January 2010
44 posts
on joanna newsom, strangeness, and "authenticity"
agrammar:
… who is apparently set to release a triple LP. Her music is distinctly polarizing, right? It’s pretty obviously Not For Everyone. People who have bad reactions to it will point to various turn-offs. There’s the way she uses her voice, of course, which is singular and highly affected: it creaks like an old door and can remind people of anything from little girls to old crones and Lisa...
1 tag
Reel change
slutsky:
It’s time the film, movie journalism and festival communities took a hard look at a practice that is practically rampant in the cinema world and needs to stop now. I’m taking about the cute homonymic use of the words “real” and “reel.” As a guy who’s written his thousands of movie-related headlines, cover lines and photo captions, I know how easy it is to reach for, but it is so, so...
Hugh Masekela, y’all.
What Fiction's Like
agrammar:
But my main call — for people who mostly aren’t Roiphe — is that if you’re going to purport to talk about What Contemporary Fiction Is Like, you really need to be clear about where you’re pointing, and not just reach for this widely known passel as your subject group. Because one thing that definitely is true about What Contemporary Fiction Is Like is that there are a whole lot of...
At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers. I’m not calling for more pundits—God knows we’ve got plenty. I’m saying that writers need to venture out from under the protective wing of academia, to put themselves and their...
“In their book on effective government, William Eggers and John O’Leary...”
– I am a big fan of drawing analogies between the government and the worst form of public transportation.
Here’s another: government is like the bus because it’s incredibly slow, desperately needed by the poor and working class, infrequently available and usually filled with crazy people.
JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR, THIS IS WHO IS RESPONSIBLE...
In no particular order:
For generally being terrible obstructionist nihilistic political opportunists: The entire Republican caucus in the Senate and the House, excepting Joseph Cao.
For being horrible teases: Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe.
For being apparently unclear on the specifics of their own party’s platform: Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, Jim...
“But the reaction congressional Democrats have had to Coakley’s loss has...”
– I swallowed a lot of bitter fucking pills this year and all I got was a bunch of idiots on TV.
antishowmanship asked: What the fuck is wrong with the Republican party?
missufartfacenpp-deactivated201 asked: how do things break?
preggersofyore asked: how'd you come up with the nickname Alexander Supertramp?
placesweusedtogo asked: do you like eggnog?
ASK ME QUESTIONS
Just “crowdsourcing” “content-idea generation” y’all.
The Do's and Don'ts of Online Publicity, For Some... →
pareene:
marklisanti:
If you work in online PR, you pretty much need to read this right now and stop wasting everyone’s time.
Thousand times yes! (I DO NOT COVER MUSIC BTW.)
Sigh. I have so many things to say about this, having been on both sides of the equation. But really: the internet ruined everything, for everyone, forever. And also, PR as a college major.
EDIT: One thing to say, is...
“Aid work was like probably 5% of it. Our main reason was just to go and sightsee...”
– My kind of enemy combatants.
JERSEY FRESH
New Jersey Legislature Approves Medical Marijuana Bill
Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, a Democrat from Princeton who sponsored the legislation, said New Jersey’s would be the most restrictive medical marijuana law in the nation because it would permit doctors to prescribe it for only a set list of serious, chronic illnesses. The law would also forbid patients from growing their own marijuana and from...
Treme →
Instruments—jazz—graveyard—a piano—a tuba, or something brass, maybe a big trumpet—old houses. Already a cutting commentary on the state of this crazy place we call ‘America.’
READING UP DATE: IF ON A WINTERS NIGHT A TRAVELER
In the interests of not being a wanker, I present to you my ideas about If on a winter’s night a traveler in the form of easy-to-digest bullet points:
I like books that you could never make a movie out of. I don’t know why—probably because I am some kind of ADD-addled 21st-century digital spastoid—but I have a tendency to spend a lot of time thinking about how a person could make a...
“1379. (09-0026)
Eliminates the Law Allowing Married Couples to Divorce....”
– California: the greatest argument against direct democracy there ever was.
slutsky asked: What are your plans for the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics?
ASK ME A QUESTION
http://celebraterickysargulesh.tumblr.com/ask
AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION WITH A REAL LIFE LAWYER...
'LAWYER': dont act like you'd know an estoppel
'LAWYER': if it landed on your balls
ME: estoppel
ME: in the name of love
'LAWYER': where did u even hear the word
'LAWYER': its one of our private words
'LAWYER': u cant use it
MORE BOOKS: THIS TIME: COSMICOMICS
Catching up on my essential postmodern fiction in the new year, y’all—just finished Cosmicomics.
There’s a lot to love about this book, and, if you’re a certain kind of person, a lot to hate, too. I never thought that the general excellence of the prose and the ideas at play within it was overwhelmed by the more… twee elements. But I can see how someone less moved by...
, MAN
Why are college student protesters so annoying these days? (Were they always annoying, no matter what generation?) Seriously, I’m asking. I know I should feel good about youthful idealism and bright naive hopes that total overhaul is possible, but I don’t.
Gawker wants to know why college protestors are so annoying.
I spent a fair amount of time in college thinking about this and I...
WHITE NOISE
I had never read this before!
I was telling Ari this weekend that I think I probably tend to overrate books that—I don’t know how to put this—put their critical-theoretical concerns on their sleeves, so to speak. Or something. Big obvious “masculine”-type books that are loud and over-proud of being “about” things. You know? Things other than, like, their plots or...