March 2009
63 posts
link: itunes free download of the week →
john cage - 4’33”.
hell yeah.
(from vulture)
ways in which "hamlet" has not been staged
instead of prince of denmark, hamlet is actually prince, the musical artist. his “madness” mirrors that artist’s own decent into a label war and irrelevance in the 1990s, and when he says “thinkest thou alexander looked this way over the earth?” he is in fact referring to his triumphant super bowl performance in 2007. the text remains unchanged. color scheme:...
“there is no doubt whatever about the influence of architecture and structure...”
– winston churchill
The New York Times folds its city section.
negevrockcity:
RIP. This is terrible news.
brianvan:
rach:
Bummer dudes.
Blargh. NYTimes, u r ded to me.
I can’t remember if it was negev rock city in the first place who posted this washington post article on why local journalism dying out is a terrible thing, but it’s certainly applicable (and harrowing) reading today.
this is trouble in a lot of ways.
on the darkest of literary arts
ahm: also intend to buy some lacan... with great, great trepidation
cec: well, at least it's not derrida yet
ahm: that's what I was hoping to get actually
cec: oh noooo
ahm: but my used shop didn't have it
ahm: I'm improving myself
cec: you are dabbling in dark arts
cec: soon you will be deconstructing everything
cec: a short stack of pancakes will come out to you at ihop
cec: and you will take it apart bit by bit and shout seemingly meaningless structural questions at the pieces
cec: then you will drink the syrup and leave
cec: without paying
ahm: one can only hope...
link: an excellent motivator →
Behind on that research project? Here’s an idea: Set deadlines and pledge to donate money to charity if you miss them. Better yet, a charity you detest.
courtesy of icb, a colleague back at the ol’ ivory tower.
“Can we make any given individual taller or stronger or wiser than other men, or...”
– william hazlitt
mission of burma - “einstein’s...
link: one-stop hub for avant-garde jazz →
this is an incredible idea, and the material that’s coming out of their studio is excellent.
there’s an abandoned firehouse for lease a few blocks from where I live in dc. maybe I should give this a try.
cage & aviary - television train single, 2007...
non-fiction: on missing china
a lot of people ask me why I miss china. it’s a legitimate question. I don’t miss the fear, or the loneliness. I especially don’t miss the grotesque expatriates, hands-down the worst part of my experience in shanghai - the clubbing monsters who made obsequious gestures to the culture but spent their evenings drunk at a mall on huaihai lu or nanjing xi lu or the bund or...
lowlife:
Too bad when I get to New York the city will be a bankrupt Gerald Ford-era dystopia.
THANKS MTA.
Actually, this means the Lower East Side and the E Village might even be fun again.
glenn o’brien, talking about said era for the outstanding documentary about his public access show tv party:
It wasn’t hard to make a living as a freelance writer then. My apartment on St....
excerpt: the problem-solvers
the cast =
jimmy, 25, white male, queens native, bad posture, lanky, rare possessor of endangered loud new yorker vocal patterns.
harper, 29, black male, midwestern transplant, tall, well-built, quiet.
jimmy: harper. seriously. what is your problem? why are you not hitting that? she's begging you for it.
harper: I don't see it.
jimmy: look. last time we were out, right? she comes in. now, I know, she hates me. she wouldn't give me the fucking time of day. but man, when you walked in the room, she was all over your shit.
harper: (after a pause) see, I think I would have noticed if she was all over my shit.
jimmy: she was desperate for your primal love, harper. she came up to you and was like "excuse me, harper, if you wouldn't mind, please align your penile unit with my vaginal unit and commence the thrusting."
harper: I would definitely remember that.
jimmy: what the fuck, harper? this is not the first time we've had this conversation.
harper: we have this conversation every time we go out.
jimmy: (considering this) lots of girls, harper, they want you to take them home, start grinding all up in their business.
harper: yeah, sure.
jimmy: no, I mean, hey, come on, this girl, this time, you know it's true, it's happened before, there's... there's a pattern here.
harper: it's not true. besides, she's not my type.
jimmy: what? if that's not your type, what is your type?
harper: my girlfriend.
jimmy: (considering this) well, okay. I mean, I didn't know you were... I mean, otherwise engaged, whatever. (another pause.) is it some kind of long-distance thing? does she live around here? or...
harper: yeah, no, long-distance.
jimmy: how long you been going out with her?
harper: three years.
jimmy: wow. you see her on weekends or what?
harper: yeah.
jimmy: so what you're saying is that she'd never know if you rode all up on this other chick.
harper: ...what?
jimmy: I'm just trying to help you out, here, man! maximize your options!
“I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.”
– the duke of gloucester, “king lear,” act III, scene vii
in which I am reminded that I am often too eager...
cm: you look naked [in your gchat picture]!
cec: it happens
cec: I used to have a picture of me with my bare shoulders showing when I wrote for [a political blog], since then I've tried to sneak a few around
cec: a thumbing-of-nose/ironic endorsement of the vanity/false honesty of the internet or something like that
cm: oh i see
cm: its much more complex than i had imagined
cm: you could have just said you were wearing pants!
re: Question [on the popularity of Dan Deacon]
lowlife:
I’ve never been a fan of Dan Deacon’s music. Can someone explain his appeal to me?
hipster faux populism. after the high-water mark of elitism receded under accusations that perhaps people just weren’t “getting” things just like elements of the prog movement never “got” punk, “brainy” but simple dance music rushed in to fill the void, under the...
in which I am called on my inadvertent propagation...
ps: he [shakespeare] was not the best of us, nor the worst of us
ps: he is of us
cec: that better not be some harold bloom shit
cec: or ben jonson, for that matter
ps: haha, naw, that is some [ps] shit
cec: acceptable then because you're not a scholar
ps: god there are so many things that sentence is true for
Ryan Adams fans
vela:
Confession: I can’t name even one of his songs. My only comprehension about the guy is what I’ve read from other Tumblrs. I’ve rushed through listening to a few of his songs a couple of years ago. I think one of the reasons why I didn’t give him another listen was because I dated this guy who was so damn persistent on making me like RA after I politely said I didn’t. I wasn’t about to...
on the benefits of the previous generation's...
dad: (i.e., my father) so you saw. your mother's on facebook.
cec: yeah. I know. I friended you when you got on it, I have to friend her.
dad: I already did.
cec: I can limit my profile pretty well, though, no worries.
dad: (after a good five seconds of laughing) well, you know, I never see anything too offensive on... well, I mean... I shouldn't say that, I never go on there.
cec: I know. thanks.
current reading in our bathroom
esopus magazine #11 (fall 2008)
what terrorists want by louise richardson
opium magazine #7
men’s health (march 2009)
a biography of marcel duchamp by ades, cox and hopkins
GQ (april 2009)
gluten-free baking with the culinary institute of america (a gift - thanks, gto!)
you could try and guess which of these are my roommate’s and which’re mine, but you’d...
“Everybody likes to think they did it all by themselves. I don’t believe in...”
– howard dean
peterfeld:
Gang of Four, “Damaged Goods.” From the...
on the truth
cec: washington is boring
cec: I want to go back to shanghai more and more
cec: I know I've just gotta get through this semester and then I can study things I'm actually interested in, but it's just grueling at this point
ahm: law!!!
ahm: it's the TRUTH
on remedies provided by fictions, legal and...
professor: to whom or what could the family sell this property to in order to effectively abandon the property?
--silence--
professor: I'll give you a hint. it's a fictional entity.
cec: the easter bunny.
bc: a terminator.
eb: (to the professor) a corporation?
professor: right!
cec: not that far off.
on the future judgment of humanity
aw: fucking a they played golf on the fucking moon
cec: one day a spacefaring civilization will come to our burned-out shell of a planet
cec: land on our moon, drawn by the tiny structure that was the eagle's launching legs
cec: decipher its message
cec: and think "truly, this civilization reached its peak under the great leader richard nixon"
link: joe "the" biden, live on tape: "gimme a... →
we already have excellent audio of our president cursing up a blue streak. now america’s favorite vice president joins the fray? hurray! plus, it’s apparently not used perjoratively, as opposed to when the last vice president encouraged senator patrick leahy to “perform an action upon himself which was anatomically impossible.”
next time, joe, go to a recording studio and...
caesar: the ides of march are come.
soothsayer: ay, caesar, but not gone.
link: hearth gods no. 20 (3/14/09) →
for those of you in new york city this evening, I’d highly recommend michael yates crowley’s bi-monthly reading series at jimmy’s (43 e 7th b/t 2nd & 3rd aves). program’s at 9 pm and admission is free, though you should buy a delicious specialty beer to support jimmy’s.
I can’t say I don’t have a horse in this race: I’m the program...
On Jon Stewart and Pallative Populism
Since the internet’s going to be abuzz this morning praising Jon Stewart for crushing Jim Cramer on “The Daily Show,” I thought now might be a good time to recall the last time Stewart did something similar: “Crossfire,” 2004.
You probably remember the outcome of that debacle: the show was canceled; gutted, ostensibly, by Stewart’s razor-sharp critique of its...
“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;...”
– antonio, “the merchant of venice,” act I, scene I.
non-fiction: my empty notebooks
“Do you ever finish a notebook? Or go back and read them?” My father gives me an incredulous look as he finishes the questions. We are standing together on a train, he in his suit, me in my windbreaker and jeans. “Sure,” I say, scratching down his words, but that is not strictly true. They stand like unfinished buildings in developing countries, surrounded by scaffolds yet...
link: civil war brews in journalism school →
as an editor at the nyt (who was also my news & feature writing professor) once told me: “if you want to be a journalist, go to law school.”
jimmy soul - “if you wanna be happy”...
fiction: urbane planning
Never trust a city poet. Their minds run too fast and they parse every phrase, looking for some semblance of connection. But a city defies all these easily-bared assertions, particularly if the city is itself dying. Its poets either withdraw into the reductive technical tools of generalized hopes of enhancement or, worse, struggle to catch and contain the entire essence of the undertaking, and one...
“mr. cogito on a set topic: friends...
fiction: selective omission
In the obituary business, the facts you don’t incorporate make all the difference. It was late in the decade when I re-wrote his, right when his wife died, on the (correct) hunch that he would not long survive her. I didn’t include the fact that the couple lived more like steel contractors than lovers, greeting one another with curt recitations of the others’ name before settling...
