Agent Palmer

Of all things Geek. I am…

Blow-Up: Nothing like a little disaster for sorting things out.

Blow-Up 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni

1966’s Blow-Up is the pinnacle of avant-garde filmmaking in the pop art, swinging sixties directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Not only is it the story of a mod London photographer who finds something beautiful and sinister in the photographs he has taken of a mysterious beauty in the park, but it is the perspective of the swinging sixties through that photographer’s eyes, as well.

Declassify >

Netflix’s Mercury 13 is A Wonderful Look At the Women Who Almost Became America’s First in Space

Netflix’s Mercury 13 is A Wonderful Look At the Women Who Almost Became America’s First in Space

“Most harmful behavior is based in fear. Protecting one’s perceived position in society, protecting one’s territory, or one’s physical well-being. But progress is inevitable.”

That’s the opening quote from Netflix’s original documentary on 13 women known as “Mercury 13” who could have become America’s first women in space. But at that time it wasn’t meant to be, and that’s the compelling part of the story.

Declassify >

Chinese Democracy: In Both Defense and Explanation of Guns N’ Roses’ Musical Growth

Chinese Democracy Guns N' Roses 2008 Album

For rock fans in Generation X and in between GenX and Millenials (of which I fall into), it was a punchline.

Chinese Democracy was the album that was never ever going to be released, until one day in November 2008, the 23rd to be exact, there it was: The long awaited Guns N’ Roses album that no one ever thought would be heard by anyone other than the reclusive Axl Rose, who was behind the machinations of the delays and the album’s eventual release.

Declassify >

Coffee Declassified

A History of Coffee by Agent Palmer

Coffee Declassified: The History of Coffee

Coffee has a rich, bold history, with all the ingredients of a well-produced premium cable miniseries: kings, spies, pirates, lovers, religion, politics, and war.

Over the years, its advocates and acolytes have called it “koffie,” “kahve,” “qahwah,” “quwwa,” “kaafa,” and “cafe,” and the path it took to your kitchen counter is rife with treachery, battles, seduction, and dumb luck.

Declassify >