Alexander Stuart

I just came across this long-lost Rembrandt of Homer Simpson on a website called limpfish.com. It's the work of artist David Barton , who says he creates his images, "mostly with an old version of Photoshop, a less old Corel Painter and a crayon." He is also responsible for Monet's Vader With A Parasol , below. Vader has never looked more...um...sundrenched. How about: Star Wars MDCCCLXXV : The Impressionists Strike Back?  Many thanks to David for letting me reproduce his work here!

Screengrab of KCRW's Bookworm webpage I only caught the last few minutes of this week's Bookworm on Los Angeles' outstanding public radio station KCRW , but they were quite exceptional. Bookworm presenter Michael Silverblatt was interviewing America's octogenarian Poet Laureate, W S Merwin , and asked Merwin what made him accept the position of laureate - a post Merwin most likely would not have been offered in the 1960s, when he was a vocal anti-Vietnam War poet. Merwin replied that part of the terms he established for accepting the position was that there would be a theme to "string the whole thing along" - and that theme would be, "the human imagination." The next five minutes, which I listened to as I drove, were absolutely mesmerizing: a highly eloquent and entrancing meditation on the human race. "The human imagination," Merwin said, "I think is the one really distinctive thing that humanity has - not intelligence o...

Gaddafi gets the boot - Public Domain Image/ article.wn.com There are two great articles in newspapers today, ruminating on the ripple effects of unrest in the Middle East and the Midwest of the USA - specifically Wisconsin - and searching not so much for a defining moment as perhaps a defining momentum. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L Friedman writes in the New York Times a column titled, This Is Just The Start , in which he examines, very astutely, connections between the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi , in protest over the confiscation of his fruit stand - which set off the Tunisian "Jasmine Revolution" - and wider contributing influences, such as "The Obama Factor" and Google Earth. Here is Friedman's quote on President Obama - whose influence on history, I have always thought (as the father of two multi-racial American children), lies hugely in the simple - and still quite remarkable - fact that he was actu...

Banksy's Charlie Brown/Charlie Burn on a building in LA - Photograph: Banksy.co.uk Without doubt, the one thing that most makes me want to watch the Oscars this year is British artist Banksy , whose wonderfully anarchic and entertaining documentary (he is either its subject, its co-creator, or both - or more) Exit Through The Gift Shop is hopefully a shoe-in for Best Documentary. Aside from my feelings about this year's crop of movies in general - more on that in a moment - when did the Oscars last have any sense of the unexpected, of something really interesting and unusual possibly happening? Banksy - a mysterious, identity-concealed street artist (of sorts - his works now sell for six figures and he storyboarded and directed a stunning opening sequence for The Simpsons ), whose work is akin in spirit to the upheaval caused by the "hacktivist" group Anonymous - may or may not appear at the Academy Awards ceremony in some form or another. (I'm sure he w...

As a break from the mix of disturbing and encouraging news from the Middle East (see my Twitter feed in the left sidebar) - and, for that matter, the Midwest (um, Wisconsin - may the GOP back down and recognize social realities) - here is an absolutely hilarious review of the upcoming movie Red Riding Hood , from my favorite newspaper, The Guardian. Okay, so it's not actually a review of the movie - it's a review of the trailer!  The Guardian does this from time to time...and frequently makes me laugh out loud. Red Riding Hood trailer: life in the hood ain't so Grimm If you go down to the woods today, ladies, it seems you're more likely to get lucky with your fella than meet a cross-dressing wolf... Amanda Seyfried as Red Riding Hood Fairytales have always played a vital function, offering strict morality lessons that help to mould each generation of children into well-developed adults. However, now that they're primarily being used to sell subscription...