Wasteland wrap-up #9

Back to school, a very strange "biography," a good show, prehistoric man, and the pre-atomic age...

I’m back in the classroom again, after being out of it for over a year on sabbatical. Of course, I’m already a little behind the lecture schedule, but what else is new? It’s been fun to get back into the “groove” of it, and to see colleagues again. And Lyndon has been enjoying being on campus again.

Lyndon is ready for his 1996 alternative rock album cover. Taken on our walk to campus on the first day of teaching.

In case you missed it: this week on Doomsday Machines I had a guest post from my colleague Billy Middleton about George Romero’s 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead (“Cinéma verité, cinéma mort”), and I posted a clip from an episode of James Burke’s 1978 BBC show Connections (“The Trigger Effect”) about electricity and modern civilization. Uncharacteristically, I also wrote a quick post up for my other blog, Restricted Data, about an unusual image I stumbled across (“Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?”).

I also, somewhat belatedly, was able to track down a copy of a review of Night of the Living Dead that Billy referenced in his piece, and add it in as a footnote: George Abagnalo, “Night of the Living Dead,” inter/VIEW 1, no. 4 (1969): 23. Abagnalo’s review, in Warhol’s magazine, was one of the first really positive appreciations of Romero’s film. It contains some really wonderful lines, especially this one: “Some people laugh when the film ends, but not because it is funny or badly done. They laugh because they can't believe what they have seen. Some leave silently, looking as though they're about to vomit.”