually makes me believe in some part of my mind that I am invisible.

But avoiding mirrors is a different prospect for women. At The Beheld, a blog about beauty and the beauty industry, Autumn Whitefield-Madrano has been writing about her “mirror fast”—the experience of deliberately avoiding mirrors for a month. This post introduces the project, which I understand as an experiment to assess the degree to which self-monitoring impedes the possibility of escaping reflexivity—that is, Whitefield-Madrano is regarding mirrors in the same role that I often give to social media. (Social-media sites seem to me to be self-consciousness machines, encouraging that one maintain a directorial distance from one’s own life experience in order to strategize how to present it in update broadcasts.) But the realities of patriarchy complicate matters considerably; as much as believe we are collectively compelling one another to route our social life through commercial social-media sites, that seems like nothing compared with the coercion involved with fulfilling gendered expectations of self-presentation.

Few bands inspire the kind of critical and commercial success enjoyed—and often bemoaned—by Radiohead. The UK-based group formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985, with Thom Yorke (vocals, guitars, piano), Jonny Greenwood (guitars, keyboards, everything else under the sun), Ed O’Brien (guitars, vocals), Colin Greenwood (bass, synthesizers), and Phil Selway (drums, percussion). The band caught its first break in 1992 with the release of “Creep”, the first single from its debut record, Pablo Honey (1993). The Bends (1995) brought them greater fame and inspired a legion of imitators. Even with that great record, no one saw OK Computer (1997) coming: an ambitious, eclectic, and impassioned album, it topped most of those recent Best Records of the ‘90s lists and became an instant classic. How to follow up? How about by jettisoning your guitars for synthesizers and drum machines, forcing your bandmates to play new instruments, and essentially eschewing everything that made your last album such a hit? That’s what Radiohead did with Kid A (2000), and the results were just as—if not more—exciting than those of OK Computer, with those two albums sitting side-by-side in the list of modern classics. Amnesiac, largely recorded during the Kid A sessions, followed in 2001. The group released the dense, electronic-tinged Hail to the Thief in 2003 and the more organic, rock-oriented In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-will digital download (and, eventually, a physical record) in 2007.

The first film was a surprising combination of The Shaw Brothers and an above-average Saturday morning cartoon.  It took its moviemaking, and its martial arts mythology, seriously. Even with humor aimed more at the adolescent than the adult, the overall effect was one of respect, reverence, and real legitimated imagination. Sadly, only the third element in that alliterative triptych remains behind for this otherwise entertaining - and wholly unnecessary - sequel.  This time around Kung Fu Panda 2 falls back into the lamentable formulas that make most CG animated efforts so irritating. Instead of continuing our fighting bear’s quest to become the ultimate Dragon Warrior, we get a standard stock villain, a questionable backstory, and enough Jack Black buffoonery to make up for the decided lack of such silliness during Part 1.

Po (Black) has settled into his role as Dragon Warrior and defender of the valley. He is a superstar, and along with the members of the Furious Five - Masters Tigress (Angelina Jolie),  Monkey (Jackie Chan), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen) and Viper (Lucy Liu) - hes tackle random gangs of marauders and highwaymen. While their guide, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) struggles to find the key to inner peace, Po’s dad (James Hong) and his noodle shop are making a mint off his celebrity status. In a bit of a flashback rewinding, we learn that an evil peacock named Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), heir to the throne of Gongmen City and an expert in fireworks, has a prophecy inspired vendetta against all pandas. So he slaughters them and develops gunpowder as a means of destroying all kung fu and ruling the entirety of China…and perhaps, the world. Only Po and his pals can stop him, saving their land from domination and destruction.