October 2008
56 posts
WatchAlso, I’ve been up in this business (aka on my tumbs) for exactly a year now. And if that isn’t reason for Haircut 100 videos, than nothing is.
“We have quite enough lionizing of the notion of “success” as popularly defined,...”
– John C. Bogle, (via antiocharonow)
from Flashlight Stories by Rick Hilles
Rick Hilles just won the Whiting poetry award. With good reason.
[After so much build-up, who should
arrive but the little Thai delivery-man
with the white walrus mustache, the one
you always overtip because he is so old
and still delivering dumplings, chicken with lemon grass
on a rainy Friday night. The strangers
you’ve opened your doors to!
How many times have you held off sleep...
WatchNever thought I’d say this, but thanks MTV, for starting a site (FINALLY) that actually shows music videos.
From "Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing...
[There go my dark girls,
their dresses puff
in the leeward air.
Oh, they are lighter than flying dogs
or the breath of dolphins;
each mouth opens gratefully,
wider than a milk cup.
My dark girls sing for this.
They are going up.
See them rise
on black wings, drinking
the sky, without smiles
or hands
or shoes.
They call back to us
from the gauzy edge of paradise, good news, good...
“I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I...”
– Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, who is stepping down for a while to write a children’s book about whether or not believing in wizards/witches is bad for you. Fascinating.
Margaret Atwood of the day...
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
“January 10: Ferry ride alone. Idea for fourth novel.The Bad Girl. Bad. Novel of...”
– From The Diaries of Dawn Powell, one of my favorite works and the book that, line by line, sounds the most like how I wish I did. She’s sharper than Dorothy Parker and more forgiving, and that takes pounds of something magic.
Afghan journalist gets 20 years for blasphemy →
Oh NO. Why is this still happening?
Now on CD: library's treasure trove of authorial... →
[Rare recordings of some of the last century’s greatest writers are to be released for the first time - from F Scott Fitzgerald reciting Othello to Tennessee Williams lambasting critics and Raymond Chandler drunkenly slurring his way through an interview with Ian Fleming. The British Library CDs are a literary goldmine, with recordings of 30 British writers and 27 from the US, most of whom...
“What makes this story so unusual is the fact that most of it takes place through...”
– 1946 Saturday Review article about Carson McCullers.
A conversation between three weird people is pretty much the basis for most good things.
Oh hello, amazing song.
(ps it’s sara)
Or when my mother and I discuss the topics of the...
Mom: Do you know about these "click" books?
Me: clique?
Me: the ya novels?
Mom: Yeah, for adolescent girls. They seem vile
Me: Yes, insipid
Mom: They are fueling a superficial culture and the author seems like a vacuous skeletal bitch.
Me: where did you see her
Mom: I saw her on TV and she was saying that the girls understood that she was being sarcastic and that they saw through the values in the book. I don't think so.
Mom: She is just fueling tween Paris Hiltons.
Me: i think girls dont get irony at that age
Me: they only get cool and uncool
Mom: I agree. But she is totally laughing all the way to the bank in her rolls royce etc.
Mom: I think that junior high is hard enough.
Mom: You know that [redacted popular girl I went to HS with]'s dad is running for [redacted office]in the [redacted] district. He has always been republican and he is pretty much a carpet bagger. I hope that he gets his ass kicked, I think of the girls in the novels as being like [redacted popular girl.]
Me: ah, we are RELATED
Mom: But I think that parents of kids are as bad as the kids. I served dinner at the temple with a woman who had referred to your brother's class in elementary school as the total geeks and nerds.
Me: i hope you slapped her
Mom: No, I should have said something like ..you're right..my kids are hopeless outcasts!
WatchI am totally in love with Milvina.
Thanks to Facebook, Your Childhood in Park Slope... →
I love the city section when it does shit like this.
Colin Meloy singing Red Right Ankle for an...
Levine in Winter →
“For four decades, David Levine’s acid-tipped portraits of everyone from Castro to Cheney gave The New York Review of Books its visual punch. Now that the greatest caricaturist of the late 20th century is going blind, is he owed more than a fond farewell?”
I loved this.
I am lifting my no-VampW policy to post a new...
There Is a Silver Lining →
Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek:
“But it’s a different world out there. If Iraq cast a shadow on U.S. political and military credibility, this financial crisis has eroded America’s economic and financial power. In the short run, there has been a flight to safety—toward dollars and T-bills—but in the long run, countries are likely to seek greater independence from an unstable...
WatchAlso, do go see Synechdoche, New York when it comes out. I really loved it.
