I Am Not A Gun

Champion Sound

2012-02-10T09:39:00.002-05:00

How does one win $1000 at a Karaoke contest? I'm glad you asked:

Jeremy Scott Leopard

2012-02-09T18:32:00.001-05:00

2012-02-06T00:33:00.001-05:00

Baby J and Rhye

2012-02-04T20:53:00.000-05:00

Lizzie and Sarah

2012-02-04T20:18:00.002-05:00

Julia Davis of Nighty Night and Jessica Hynes of Spaced team up for a show that only made one episode before the BBC lost its nerve:

As Simon Pegg twitted: "Seems amazing that the BBC commission a pilot from two of the funniest women in the UK then air it at 11.45pm. Jeez beeb, GROW A PAIR!!"

New York Skyline — 1876 to 2013

2012-02-02T19:47:00.000-05:00

January 2012 Music

2012-02-02T00:14:00.001-05:00

Adrian Younge - 1969 Organ // Turn Down the Sound
An older and newer song by the man behind the score of Black Dynamite.

Beach Boys - Our Prayer [Dialog]
Recording of Brian Wilson teaching the other Beach Boys how his new "rock church music" is to be sung.

Chuck Inglish - Together
From one half of the Cool Kids' new beat tape.

The Four Mints - Endlessly

Ike Turner - She Made My Blood Run Cold

Jefferson Handkerchief - I'm Allergic to Flowers

Louis Prima - Fever // Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)

Quantic & Alice Russell featuring the Combo Bárbaro Band - Look Around The Corner

Soki Ohale's Uzzi - Bisi's Beat

Terry Randall - S.O.S. [Save Our Strip]

Additionally:

Did you know the then Cassius Clay put out a 45 in 1964?

I Am The Greatest

Stand By Me

2012-02-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

Colbert v. Sendak

2012-01-31T02:00:00.001-05:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Christopher Isherwood — Christopher and His Kind

2012-01-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

[Note: In this book, written in the 1970s, Christopher Isherwood writes about his life in late 20s/30s Germany and Europe in the third person. It seems like an affectation at first but by the end I think it makes sense: Who you were almost 50 years earlier might as well be another person.]

Christopher and Wystan [Auden] stayed on an extra day in Amsterdam, before Christopher went back to England. They were both in the highest spirits. It was such a relief and happiness to be alone with each other. They took a trip through the canals and the harbor in a tourist launch, deep in an exchange of private jargon and jokes, barely conscious of their surroundings. On disembarking, all the passengers were asked to sign a guest book. Beside their two signatures, Wystan wrote a quotation from Ilya Ehrenburg's poem about the Russian Revolution:

Read about us and marvel!
You did not live in our time—be sorry!

Christopher saw Viertel as the kind of intellectual who takes his intellectualism too seriously and thus becomes the captive of his own opinions. He could be dazzlingly witty, grotesquely comic, but never silly, never frivolous... Christopher said to himself that only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.

In his two novels about Berlin, Christopher tried to make not only the bizarre seem humdrum but the humdrum seem bizarre—that is, exciting. He wanted his readers to find excitement in Berlin's drab streets and shabby crowds, in the poverty and dullness of the overgrown Prussian provincial town which had become Germany's pseudo-capital. Forty years later, I can claim that that excitement has been created—largely by all those others who have reinterpreted Christopher's material: actresses and actors, directors and writers. Christopher was saying, in effect: "Read about us and marvel! You did not live in our time—be sorry!" And now there are young people who agree with him. "How I wish I could have been with you there!" they write. This is flattering but also ironic; for most of them could no more have shared Christopher's life in Berlin than they could have lived with a hermit in the desert. Not because of any austerities Christopher endured. Because of the boredom.

The change in Christopher's attitude was also related to Heinz [Isherwood's long-term German boyfriend who had been forcibly drafted] and the Nazis. As long as Heinz had been outside their power but menaced by them, Christopher's attitude to them had been one of uncomplicated hatred. But now Heinz was about to become an unwilling part of the Nazi military machine. Soon he would be wearing Hitler's uniform. Christopher didn't for one moment wish him to do otherwise. Heinz had plenty of courage but he wasn't the type who could be expected to disappear and join the underground, or to take a stand as a pacifist in a country where pacifists would probably be executed.

Suppose, Christopher now said to himself, I have a Nazi Army at my mercy. I can blow it up by pressing a button. The men in that Army are notorious for torturing and murdering civilians—all except for one of them, Heinz. Will I press the button? No—wait: Suppose I know that Heinz himself, out of cowardice or moral infection, has become as bad as they are and takes part in all their crimes? Will I press that button, even so? Christopher's answer, given without the slightest hesitation, was: Of course not.

That was a purely emotional reaction. But it helped Christopher think his way through to the next proposition. Suppose that Army goes into action and has just one casualty, Heinz himself. Will I press the button now and destroy his fellow criminals? No emotional reaction this time, but a clear answer, not to be evaded: Once I have refused to press that button because of Heinz, I can never press it. Because every man in that Army could be somebody's Heinz and I have no right to play favorites. Thus Christopher was forced to recognize himself as a pacifist—although by an argument which he could only admit to with the greatest reluctance.

...

The above description of Christopher's reactions is far too lucid, however. What had actually begun to surface in his muddled mind was a conflict of emotions. He felt obliged to become a pacifist, he refused to deny his homosexuality, he wanted to keep as much of his leftism as he could. All he could do for the present was to pick up his ideas one after another and reexamine them ring them like coins saying: This one's counterfeit; this one's genuine, but I can't use it; this one I can keep, I think.

Shit New Yorkers Say

2012-01-19T02:25:00.000-05:00

December 2011 Music

2012-01-06T18:30:00.003-05:00

The Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls

Clear Creek Missionary Baptist Church Congregation - Prayer (excerpt) / Prayer (excerpt) / I Love the Lord

Dee Dee Warwick - Foolish Fool

Dirty Beaches - True Blue // Lord Knows Best

Frankie Karl - Don't Be Afraid
Misogyny never sounded so sweet!

Hallelujah Chorus - I've Got to Find A Way

Ike & Tina Turner - I Can't Believe What You Say (For Seeing What You Do)

Jimi Hendrix - Angel
This song is not from it but I just learned about the existence of the Black Gold tapes, home recordings that were long thought lost but recently rediscovered and presumed to be the sketches for what was to be his next album.

Jimmy Holiday - How Can I Forget

Lost Generation - The Sly, Slick, & the Wicked

The Lovelites - Love So Strong // Oh My Love // Come And Get It

Neon Indian - Heart: Attack // Polish Girl

Paul Revere & the Raiders (feat. Mark Lindsay) - Rain, Sleet, Snow

Smithstonian - Mississippi Mud

Terry Callier - Cotton Eyed Joe

Van McCoy - Mr DJ

The Velvet Angels - I'm In Love

Additionally:

2012-01-06T18:09:00.002-05:00

Have nothing in your house...

2011-12-20T13:07:00.004-05:00

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

—William Morris

Baby J Digs Chet Baker & Bill Evans

2011-12-15T10:41:00.004-05:00

But mostly Chet Baker.

2011-12-13T14:21:00.005-05:00

Tsunehisa Kimura, Waterfall

Cubs and Abysses

2011-12-06T11:53:00.007-05:00

Two images I came across today that seemed related.

Left: A child with lion cubs in the 1850s.

Right: Artist's conception of a newly discovered black hole 10 times the width of our solar system.

2011-09-26T16:25:00.001-04:00

2011-09-22T12:34:00.000-04:00

2011-09-20T11:18:00.002-04:00

"Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

View from the Space Station

2011-09-20T11:10:00.006-04:00

Apparently I'm on a space kick. Watch this fullscreen in HD mode and float down the coast from Oregon to Antarctica. The bay area is visible about six seconds in which should help you orient yourself. The lightning storms are particularly cool:

Moon/Planet Comparison

2011-09-16T18:02:00.001-04:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald — On Booze

2011-08-28T18:08:00.008-04:00

from Selections from the Notebooks

Yes mam, if necessary. Look here, You take a girl and she goes into some café where she's got no business to go. Well, then, her escort gets a little too much to drink an' he goes to sleep an' then some fella comes up and says, 'Hello, sweet mamma,' or whatever one of those mashers says up here. What does she do? She can't scream on account of no real lady will scream nowadays—no—she just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into a pair of Powell's defensive brass-knuckles, debutante's size, executes what I call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fella's on his way to the cellar.

You can order it in four sizes: demi (half a litre), distingué (one litre), formidable (three litres), and catastrophe (five litres).

Drunk at 20, wrecked at 30, dead at 40.
Drunk at 21, human at 31, dead at 51.

Then I was drunk for many years, and then I died.

from The Crack-Up (1936)

Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

This led me to the idea that the ones who had survived had made some sort of clean break. This is a big word and is no parallel to a jail-break when one is probably headed for a new jail or will be forced back to the old one. The famous "Escape" or "run away from it all" is an excursion in a trap even if the trap includes the south seas, which are only for those who want to paint them or sail them. A clean break is something you cannot come back from; that is irretrievable because it makes the past cease to exist. So, since I could no longer fulfill the obligations that life had set for me or that I had set for myself, why not slay the empty shell who had been posturing at it for four years? I must continue to be a writer because that was my only way of life, but I would cease any attempts to be a person—to be kind, just or generous.

from "Show Mr. and Mrs. F. To Number—" (1934)

We got out as soon as we could because we had been there so many times before—it is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

from My Lost City

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb up to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to thereof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood—everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits—from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground. That was the rash gift of Alfred W. Smith to the citizens of New York.

Previously by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Look At That

2011-08-18T18:07:00.004-04:00

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'"

Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut

Yikes

2011-08-17T15:18:00.007-04:00

Via SFWeekly

Voynich Manuscript

2011-08-08T14:23:00.012-04:00

Delighted to discover that the complete Voynich Manuscript is now available on the Wikimedia Commons. The wikipedia article makes for a fascinating read on "the World's Most Mysterious Manuscript." To be incredibly brief, this possibly medieval book is in a script and language that has never been seen before nor translated yet cryptographers assert that it displays patterns that make them believe it has meaning and is not simply gibberish. Added to the mystery are a series of illustrations of plants not known to exist. My favorite theory is that it is a report by an alchemist of conversations he'd had with angels, written in their own language. Here are some of my favorite pages:

Vs.

2011-08-07T16:15:00.001-04:00

Post-Apocalyptica Screen Grabs #10Vanishing on 7th StreetCause: The "Shadows"

2011-07-13T03:12:00.007-04:00

Dumb movie with a killer soundtrack. The crashing jet reminds me of a story I heard about a malfunction on a plane that suffocated everyone on board but flew on autopilot all the way across the country. For a while I wondered if there was anyone alive on board when I would see planes in the sky.

Black Coward

2011-06-22T10:43:00.003-04:00

Michael Ian Black doing a bit of Noël Coward's Private Lives. I adore anything this man does.

Tom Waits the Parent

2011-06-15T14:49:00.003-04:00

"The other day, I overheard my older kids talking to my younger boy and they were saying ‘don’t ever, don’t ever ask Dad to help you with your homework.’ They said I made up a war once."

Crewdson's Fireflies

2011-06-14T16:52:00.004-04:00

I just discovered Gregory Crewdson's Fireflies series from 1996. It looks like some kind of Victorian spirit photography:

Reminds me of the weirdness that is fireflies flashing in unison in Southeast Asia:

Otherworldy Report

2011-06-13T16:13:00.024-04:00

The exhibition Otherworldly at the Museum of Arts and Design was as good as I hoped! Here are some of my favorites:

Frank Kunert's Children!:

Patrick Jacobs' Room with Radiator (you had to view it through a little porthole):

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's ominous Traveler series of snowglobes:

Alan Wolfson's Canal St. Cross-Section of which Neil took some great detail shots:

And Mat Collishaw's Garden of Unearthly Delights was terrifying:

Obligatory goofball shots:

This shot reminds me of the first issue of Fantastic Four:

Language Development

2011-06-12T22:09:00.001-04:00

New Banner?

2011-06-11T23:53:00.002-04:00

Cary Grant With A Dog

2011-06-08T17:19:00.008-04:00

I could start a tumblr on the subject but would prefer not.

University Challenge

2011-06-03T11:34:00.003-04:00

When I first saw this in high school I totally missed that the Young One's nemeses are played by Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson!

2011-05-26T13:28:00.002-04:00

Dicks & Tits

2011-05-24T13:39:00.002-04:00

Seen in Petrosino Square.

Eric Chase Anderson — Chuck Dugan is AWOL

2011-05-20T15:45:00.017-04:00

I just finished reading Eric Chase Anderson's Chuck Dugan is AWOL: A Novel with Maps and thoroughly enjoyed it. If I were ten and reading it for the first time it probably would have been (along with Agent Arthur's Puzzle Adventures and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places) one of my favorite books period. If his style is at all familiar it's probably because you've seen the work he's done for his brother Wes Anderson. His work could be criticized in much the same way that his brothers (debatably) is: strong style but a weak story. It could be argued though that the audience for this adventure story of a teenage boy trying to solve a mystery, bolstered by a map, diagram, or illustration on almost every page may not be particularly interested in sophisticated character development. Combine the wealth of visuals with it being set on the coast of Maine in the 1960s and an overarching Anderson family vibe and you've got a book I'm going to be pressing on friends for a lifetime.

On a related note, I just came across these animated GIFs of Anderson films via If We Don't, Remember Me:

Endpaper Map #4 Chuck Dugan is AWOL

2011-05-20T15:43:00.003-04:00

George R. Stewart — Earth Abides

2011-05-09T12:47:00.006-04:00

Earth Abides, published in 1949, is one of the earliest books to explore the idea of a post-apocalyptic world, in this case an air-borne virus that has killed almost the entire human race. It's all the ideas rather than the clunky writing and dated values that make it readable. What really sets this apart from anything else in the post-apocalyptic genre is that it finds the premise of a mass human dying-off and subsequent collapse and decay of civilization and its trappings over 60-odd years story enough; that to add all the post-apocalyptic elements one comes to expect, for example roving sadistic gangs to heighten the tension of the story, superfluous. Instead he gives a running commentary on how the world is changing, the slow wearing away of infrastructure, the fall of domesticated plants and animals and the flourishing of the once repressed, the extinction of almost all human diseases, the fading of bright colors from the world, the slow but sure shift in language from generation to generation. All pretty fascinating.

In one way or another, each in his own manner, everyone whom he had seen that day was going to pieces. He did not think that he himsef was. But was he actually still sane? Was he too, perhaps, suffering from shock? In calm self-consciousness he thought about it. After a while he took pencil and paper, deciding to write down what qualifications he had, why he might be going to live, even with some degree of happiness, while others were not.

First of all, without hesitation, he scribbled:

1) Have will to live. Want to see what will happen in world without man, and how. Geographer.

Beneath this he wrote other notes.

2) Always was solitary. Don't have to talk to other people.
3) Have appendix out.
4) Moderately practical, though not mechanical. Camper.
5) Did not suffer devastating experience of living through it all, seeing family, other people, die. Thus escaped worst of shock.

He paused, looking at his last note. At least he could hope that it was true.

Still he sat staring, and thinking. He could list others of his qualities, such as his being intellectually oriented, and therefore, he supposed, adaptable to new circumstances. He could list that he was a reader and so had still available an important means of relaxation and escape. At the same time he was more than a mere reader in that he knew also the means of research through books, and thus possessed a powerful tool for reconstruction.

His fingers tightened about the pencil for a moment while he considered writing down that he was not superstitious. This might be important. Otherwise he would even now, like the old man, be fighting the fear that the whole disaster has been the work of an angry God...

The protagonist, Ish, upon coming out of the mountains and arriving in San Francisco, decides to drive cross country to see what has happened. He comes across a few scattered people, including this one solitary couple in New York City:

In spite of lacking even the great and continual show of the passing populace of the city, still Milt and Ann did not seem to be particularly bored ... But if they were not bored, neither did they seem to have much pleasure in life. There was a great vacantness somewhere. From shock they were walking in a kind of haze. They were people without hope. New York, their world, had vanished; it would never live again in their time. They had no interest when Ish tried to tell them what had happened in the rest of the United States... He liked them, and he pitied them. He hated to think what would happen when winter struck, and the deep canyons between the buildings were clogged with snow and the north wind whistled down the groove of Broadway... He doubted whether they could survive the winter, even though they piled broken furniture into the fireplace. Some accident would quite likely overtake them, or pneumonia might strike them down. They were like the highly bred spaniels and pekinese who at the end of their leashes had once walked along the city streets, Milt and Ann, too, were city-dwellers, and when the city died, they would hardly survive without it. They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world, he knew, had always been inflicted upon organisms which specialized too highly. Milt and Ann—the owner of a jewelry store, a salesgirl for perfumes—they had specialized until they could no longer adapt themselves to new conditions.

Decades later, after failing to teach his small community's children and children's children to read, let alone agriculture, medicine or geography. Ish realizes that civilization as he knew it was long past saving and that a new one was being born. With this knowledge he teaches them to create bows both for hunting and fire making. Arrowheads, as it turns out, are much easier to make by hammering coins than by chipping rock.

Perhaps there were too many people, too many old ways of thinking, too many books. Perhaps the ruts of thinking had grown too deep and the refuse of the past lay too heavy around us, like piles of garbage and old clothes? Why should not the philosopher welcome the wiping-out of it all and a new start and men playing the game with fresh rules? There would be, perhaps, more gain than loss.

Savage Beauty

2011-05-09T12:17:00.013-04:00

The Alexander McQueen show Savage Beauty just opened at the Met and is simply fantastic. McQueen's talent is that rare kind that makes you realize that most of what passes for good in our lives is actually less than mediocre. I couldn't find images of some of my favorite pieces but what follows is more than exemplary. The show is up till July 31st.

I have to add that I find almost everything about the fashion world pretty loathsome. Although as Bill Cunningham points out in the wonderful new documentary about him, "Fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life. I don’t think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization."

Otherworldly

2011-05-09T11:35:00.008-04:00

This upcoming show at the Museum of Arts and Design looks like it's going to be awesome! Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities:

Endpaper Map #3 Of Minnie the Moocher and Me

2011-05-09T03:22:00.003-04:00

Happy May the Fourth!

2011-05-04T12:30:00.002-04:00

Via the fantastic image blog This Is Not Porn.

Post-Apocalyptica Screen Grabs #9The RoadCause: Unknown

2011-04-29T20:32:00.006-04:00

Ugh. I'm not sure I want to survive the apocalypse anymore.

The Abyss of Brutal Force

2011-04-13T17:31:00.003-04:00

"Violence (physical force) used to another's hurt, which is the most brutal form of struggle between men can assume, is eminently corrupting. It tends, by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the antisocial qualities, ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong. And this harmful tendency arises also when violence is used for a good end... Anarchists who rebel against every sort of oppression and struggle for the integral liberty of each and who ought thus to shrink instinctively from all acts of violence which cease to be mere resistance to oppression and become oppressive in their turn are also liable to fall into the abyss of brutal force... The excitement caused by some recent explosions and the admiration for the courage with which the bomb-throwers faced death, suffices to cause many anarchists to forget their program, and to enter on a path which is the most absolute negation of all anarchist ideas and sentiments."

—Errico Malatesta

Fire in the Hole

2011-04-05T18:25:00.005-04:00

Fighter jet shoots missile into Union Square subway station (from DMZ Vol. 9):

[Click to enlarge]

Alberto Manguel — The Library At Night

2011-03-21T00:26:00.007-04:00

Breezed through this philosophical musing on the meanings of libraries by Alberto Manguel whilst poolside in Key West. Half way through I realized he is the author of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places that I've owned since third or fourth grade, making it one of the oldest books in my own library!

Virginia Woolf once tried to distinguish between the man who loves learning and the man who loves reading and concluded that "there is no connection whatever between the two." "A learned man," she wrote, "is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what it suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading."

(From 'Hours in a Library' in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume II, 1912–1918.)

And even paper and ink can sometimes survive a death sentence. One of the lost plays of Sophocles is The Loves of Achilles, copies of which must have perished one after another, century after century, destroyed in pillaging and fires or excluded from library catalogues because perhaps the librarian deemed the play of little interest or of poor literary quality. A few words were, however, miraculously preserved. "In the Dark Ages, in Macedonia," Tom Stoppard has one of his characters explain in his play The Invention of Love, "in the last guttering light from classical antiquity, a man copied out bits from old books for his young son, whose name was Septimus; so we have one sentence from The Loves of Achilles. Love, said Sophocles, feels like the ice held in the hand by children." I trust that book-burner's dreams are haunted by such modest proof of the book's survival.

Books lend a room a particular identity that can in some cases, usurp that of their owner—a peculiarity well known to oafish personalities who demand to be portrayed against the background of a book-lined wall, in the hope that it will grant them some scholarly lustre. Seneca mocked ostentatious readers who relied on such walls to lend them intellectual prestige; he argues for possessing only a small number of books, not "endless bookshelves for the ignorant to decorate their dining-rooms."

Phoebe Hoban — Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art

2011-03-20T23:04:00.013-04:00

Jean-Michel's PIN code for his Citibank account was "So What?" after the Miles Davis tune.

Soon after the flight took off, Basquiat and his coterie were cozily ensconced in the first-class section. Basquiat took out a quarter-ounce of coke and dumped it on a cocktail plate. "I've never seen anything like it on a plane," says Gagosian, laughing. "It was like these four kind of rough-looking black kids hunched over a big pile of coke, and then they just switched over to these huge joints, and they sat up there and smoked them. It was just wild. They had their big hooded ski glasses on, and big overcoats. The stewardess freaked. I was terrified. I thought, 'Oh God, we're going to jail.'"

But Jean-Michel remained completely cool. "The stewardess came over and she said, 'You can't do that on a plane. The authorities are going to be waiting for you,'" recalls Gagosian with obvious relish. "Jean-Michel just looked up at her. He had perfect timing and he said, 'Oh, I thought this was first class.'"

Bird Lives! the Charlie Parker biography by Ross Russell, was one of his favorite books, bebop his favorite music. Like Parker, Basquiat left home at fifteen; like Parker, he was a terminal junkie and sex addict; like Parker, he quickly became conversant in the latest artistic vernacular, becoming a legend by the time he was twenty-one; like Parker, he was a clever and self-conscious bad boy. Basquiat must have found many passages in the book deeply resonant:

"Iconoclast, breaker of rules, master of the put-on, Bird was the first jazz musician who carried the battle to the enemy...The act of throwing his saxophone out of a hotel window, walking into the sea wearing a new suit, standing up the promoter of a Paris jazz concert, drinking sixteen double whiskies in two hours, eating twenty hamburgers in a sitting...the patronizing way he took his pleasure with any white girl who offered herself—every episode in the cumulative legend of the Bird, however ineffectual and childish, was seen as a blow struck against the forces of oppression...

Charlie Parker was the first angry black man in music. Because he was ahead of his time, he bore the burdens of loneliness and frustration. The futility of blows he directed at the establishment did much to encourage his dependence upon heroin and alcohol, adding to his loneliness and accelerating an inner drive towards self destruction...In spite of his successes and growing prestige Charlie saw no future of the music he played, or for his race in America. To live once, and to the limit—that was his game plan," writes Russell.

I liked this exchange from right before Basquiat dies where he predicts the rise of Jazz-Rap:

[Vincent Gallo:] He said he was going to buy a clarinet and we were going to do new music together. Jazz-rap. I said, 'What's that?' and he got that sparkle in his eyes and said, 'You'll hear it the first time when we do it.'

Lastly a quote from Jeffrey Wright who portrayed Basquiat in Julian Schnabel's biopic that makes me respect Wright even more and Schnabel even less:

"I think my performance was appropriated, literally, and the way I was edited was appropriated in the same way his story has been appropriated and that he was appropriated when he was alive.

"There's another parallel, that the mystery you are left with at the end of the film about who Basquiat was is the stuff that Julian [Schnabel] didn't know, so he assumed it didn't exist. The sense I got about him from his work and what I found out about his life was a profound sense of aloneness, not loneliness, because he had friends, but a real sense of isolation."

Ultimately says Wright, "Julian made him out to be too docile and too much a victim and too passive and not as dangerous as he really was. It's about containing Basquiat. It's about aggrandizing himself through Basquiat's memory. It's really fucking barbaric. But maybe our culture can't take the real danger of Basquiat right now."

Interestingly the movie, like Hoban's biography, couldn't get permission to use Basquiat's paintings. Schanbel's solution was to invent new ones.

I also made note of the the artists and songs Basquiat liked that were mentioned in the book:

Brian Eno's song Chemistry / Charlie Parker / David Bowie / Dizzy Gillespie / El Grand Combo / Gregory Isaacs / Lester Young / Maria Callas / Marvin Gaye's song After the Dance / Max Roach / Miles Davis / Ravel's Bolero / Run-DMC / Spoonie Gee / Steel Pulse

William Hope Hodgson — The Casebook of Carnacki – Ghost Finder

2011-03-16T22:46:00.005-04:00

Discovered this book via Mike Mignola who called him one of his favorite authors. A series of Edwardian-era investigations by the occult detective Carnacki, who is armed with only his camera, his Electric Pentacle, and various ancient tomes on magic. Super-geeks might remember him as being a one-time member of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). You can place him right between Sherlock Holmes and H. P. Lovecraft both in time and subject matter. He doesn't quite live up to either but who could? The best part of these stories is that you're never sure if the reported ghost is real or a Scooby-Doo type situation. Not only does it make it funner to follow along looking for clues but also makes it that much scarier when it turns out to be real! First off is some paranormal research that marks me as especially prone to par-human sightings:

"In the first place, it was obvious there was something genuinely strange in the house, which made itself manifest as a Woman. Many different people had seen this Woman under differing circumstances, so it is impossible to put the thing down to fancy; at the same time it must seem extraordinary that I should have lived two years in the house, and seen nothing, whilst the policeman saw the Woman before he had been there twenty minutes; the landlord, the detective, and the inspector all saw her.

"I can only surmise that fear was in every case the key, as I might say, which opened the senses to the presence of the Woman. The policeman was a highly-strung man, and when he became frightened, was able to see the Woman. . . In short, until a very strong degree of fear was present, no one was affected by the Force which made itself evident as the Woman. My theory explains why some tenants were never aware of anything strange in the house, whilst others left immediately. The more sensitive they were, the less would the degree of fear necessary to make them aware of the Force present in the house. . . It is impossible to put the thing into words because language is not enough developed yet to have produced words with sufficiently exact shades of meaning to enable me to tell you just what I do know."

As in Lovecraft (and Susanna Clarke), I love the imaginary magical reference titles he'll reel off:

"One other thing," said Arkright, "have you any idea what governs the use of the Unknown Last Line of the Saamaa Ritual? I know, of course, that it was used by the Ab-human Priests in the Incantation of Raaaee; but what used it on your behalf, and what made it?"

"You had better read Harzan's Monograph, and my Addenda to it, on Astral and Astral Co-ordination and Interference," said Carnacki. "It is an extraordinary subject, and I can only say here that the human vibration may not be insulated from the astral (as is always believed to be the case, in interferences by the Ab-human), without immediate action being taken by those Forces which govern the spinning of the outer circle. In other words, it is being proved, time after time, that there is some inscrutable Protective Force constantly intervening between the human soul (not the body, mind you,) and the Outer Monstrosities. Am I clear?"

Lastly, here's how to create your own paranormal defense at home!

I returned to the centre of the room, and measured out a space twenty-one feet in diameter, which I swept with a "broom of hyssop". About this, I drew a circle of chalk, taking care never to step over the circle. Beyond this I smudged, with a bunch of garlic, a broad belt right around the chalked circle, and when this was complete, I took from among my stores in the centre a small jar of a certain water. I broke away the parchment, and withdrew the stopper. Then, dipping my left forefinger in the little jar, I went round the circle again, making upon the floor, just within the line of chalk the Second Sign of the Saamaa Ritual, and joining each Sign most carefully with the left-handed crescent. I can tell you, I felt easier when this was done, and the "water circle" complete. Then, I unpacked some more of the stuff that I had brought, and placed a lighted candle in the "valley" of each Crescent. After that, I drew a Pentacle, so that each of the five points of the defensive star touched the chalk circle. In the five points of the star I placed five portions of the bread, each wrapped with linen, and in the five "vales", five opened jars of the water I had just used to make the "water circle". And now I had my first protective barrier compete.

This book collects all nine of Hodgson's Carnacki stories. Not included (since they were never written) are all the cases Carnacki would refer to offhandedly but never expand upon. I wish I had noted them all but here's what I remember:

The Three Straw Platters, the Yellow Finger experiments, the Black Veil incident, and the Grey Dog, the Moving-Fur, and the Dark-Light cases!

Woodland Flyover

2011-03-15T18:35:00.008-04:00

While trying to learn when the second third of the High Line will be opening (mid-may?) I came across this upcoming feature that looks cool, The Woodland Flyover:

In response to the microclimate created by adjacent buildings, which supports dense plant growth, a metal walkway lifts off from the High Line level and allows the landscape to fill in below. While an undulating terrain of moss and shade groundcover blankets the High Line bed, the Flyover carries visitors upward, into the shady canopy of a stand of sumac trees.

On a related note, check out my friend Derek's mid-story forest photos he's been taking.

Typographic Map of the World

2011-03-15T18:19:00.003-04:00

I want one of these very much. Designer Nancy McCabe's hand painted / typeset map of the world:

Saturnalia

2011-03-15T11:21:00.007-04:00

Voyager eat your heart out. Someone has assembled the thousands of photos the Cassini spacecraft took of Saturn and it's moons into an animated fly-by video!

Via NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

David Mitchell — Cloud Atlas

2011-02-22T15:14:00.015-05:00

I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom . . . "

I notice he rarely proposes alternatives for the systems he ridicules. "Liberality? Timidity in the rich!" "Socialism? The younger brother of the decrepit despotism, which it wants to succeed" "Conservatives? Adventitious liars, whose doctrine of free will is their greatest deception." What sort of state does he want? "None! The better organized the state, the duller its humanity."

Modestly, he explained, "Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood . . . My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched."

Was he so sure another war was coming?

"Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. War, Robert, is one of humanity's two eternal companions."

So, I asked, what was the other?

"Diamonds."

At top, one of John Constable's cloud studies. I believe it was Constable who first decided the sky was worthy of being a painting's single focus.

The Hidden Fortress & The Lake of Skeletons

2011-02-20T09:29:00.009-05:00

A random photo straight out of Hellboy (See below) or At the Mountains of Madness (see previously here and here). I wish I knew where this was, the pattern on the wall is completely unfamiliar to me. What appears to be a cave at its base is almost awesome overkill and the apparent glacial scrape across its base makes it seem older than civilization. Jesus...

[Click image to enlarge]

Which reminds me, here is a great interview with Mike Mignola about architecture and setting in comics on BLDGBLOG.

Mignola: You know, I’m constantly looking for visual references. Story-wise, I’ve got all that stuff in my library—but I can never have enough photo references. There are still stories that are waiting to be told until I have the right references; and there are certain stories that I decided to set in a location just as an excuse for me to draw a particular place or building.

PS Here's one more place that seems like a Mignola invention: The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund.

Jenny Slate is the Best

2011-02-02T14:29:00.002-05:00

Shots!

2011-01-20T01:34:00.002-05:00

I think they're riffing on the song Shots that left me feeling aurally bludgeoned the first time I heard it.

190 Bowery

2011-01-09T20:32:00.007-05:00

I never understood why the massive building on the corner of Spring and Bowery hadn't long ago been sold to developers. I assumed there was some kind of property dispute or other court hang-up keeping it from joining the mushrooming up-scale development of the Bowery and got so excited to snap this picture of what I assumed to be the light of a solitary squatter but then I found out the truth. The building is a six story, 72 room single family home of an artist who bought it in the 60s for $100,000! Check out this article on New York's website and the following interior shots:

Nighty Night

2011-01-05T21:06:00.004-05:00

Sarah and I just burned through the whole first season of this twisted comedy last night and can't stop feeling awful/delighted about it. It stars Julia Davis (also the writer) as the "narcissistic sociopath" Jill Tyrell. Here's the first episode:

Fun fact: Julia Davis is married to the Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt (Howard Moon), thus usurping Amy Poehler and Will Arnett as my all time favorite comedy couple.

FML

2011-01-02T00:54:00.004-05:00

This is the kid of a friend of a friend who is obsessed with Led Zeppelin. How is this four year old already cooler than everyone I know? Please help get this video viewed more than 50 times. Can anyone tell what if any song he's performing? The amount of time he spends fussing over the settings on his cardboard amp encapsulates everything that is awesome about kids.

Favorite Songs of 2010

2011-01-01T13:26:00.000-05:00

Happy New Years!

Not a mixtape, just an MP3 dump, here are my favorites of my favorite songs I've come across this year, almost all of them not from 2010. These are songs that it pains me to think of never having heard, the feeling that drives almost everything I do in life:

Alexander O'Neal & Cherrelle - Saturday Love
Aretha Franklin - Jump
Arthur Russell - I Couldn't Say it To Your Face
Bob Dylan - I Was Young When I Left Home
Bob Marley & the Wailers - It Hurts to Be Alone
Brenton Wood - The Oogum Boogum Song (Soul Explosion)
Darondo - Didn't I
Dionne Warwick - You're Gonna Need Me
Dr. John - Twilight Zone
Estelle - More Than Friends
Family Circle - It Doesn't Make Sense
Happy Birthday - Subliminal Message
The Hot 8 Brass Band - Sexual Healing
The Impressions - I'm Getting Ready
International Music System - Dancing Therapy
Janis Joplin - Little Girl Blues
Jens Lekman - I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You
John Prine with Iris Defflent - In Spite of Ourselves
The Joubert Singers - Stand (Larry Levan Mix)
Kris Kristofferson - Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down
Little Willie John - My Love Is
Mayer Hawthorne - Just Ain't Gonna Work Out
The Nipple Erectors - Vengeance
Nora Dean & Dansak - How Could You Do This
The Ordeals - Sippin' A Cup of Coffee
Os Mutantes - Ave Lúcifer
Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship... (Without a Sail)
Pineapples - Come on Closer
Private - My Secret Lover
Ray Charles - I Believe to My Soul
Richard Hawley - Tonight the Streets Are Ours
Rotary Connection - Love Has Fallen Over Me
Sam Cooke - Mean Old World
Simon & Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy in New York
Sparque - Let's Go Dancing
The Strokes - I'll Try Anything Once
Thunderheist - LBG (Little Booty Girl)
Top Drawer - Song of a Sinner
The Valentines - Stop the Violence
[Unknown artist] - It'll All Be Over [I'm guessing]

Download Part A (126 Mb)
Download Part B (112 Mb)

New York City

2010-12-22T00:45:00.001-05:00

David Rakoff — Fraud

2010-12-17T20:54:00.003-05:00

from I Used to Bank Here, But That Was Long, Long Ago

What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories. Procedural and depopulated.

Previously by David Rakoff: Half Empty

Creepy Stereopticons

2010-12-13T00:21:00.004-05:00

Forgot where I got these, probably on ThemThangs. Storing them here so I can find them later. Glasses up!

Indiscreet

2010-12-12T23:28:00.004-05:00

I loved this scene from Indiscreet (although watching it now it loses a lot of its impact out of context). I don't know why I had never heard of it before, Grant considered it his favorite of his films although I can't tell why.

I heard the split screen conceit was to please the censors who didn't want a shot of Grant and Bergman in bed together. One more Cary clip (jump to 2:19 if you're in a hurry):

Endpaper Map #2 Far Arden

2010-12-07T15:16:00.003-05:00

Nazgûl

2010-12-05T23:56:00.008-05:00

Check out this creepy Nazgûl-esque sculpture via ThemThangs:

Speaking of LoTR, I had a nightmare I was trapped in Moria last night. The dark side of being a geek.

Basically...

2010-12-03T18:47:00.000-05:00

Stupid Nazis!

2010-12-02T10:29:00.004-05:00

Hellboy/Batman crossover with Lovecraft theme. I am so happy.

Lorrie Moore — Self-Help

2010-12-01T23:42:00.011-05:00

This book is devastatingly good, everyone should immediately move it to the top of their bedside queues. The stories in it are largely taken from Moore's MFA masters thesis from when, I gather, she was only 27 years old (fucking precocious geniuses). It's so perfect that I counted only four or five similes that were just good instead of perfect, yet they stood out.

from How to Be an Other Woman

Love drains from you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.

from What Is Seized

"Your numbness," my mother cries softly, "is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world."

"That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls—we all have a bit of that—but that they insist their every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth..."

from Amahl and the Night Visitors

Two years ago when Moss first moved in, there was something exciting about getting up in the morning. You would rise, dress, and, knowing your lover was asleep in your bed, drive out into the early morning office and factory traffic, feeling that you possessed all things, Your Man, like a Patsy Cline song, at home beneath your covers, pumping blood through your day like a heart.

"Look, Bob. I'm no idiot. I was born in New York City. I lived there until I was four..."

Step away from him. Outside, in front of the streetlight, something like snow is falling. Think back again to MacNeil-Lehrer. Say in a level tone: "You know, there are people who know more about it than we do, who say that there is no circumnavigating a nuclear war, we will certainly have one, it's just a matter of time. And when that happens, it's going to dissolve all our communications systems, melt silicon chips—"

"Trudy, please." He wants you to stop. He knows this edge in your voice, this MacNeil-Lehrer edge. All of the world knotted and failing on your tongue.

"And then if you're off living someplace else, in some efficiency, how will I be able to get in touch with you? There I'll be, Moss, all alone in my pink pom-pom slippers, the entire planet exploding all around, and I won't be able to talk to you, to say—" In fifth grade you learned the first words ever spoken on the telephone: Mr. Watson, come here, I want you. And suddenly, as you look at him, at the potatoey fists of his cheeks, at his broom-blonde hair, it hits you as it would a child: Someday, like everybody, this man you truly love like no other is going to die. No matter how much you love him, you cannot save him. No matter how much you love: nothing, no one, lasts.

Catty Cake

2010-12-01T22:47:00.001-05:00

I'm embarrassed at how much I laughed at this.

Werner Herzog — Of Walking In Ice

2010-11-29T12:14:00.008-05:00

Between November 23rd and December 14th, 1974, Werner Herzog, upon hearing his friend Lotte Eisner was on the verge of dying in Paris, walked directly from Munich to Paris believing this would somehow keep her alive. During his walk he kept a private journal that he decided to publish the following year. It was published for the first time in English last year.

I sought this book out to read of one person's plunge into feelings I've only dabbled with yet still found to be revelatory: The high of prolonged hunger and the rapture of eating, the curious impulse to start walking straight into the country with no destination in mind, and most importantly, the intense altered consciousness that results from prolonged solitude. I think the longest I've gone without talking to anyone has been four or five days but in such a short time, my self conception proved to be much more fragile than I ever would have guessed. Let it be said I no longer scoff at people sentenced to the hole in prison. I once read someone claiming that the only reason we are continuously speaking to ourselves in our minds is to prepare ourselves to immediately engage with other people. In my experience, it only takes a surprisingly short period of time with no human interaction to quiet that inner voice and revert or shift to a non-lingual mindset, one much more receptive to outside stimuli. Not to sound crazy but the most interesting interaction I've had with an animal was with two cats in one of these quiet-minded states where I felt a pure animal awareness flowing between us with no distinctions between species. That sounds crazy, forget it. Anyway, here are a few snippets I thought were telling of his mental state while on this 21 day hike:

A perfect morning; in perfect harmony with myself I'm walking briskly uphill.... For once I didn't notice that I was walking, all the way up to the mountaintop forest I was absorbed in deep thought. Perfect clarity and freshness in the air, up further there's some snow. The tangerines make me completely euphoric.

Out of sheer loneliness my voice wouldn't work so I merely squeaked; I couldn't find the correct pitch for speaking and felt embarrassed.

Today, especially en route to Senones, I felt severe despair. Long dialogues with myself and imaginary persons.

The text as a whole seems fragmentary, shifting constantly between the internal and external, observations and fantasies. I wondered if he didn't write in one line bursts as he walked or all at once at the end of each day in one of the many shacks and houses he would break into to sleep in.

Also, how could you not want to read a whole book by someone like this:

Lydia Davis — Samuel Johnson is Indignant

2010-11-28T16:59:00.008-05:00

Boring Friends

We know only four boring people. The rest of our friends we find very interesting. However, most of the friends we find interesting find us boring: the most interesting find us the most boring. The few who are somewhat in the middle, with whom there is reciprocal interest, we distrust: at any moment, we feel, they may become too interesting for us, or we too interesting for them.

from Blind Date

"I was fifteen or sixteen, I guess," she said. "I was home from boarding school. Maybe it was summer. I don't know where my parents were. They were often away. They often left me alone there, sometimes for the evening, sometimes for weeks at a time. The phone rang. It was a boy I didn't know. He said he was a friend of a boy from school—I can't remember who. We talked a little and then he asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him. He sounded nice enough so I said I would, and we agreed on a day and a time and I told him where I lived."

...

"Well, when the day came, I didn't want to go out to dinner with this boy. I just didn't want the difficulty of this date. It scared me—not because there was anything scary about the boy but because he was a stranger, I didn't know him. I didn't want to sit there face-to-face in some restaurant and start from the very beginning, knowing nothing. It didn't feel right. And there was the burden of that recommendation—'Give her a try.'

"Then again, maybe there were other reasons. Maybe I had been alone in that apartment so much by then that I had retreated into some kind of inner, unsociable space that was hard to come out of. Maybe I felt I had disappeared and I was comfortable that way and did not want to be forced back into existence. I don't know.

"At six o'clock, the buzzer rang. The boy was there, downstairs. I didn't answer it. It rang again. Still I did not answer it. I don't know how many times it rang or how long he leaned on it. I let it ring..."

...

"What was strange was how awful this felt. I was treating a person like a thing. And I was betraying not just him but something larger, some social contract. When you knew a decent person was waiting downstairs, someone you had made an appointment with, you did not just not answer the buzzer. What was even more surprising to me was what I felt about myself in that instant. I was behaving as though I had no responsibility to anyone or anything, and that made me feel as though I existed outside society, some kind of criminal, or didn't exist at all. I was annihilating myself even more than him. It was an awful violation."

Mir the Hessian

Mir the Hessian regretted killing his dog, he wept even as he forced its head from its body, yet what had he to eat but the dog? Freezing in the hills, far away from everyone.

Mir the Hessian cursed as he knelt on the rocky ground, cursed his bad luck, cursed his company for being dead, cursed his country for being at war, cursed his countrymen for fighting, and cursed God for allowing it all to happen. Then he started to pray: it was the only thing left to do. Alone, in midwinter.

Mir the Hessian lay curled up among the rocks, his hands between his legs, his chin on his breast, beyond hunger, beyond fear. Abandoned by God.

The wolves had scattered the bones of Mir the Hessian, carried his skull to the edge of the water, left a tarsus on the hill, dragged a femur into the den. After the wolves came the crows, and after the crows the scarab beetles. And after the beetles, another soldier, alone in the hills, far away from everyone. For the war was not yet over.

Previously by Lydia Davis: Break it Down, Almost No Memory

Lydia Davis — Almost No Memory

2010-11-28T16:37:00.007-05:00

from Examples of Confusion

There is his right leg over my right leg, my left leg over his right leg, his left arm under my back, my right arm around his head, his right arm across my chest, my left arm across his right arm, and my right hand stroking his right temple. Now it becomes difficult to tell what part of what body is actually mine and what part his.

I rub his head as it lies pressed against mine, and I hear the strands of his hair chafing against his skull as though it is my own hair chafing against my own skull, as though I now hear with his ears, and from inside his head.

Affinity

We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him; or because he shows us what we were already thinking; or because he shows us in a more articulate form what we were already thinking; or because he shows us what we were on the point of thinking; or what we would have thought much later if we hadn't read it now; or what we would have been likely to think but never would have thought if we hadn't read it now; or what we would have liked to think but never would have thought if we hadn't read it now.

Previously by Lydia Davis: Lydia Davis — Break It Down

Bucket List Item #845: Pet Edward Gorey's Cat

2010-11-26T17:25:00.010-05:00

Check.

I went to the Edward Gorey Museum today in his former house and was pleasantly surprised to see how weird it still manages to be, even after having the bulk of his thousands and thousands of books and collections removed. Among other things they had a scavenger hunt for all 26 dead children from the Gashlycrumb Tinies, here is G is for George, smothered under a rug:

I also learned he had a pop-up book called The Dwindling Party published in the 80s that I'm off to get as soon as possible:

Looking at the book covers he made, I mentioned to my mum that there was a great web-comic artist who made comics extrapolated from his work. "Kate Beaton!" said the girl next to us, "I'm friends with her! She just moved to Brooklyn!" Hi Kate! Check them out (click to enlarge):

Good God I Wish These Were Real

2010-11-23T10:05:00.003-05:00

By artist Murray Groat:

Addicted to Yimmy's

2010-11-23T10:02:00.002-05:00

Larissa's New Show

2010-11-19T00:57:00.007-05:00

Larissa's new show opened tonight and she is killing it! I almost started tearing up she's grown so much as an artist from her old very very pretty work to now just gorgeous. That work this good is being quietly produced and exhibited while so much garbage is being forced on people drives me bananas. My photos kill dead the luminosity of the real things so please go see them before the show closes on the eighth! She's also organized a panel discussion on December 11th that I will be trying very hard to attend.

Jay-Z at Brooklyn Museum

2010-11-19T00:29:00.006-05:00

Snapped this quick at Jay-Z's talk tonight with Charlie Rose (it was a little awkward), Jay talking about his line "Inspired off Basquiat":

He was asked by someone in the audience what his dream cipher of five rappers would be. His answer: Biggie, Tupac, Kool Moe Dee, Big Daddy Kane, and KRS-One. (No one is asking me but if they did... Slick Rick, MF Doom & Ghostface)

Seen at the MoMA

2010-11-17T23:49:00.007-05:00

[Click to enlarge]

Haus-Rucker-Co.
1967–1992

The Planet of Vienna, Rooftop Oasis, New York
project, 1971

Project for the Opening of Haus Rucker Studio

It looks like architecture by way of Jack Kirby!

Sadly it's now just one less Coffee Shop:

I Love NY, But Change

2010-11-17T21:40:00.009-05:00

I stopped on the corner tonight on my way home wondering why a distant aircraft wasn't moving. I finally realized it was Venus, the only light in the sky not moving besides the moon. New York, I love you, you're perfect, but there are a few things about you I'd change about you if I could. That being said, the explosion of stars I see when I go home to Maine has become pretty magical. I guess it'll have to be an open relationship.

UPDATE: Whoops! Alex says it's Jupiter. Good thing my dad doesn't read this!

Bookshelf Porn

2010-11-16T18:26:00.009-05:00

"Featuring a book on your bookshelf is akin to displaying a trophy. You’ve accomplished something in reading a book; it feels like a victory. The opportunity to display your literary conquests in unique or unexpected ways is something I will greatly miss with e-readers.”

—The New Yorker’s The Book Bench on Bookshelf Porn

Here are some of my favorites from the BookshelfPorn blog. After having gone through all of them I have to add that I find it really distasteful when people organize their books by color or use novelty shelving (unless it's a hidden door).

I Met Wes Anderson!

2010-11-14T22:26:00.001-05:00

He was nice.

Sherlock 2010

2010-11-12T01:15:00.005-05:00

I'm really enjoying new Beeb miniseries of Sherlock Holmes set in the present day. Bonus: It stars British Office Tim (US Jim) as Dr. Watson! You can watch it here (thanks Chinese youtube!).

Elizabeth Bishop — Letter to N.Y.

2010-11-12T00:53:00.008-05:00

And speaking of David Rakoff, this is the poem he chanted to himself while getting MRIs to stay calm. I'll forever think of it while watching the city lights pass by, slumped in a late night cab going home (despite the cringe-worthy rhyming of soul and owl):

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

David Rakoff — Half Empty

2010-11-12T00:22:00.013-05:00

Just finished David Rakoff's new book Half Empty and promptly put his previous books on my To Read list. I laughed, I cried, and he's much too smart to reduce to a summary quote, but these are some of my favorite zingers:

If others had reservations about trusting me, they seemed to dissipate as quickly as that fleeting moment where one hesitates before undressing in front of the dog.

I am in a canvas that Edward Hopper never felt bummed out enough to paint.

...how lovely the friends who deliver a potted amaryllis... its pink and-and-white striped petals like a child's drawing of an ideal flower, if children could actually draw.

Two great interviews about his book: Daily Show / Fresh Air

And finally, the first ten minutes of his Oscar-winning adaptation (in which he also acts) short film, The New Tenants:

And then, lastly, there's this self-assessment:

Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness—a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest Self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib chronic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of a kitchen chair...

Fun!

You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen

2010-11-10T10:31:00.006-05:00

Rick Rubin at home with his parents, 1986

Debbie Harry at home, 1977

This Friday from 6-8 at the KS Art Gallery (73 Leonard St) there will be a book launch and exhibition for photographer James Hamilton, one of the sweetest men I know. Come meet me there! I designed the book!

Here is Thurston's short, rapturous essay about James and a small slide show of his work on Vanity Fair's website. You can RSVP at rsvp@ecstaticpeacelibrary.com

Atlas of Remote Islands

2010-11-03T18:48:00.013-04:00

The Atlas of Remote Places is one of the most beautiful books I've seen in a long time. If I had the money I'd buy everyone I know a copy. Judith Schalansky both wrote and designed this small tome after weeks of what I assume was a rabbit-hole's worth of research in Berlin's state library. The fine design and printing of the book would have been enough to make me want it but it's her essays, magical, probably true* vignettes or histories of each island that make the book a marvel. It is no wonder it won the 2009 prize for Most Beautiful Book in Germany.

* The author:

That’s why the question whether these stories are "true" is misleading. Every detail stems from factual sources…however I was the discoverer of the sources, researching them through ancient and rare books, and I have transformed the texts and appropriated them as sailors appropriate the lands they discover.

The librarian in me took a deep pleasure in sliding this book next to my copy of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, a book I've been bringing with me everywhere since I got it in fourth grade. Without getting preachy, I really look forward to a future where the only books that continue to be printed are works of beauty for intimate perusal like this one.

And just because I love it so I'm tacking on Lewis Carroll's map of the ocean from The Hunting of the Snark:

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!”

Happy Halloween

2010-10-30T21:10:00.000-04:00

Susan Hill — Howard's End Is On The Landing

2010-10-30T20:21:00.005-04:00

I wanted to repossess my books, to explore what I had accumulated over a lifetime of reading, and to map this house of many volumes. There are enough here to divert, instruct, entertain, amaze, amuse, edify, improve, enrich me for far longer than a year and every one of them deserve to be taken down and dusted off, opened and read. A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through the house that day looking for one elusive book, my eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored here neglected or ignored.

The start of the journey also coincided with my decision to curtail my use of the internet, which can have an insidious, corrosive effect. Too much internet usage fragments the brain and dissipates concentration so that after a while, one's ability to spend long, focused hours immersed in a single subject becomes blunted. Information comes pre-digested in small pieces, one grazes on endless ready-meals and snacks of the mind, and the result is mental malnutrition...

Rationing it strictly gave me back more than time. Within a few days my attention span increased again, my butterfly-brain settled down and I was able to spend longer periods concentrating on single topics... It was like diving into a deep, cool ocean after flitting about in the shallows.

Fast reading of a great novel will get us the plot. It will get us names, a shadowy idea of characters, a sketch of settings. It will not get us subtleties, small differentiations, depth of emotion and observation, multilayered human experience, the appreciation of simile and metaphor, any sense of context, any comparison with other novels, other writers. Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language. It will not get us anything that enters not just the conscious mind but also the unconscious. It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps to form us as complete human beings. It will not develop our awareness or add to the sum of our knowledge and intelligence....do not insult yourself or a book which has been created with its author's painstakingly acquired skill and effort by seeing how fast you can dispose of it.

Bachelorette Party

2010-10-18T12:24:00.003-04:00

Fiona Arrives

2010-10-18T02:21:00.003-04:00

I'm surprised at how happy this has made me. I'm suddenly realizing I've gone more than 10 years without living with an animal. Never again! I feel like I got my daemon back! Side Note: She does not like garbage trucks.

Anaïs Nin — A Spy in the House of Love

2010-10-13T22:11:00.004-04:00

This one goes out to all my night owls:

At sixteen Sabina took moon-baths, first of all because everyone else took sun-baths, and second, she admitted, because she was told it was dangerous. The effect of moon-baths was unknown, but it was intimated that it might be the opposite of the sun's effect.

The first time she exposed herself she was frightened. What would the consequences be? There were many taboos against gazing at the moon, many old legends about the evil effects of falling asleep in moonlight. She knew that the insane found the full moon acutely disturbing, that some of them regressed to animal habits of howling at the moon. She knew that in astrology the moon ruled the night life of the unconscious, invisible to consciousness.

But then she had always preferred the night to the day.

Moonlight fell directly over her bed in the summer. She lay naked in it for hours before falling asleep, wondering what its rays would do to her skin, her hair, her eyes, and then deeper, to her feelings.

By this ritual it seemed to her that her skin acquired a different glow, a night glow, an artificial luminousness which showed its fullest effulgence only at night, in artificial light. People noticed it and asked her what was happening. Some suggested she was using drugs.

It accentuated her love of mystery. She meditated on this planet which kept a half of itself in darkness. She felt related to it because it was the planet of lovers. Her attraction for it, her desire to bathe in its rays, explained her repulsion for home, husband and children. She began to imagine she knew the life which took place on the moon. Homeless, childless, free lovers, not even tied to each other.

The moon-baths crystallized many of Sabina's desires and orientations. Up to that moment she had only experienced a simple rebellion against the lives that surrounded her, but now she began to see the forms and colors of other lives, realms much deeper and stranger and remote to be discovered, and that her denial of ordinary life had a purpose: to send her off like a rocket into other forms of existence. Rebellion was merely the electric friction accumulating a charge of power that would launch her into space.

She understood why it angered her when people spoke of life as One life. She became certain of myriad lives within herself. Her sense of time altered. She felt acutely and with grief, the shortness of life's physical span. Death was terrifyingly near, and the journey towards it, vertiginous; but only when she considered the lives around her, accepting their time tables, clocks, measurements. Everything they did constricted time. They spoke of one birth, one childhood, one adolescence, one romance, one marriage, one maturity, one aging, one death, and then transmitted the monotonous cycle to their children. But Sabina, activated by the moonrays, felt germinating in her the power to extend time in the ramifications of a myriad of lives and loves, to expand the journey to infinity, taking immense and luxurious detours as the courtesan depositor of multiple desires. The seeds of many lives, places, of many women in herself were fecundated by moonrays because they came from that limitless night life which we usually perceive only in our dreams, containing roots reaching for all the magnificences of the past, transmitting the rich sediments into the present, projecting them into the future.

In watching the moon she acquired the certainty of the expansion of time by depth and emotion, range and infinite multiplicity of experience.

It was this flame which began to burn in her, in her eyes and skin, like a secret fever, and her mother looked at her and said: "You look like a consumptive." The flame of accelerated living by fever glowed in her and drew people to her as the lights of night life drew passerby out of the darkness of empty streets.

When she did finally fall asleep it was the restless sleep of the night watchman continuously aware of danger and of the treacheries of time seeking to cheat her by permitting clocks to strike the passing hours when she was not awake to grasp their contents.

There is no bleaker moment in the life of the city than that one which crosses the boundary lines between those who have not slept all night and those who are going to work. It was for Sabina as if two races of men and women lived on earth, the night people and the day people, never meeting face to face except at this moment. Whatever Sabina had worn which seemed to glitter during the night, lost its colors in the dawn. The determined expressions of those going to work appeared to her like a reproach. Her fatigue was not like theirs.

J. R. R. Tolkien — The Lord of the Rings

2010-10-10T21:54:00.006-04:00

Upon closing the book I was immediately depressed it was over.

Sam struggled with his own weariness, and he took Frodo's hand; and there he sat silent till deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond it's reach. . . . Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fears he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.

Boston Athenaeum

2010-10-08T23:56:00.005-04:00

I just killed some time checking out the public galleries at the Athenaeum in Boston. It's one of the oldest and largest private libraries in the country and is gorgeous.

Among all the 18th and 19th century portraiture in their collection I came across this painting, Checkout Time at the Marlborough-Blenheim (1978) by Bradley Phillips. I was describing it to my Grandmother who used to work there and she remembered it well (although in her time it hung in the staff kitchen) and also loved it. She did not, however, ever notice that the subject is in the middle of relighting a roach!

Bonus: Among the the Athenaeum's 500,000+ collection includes a book bound in human skin!

2010-10-08T03:29:00.001-04:00

Christian Marclay at the Whitney

2010-09-27T03:04:00.012-04:00

I caught the second to last day of the Christian Marclay show at the Whitney and wanted to share pictures and videos of all the great work there but the museum doesn't allow photography and what else is new. (Is there an iPhone peripheral to take Walker Evans-style 90 degree spy photos?) So instead I'm just going to dump a bunch of Google images of some of his work that I like and you'll just have to believe me that it was great:

Dark Shadows

2010-09-27T02:15:00.006-04:00

Just started watching Dark Shadows streaming on Netflix.

Filled with Gothic mystery and supernatural intrigue, the daytime series "Dark Shadows" became wildly popular after its 1966 premiere on ABC and has earned a reputation as one of the most unusual and enduring programs in TV history. The show revolves around Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), a guilt-ridden 175-year-old vampire who longs to be human again and returns to his estate after being chained inside a coffin for nearly 200 years.

I read a long time ago that Johnny Depp's production company had bought the rights to it and I believe he and Tim Burton have already begun work on it. I was reminded to check it out after reading that Lukas Haas' character's outfits in the film Brick (also good and streaming) were based on those of Barnabas Collins. I also saw that it was on TV Guide's (my favorite magazine!) list of top cult TV shows.

All that aside how can you not watch a show with these titles:

2010-09-27T02:14:00.001-04:00