By Scott Gordon

Need some tiding over between annual installments of the beloved, 24-hour Music Box Massacre? This weekend, the Music Box and Massacre organizer Rusty Nails are inaugurating what should become the Massacre’s less grueling but equally captivating and deranged little sibling: The 14-hour Sci-Fi Spectacular, running from noon Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday. Those who show up early at 11:15 a.m. can catch an episode from an old Flash Gordon serial. Here’s what you’ll see:
12:10 p.m: Metropolis (1927)
A formidable, two-hour start to this long day and night, the recently restored Metropolis remains an eerie, gorgeous experience. It’s not so much Fritz Lang’s vision of utopian struggle; it’s the way he turned the limitations of the day’s production values into an otherworldly universe.
2:15 p.m.: A Trip To The Moon (1902); Haredevil Hare (1948)
The further back you go, the more fanciful the imagined future seems, as these animated shorts prove. A Trip To The Moon captures Jules Verne’s vision; Haredevil Hare puts Bugs Bunny in space (what more do you need?).

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Posted on May 4, 2007

Dear Paul McCartney On The Occasion Of Your Latest Release:

Please, just stop.
I’m considering putting my children into foster care and devoting my life to a relentless study of quantum physics for the single purpose of developing a time machine, so I can travel back to 1982 and deliver this message before you record “Ebony and Ivory.”
We must, however, face a cataclysmic possibility: I may not succeed. So I beg you, begin the damage control which is now sadly necessary to preserve your musical reputation for future generations

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Posted on May 2, 2007