February 2012
15 posts
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“At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol.
At 13, he lit out for the Amazon...”
– John Fairfax, Who Rowed Across Oceans, Dies at 74 - NYTimes.com
Despite being flattened and edited into a NY Times obituary, John Fairfax’s life seems uncontainable. I can smell the gunpowder, the jungle at night, and the salt of the ocean. Untether me from objects and obligations. I want to...
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“I had sensed that extracting this industrial miracle food of yesteryear from the...”
– The Believer - Atomic Bread Baking at Home
Simple sliced white bread—a yeasty tabula rasa—as the rosetta stone for 20th century American culture. Germophobia, xenophobia, red scare and our current orthorexia are all projected onto its uniform whiteness. (Is it too much to read into...
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“High-end consumer culture in Japan survived 20 years of economic decline and has...”
– Made Better in Japan - WSJ.com
Extreme perfectionism in Japan that springs superior clones of foreign cultural vestiges—an ur-object created in reverse. Put this way, Japan seems like a paradise of perfect clothes, food and cocktails. However, there is something in that quest for ultimate...
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“Basically, there’s a service charge, so everyone gets an hourly rate, which is...”
– Workplace Confidential - The Per Se Waiter — New York Magazine
A tiny morsel of high-end dining reality. Reading about the $4000 tip reminded me, somehow, of a scene in Judy Blume’s Then Again Maybe I Won’t wherein the protagonist leaves a bunch of pennies at the bottom of an...
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“I also miss the pit in my stomach, the uneasiness that comes with the ascent. As...”
– My Last Day: Le Bernardin’s Pastry Chef Reflects on 8 Long Years - Michael Laiskonis - Health - The Atlantic
I never thought about equating the queasy, floating guts feeling of ascending physically, as in a fast elevator, to ascending figuratively through the ranks in one’s career....
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“So I worked there, and I also discovered porn there, unfortunately. I really...”
– Louis CK Q&A
Louis C.K. dissected. Pedestrian things like how KFC made its fried chicken becomes fascinating when Louis talks about his days working as a KFC chicken fryer guy.
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Watch165 million year old love song. Scientists used a very detailed fossil of a Jurassic cricket to recreate its mating call.
Does it sound more forlorn 165 million years later, with no one to answer?
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“A week later, the raft was stolen, and I managed to track down the people who...”
– Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview | Politics News | Rolling Stone
Of everything in this lengthy Julian Assange, this story stood out to me as a strangely poetic interlude.
What the whole Assange/Manning/Wikileaks affaire impresses upon me is that hindsight isn’t 20/20. Sometimes,...
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“Money can be like an energy, fueled by the desire to make a mark in the world,...”
– On Louis CK, the Future of Media, and How We Feel About Money and Corporations - By Reihan Salam - The Agenda - National Review Online
Oh, intentionality! National Review tries to cast Louis CK as a conservative because he said money can be like an “energy” fueled by creativity and...
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“The copyrightability of designs has been a hot topic of late in courts. Could...”
– Judge Declares Batmobile Is Subject to Copyright - Hollywood Reporter
I’m so sorry, you cannot be Batman. Copyright firmly keeps Batman in the realm of fiction as DC Comics’ intellectual property. Which leads me to wonder, will there be an open source Creative Commons superhero anytime...
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Cronenberg
lareviewofbooks:
JONATHAN PENNER David Cronenberg © Ian Welch, Welchtoons.com
David Cronenberg arrived on the world’s cinema screens with a viscous splash. His unmistakable Cartesian horror films Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, and Existenz were extraordinary meditations on making the mental physical, and made Cronenberg one of the most admired auteurs of the late seventies and...
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“Room 237,” the first full-length documentary by the director Rodney Ascher,...”
– ‘Room 237,’ Documentary With Theories About ‘The Shining’ - NYTimes.com
You should read into things, but then again, you shouldn’t. These theories about the true meaning of The Shining is buh-nanas, don’t you think? Even taken at face value, the Kubrick classic offers so much to chew...
January 2012
18 posts
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“For the most part, it hasn’t affected it much. There have been a couple of...”
– The Vegan Experience, Day 13: The Halfway Mark | Serious Eats
I’ve been following J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s “The Vegan Experience” series closely, as it mirrors my own experience changing my diet. Whatever your eating persuasion, do go read his writing. It’s a really...
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“It comes in voters’ own words, often registered onto the clipboards of...”
– Project Dreamcatcher: How cutting-edge text analytics can help the Obama campaign determine voters’ hopes and fears. - Slate Magazine
A crazy ambitious data-mining project for the Obama reelection campaign, which they call “microlistening.” Can algorithms read into voters’ stories...
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“We have one main ski mask. We have a couple decent backup masks, but the one you...”
– Jon Glaser | TV | Interview | The A.V. Club
You haven’t watched Delocated? Why not?!?!?! Jon Glaser is absolutely an underrated comedy genius.
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“you see Smith spitting, cursing, and telling an early audience: “Don’t be afraid...”
– The Mother Courage of Rock by Luc Sante | The New York Review of Books
An overview of Patti Smith’s career as poet, musician and irresistible animal of a woman.
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The Best Time I Doped by Accident
This morning, in the shower, I thought about my easy progress coming back to running since re-injuring my back in November. I began running again early last week. Half mile at first, but quickly adding up to 2 miles, my leg muscles feeling so supple I declared to my chiropractor that I was running even better than before my original back injury that put me out.
Then, I remembered I forgot to take...
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“For starters, whatever camera phone she was using had a piercing, distracting...”
– Patton Oswalt | IT WAS THAT GODDAMNED EYE-ROLL
This incident is getting some attention. Never understood camera phone people at shows, comedy or music, who are hell bent on preserving rather than living the moment. Does a performance not feel real unless you see a shittily lit version of it on your...
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“According to my pitch, as the final show wrapped up, the real Late Night set...”
– How to Kill a Joke (and Your Boss) - Culture - GOOD
Is it too late for me to become a comedy writer, where you can render your boss as a horse masturbator and pitch it to his face?
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WatchDestroyer covering New Order “Leave Me Alone.” This filled a hole in my soul. A likeness I never noticed between them.
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WatchBefore taking on the stage name Lana Del Rey, she was just “Lizzie Grant.”
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WatchPortlandia Season 2 Episode 1 available online! Here! Now! Wow!
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““We’ve always been about social and about connection,” Ms. Anderson said. “And,...”
– Tostitos’ New Spokesman Is the Product Itself - NYTimes.com
This whole entire article is rendered in creepy, skeevy marketing newspeak. It’s fun to read, but also makes you want to strangle and kill. When did humankind get so weird and disingenuous?
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“You see them all across the country, in shopping malls and street corners,...”
– Bankrupt Chain Restaurants Are Still Holding On - NYTimes.com
The business of feeding America. Time to stay home and cook instead of feeding these zombies.
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December 2011
22 posts
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“My mother died of esophageal cancer six years ago. It was her great regret that...”
– The Fat Trap - NYTimes.com
Saddest two sentences I read in a long while.
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“Miller can’t tell you how to eliminate cramps altogether—there isn’t enough...”
– Fitness Myths – From Stretching to Hydration and Electrolytes | Injury Prevention | OutsideOnline.com
Pickle juice is such an esoteric fluid to test in a fitness study, no?
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“Armisen and Brownstein text each other every night before bed. Brownstein says...”
– Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen in “Portlandia” : The New Yorker
Goodness, how I love this. This is exactly what I want: my other half of a comedy duo. Just laffs, no couples obligation.
This Carrie Brownstein profile in the New Yorker is worth reading even if romantic non-romance...
“These monogamy chemicals combine the fundamental, biological drive to mate with...”
– http://brinkmag.org/?p=14
Love and heartbreak as brain chemistry. Some day, it may be possible for heartbreak to be treated medically. I need my medicine.
Best way to push through insomnia, I heard, was to pretend to be asleep. I lay in bed, breathing heavily as if in deep sleep, trying to will my bones to sink, muscles to unwrap. Floating in the hum of the gas heater are urgent paw-strikes coming up the stairs. Then, a thud atop the bed. Wet nose examining my pretend-sleeping face. A tiny tongue thirstily lapping water from the mug I placed on the...
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“Octopuses die after mating and laying eggs, but first they go senile, acting...”
– http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474/
I seem to be shriveling up and dying. Now, I think I shouldn’t have.
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“I thought to say something along the lines—the air of Byron, the steel pen of...”
– News Desk: Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011 : The New Yorker
Eulogy. Whose will you write? Who will write yours?
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“Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after...”
– Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater
Go go go pay your $5 for the Louis standup special. It’s so worth it. This human being, Louis C.K., is so magical he freaks me the fuck out.
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““Since all other birds with penises have lymphatic erection mechanisms, I...”
– BBC Nature - Bloodless erections for big birds, say researchers
It’s strange that the ostrich would have a blood vascular system, but it’s also strange that you think about ostrich and other bird penises as your job.
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“I feel like i have a front seat to a really cool… thing. I don’t...”
– Hi I’m Louis C.K. and this is a thing : IAmA
You guys, go read this Louis C.K. Q&A. He’s just so…I love and respect him so much my chest feels like bursting. He’s like the Fugazi of standup comedy with his new $5 comedy special download/streaming.
I can’t...
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“Yoko called May one day and told her she was thinking of taking John back. May...”
– In Which John Lennon Is Split In Two - Home - This Recording
John Lennon’s wilderness years with May Pang fascinates me. This Recording has a great summary of this Yoko-John-May pseudo-triangle. Whatever happened between 1973 and 1975, all I know is when I saw Yoko at Arthurfest and she...
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“And there are times when a justice protests that he or she knows nothing about...”
– On top court: Can’t spell justice without ‘I’ – USATODAY.com
As always, don’t agree with Scalia but he’s strangely the funniest Justice on the Supreme Court.
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“The smell was bad, and several of us gagged. In front of the stage, along with a...”
– In the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Guyana After the Jonestown Massacre | Culture News | Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone made available online its original 1979 reportage of the aftermath at Jonestown. Over 30 years later, immediacy of the prose is startling.
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““I think we need a new vocabulary, because [now] everybody wants to be an...”
– John Waters discusses Occupy Wall Street, becoming a capitalist, and The Wire - Slate Magazine
Always delightful, always provocative John Waters!
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“Also in deference to David, there was no mention of margarine, even though all...”
– Importing Italian Cuisine - NYTimes.com
The labored birth of food appreciation that degenerated into today’s despicable food snobbery. On editing Elizabeth David’s Italian Cooking for an American audience of the 1950s. A must read if you think you’re a food snob or a word snob.
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