While the web has no shortage of artistic forums, few of them offer the elegant cohesion of The Workbook Project, an “open source social experiment” founded by maverick filmmaker and tech iconoclast Lance Weiler that sews together the communal knowledge of 21st century artists and craftsmen of all ilk into a rich and, well, enriching tapestry.

Their topic cagetories just make so much darn sense!  “Hoard” is for new blogs, sites, services, projects and events of interest.  “Culture Hacker” tackles examples of technology specifically shaping the storytelling side of things in everything from film to games to music.  “Motive” tracks the trends impacting media behavior.  “New Breed” focuses on everything DIY, and “Pollinate” looks at ways to build, engage and maintain an audience.  Brilliant.

It is a work in progress, so some areas are more lop-sided than others, but seriously, this is one of the best resources I’ve found out there for navigating the choppy waters of emerging media, and not enough people know about it.  Check it out.

WIRED Magazine‘s Scott Brown pulls the drool-logged plug on the doddering old narrative structures of old, and from their ashes raises an alternative storytelling model for the 21st century and beyond – Brown’s Ziggurat.

Follow the link to compare the classic Heroic journey of supercop John McClane with Brown’s own Escheresque re-imagining of the familiar fable, Die Hard.  An excerpt:

“In [the traditional model] Die Hard unfolds thusly: NYC cop John McClane arrives in LA to reunite with his estranged wife, Holly (exposition), but terrorists raid her office tower, taking everyone hostage except McClane (inciting incident), who escapes unseen and starts picking off the goons (rising action). The terrorists finally realize they’re holding McClane’s wife and gain the upper hand (climax), but McClane frees the other hostages (falling action), goes toe-to-toe with the terrorist chieftain, and prevails (resolution). He celebrates by making out with his wife in the back of a limo. (Awww! And … denouement!)

A little square, no? With the snazzy Brown Ziggurat, however, Die Hard will look like this: John McClane, NYC cop, arrives in LA to reconcile with his estranged wife—but we already know all about their failing marriage from the ARG we’ve been obsessed with for the six months leading up to the movie’s release. (McClane’s potemkin Tumblr blog was especially illuminating.) With exposition rendered obsolete, we open instead on a Sprite commercial, which transitions seamlessly into furious gunplay. We don’t even see McClane in the flesh, but our handsets are buzzing with his real-time thumb-tweets: “in the air duct. smelz like dead trrist in here lol.” The film then rewinds to McClane Googling “terrorists” to read up on his adversaries. We then flash-cut to the baddies’ POV, which we’re familiar with (and sympathetic to) thanks to the addictive Xbox hit Die Hard: Hard Out There for a Terrorist. This is all part of the Action-Happening Plateau, an intensifying mass of things and stuff leading up to the Mymax^tm.

The Mymax is not a lame old Freytag climax but a hot Escher mess of narrative possibilities suggested by you, the audience. With a mere click of your handset (and a charge of 99 cents), you furnish a Youclusion^tm to your liking. This is how McClane somehow ends up defeating terrorists—and winning American Idol—with his ultrasonic melisma. McClane and Holly then celebrate by making a sex tape. (Awww!)”

You know what there’s not?  A dearth of reviews of Chinese Democracy.  Well first of all, the only review of Democracy that anyone really needs to read is Chuck Klosterman’s.  Secondly, this isn’t really a review, it’s a Popten list.  And thirdly, Guns N’ Roses has been my favorite band since I was eleven, which I feel gives me a special, completely biased perspective on things.

So real quick, before we get to the list:  I think Chinese Democracy is fucking awesome.

I heard it for the first time in its entirety last Friday/Saturday at midnight on 92.7FM while attending a Popten pot-luck dinner, so I was pretty drunk, but I’ve listened to it a whole lot since then, and I still think it’s super.  Was it worth 14 years and 13 million clams?  Of course not, life is for living, not for spending 1.5 decades slavering over a single album that you hope will make the world think it was worth spending 12/8ths decades slavering over.  But what’s done is done, and all that jive aside, I can’t think of very many albums I’ve enjoyed this much since, well, Use Your Illusion II.

One more quick note.  Parts of what follows might come across as Axl worship.  Fair enough, but understand that it is an entirely artistic appreciation.  Honestly, I doubt that I could make it through ten minutes in the same room as that guy.  But boy, I’d sure love the chance to test my mettle.

After the jump, the Top Ten Things About Chinese Democracy.

10. Axl’s bizarre obsession with gimmicky guitar players. Buckethead? Bumblefoot? I’m not saying these guys aren’t amazing musicians, because gosh, they really are – much of the guitar work on Democracy rivals anything put out by GNR’s original line-up. But now that I think about it, even Slash is a guy with a made-up name and a carefully affected image. And all three of those guys have single iconic accessories! (a. KFC bucket… b. foot-and-bee-shaped guitar… c. top hat.)

9. Thank God none of these tracks sound anything like My World, Axl’s first (failed, just utterly) foray into programmable drums and ignoring everyone else in the band. That song sucked.

8. The guitar solos. Man oh man, the guitar solos on this album are great. Slash forgive me.

7. The beginning of the song Prostitute, which for a few moments sounds like a neat David Bowie song. (like, Earthling-era Bowie, which is still pretty neat.)

6. Just because it’s “over-produced” doesn’t mean that it isn’t sincere. It is. Axl is an obsessive perfectionist and a gifted control-freak, for better or for worse, and in that sense this album is a beautiful expression of himself. As Slash puts it in his best-selling autobiography, Slash (which I read on the subway tonight, while listening to Chinese Democracy on my iPod. Do I love Guns N Roses too much, you ask? Fuck you. Maybe you don’t love them enough.): “Axl is a dramatic kind of individual. Everything he says or does has a meaning, a theatrical place in his mind, in a blown-out-of-proportion kind of way.”

5. This is not the best vocal performance that Axl Rose has ever recorded – that can still be found on Appetite – but it is still hands-down about eleven times better than that of any other rock or pop or R&B singer alive today. I mean that literally.

4. The album’s credits list is longer than the lyrics sheet. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but it is distinguishing.

3. Chuck Klosterman’s unprecedentedly insightful/hilarious/humanistic review of the album.

2. The entire song Better, which is my favorite track on the album so far.

1. Despite the impossibility of separating Chinese Democracy from the circumstances in which it was made, if it were somehow able to exist in some sort of contextual-vacuum it still might well be the most interesting album of 2008, even if it isn’t the best. Which I think it might be also. But like I said, I’m having a hard time being objective here.

Winter is coming, my friends.  While speculation that HBO would be bringing  “A Song of Ice and Fire” – George R.R. Martin’s epic (and as yet unfinished) fantasy series – to life has been circulating for well over a year now, the official greenlight has just been given to produce Season I, which will be entirely devoted to the the first book in the series, “A Game of Thrones.”  Yes my nerdling brothers, HBO is planning to devote an entire season to each installment in the 7-novel arc, and the TV versions will be written by Martin himself, along with feature writers David Benioff (“The 25th Hour,” “Troy) and D.B. Weiss.

This is of course assuming that R.R. deigns to ever actually complete the effin’ series.  More after the jump.

As many of you may already be frustratingly aware,  Mr. Martin’s release schedule can best be described as “drunken mollusk-like”  in its rapidity.  “Game of Thrones” was released in 1996, and we’re still waiting for book five of seven to hit the shelves.  Not that R.R. doesn’t have plenty of really just ace excuses, as we can see in this recent post from his blog, sent to me by fellow bastard noble Jon Pappas.  Oh, TIVOing “Entourage,” are we Mr. Martin?

As Pappas put it so well:  Get the f**k back to work, George.

You know what else are great? Pumpkin pancakes. My dad used to make these all the time when I was a kid. The recipe calls for canned pumpkin, so I guess there’s no reason you couldn’t make these for the 4th of July if you felt like it, but something about having them in the Fall just makes it feel more legit. Here’s the recipe I use. One thing to note however, is that I use about twice the amount of pumpkin that is usually suggested, which basically transforms this into a recipe for pumpkin-pie filling with some Bisquick added. This makes for an admittedly gummier pancake, but the taste is so much more pronounced, and rules all the harder for it. Skip the maple syrup, and serve these lovelies with some fresh-made whip cream instead.
2 cups Bisquick
2 Tbs. packed light brown sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tsp. ground allspice
12 oz can of Evaporated Milk
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 Tbs. vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all the dry stuff, then add all the wet stuff. Boom.

You know what else is great? Pumpkin seeds, pumpkin soup, roasting the scraps of pumpkin left from carving jack-o-lanterns with some nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar and a dash of cayenne, wearing a pumpkin on your head as a costume (thanks Juan), calling a girl “pumpkin,” hanging out in pumpkin patches……..

If you don’t still own a pair of cardboard 3-D glasses, then go pick up a pair before we proceed.  All set?  Okey-doke.  The disgustingly talented people over at Encyclopedia Pictura have made an epic video for the Bjork song Wanderlust, and you can watch the friggin thing in 3-D on their website.  Why has it taken so long for someone to finally pull this vintage trick off online?  I get the feeling the file size of something like this is pretty extreme, as a message at the beginning of the video explains that the 3-D effect will not survive any further compression, and the thing did take an unusually long time to load on my computer.  So that may be part of it.

Still, this is an exciting step, and I look forward to more online video that incorporates clever gimmickry.  Perhaps John Waters could post some Smell-O-Vision shorts on YouTube, or someone will remake William Castle’s “The Tingler” as a webseries that sends tiny electric shocks to your keyboard.

I would like to share something very special with you.   A few years ago my girlfriend found a book at the library where she works and thought it looked like something I would enjoy.  The book was one of those novelty phrase books meant to teach a person the intricacies of swearing in another language, in this case to teach Polish people how to use every variation and expression of the word “fuck” offered by the English language – except that this particular book’s idea of what English expressions are is completely batshit insane.  Under “T” we find the apparently popular American phrase “the board the monkey fucked the duck on.” The who the what fucked the where??  Not to worry!  Like any good phrasebook, the Fucktionary offers clear, helpful examples to provide the reader with the appropriate context for such an expression:  “The War Office Selection Board turned him down.  The board the monkey fucked the duck on!  (Wojenna Rada Naboru Oficerow odrzucita jego podanie.  Radasrada!); Have you read the message on the notice-board?  The board the monkey fucked the duck on? (Czytates wiadomosc na tablicy ogloszen?  Tablicy-srycy?)

My friends, this book, which I have been unable to locate outside of this one library, is a treasure.  A “needle-dicked bug-fucking” treasure that should be available for the entire world to enjoy.  To this noble end, I will be regularly posting some of my favorite entries from The Fucktionary here on Popten for everyone to marvel at, and yes, learn from.  Just because these expressions don’t actually exist in English doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t.

FUCK ME, SAID THE DUCHESS

fuck me, said the duchess, more in hope than in anger

sent Br dowcipny komentar bedacy reakcja na skrywana przez kobiety chuc i pozadanie <odpowiedni czy nie, kazda chuja/tego chce>:  They said goodbye to each other.  Five minutes later she knocked at his door.  Fuck me said the duchess, more in hope than in anger, he thought to himself  (Poweidzieli sobie do widzenia.  Piec minut pozniej zapukata do jego drzwi.  Niech mnie chuj, rzekla hrabina, bardziej z nadzieja niz w gniewie -  pomyslat.)

FUCKERELLA

fuckerella

n Am rzadk mloda, atrakcyjna dziewcyna, zalaszcza jako partnerka do seksu <dupka, cipka, LISTA 14>: This fuckerella makes me sick (Nie dzwigam tej pipencji); What’s the name of that fuckerella who had your nose wide open?  (jak sie nazywata ta mala dupencja, ktora cie tak podjarata?); I hear he shacks up with some fuckerella.  Creepy old idiot! (Styszatem, ze zadaje sie z jakas nieletniq dupq.  Stary oblesny idiota!) p FUCKERINO, HONEY-FUCK