Art&Culture
03/16/08 -
the reel addict - Dear Mr. Ferrell, So let me cut right to the chase: you need to stop making sports movies. After KICKING & SCREAMING, TALLADEGA NIGHTS, BLADES OF GLORY, and now SEMI-PRO, enough is enough. Heck, I might even suggest you steer clear of films that rest solely on making fun particular professions, whether they be sports-related or not (i.e. ZOOLANDER, BEWITCHED, and ANCHORMAN). It’s not that you’re...
03/16/08 -
Project Marmite - Eleven years ago, I arrived in Paris by train with only a backpack and a guidebook. This time, I arrived by rail with a backpack and a guidebook. And, of course, my beautiful wife. Last time was a week, this time it was a weekend. As with so many other vacations I have been on, this one required getting up at stupid o’clock. Once we arrived at London’s Waterloo station the stress decreased,...
03/16/08 -
Lebbeus Woods - One thing for sure, Rem Koolhaas doesn’t hedge his bets. He also knows how to stick his neck out and not lose his head. He has perfected the old debating trick of disarming his critics in advance. Philip Johnson was also a master at this. Before anyone could criticize the pandering commercialism of his office tower designs, he would say, “I’m a whore.” Rem Koolhaas gives this tactic a European...
03/14/08 -
Chromewaves - Ahhh, ATX. Once again I find myself nestled in your soft, tortilla-like bosom. Ever since I decided to attend the 2008 edition of SxSW (which was about two minutes after the 2007 edition ended), I swore that I'd do this year right - badge, downtown hotel, RSVPs to all the day parties......
03/13/08 -
Hip Hop Linguistics - Whenever I think of Del Tha Funky Homosapien, I think of my trip to the University of Michigan. Back in ’97, my homie E and I took a road trip to Ann Arbor to holler at some young ladies that were students there. We got in late Friday night, kicked it at some keg party, and woke up the next morning to attend a football game. A couple hours and a half bottle of snuck-into-the-stadium Captain...
03/13/08 -
The Rock Blogger - I had just recently discovered Vic Chesnutt, the celebrated folk/rock songwriter from Athens Georgia, after learning that A Silver Mt. Zion, one of my favorite post rock bands, lent their orchestral stylings to this harrowing album. Recorded at the now legendary Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Chesnutt’s collaboration, which also includes members of Fugazi and Godspeed You Black Emperor, fits beautifully...
03/13/08 -
Comics Reporter - I bought these two comics at a local video store while waiting to get a prescription filled next door. There were two amusing elements to that purchase. The first was that the manager was inordinately pleased by my sale, as if he were relieved that at least a couple of the books had moved (they were among six or seven comics at the bottom of a rack with some newer manga/anime-looking magazines nearer...
03/13/08 -
The Root - Initially, I avoided The Wire because I wondered if it was truly drama or just TV intent on scaring white folks into voting Republican. Three seasons ago, I gave in to the buzz, and The Wire drew me in. I'm not from Baltimore, and I have never been there, but The Wire felt a lot like watching my old 'hood disintegrate. Race and class were complicated by politics and corruption. Lines between good...
03/12/08 -
Dead Metaphor - Thanks to a couple of fine Aussie gents I was able to lay my hands on this rather large stack of Australian zines a few weeks ago and I’ve finally managed to get through them all. Unlike virtually anywhere else on the planet (as far as I know), Australia seems to have a thriving paper zine culture. The only really good, new-ish music zine from the US that stands up to these at all is Mindless...
03/12/08 -
Wooster Collective - It was about a year ago that JR first told us about his “Women are Heroes" project, a collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières. Taking his trusty 28 millimeter lens, for the last year JR has been traveling to such countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Southern Sudan and Kenya, documenting the lives of a group of incredibly courageous women. ...
03/12/08 -
Tokyo Times - In an effort to promote the publication of his new book on decorative delectables, Japanese sushi chef and show off, Ken Kawasumi, opted to recreate Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with sushi. Which, while far from a facsimile, is still a fair effort considering it’s made of fish....
03/11/08 -
Pitchfork - We already knew that Kelley Deal rocked. The Breeders, her band with sister Kim, has been making some of the coolest music on the planet on and off for years. But did we know that Kelley Deal's bags rocked? No we didn't. Well, apparently they do, and she's writing a whole book about it! Bags That Rock: Knitting on the Road With Kelley Deal will be published by Lark this October. ...
03/11/08 -
Jewcy - Up until last week, the most interesting—you might even say fierce—competition on TV was the battle to win Season 4 of Bravo TV's hit series “Project Runway.” Would it be Christian “Young, Fierce, and Talented” Siriano, Jillian “I Can Make Twizzlers Look Sexy” Lewis, or Rami “Drapery” Kashou? Last Wednesday Christian emerged as the winner, but Ramallah-born Rami was a close...
03/11/08 -
desicritics - Here's a bit of shocking information: remember Aurangzeb? That jolly old Mughal who imprisoned various family members including his dad and his son, killed his brothers and generally went about making himself pleasant to his populace through the means of banning things like music and killing Sikh gurus?...
03/10/08 -
Lucid Culture - By turns fierce, fervent, brilliantly lyrical and subtly witty, this is an album that needed to be made and it’s a good thing Black 47 were the ones to do it. To say that this is an ambitious project is an understatement, but it works, brilliantly because frontman Larry Kirwan’s songs tell the story of the war through the eyes of those stuck over there fighting it: the songs here have a ring of...
03/10/08 -
Asylum - Junot Díaz received such a rapturous reception for his debut collection of stories, Drown, in 1997 that it must have scared the living daylights out of him. How to follow that? In preference to knocking something out in a year or two, he has ruminated, cogitated and gestated for a decade over his first novel....
03/10/08 -
Kotaku - Years ago, tattoos were considered quite the taboo for normal folk. They were usually reserved for the likes of bikers, thugs, sailors and circus sideshow performers. In the last ten to fifteen years, tattooing has become de rigueur amongst the alternative set, slowly spreading its inky wings to a larger part of the general populous....
03/07/08 -
BLDG Blog - As interesting for its form as for its content, the project pictured here is something called "Willa's Wonderland," a one-off urban design comic strip set on the urban fringes of Atlanta by LOOMstudio and Amy Landesberg Architects, in collaboration with artist John Grider and writer Julia Klatt-Singer. I've always thought that comic books – in fact, entire graphic novels – are an underused...
03/07/08 -
Fecal Face - There are artists whom we've loved for so long and yet aren't really up on the site that much. For some reason Maya is one of those artists... It's with great joy that we bring this NYC based artist to the Fecal. She's recently wrapped up a solo show at Fifty24SF here in San Francisco to coincide with a book she just released through Upper Playground and is preparing a show with Chris Duncan and...
03/07/08 -
The Auteur's Notebook - Conjuring a subversive audio/visual atmosphere that is neither dreamy nor exactly expressionistic, Paranoid Park nevertheless gets into the headspace of its young high school skater protagonist and treats with supreme respect what might be best described as a blown mind....
03/06/08 -
Walking Off The Big Apple - The Met arranges the grays thematically and, more or less, chronologically. After stating the thesis, well-made in the presentation of False Start and Jubilee, two paintings with the same subject, one with color and one with gray, the exhibit walks the visitor through the visual language of the artist - the objects (drawer, coat hanger, etc.), American flags in gray, the maps and targets leached of...
03/06/08 -
Artdaily - Opening on March 6, David Zwirner will present a new exhibition by Marcel Dzama. For the last decade, Canadian-born Dzama has shown extensively throughout North America and Europe. Transforming 519 West 19th Street into an odeum of imagination, Dzama’s ambitious fifth solo exhibition at the gallery will include single drawings, composite drawings, costumes, dioramas, and film. ...
03/06/08 -
9513 - Country Music is concerned with topics like life and death, sin and salvation, and the experience of the outsider and the lower classes. It should come as no surprise then that many fine country songs feature prisoners waiting to die. Here are 10 of the finest....
03/05/08 -
Lebbeus Woods - One thing for sure, Rem Koolhaas doesn’t hedge his bets. He also knows how to stick his neck out and not lose his head. He has perfected the old debating trick of disarming his critics in advance. Philip Johnson was also a master at this. Before anyone could criticize the pandering commercialism of his office tower designs, he would say, “I’m a whore.” Rem Koolhaas gives this tactic a European...
03/05/08 -
Keen & Graeve - Gary Gygax, best known as the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and father of roleplaying games, passed away today. He was probably only known to the most extreme geeks by name but you would be hard pressed to find anyone remotely interested in gaming who hasn’t been impacted by Mr. Gygax in some way. While D&D probably remains his largest accomplishment to date, he left his mark on the gaming...
03/05/08 -
Media Loper - This special Leap Day podcast features another vintage interview from the Medialoper vaults. Recorded in 1987, this is one of the more unusual Jonathan Richman interviews you will ever hear. How unusal? Well, I think it’s safe to say that this is probably the first and only time that Jonathan Richman was ever interviewed by a janitor....
03/04/08 -
LHOOQtius ov Blog - Conveniently located less than a half block from the Bowery Mission, ensuring your entrance and exit takes place on litter-strewn streets where you'll be accosted by one or more of the Bowery's colorfully authentic crazy, drunken vagrants, New York's imaginatively named New Museum is the latest in a series of art venues recently built or refurbished in a desperate attempt by the benefactors of...
03/04/08 -
ken levine - So I was walking down the street today…well more like sliding down the street...when I came across a stand for Girl Scout Cookies. Naturally I was delighted—I wait all year for this. So I go up to the stand prepared to buy some “Thin Mints” when I see this: Girl Scout Cookie 100 calorie packs. I was horrified. Girl Scouts shouldn’t know what calories are much less be counting them. Now...
03/04/08 -
Future of Music Coalition - Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor released the band’s (OK, his) new album this week in suitably experimental fashion. Theorizing that fans would be willing to pay extra for additional content, Reznor made the record, Ghosts I-IV, available in several varieties via his website. The basic package is free: nine songs from the album in a DRM-free MP3 format. For $5, fans get the full album...
03/03/08 -
the reel addict - Before I say anything, I do want to emphasize that I mean only the best. My words are not meant to cut. Given the underperformance of your most recent film, SEMI-PRO, at the box office this past weekend, my intentions are not to kick you while you’re down. If anything, it’s to attempt to pick you up off the ground, brush you off, pat you gently on your butt, and send you on your way in a direction...
03/03/08 -
peter and patty - Our lead up to this race was actually a build up for the Napa Valley Marathon. Since the half marathon in November last year we've increased our long run up to 20 miles and our weekly mileage peaked at 32 miles. We've run about 260 miles since then. It wasn't ideal. There was the usual winter sickness. There was travel. There weren't enough mid-week runs because work squeezed them out. But for us...
03/03/08 -
bounceback - And how to include the energy costs that the authors induced during their 100 mile diet? One of the reasons they put forth for attempting a 100 year diet is that it was ecologically unconscionable and wasteful to have fresh food, on average, travel 1500 miles to their plate. Yet, they seems to also log many miles in their car that year driving out to local farms for the small amounts needed to...
03/02/08 -
morley ron travels - Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, and the Grand Canyon National Park form a landmass where the bottom of Bryce forms the top of Zion, which forms the top of the Grand Canyon North Rim, speaking from a geological perspective. From a human perspective this is the most beautiful and impressive series of parks. We have spend 3 or 4 days in each one, and now are on the south rim of the...
03/02/08 -
feministing - It's a question that has haunted the movement for ages. It came up quite a bit for me when I was teaching gender studies at Hunter College. I could see that I was reaching the young women in men in my class--that they were moved to think about race and sex as constructs, sexism in the workplace, rape, sexuality as a spectrum not a binary (in other words, they were really "getting it")--but few of...
03/02/08 -
nz gardener - Last winter a good friend of mine gave me some green walnut liqueur made by his mother. (Actually, I think he gave it to me to try... and then I sort of "borrowed" the rest of the bottle.) Green walnut liqueur is a traditional Italian tipple that tastes like liquid cinnamon and is as black as squid ink. It's unbelievably delicious and, quite frankly, it's miraculous stuff to make. It's hard to...
02/29/08 -
cinematical - 2008 is not this generation's 1968. Let's get that matter straight, right away. Even if we can draw some parallels or see some similarities between now and then, the truth is that it was a very tragic year, and despite our penchant to fetishize the period and wish that our time could be so important and powerful, we need to pray no politicians are assassinated this year (the fact that one particular...
02/29/08 -
pitchfork media - Final Fantasy, meet the grim reality of bureaucratic bullshit. It exists even in Canada, believe it or not, and even within the country's state-subsidized healthcare system that is-- while certainly not without flaws-- still the envy of quite a few folks here in the U.S. Here's the sad tale [via Torontoist]: Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett recently went to renew the card that entitles him to health...
02/29/08 -
parlezmoipress - One of the most interesting things to me about the Misha Defonseca controversy that has occupied most of my blogging for the past week is the incredible role the internet and blogging has played in this story. The original book, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust, was published in 1997 by Mt Ivy Press. At that time the internet was nowhere near as commonly used as it is now and who could have known...
02/28/08 -
drye goods - When I was a kid, I could tell you the brand names of all the cigarettes that were made in North Carolina as well as the companies that produced them and the cities where they were manufactured. I knew that tobacco had been a dominant part of the state’s economy since Reconstruction, and was a major factor in the growth of the state’s largest cities – especially Durham and Winston-Salem,...
02/28/08 -
Stephen Bainbridge - Rachel Ray and reality TV. I’m not sure which is the lesser evil. But if they cancel Alton Brown or Giada De Laurentiis, I’m going to be seriously pissed off. (Of course, I’ve been PO’d at The Food Network since they cancelled David Rosengarten’s Taste program, which was the single best food and wine TV show ever.) On a serious note, I understand that the profit motive is driving the...
02/28/08 -
ken levine - Okay. This is going to be fun. Wild but fun. Not everyone loved NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN even though it won Best Picture. Bob Gale, a screenwriter who I have enormous respect for (among his credits: BACK TO THE FUTURE) is one of those naysayers. He had a few teeny-weenie logic issues and one or two questions. Here's his assessment and I know the comments are going to start flying. I'm just the...
02/27/08 -
Corduroy orange - Free range doesn’t actually mean much of anything. It’s unfortunate, but hens housed in a warehouse, not kept in cages, and given access to the outside through a door at the end of the warehouse that they never travel through are free range. The only difference between cage free eggs and free range eggs is that the cage free hens don’t have the door at the end of the warehouse, but since none...
02/27/08 -
just hungry - Japanese people love eating eggs in many ways. One of the most popular uses for the egg is to make a very thin omelette called usuyaki tamago (literally, thinly cooked egg). Usuyaki tamago is used julienned as a garnish, or as a wrapper for sushi rice and other things....
02/27/08 -
jets on green - Speaking of the Rapson Greenbelt, Inhabitat reports: "Modernist architect Ralph Rapson has managed to reinterpret this 60-year old design with the green panache of a 21st century prefab. The Rapson Greenbelt, an articulate series of prefab dwellings, is derived from a 1945 design called Case Study #4, which debuted back then as part of Arts & Architecture’s Case Study House Program. Today, the...
02/26/08 -
women artists of the world - I believe art has the ability to transform a community by helping to chip away at walls of prejudice and create a climate of acceptance, and women artist, through their artistry and vision of a more peaceful world, are especially suited for this task. To test my convictions, I decided to seek out women artists in a society dramatically different from the USA; I choose Prague, the capital of the...
02/26/08 -
terrierman - I don't breed dogs and am not particularly enammored with those that do, as most have no idea of what they are doing, do not work their dogs at all, and essentially treat the whole thing as a lark -- or a way to move up in the "pecking order" of the show-ring community. Breeding dogs is not a sport, and if you are not working your dogs a lot, please do nottell me you are breeing working dogs or...
02/26/08 -
the book pirate - The first is to look at this book as a coffee table book. It should sit on the table being picked up by friends and family who will flip through it while relaxing on the couch. It would make a good conversation starter. If this is how you view the book then there are so flaws. The first is that it is a small paperback book. Coffee table books are normally comically oversize, glossy, and contain many...
02/26/08 -
A Library By Any Other Name - Ok, I climbed outta my hole this morning and "discovered" cell phone novels...currently a huge hit in Japan...coming to your neighborhood bookstore...? My favorite light-weight news program CBS News Sunday Morning did a piece on the literary format. First off, let me make it very clear...this is adult (very adult) reading entertainment for the most part, so I am not a supporter of its content!...
02/26/08 -
1000 Papercuts - The popular A&E reality series Flip This House shows developers buying properties, fixer-uppers and foreclosures, renovating the property then turning it around for a profit. Tackling one of the most exciting aspects of today's high-stakes real estate market - the transformation of an eyesore into a profit-making beauty - A&E's hour-long "docu-soap" follows the travails of three real-estate...
02/26/08 -
Freehold 2 - Has the art of recitation gone out of vogue? I can remember as a schoolgirl being taught to recite mnemonics that would help with spelling or pronunciation of words newly encountered: “When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking,” we were taught to say. I remember as early as first or second grade, being taught how to make a formal introduction and the class having to practice it...
02/25/08 -
Bridget Johnson - I saw No Country for Old Men in one of the best possible ways: in an old, grand, one-screen theater from the 1940s, the last show of the evening (as it alternated with Citizen Kane), where the owners nuked real butter in the concession-stand microwave to pour over the popcorn. The velvety red seats with wooden armrests (before audiences got spoiled by cup holders), original architecture, and...
02/24/08 -
nedraggett - The first I knew about TVT, aside from the ‘TV’s Greatest Themes’ compilations that made their initial name, came courtesy of a little release of theirs in 1989 called Pretty Hate Machine, the debut album release of another entity equally well known for a three-letter name. I remembered looking at the cover art and all at KLA at UCLA and thinking, “Oh, another thing on Wax Tra…wait, this...
02/24/08 -
repeat the sounding joy - The boys normally are more summer fishers, the kind where you spend all day on the boat. Normally, I don’t go along because it’s a matter of fitting people into boats, and I don’t want to take up space at an event I’m not particularly good at. When it comes to ice fishing, fitting people into boats isn’t so much of an issue, and I’m welcome to come, but it’s cold. Being the big suck...
02/24/08 -
project marmite - As with so many other vacations I have been on, this one required getting up at stupid o’clock. Once we arrived at London’s Waterloo station the stress decreased, though. Traveling by train is much more civilized than air travel. Arriving at the station twenty minutes before travelling is all that is required. A quick check of passport and ticket sees you aboard the train. None of the scrum,...
02/21/08 -
majikthise - David Simon was a police reporter for the real Baltimore Sun before he started producing TV dramas. Simon also wrote two important pieces of long-form reporting from the streets of Baltimore, Homicide and The Corner. The latter, Simon co-wrote with Ed Burns, a retired Baltimore cop who also writes for The Wire. Simon's books challenged many of my preconceptions about the methodology of journalism....
02/21/08 -
Corduroy orange - I was driving on Monday afternoon and had the radio tuned to NPR, where I heard a snippet of an interview Terry Gross was doing with Dan Koeppel, author of a new book called Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. I was entranced and I stopped the car at Barnes & Noble so I could buy the book—the sort of quick purchase that I almost never make, but in this instance was glad that I...
02/21/08 -
Peter Suderman - Lost, like the war, began with a spectacular opening—a $10 million+ shock-and-awe pilot that you couldn't possibly ignore. And as it opened, it was sold on the basis of resolving a few key, central mysteries: What, exactly, is the smoke monster? How are all these dead relatives showing up? Are the survivors connected, and how? And what is the nature and origin of the island? And it was sold on...
02/21/08 -
plain stella jane - My Yahoo mail box was flooded with petition after petition on forcing Wikipedia to remove the pictures of Nabi Muhammad (s.a.w) on its site. At first, I was confused over this barrage of emails, most of it coming from a Pakistani email group. I decided then to just look into the link provided, hoping to be enlightened by the whole dramaIt is a drama. Like seriously, taken upon by our Muslim brothers...
02/21/08 -
wdrye goods - I grew up in North Carolina in the 1950s and ‘60s. By the time I was a teenager, the egregious sins of the tobacco companies and the serious health threats caused by smoking were just starting to come to light. So during my formative years I was steeped in a pro-tobacco culture before the anti-smoking movement really got underway. When I was a kid, I could tell you the brand names of all the...
02/21/08 -
counterfeit chic - So it is that when, as Counterfeit Chic readers will recall, Jessica suspected Chanel of knocking off her wittily inscribed scrimshaw bracelets, she went into action. First came her amusing scrimshaw response, a one-off "Ripped off by Chanel" bracelet. Then she launched a line of less-expensive resin bangles to satisfy her new fans. Now, Stiletto Jungle reports that Jessica has re-created her...
02/20/08 -
roiword - This month the Smurfs are celebrating a 50-year anniversary. The cartoon, which was the brainchild of Pierre Culliford (better known as Peyo), began in 1958 as a comic in the Belgium magazine Le Journal de Spirou. It was adopted into a cartoon in the United Stated in 1981, and inserted into NBC’s Saturday Morning Lineup where it successfully stayed for eight seasons. Internationally, the Smurfs...
02/20/08 -
the plugg - When I was a kid they were called comic books and I was forbidden to read them. They fostered “lazy reading habits” according to my mom and were “a waste of time and money” as far as my dad was concerned. To be fair, my parents were mostly right. Comic art was merely serviceable, if not outright crude, and the story lines were usually juvenile. But, then I was in a book store and saw a copy...
02/20/08 -
grow the hunt - I love archery and it’s my passion. I’m into it heavy and love to help people who want to learn how to shoot or just need a little help tuning their bow to get them back into action. This past weekend I met a young man that is about as enthusiastic about bow hunting as anyone I’ve ever met. He reminds me of myself when I first started shooting a long time ago. Bart bought a great bow two...
02/19/08 -
social consumer - One of the more intriguing requirements of my graduate program is the Montgomery Prize Competition. In essence, the contest tests a student’s ability to construct a lucid argument relaying the importance of a chosen object and it’s appropriateness for museum acquisition and display. Part of the task pairs the speaker (student) with a colleague in conservation, and the two work in tandem to assess...
02/19/08 -
life is a bowl of cherris - After a flight that was delayed for two hours, Celeste and I made our way (kid-free!!!) to Dubai on an airplane that made very strange and worrisome noises. We managed to land without incident, though, and made our way into the "City of Captivating Contrasts" in the United Arab Emirates. Our first stop was to the Mall of the Emirates to Ski Dubai. It's an indoor ski slope inside the mall. As we...
02/19/08 -
samurai frog - I watched Death Proof over the weekend; it was the first time I'd seen it since it was in the theater nearly a year ago. To my surprise, stripped away from the whole Grindhouse concept, it actually turns out to be about something. You wouldn't know, since Tarantino either can't quite handle his film or he's just doing his damnedest to disguise it, but it's more than a genre exercise. It's about...
02/18/08 -
photo allies - I was nervous, even a bit scared. I was with my friend, Regina. We are about the same skill level in surfing, but she surfs these breaks everyday and has been out in 20ft+ waves many times. Without her knowledge and experience, I would never have dared paddle out in those conditions. That day, I decided Sunset Beach was the best place for me. The waves had 12-15ft faces. The conditions were clean,...
02/18/08 -
euros ate my dollars - The unwelcome turn of events on New Year’s Eve was the first (and hopefully last) moment on this trip that I’ve genuinely feared for our safety. It was surreal: imagine riot footage you’ve seen on television, with protesters desperately scattering while being chased by cops wielding weapons. Not a scene I ever saw myself being a part of. When we’d safely made it back to the apartment,...
02/18/08 -
melanie's old country garden - If you've been gardening for many years then you probably have belonged to a gardening club at some time. Before the wonderful world of the internet, a garden club was one of the only ways to share gardening information with others who share the same obsession. In my own case, the gardening craze came upon me fairly early in life. I had a day job chartering vessels for a German steel company that...
02/15/08 -
straight from the farm - I know we all enjoy the coming of spring and the sooner the better, generally speaking. But without the cleansing freeze of a snowy blanket and many bitter cold nights, life cycles are bound to get wacky. For one thing, disease and weeds in the soil will live to see another day, rather than succumbing to the big freeze. This prospect is a daunting one indeed for the small organic farmer. It’s...
02/15/08 -
richard s wheeler - I have regarded The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford as a bellwether film that would tell us much about the status of the traditional western story in this country. The film had everything going for it. The James brothers are heroes unequaled in our folklore. Generations of Americans have absorbed the story of the James gang, and have passed it along to later generations....
02/15/08 -
Whassup in the Milky - One of the most striking sights in the winter sky is the star-studded figure of Orion the Hunter. After the Big Dipper, Orion’s hourglass shape is perhaps the best known star pattern in the night sky. Once learned, it is recognized by most people without difficulty. Because it straddles the celestial equator, the constellation--or some part of it--can be seen from everywhere on the planet. The...
02/15/08 -
East Coast Bias - Dale Earnhardt Jr. no longer drives for the team that bears his father's name. This off-season, he moved from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsports, where he joins new teammates Jeff Gordon and two time defending champ Jimmy Johnson. How will Earnhard's fans react to the move? They've spent years hating Jeff Gordon, how he's Junior's teammate. Also, has Hendrick finally crossed the line of...
02/15/08 -
wolfish musings - Baseball Fans love to argue over who belongs in the Hall of Fame. Every fan has his or her own opinion both on players who are not yet in the Hall and on players who are actually in the Hall. We can spend endless hours arguing over the merits of Phil Rizzutto vs. Pee Wee Reese, whether Don Mattingly or Bert Blyleven really should be inducted or if we should induct players who were undoubtedly great...
02/15/08 -
berlins whimsy - Always willing to try something new, I decided to make some. It's really very simple: toast a layer of sesame seeds in a dry saute pan only until they begin to move around a bit and pop. They burn quickly so keep an eye on them---only toast them to a tan color! Let them cool a bit and place them in a mortar & pestle. (I have a Thai granite mortar & pestle that I use frequently for all sorts of...
02/14/08 -
maki - One of Chevalier's signature songs was Valentine, which is about a girl called Valentine (pronounced val-un-tEEnu, not val-en-TEIN). It's here because, it's one of the most famous dirty songs ever! And yes, breasts feature prominently. It rather proves a pet theory I have, that you can get away with just about anything as long as you say it in French, which makes almost anything sound better. ...
02/14/08 -
dr meta blog - In the Shakespearian universe, villains are regularly described as dogs, but dogs are never, ever, characterized as loyal, or affectionate, or helpful. They're anything but our newspaper-fetching friends. On the contrary, dogs are "base," "unmanner'd," "thievish," "mangy," "hellish," "whoreson," "coward," "rascal," and "bloody." Shakespeare often uses the dysphemism "cur" for dog. Curs are...
02/14/08 -
Bats In My Belfry - I bought a skein on a whim from Angel Yarns earlier this year and was intrigued by it. Soft, slightly fuzzy and The Dawg went mad for it. Keep in mind there is yarn all over the place here and he’s never paid the least bit of attention to any of it but when I got the parcel from Angel Yarns as soon as I opened it, he zoomed in on the skein and tried to run off with it....
02/12/08 -
bnww - Lent is upon us. I’ve been talking a lot lately about the consequences of us being a Protestant vs. a Catholic nation. (At times I’ve even thought I should rename this blog — after Samuel Huntington’s book – ”Who Are We?”) Lent is a ritual that has lost a lot of importance in the Protestant churches, while being observed with fasting until very recent times in the Catholic Church. I...
02/12/08 -
sv moms - Four short weeks ago (although it seems so very long ago in some ways....), I started adventure boot camp. 5:30am, 5 days a week. I'm pretty darn proud of myself because I have only missed one day out of the 20 days and that was because we had my sister-in-law and brother-in-law in town (and were up late partying with them in the hot tub! A totally valid excuse, IMHO). A short list of life boot camp...
02/12/08 -
rabbit boy - Who doesn’t like Steve Martin? I’ve loved him in many of his later period movies (Roxanne, Housesitter and, once upon a time, Three Amigos!) but have never seen The Jerk. (”You’ve never seen The Jerk?!”) He’s very likable, sharp-witted, classy and, I kind of thought Bringing Down The House was funny…I know, I know. When it came to his stand-up comedy, though, I didn’t quite...
02/12/08 -
metro dad - When I speak to my friends, it’s clear that almost all of us were essentially raised by our mothers. Times were different back then. Even if both parents worked full-time, it was mom who always made the decisions. Dad was the working stiff. In my case, my mother was a newly-arrived immigrant. Therefore, I'm not quite sure whether her cruelty stemmed from ignorance of prevailing social norms in...
02/12/08 -
kiss me suzy - I Dr. Z, am also a Grammy voter. Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t really like music. All that singing and dancing, that’s just a bunch of nonsense. There wasn’t of this silly music business back when Paul Brown was coaching. There was nothing but stony silence, interrupted by brief flashes of incredible rage. It was a purer way of doing things. None of this gussied up foolishness with guitars,...
02/12/08 -
chekhovs mistress - Blogs do occupy the space of a pub and they do indeed spurt opinions and sometimes gossip all day – Isn’t that how people get along at a pub? Regulation comes in the form of oblivion; that is to say, from below instead of above. No editors, but if you don’t write well enough you won’t sustain an audience and will disappear (a great number of the oft quoted millions of blogs out there don’t...
02/11/08 -
11d - So, the looming spectre of poverty from divorce has pushed women to enter the workforce in droves. They need the insurance of a paycheck. That sounds about right. However, is full time employment good for all women? Hartford assumes that full time employment makes people happy. Writing legal briefs is better than baking cookies. Full time employment is great for people who do cool jobs, like...
02/11/08 -
Poligazette - Two movies. Both “monster” movies. One has a huge star. Maybe the biggest star in the world. In addition to a megastar in the lead, it has a megastar director. The biggest director in the world. The other movie’s got no one you’ve heard of. The star vehicle had a summer release. Humongous publicity and marketing. The other movie opened toward the end of January, a dead time in...
02/11/08 -
black fives - Today’s blog allows the same self-determination and self-definition independent of economic manipulation or necessity. Think “hip hop industry,” for example. Now think minstrelsy. Think “black face.” Think “rap face.” Are they the same? Who are we, really? Who says so, really? Who is buying the music, really? Who is selling the music, really? Who is making the big money,...
02/09/08 -
DragonCave - After a year of dying, too much of endings and beginnings, a long year of being nothing to myself, after years of dangerous migration across a world eclipsed by memory and exile, after years of wandering homeless in mountains and camping provisionally by oceans, years living nowhere before living too much here, too giving, after months of disintegrations universal and personal, I turn to...
02/09/08 -
Memphis Sport - The monster trucks rolled into the Fed-Ex Forum tonight and put on quite a show. I was there at 5 pm to enjoy the pit party and stayed til the party was over late into the night. The pit party was great. It gave you a chance to see all the Monsters up close, talk to the drivers, and get pictures and autographs. This gave me a chance to get one on one with the drivers and ask many a curious question....
02/09/08 -
New Fashion - All men are little boys when it comes to toggle coats. Grown-up men, even balding men, can sometimes be found in department stores fondling the horn buttons, looking at them the way they might a red sports car or Gisele Bündchen, as the outerwear antidote to a midlife crisis. “This will make me look young and hot again,” such a man may be thinking, “like Ethan Hawke in ‘Dead Poets...
02/07/08 -
the sledge hammer - Valentine’s Day is just around the corner now, and as the thoughts of (some) people turn to the subject of love, the seasonal sections of the stores have filled up with all manner of heart-encrusted merchandise. Back in the old days, it used to be sufficient to put out a few boxes of chocolates and other heart-shaped candies, and a selection of the noncommittal “friend” cards featuring the...
02/07/08 -
justwatch - I mean, if that doesn't ignite something in the cockles of your black shriveled little heart, I don't know what to do with you. I should kick things off by saying it was a pleasant surprise. I was so psyched when the trailers first started popping up, I was actually planning on catching it as soon as it came out, which I never do. Then I got scared off by tepid reviews. Which is just another...
02/07/08 -
louis proyect - At the risk of sounding like a complete philistine, I have to confess that I had more interest in Gustav Klimt as a mover and shaker in fin-de-siècle Vienna than as an artist. When I received a DVD of the 2006 movie “Klimt” from Koch-Lorber, it sat on my desk for a month or two. I finally decided to take a look at it when I discovered that the Neue Galerie, a nearby museum specializing in German...
02/06/08 -
mas folderol - There are other instruments -- I love the violin as an accent, the horns in Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson -- and despite unfamiliarity, I'm sure they've got both their peccadilloes and twelve notes tuned to the same frequencies as the twelve on the piano or guitar. It's what you do with those twelve notes that makes all the difference and it's here that seeing things becomes important. One...
02/06/08 -
Toby's Blog - On January 7th, I left Chicago and the AIA/APA meeting to travel to Guatemala City. I had several goals during my time in Guatemala City. I wanted to learn more about colonial art – the religious and secular art and architecture created by the indigenous people during the Spanish conquest. Roughly, this era dates from 1530-1830. The opportunity to see this art at first hand is imperative to my...
02/06/08 -
policy next - I am nurturing a fervent hope that after many years of a president who spits on the White House lawn, a VP who tells legislators to "(blank) off" on the Senate floor, the success of "Girls Gone Wild", and the introduction of flip-flops in the workplace, that perhaps a vein of civility and class will make a comeback in mainstream American society. Thus, I put together a small series of tips on...
02/05/08 -
heretic - Cambodia is probably the poorest country that I have visited. It’s much more of a backwater than even Afghanistan. Their only industry is the silk trade. Silk crafts such as scarves, table cloths, clothing, etc. Not much else in the way of industry. Handicrafts such as statuary. Precious and semi-precious gems. Tourism must be one of the, if not the, largest industry for Cambodia. Phnom Penh,...
02/05/08 -
dynamic fitness - I've never been a big "workout partner" guy. Whether running or biking or lifting weights or swimming or practicing kata or hitting a heavy bag, working out has always felt like an inherently solitary endeavor to me, ever since my initiate days of pumping concrete-filled "DP" weights in my parents' basement. My few forays into "social" exercise--in triathlon clubs, boxing gyms, and martial arts...
02/05/08 -
mortar bend - The other night, we ordered a pizza from Hot Tomatoes in Williamstown, our favorite non-homemade pizza option. It was a chilly evening, which made the hot pizza box a welcome hand warmer on the short walk from the shop to my car. Cool night, hot pizza, tantalizing aroma. There is something special about going out to pick up a pizza. I remember doing it as a kid, going into the pizzeria with one...
02/04/08 -
themonarchist - How many poor souls made yet another new year's resolution promising themselves they're going to quit smoking? Hah! As a social smoker (and occasional drinker), I intend to carry on handsomely, thank you very much. With a few precautionary safeguards to protect the family from the pungent fumes, and a smoking jacket to keep the ashes and embers off my clothing, my resolution in 2008 is to take up...
02/04/08 -
Inhabitat - The project centers on the “Solar Drop”, an elliptical structure perched over the unused railroad tracks. The exterior is fitted with 250 square meters of solar photovoltaic panels and coated in titanium dioxide (TiO2). The PV system produces on-site electrical energy while the TiO2 coating works with ultraviolet radiation to interact with particulates in the air, break down organics and reduce...
02/04/08 -
anniesbritishblog - I spent the entire weekend trying to recover from my illness, and I am pleased to report that yesterday I was almost back to normal. Today I woke up feeling pretty good and more than ready to get out of my room and back out into the world. I spent the whole morning in the library, catching up on work, and this afternoon I went to Kensington Palace to do some sight-seeing. In case you don't know,...
02/03/08 -
beneath the volcano - It was one of those days when everything seemed to be happening. A deadline for a regular walking feature was looming close and calima and high clouds on Tenerife for the last couple of weeks had ruled out the chance of any decent photos, until yesterday. So the day started with a three hour hike along an old merchant’s trail on the island’s northern coast. Trouble was Spanish TV was screening...
02/03/08 -
Edwardian Promenade - To the Edwardians, everything had its place, and most importantly, everyone. For a society now transformed by the influx of wealth-sans-birth, a set rules were created to show who was in, and keep others out. Prior to the era, Britain’s ruling class of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was composed of scarcely more than three or four hundred families, whose wealth and power stemmed...
02/03/08 -
TheoFantastique - As I was reading last night a chapter on horror in the 1960s was of special interest to me as this was the decade in which I was born, and thus it was formative in my encounter with horror in the very early 1970s. At one point Skal references "Monster Culture, a phenomenon of horror-movie hoopla that began in the late fifties and continued into the mid-sixties." An interesting aspect of Skal's...
02/02/08 -
The Box Office Junk - He's always smiled a little too wide. He's always laughed a little too hard. And that's why we liked him. But when Tom Cruise acts overly cheery (and entirely arrogant) while talking about his cult religion of scientology, he comes off like a maniac. The clip above has been spreading around the internet like crazy over the past few days. Have you seen this video? Very creepy. But...
02/02/08 -
World Gone Mad - Brazil, with one of the largest Catholic populations in the world, has told that church to keep its nose out of government policy. Yeah! The church tried to sue The Brazilian city of Recife for it’s plans to distribute “morning after pills” to carnival goers this year. The Catholic Church lawsuit claimed the initiative promoted sex and provided “abortions.” (Can you imagine! Those...
02/02/08 -
megan mcardle - There's an interesting debate raging in this thread between the veg*ns and the meat-eaters. I find it interesting, because on the one hand, there are veg*ns claiming that veg*ns don't prosletyze, despite the presence of people doing just that upthread. On the other hand, what the veg*ns are talking about is a very real phenomenon: meat-eaters who are angry at you for not eating meat. Most...
01/31/08 -
expedient means - In case you are unfamiliar, the Music Genome Project is an attempt to organize music into over 400 attributes via a complex mathematical algorithm. They have developed musical genes, each corresponding to a specific musical characteristic, then applied the math to tens of thousands of songs. What you are left with is a genetic map of the “body” of music. It ignores lyrical content, band members,...
01/31/08 -
claudia rosett - This would all be great if UN peacekeeping actually produced peace. But the illusion that the UN is a grand force for good in this world deserves to be catalogued somewhere between World’s Most Amazing Scams and Believe It-Or-Not Best-in-Special-Effects. The reality of today’s UN is more like a cross between “Animal House” (the movie, with John Belushi) and “Animal Farm” (the book, by...
01/31/08 -
Self Sufficient Urbanite - I started by disassembling the drawer and laying out the wood so I could visualize how I wanted to lay out the project. Because of the shape of a brownstone, I decided to go with something approximately the size of a large shoe box, with two bird apartments on top of each other. I cut the wood to size, but quickly found that the wood was dense and brittle. I understand that this owes to the wood...
01/30/08 -
bicycle design - As most regular readers know, I am an industrial designer, but I do not work in the bicycle industry. As much as I enjoy writing about bikes a couple hours a week, my real job obviously has to take precedence over the blog, and any other bike related reading, when I get really busy. For the last week and a half, I was at a show where some of my new designs were released . Everything went well, but...
01/30/08 -
opera chic - Tinkering only slightly with his trademark production of Tosca (aka the oldskool-y one with Callas) , and with a lot changes in the singers stage directions, Franco Zeffirelli's new Tosca has won raves by the Roman audience and very flattering reviews in the Italian press. Now he's sometimes cranky and his 2006 Aida at la Scala was an example of how, given a big budget, Frengo can totally lose his...
01/30/08 -
Intern Life - Once is a film I watched yesterday, as my girlfriend lay around sick after she got home from work. I wanted to watch 12:08 East Of Bucharest, but she was not awake or feeling well enough to pay attention to subtitles. Which was fine. Once was in English. Only, once it began, I still needed to put on subtitles until I got used to the accents and the Irish brogue. Since most of the movie is music,...
01/30/08 -
A Guy Named Dave - I knew exactly where to go to be alone and think. I had been there just before Christmas and so I knew it would be a quiet place. I got on the tube but happened to miss my stop. Guess I didn’t need to go anywhere to get lost in thought after all. The London rain was nice and cold and only made better by the fact that I didn’t have my warm coat any longer-- it went home with my sister a few days...
01/30/08 -
Ari's Planet - In the morning, on my search for a hotel room, I saw a dog and a cow who were friends. Both were warming up in the sun. Cows basically stand around in the sun for the first few hours in the morning to warm up. The dog rubbed heads with the cow, then sat down next to it. Both cast long shadows on the white wall behind them. I crossed the river and looked for Hotel Minerwa, which also had been...
01/30/08 -
Photo Luminations - What is photography? A great question to fill many idle hours! You tell me you that you, as a new and enthusiastic photographer, are confused. Is it photography only if one uses "traditional" tools like film and wet chemistry in a darkroom? Is it photography when one uses digital cameras and media? Is it photography when one uses Photoshop not only to process an image, but to combine images or...
01/29/08 -
Loquacious D - I’m not gonna lie. I hate winter. I haaaate it. Despite having a January birthday, and being Canadian-born and bred. For years I’ve been convinced I’m not genetically predisposed to this sort of climate. (Yes, even though I live in Toronto, where it isn’t nearly as cold as some other parts of the country, it’s still too cold for me.) I complain about the cold, whinge about the wind,...