November 2009
45 posts
Another story I wrote is going to be in this...
zach baron and nick sylvester invite you to celebrate * * * * * * * PERINEUM NUMBER SEVEN * * * * * * * featuring new pieces by max morton, clancy martin, michael robbins, chris ryan, thessaly laforce, adam moerder, rachel khong, liz phang, leon neyfakh, a guy who swears he’s pat smear from germs, adriane quinlan, francis cash, anselm shepard, and us too * * * * * * * *...
“She glimpsed, from the corner of her eye, Harry bending to kiss the beringed claw of an ancient lady in black, almost hidden within the wings of an enormous brocaded chair.” - Deborah Eisenberg
Spent the afternoon thinking about what this one teensy moment of a woman in black is doing in this giddy story, as compared to the two black-robed knitting women in Heart of Darkness, as compared to the...
Found, this a.m., in the comments section of the...
“Your wonderfully eloquent letter reminded me of Deborah Eisenberg’s comment in her introduction to Katherine Mansfield’s story “The Daughters of The Late Colonel.” I don’t know a better description of the mystery of reading so forgive me for quoting this at length. Eisenberg describes her early encounters with Mansfield - her parents owned a copy of a selection of stories published in 1930...
Zac Efron has a plaque on the outside of a... →
Terri Gross interviews Wes Anderson on Fantastic... →
Someone mashed up my favorite song w/ Lil Wayne.... →
In the last episode of “Jon and Kate Plus 8″ (TLC, 9 p.m.), Kate takes the brood to a dairy farm for a lesson in cow-milking and Jon takes them to a firehouse. Then the two of them talk about the “recent life events” that have made this the last episode of “Jon and Kate Plus 8.” - NYT
Just thinking about the relationship between teaching children to get their own milk and shoving them off into...
The enfeebling comma:
And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a...
AdrianeQ: Amazement at how blatantly sexist Scrubs... →
How many old white men edit Reuters?
This headline about the world’s foremost female architect is so blatantly sexist I almost laughed:
Feisty architect Hadid challenges Rome skyline
ROME (Reuters Life!) - Iraq’s Zaha Hadid, one of the world’s most acclaimed architects, has given this ancient city that normally shuns modern intrusions another controversial building — a new museum dedicated to contemporary...
“ I picture the Pussycat Dolls as sort of desperation made flesh”
– Listening Station: The Pussycat Dolls Try To Hitch Their Wagon To The Oscar Train
If I believe in Spiritual Moments, it was turning off the Hudson river jogging path today at a random intersection — I was bored — and the Townsend song “Let My Love Open the Door” coming on shuffle just when I, confused, came upon the glowing pit that was the World Trade Center, and could find no way to go around it.
Great First Line for a Memoir From the Future*
During the recession I was making out okay working out on Broadway, where me and a few kids were selling Obama condoms. They were condoms with the face of the president on them, and all the wealthy Russian tourists with bags from GUESS would ask to take pictures with us, and then buy a pack, as though in compliance for services rendered…
*Inspired by my jaunt to the bank during work. What...
What I Thought About Now That They're Banning Raw...
It was Christmas day and Lane and I were in Biloxi, Mississipi. We had woken up in our car in the parking lot of a WalMart, with sand blowing in off the asphalt from the beaches we hadn’t been to yet, and we had gone for breakfast to a casino — a big, empty, ghostly place; one of the few that remained despite the hurricane. Feeling cheery and proud of ourselves, we ordered two bloody...
Nothing better than Twilight fan art →
Today, in front of the office coffee-maker, I zoned out and thought, inexplicably, of Xian — of being 22 and walking to the streets where my guidebook said all of the dried-fruit stands were. I thought of how I hadn’t learned anything since then, when I walked down the stone streets and ate the dried-fruit from the little baskets. Then, maybe, I had seen it all more hungrily —...
I thought I was too broke to pay someone else to cut my hair, but it turns out that the HAIR ACADEMY near my work is only $20 dollars! Maybe I can even afford to have someone dye it jet black again!
And how great would it be if they remade the police academy movies about hair?
Paula Fox is Courtney Love's Grandmother! And...
The daughter of Cuban-born screenwriter Elsie Fox (nee “De Sola”)[2] and novelist Paul Hervey Fox, she was given up for adoption as an infant and was passed among various relatives and friends. In her 2001 memoir Borrowed Finery, Fox recalled that at her first meeting with her mother, at age five, “I sensed that if she could have hidden the act she would have killed me.” A...
You can even play Whackbat! →
Linksplodge!
Two of the better things I’ve written in the past six months “dropped” today. One is serious, one is silly!
1. The Year of Men: An Expat in China, for Elizabeth’s Candor Magazine*
2. My review love letter to Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox**
*Excerpt:
There was a poet I knew in Hong Kong, and within an hour or so of meeting him, drinking outside a 7-11, I...
Tra la la
Last night I saw a screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox. It is far and away the best movie I’ve seen in theatres in a year or so—back to whenever There Will be Blood came out. So today, this is the person profiled in the NYT’s Moment Blog that I’ve decided to be jealous of:
Name: Octavia Peissel
Age: 25
Occupation: Assistant to Wes Anderson
Home base: Montmartre, Paris
THE ONE ISSUE THAT FEMINISM HAS NEVER ADDRESSED
“Our research shows that you can tell when a man is looking for a partner by the number of new underpants they buy for themselves,” said Debenhams Head of Men’s Accessories Buying, Rob Faucherand.
“If he buys more than 31 pairs every year then he’s either still trying desperately to impress the woman in his life — or else she’s not The One.”
The...
I keep forgetting to go to Performa '09. These are... →
yay - new david simon:
… The New Orleans Times-Picayune goes behind the scenes of “Treme,” a coming HBO series set in post-Katrina Louisiana and created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer of “The Wire.” - nyt
Miley Cyrus is Dumber Than You Ever Imagined
This gets complicated. Bear with it. Basically, Miley Cyrus is uncultured like bad yogurt.
In her hit single “Party in the U.S.A.,” Miley Cyrus famously claims that a Jay-Z song saved her life…But which one of Hov’s hits is she singing about? Turns out, she doesn’t know. Because she’s never actually heard a Jay-Z song…On Cyrus’ MileyWorld Web...
Gloria Vanderbilt went on WNYC and talked about her Jungian analysis of her own life and taxidermizing Anderson Cooper’s snake:
After noticing a snake in an image, an audience member asked Vanderbilt about her first encounter with one. The artist related it all back to the childhood pet of her son Anderson Cooper (yes, that Anderson Cooper ). She had the snake taxidermied after its death...
November →
but seriously, who wants this roof? →
room in my apartment open. email me!
jedcrockr:
my bedroom in my current apartment will be available december 1st.
get at me.
carsick cars / p.k. 14 / xiao he →
The largest online video library of African Film... →
Best story ever:
A U2 show marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has run into controversy - after organisers built a wall around the venue. A two metre barrier has been erected around the Brandenburg gate to keep out people without tickets for the show.—BBC
• “While it’s tempting to call them ‘baristi’ because of the Italian roots, the plural of ‘barista’ is ‘journalism majors’.”
—Fake AP Stylebook Twitter feed. (via Guardian)
Can I just say I frickin' Love Henry Allen?
First: http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/14004.html
He’s the voice in my head I hear when I write anything. “Quinlan! You’ve gotta learn to cut the Henry James!”
Keepin’ Style real since Vietnam.
oooooooooooooooooooooh →
