‘Staabucks Fukkee is Your Enemy’

MORE?

Tintin and Politics

An investigation has begun into whether or not Tintin in the Congo (1931) is a racist work. A Congolese student in Brussels Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu has lodged a complaint with the public prosecutions office claiming it was "an insult to all Congolese." Having read several Tintin adventures in recent years to my 7 year old son I could imagine, (having not read 'Congo') that it does carry racist images as most of the Tintin books seem to. Bloodthirsty Indians, fiendish Chinese, violent Africans and hideous Arabs abound in Hergé's works. I have had my doubts about exposing my son to all this but they are good stories and I figured that if he sees the stereotypes now (as clumsy and out of date as they are in Tintin) he can recognize them for what they are, rather than when he is older and meeting more complex images of racial hatred as a teenager and refusing to listen to me (the voice of wisdom). Maybe in a year of three Ill slip him a copy of The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, where our young hero leads an anarchist revolution in Britain. Much more interesting than blowing up hippos in the Congo.

The Salon

THE SALON
by Nick Bertozzi. 192 pages, full color, Spring '07 from Griffin.
When someone starts tearing the heads off modernist painters around Paris, Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo realize that they may be next on the killer's list. Enlisting the help of their closest friends and colleagues: Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Alice B. Toklas, Erik Satie, and Guillaume Apollinaire, they set out to put a stop to the ghastly murders--only to discover that an addictive absinthe that painters around Paris have been using to enter famous paintings may in fact be responsible for all their troubles. Filled with danger, art history, and daring escapes, this is a wildly ingenious murder-mystery ride through the origins of modern art.

Watch the promo video!

Read the press!