Tom Matlack, one of the founders of the Good Men Project, wrote in his introduction to the book that the goal is “by reading other men’s stories and watching them on our documentary film, you can reflect on the arc of your own life and, in the process, begin to form your definition of a good man.”

The stories are touching and represent a variety of lifestyles and values. Professor and fiction writer Perry Glasser wrote about being a single dad to an eight-year-old girl. He used beautiful imagery to define security (pouring concrete for a tether ball pole) and the dangers a father protects his daughter from (a bat that gets into the house). Glasser explains how single fatherhood faces different challenges than single motherhood. A single mother wouldn’t have to go to a hair dresser to learn how to brush a girl’s hair. A single mother wouldn’t be questioned by a security guard because she’s waiting for her daughter to come out of the dressing room at a clothing store. This story, the first one in the book, is about a man actively on the front lines of modern manhood, where he learns how to protect and raise his daughter into womanhood.

Because most contributors write professionally, the book is an enjoyable read, but the editors should have defined goodness for themselves. By offering the reader a clear definition of goodness, or several clear definitions, the reader would have something solid to think about. Instead the book presents the stories leaving the reader, if he’s ambitious enough, to decipher for himself what each story says about goodness.

James Houghton, the other founder of the Good Men Project wrote in his introduction, “Despite the pressure we felt at times to make the book more prescriptive, for it to provide easy answers or definitions, the great lesson I’ve learned over the past year… is that there is no definitive answer.”

“No,” says Williams, they are not impossible — in fact you already know the rules. Williams’ book takes the tried-and-true laws, rules and truths of the dating world and applies them your career. Why? Because you should go after your dream job the way you went after that yoga instructor who moved in next store. She explains, for example, how the old “don’t give away the milk for free” mantra your mom used to whisper in your ear while you slept pertains to landing your dream job. Miller says that it’s just as important not to make yourself so available when hunting for a job as it is when hunting for a mate.

“Just like our tendency is to throw out the rule book and call, and call, and call, and call the super hot dude you can’t help but imagine is ‘the one,’ you’re going to come across the job, the boss, the client you can’t imagine yourself living without, and it’s exactly here where you need play the game,” Williams says on her website.

Williams was at the Limited store at the Natick Collection last night. Over 100 women attended to network, sip free wine (yeah, they gave out red wine in a clothing store. Stupid, or genius?) and enter a raffle for a $250 shopping spree to the store. Early arrivers also left with a gift bag that included Tarte eyeliner and a super cute makeup bag. But the highlight of the evening was Williams’ motivational speech and a killer fashion show. Williams was witty and frank — just like her book. If you’re looking for a new outlook on the old job hunt, Girl on Top may just be what you need. Either way, you’ll totally be brushing up on those dating tips.

So does her advice work? That’s up to you find out. We’re ready to give it a shot.

This month’s package included a full-size official poster from the movie “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” with the film’s official soundtrack courtesy of Miramax. Jeff is also receiving a copy of outlandish new DVD, “Cougar Club” and a copy of The New Rivals CD courtesy of Universal. Jeff also gets an Art of Blast 2008 desk calendar.

How did Jeff get all this? By reading Blast and mentioning us in his blog. We knew he was a fan of “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” so we’re shipping off a bunch of swag.

We’ve got more for you guys coming in 2008!

Not only do we have a bunch of copies of “Cougar Club” and The New Rivals but how about this? We have over a dozen Plantronics Audio 350 gaming headsets that we’re just throwing at our readers next month. Enjoy the ultimate gaming headset for free!

We also have copies of Roxio Crunch and Popcap’s hits for PS2 and Xbox 360.

And on top of all that, we have a “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” mini poster and the novelization of the movie FREE.

What do you have to do to get any of these freebies? Write a review! Review a new movie, music album, video game, software, hardware, gadget, laptop, camera, pretty much whatever Santa gave you this year. Write up a review that’s at least 400 words, and if we use it, you’ll get a freebie!

Email all reviews to newsroom@blastmagazine.com, and include your name, address, website address if you have one, the review, any photos you have of the product and don’t forget the “Quick hits” info like you see here.

It’s free! Happy New Year from Blast!!

Written like a geek’s guide to history and its relation to the comic book, an index makes it easy to find favorite characters; and clever formatting means there is no necessity to read from cover to cover or reference previous chapters to understand current themes.

For the most die-hard fan, Knowles carefully laid out his research and thought on the relationship between the two groups for literary consumption. His knowledge is on par with his experience in the industry, with more than 20 years spent in the comic book industry as author for The X Presidents graphic novel, based on the populat Saturday Night Live cartoon, and others.

Short sections on gods of the Norse, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies, brief histories of several alternative religious movements and biographies of occult celebrities and sci-fi authors, including Harry Houdini and the “profit” Jules Verne, populate the first half of the book. Providing the basis for later forays into the history of famous superhero characters.

Indeed, Knowles uses about half his text as the set-up for later descriptions of hand-picked comic heroes and draws enough parallels to make some compelling arguments. Plucked from the pages of DC and Marvel, heroes and villains are cast in a new light with religious undertones and occult influences for their creation.

Some examples? Fantastic Four’s Ben Grimm is nearly a literal translation of the clay Golems of Jewish legend, down to the rocky exterior. Superman, the quintessential hero, was a Christ-like figure, Knowles argues, an only son sent from the heavens to save the human race.

While Knowles works hard to prove his theory that superheroes and villains are descended from religious Messiahs and impacted by the fears and beliefs running rampant in contemporary society, he never takes the extra step to elevate ComiCon, an annual comic book conference, into a gathering of the faithful to this newfound religion.

He also touches upon the most high profile and high-impact heroes. Spider-man, Superman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Batman, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, the text may have been able to give a fuller look into the comic-book universe by sacrificing sections on histories and mythologies to give other comic heroes their own space. Not to be left out, Knowles also includes a section on comic book visionaries, including his own favorite Jack Kirby. Kirby introduced unabashedly religious heroes in 1971 under the DC Comics title The New Gods. He introduced occult, mythological and esoteric themes to young readers through the comic book medium.

About halfway through the text comes the real meat of the story. With a smattering of the famous and infamous heroes told through a brief history of their rise and fall, their relative god-like attributes and, in many cases, pop culture influences on their characterization.

It’s here that readers learn how the man of steel fought gangsters and other real-life villains in his earliest tales beginning in 1938; quickly working towards some small sense of comfort for Americans suffering through the Great Depression and later World War II. And that X-Men tapped into angst-ridden feelings of alienation instead of the more traditional format of heroes saving lesser humans and being championed for their abilities.

The text is peppered with comedic illustrations by Joseph Michael Linsner. Including a blonde-haired English version of John Constantine being strangled by Keanu Reeves and a film reel where Knowles delineates how Hollywood hacks created an unfaithful film adaptation and killed a possible franchise.

Even to a reader who doe not harbor memories of a misspent youth spent devouring the latest pulp stories or comic books, it’s clear that Knowles has done his research. But with this book, only the most rabid comic geeks are likely to wade through the history lessons to get to know their favorite superheroes better.

Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes by Christopher Knowles
Illustrations by Joseph Michael Linsner
Publisher: Weiser Books
$19.95, paperback

This oversized 150+ page book is the next best thing to going to an art museum and seeing amazing artworks yourself. The entire book is filled with large images of Hulings’ paintings and well narrated along the way.

Hulings is one of the best living painters, and it’s rare to find several of his pieces in one place — he rarely does solo exhibitions. If you missed his shows this spring, it’s just that more important for anyone with an interest in art to obtain this piece and add it to their library of inspiration.

The 2nd edition book has already won an Independent Publisher award and includes a new foreword by the artist and 15 new paintings.

The book asks a very basic question — is faster better, and how can I survive this new “fast world?”

Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit calls “The Age of Speed” “your bible to surf the speed tsunami that’s overtaking business and life.”

Time is more fluid now, and Poscente says this should make things easier for us if we can adapt to it.

4 out of 5 stars

The book  is horrifying in a nutshell — exploitative and obscene. But if you put it down for longer than the time it takes to use the bathroom—for any other reason than unbeatable disgust—you are a testament to humanity’s true weakness in the face of suffering.

Everyone remembers, vaguely, where they were when The Juice was found not guilty in criminal court of the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown. He was later sentenced in civil court, found liable for willfully and wrongfully causing the deaths of Goldman and Brown, and for committing battery with malice and oppression. He was charged some millions of dollars, and left to fade into obscurity until he broke into a casino to steal some sports memorabilia he claimed was his.

So that was the period between the ‘90s and last week.

It’s Goldman’s relatives who are responsible for having the book published at all. After an initial fight to keep the book off the shelves when it was supposed to be published earlier this year, the Goldmans reversed their position with the intention that everyone who reads the book will be convinced of Simpson’s guilt.

The Goldman family’s quest to keep the book off the shelves is discussed in a lengthy introduction (titled He Did It), saying that the royalty money from the publication was to be funneled to a sham corporation “operated” by Simpson’s children. The Goldman family bought the rights to the book after the sham nature of the corporation was discovered, and decided to publish Simpson’s original manuscript with their preface, a preface written by the ghostwriter (Pablo F. Fenjves) and an afterward written by a judge.

This turns O.J.’s original manuscript — which was purported by Simpson himself to have started out as a fictional account — into a weird sort of dialogue, or debate, between two distinct visions of the truth.

The three bookends to The Juice’s manuscript each ring out the same tune: He did it, we know he did it, we’re all disgusted and aren’t you? And going into the book, you either agree or you don’t.

That’s not the point: the point is to hear from our generation’s most famous killer since Aileen Wuornos. This is the Juice’s side of the story, billed by Fenjves as his final confession. Consider If I Did It O.J.’s “Monster.” We get to see how the killing started: girl trouble.

Yes, girlfriend troubles. The first hundred pages of the book are O.J.’s account of his torrid romance with Nicole Brown, from its dreamy beginnings to its bloodsoaked end. With no one to contradict him, and a ghostwriter who seems to have written the book verbatim from his subject’s own rambling narrative, Simpson makes her out to be a schizophrenic, dangerously unstable, needy, hairpin-turn kind of nutjob girlfriend, with whom O.J. spent nearly two decades before finally snapping and butchering her and an innocent bystander.

It’s this tale which is almost as morally repugnant as the act itself, but actually the real reason I simply could not put it down. O.J. Simpson’s catastrophically mundane troubles and almost touching confusion in the face of this woman he cheated on his wife to be with one week into her 18th year, is the perfect celebrity-tragedy story for our time.

I mean, come on, you’re not getting Romeo and Juliet here. This book is trashy celebrity romance, a tabloid tell-all written by a failed National Enquirer writer.
It’s beach reading for those of you with no shame at all. It’s kind of fun to wallow in The Juice’s whining.

Until you remember that it’s all just excuses and half-ass justification for why he killed his ex-wife and an innocent bystander.

Is it a narrative of quality? Not at all. Even with the Goldman family’s moralistic cautionary tale taped to the front of the original manuscript, the book still serves no purpose other than to shock. The Goldman family turns O.J. into a monster outright, and O.J. turns himself into a monster accidentally.

By the end of the narrative the whole sordid thing is just exhausting. Whether you agree with the Goldman family or Simpson, you’re going to finish reading and need a hot shower.