Today's Cool News

Me and Allan Ginsberg

The first time I met Allan Ginsberg, he gave me his phone number to memorize as a mantra.

The second time I met the legendary beat poet, he told me that he loved coming to Dallas because it was one of the few places where you could still get a good shoeshine.

Then we went upstairs to his room at the old Melrose Hotel and recorded this:

KRLD's Brian Shields interviews poet Allan Ginsberg 1987

Comic Books Try to Corrupt a New Generation of Kids - Online

From the Guardian:

Marvel is putting some of its older comics online, in the hope that the move will reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared.

It is a tentative foray onto the internet: comics can only be viewed in a browser, not downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months after they first appear in print.

What these kids have never heard of Shift-Printscreen?

You don't have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any more," said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. "We don't have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we used to."

Translate "kids' lifestyle space" into plain English and you get "the internet". Marvel's two most prominent competitors currently offer online teasers designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.

When I was a kid, my rather conservative parents assured me that intelligent people didn't read comic books, they read real books.  I know that's bunk but now I guess it's gotten to the point where asking kids to read anything printed on any kind of paper is a stretch.