Rachel Profiling

jakefogelnest: Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track on “How...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:09:01 -0500

Whitney Houston’s isolated vocal track on “How Will I Know.”

wevegotmail: The We’ve Got Mail team got together to view of...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:23:54 -0500

The We’ve Got Mail team got together to view of rough cut of the “interactive experience” this evening and, if this GIF is any indication, it’s going to be wonderful.

See you all in a week!

CAN’T WAIT.

More Downton Recappery

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:39:00 -0500

More Downton Recappery:

Still doing this silly thing. But at least it provided me the chance to coin the term “Debbie Downton,” which I’m sure will be in rotation for at least the next few months.

lisasimpsonbookclub: An oldie, but a goodie

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:24:30 -0500

lisasimpsonbookclub: An oldie, but a goodie

"There’s some instinctive attraction that draws you, as a writer, to your subject. And the..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:39:00 -0500

“There’s some instinctive attraction that draws you, as a writer, to your subject. And the attraction usually has to do with some primal personal thing that, of course, you have no idea about. In the end, the piece always comes down to the one or two sentences you struggle over. The sentences where you try to say explicitly what it is that the two of you, subject and writer, have in common. Those are the sentences that you just bang your head against the wall over until you get them right. It’s very hard to make that distillation but that is actually what your job is. Without trying to pin the person like a butterfly to the wall, to sum it up. If I can do that, then I feel satisfied. To give the subject a reality in the form of a sentence that is like a piece of rock crystal or a prism.”

- Judith Thurman, Cleopatra’s Nose

Dream room.

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:36:52 -0500

Dream room.

I mean. whhw: tinyairplanes: Bethany has a sewing machine....

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:10:39 -0500

I mean.

whhw:

tinyairplanes:

Bethany has a sewing machine. Her name is Sewfia.

poor ol’ gal deserves a whole cheesecake for the things i’ve put her through.

I'm in love with these (via New York Public Library)

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:43:08 -0500

See more at the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

As a PWHWANPR (person who has worked at NPR), I can testify that...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:08:00 -0500

As a PWHWANPR (person who has worked at NPR), I can testify that this is how people inside the juggernaut sound as well.

nprradiopictures:

It was only a matter of time…

babesofnpr:

Shit Public Radio Listeners Say (by sarahlynnladuke)

These are your people.

Obit on Parnassus/F. Scott Fitzgerald/The New Yorker/1937

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:28:00 -0500

Death before forty’s no bar. Lo!

These had accomplished their feats;

Chatterton, Burns, and Kit Marlowe,

Byron and Shelley and Keats.

Death, the eventual censor,

Lays for the forties, and so

Took off Jane Austen and Spenser,

Stephenson, Hood, and poor Poe.

You’ll leave a better-lined wallet

By reaching the end of your rope

After fifty, like Shakespeare and Smollett

Thackeray, Dickens, and Pope.

Try for the sixties — but say, boy,

That’s when the tombstones were built on

Butler and Sheridan, the play boy,

Arnold and Coleridge and Milton.

Three score and ten — the tides rippling

Over the bar; slip the hawser.

Godspeed to Clemens and Kipling,

Swinburne and Browning and Chaucer.

Some staved the debt off but paid it

At eighty — that’s after the law.

Wordsworth and Tennyson made it,

And Meredith, Hardy, and Shaw.

But, Death, while you make up your quota,

Please note this confession of candor —

That I wouldn’t give an iota

To linger till ninety, like Landor.

sylviascarlett: Marilyn Monroe and Sheilah Graham at Ciro’s...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:03:42 -0500

sylviascarlett:

Marilyn Monroe and Sheilah Graham at Ciro’s Nightclub

Photo

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:03:30 -0500

A Supposedly Run Thing I'll Probably Do Again

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:41:00 -0500

A Supposedly Run Thing I'll Probably Do Again:

I started a running blog. The impossible is here.

It’s about having no athletic prowess whatsoever and still trying anyway. I never got picked for the team growing up, but I get picked every time when I run. Because I’m the WHOLE TEAM. Works like magic.

Please read it and feel physically superior!

Stanley Kubrick’s pictures of NYC life in the 1940s are...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:34:28 -0500

Stanley Kubrick’s pictures of NYC life in the 1940s are the greatest.

No, thank YOU.

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:30:00 -0500

No, thank YOU.

So I’m recapping Downton Abbey for TIME Magazine this...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:18:05 -0500

So I’m recapping Downton Abbey for TIME Magazine this season. It brings me almost as much happiness as watching Maggie Smith do battle with overgrown bouquets. Enjoy!

Ryan Gosling Works in Publishing may be my favorite version of...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:11:34 -0500

Ryan Gosling Works in Publishing may be my favorite version of the meme yet.

Surprisingly, I am less sure than this guy on Slate that independent bookstores are killing literacy.

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:23:57 -0500

towirr:

A gentleman named Farhad Manjoo just posted a proudly contrarian article on Slate explaining why independent bookstores are not only irrelevent but maybe even harmful. I work at an independent bookstore, so that’s an argument I’d be very very curious to see made well. Honestly, I know the failings of small booksellers as well as anyone, and it’d be good to see them articulated. But that’s not what this essay was. Let’s look at it. All of it. In detail.

I’ll be interjecting my thoughts into the text of the essay itself. I know that’s a pretty ungenerous way to go about it, but as you’ll see, Mr. Manjoo is kind of an asshat, so I’m not feeling generous.

Read More

This is just the best thing.

What we talk about when we talk about Joan Didion's birthday

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:37:47 -0500

A: happy diddy's birthday!
R: i am eating a whole cake for it!
A: it's not rosie o'donnell's birthday
A: you should order a cake from payard. eat a sliver
A: and then fret that you got the wrong one and that nobody will come to your party
A: and then throw it away
R: see I like to celebrate Joan by eating all the things she doesn't eat
R: its the kids in africa theory
R: joan is starving somewhere so i better eat an entire pizza

Jessica Coen: Names, Words, and Phrases Appearing in a Single NYT Trend Piece

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:26:36 -0500

Jessica Coen: Names, Words, and Phrases Appearing in a Single NYT Trend Piece:

jessicacoen:

An abridged list, in no particular order.

Edmund Wilson

poststructuralism

the Situationists

“extrainstitutional intellectualism”

bourbon

“proletarian meta-narrative”

the Lost Generation

Cornell

Sacre Coeur

Jonathan Lethem

The Paris Review

paradigm

Jacques Derrida

French…