Also, we’re changing the way the archive works on the main MOBS site. Soon, there will be a couple of pages of highlights of titles we’ve shown, and eventually, our full schedules for each year will be available in pdf format. That pdf thing is going to take a bit, though…

Yeah – we know we let the blog go fallow for a month, but will be posting more soon!

You may remember Robertson from one of our screenings of the film he co-directed, Rock That Uke (available from Amazon and other places), and he also previously authored The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Movie.

In any case, this new compilation of essays from 21 fans and scholars promises it “contains neither arid analyses nor lectures for the late-night crowd, but new ways of thinking and writing about film culture.”

Here’s the table of contents:
Introduction / Edward P. Comentale and Aaron Jaffe
Part 1. Ins (Intrinsic Models and Influences)
1. The Really Big Sleep: Jeffrey Lebowski as the Second Coming of Rip Van Winkle / Fred Ashe
2. A Once and Future Dude: The Big Lebowski as Medieval Grail-Quest / Andrew Rabin
3. Dudespeak: Or, How to Bowl like a Pornstar / Justus Nieland
4. Metonymic Hats and Metaphoric Tumbleweeds: Noir Literary Aesthetics in Miller’s Crossing and The Big Lebowski / Christopher Raczkowski
5. The Dude and the New Left / Stacy Thompson
6. The Big Lebowski and Paul de Man: Historicizing Irony and Ironizing Historicism / Joshua Kates
7. Lebowski and the Ends of Postmodern American Comedy / Matthew Biberman
8. Found Document: The Stranger’s Commentary and a Note on His Method / Thomas B. Byers
9. No Literal Connection: Mass Commodification, U.S. Militarism, and the Oil Industry in The Big Lebowski / David Martin-Jones
10. “I’ll Keep Rolling Along”: Some Notes on Singing Cowboys and Bowling Alleys in The Big Lebowski / Edward P. Comentale
Part 2. Outs (Eccentric Activities and Behaviors)
11. What Condition the Postmodern Condition Is In: Collecting Culture in The Big Lebowski / Allan Smithee
12. Holding Out Hope for the Creedence: Music and the Search for the Real Thing in The Big Lebowski / Diane Pecknold
13. “Fuck It, Let’s Go Bowling”: The Cultural Connotations of Bowling in The Big Lebowski / Bradley D. Clissold
14. LebowskIcons: The Rug, The Irong Lung, The Tiki Bar, and Busby Berkeley / Dennis Hall and Susan Grove Hall
15. On the White Russian / Craig N. Owens
16. Professor Dude: An Inquiry into the Appeal of His Dudeness for Contemporary College Students / Richard Gaughran
17. Abiding (as) Animal: Marmot, Pomeranian, Whale, Dude / David Pagano
18. Logjammin’ and Gutterballs: Masculinities in The Big Lebowski / Dennis Allen
19. Size Matters / Judith Roof
20. Brunswick = Fluxus / Aaron Jaffe
21. Enduring and Abiding / Jonathan Elmer
Endnote: The Goofy and the Profound: A Non-Academic’s Perspective on the Lebowski Achievement / William Preston Robertson

So if ya like Lebowski, you might want to add it to your Christmas list. It’s also available at Amazon.

And in the “entirely unrelated” department, last night at the screening of Medicinal 101, I got tipped off about a very cool event in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There’s a theater group there named Commedia Beauregard who for the past two years has done the holiday standard, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, BUT – they do it in Klingon!

And this year, they’ll be doing it over 12 nights! If they were only touring…