apologies as to the delay in updating. I’ve uprooted myself from washington and am currently in a suburban staging area, working on a grad school project and waiting to move my boxes into new york to start my new job. regular updating will recommence then. sorry.
May 20, 2009, 11:56pm Comments
May 17, 2009, 3:03pm Comments
» link: the secret memoir of zhao ziyang, former communist party chief of china
After I came to Beijing, my guiding principle on economic policy was not the single-minded pursuit of production figures, nor the pace of economic development, but rather finding a way for the Chinese people to receive concrete returns on their labor. That was my starting point. Growth rates of 2 to 3 percent would have been considered fantastic for advanced capitalist nations, but while our economy grew at a rate of 10 percent, our people’s living standards had not improved.
May 14, 2009, 11:39am Comments
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
paul mccartney - “friends to go”
from the chaos and creation in the backyard LP, 2005
this man. we hate this man, this man who wrote the catchiest of melodies, who is so relentlessly upbeat that his grandest follies (off the ground? pipes of peace?) are at worst trifles: james paul mccartney jr., neither the first nor the last king of pop, but probably, empirically-speaking, the greatest.
nah, I can’t stay mad at paul mccartney. he’s the greatest, especially when someone shoves him out of his comfort zone. too bad he’s so rich he never needs to leave his comfort zone, ever.
May 12, 2009, 1:24pm Comments
» link: woody allen's "brief yet helpful guide to civil disobedience"
one of my all-time favorite non-narrative pieces. originally published in the new york times, it was collected in “without feathers,” which also has two of allen’s plays in it and is worth every penny.
Miscellaneous methods of Civil Disobedience:
Standing in front of City Hall and chanting the word “pudding” until one’s demands are met.
Tying up traffic by leading a flock of sheep into the shopping area.
Phoning members of “the establishment” and singing “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” into the phone.
Dressing as a policeman and then skipping.
Pretending to be an artichoke but punching people as they pass.
May 11, 2009, 8:31pm Comments
May 11, 2009, 2:44pm Comments
“amazing muscles, or current occupant.” a friend’s door, manhattan, may 2009
May 10, 2009, 5:33pm Comments
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
bud powell - “tea for two”
10” - 1950
in midtown on a bright spring day; still cold, but not the bitter chill of january and february. hobnobbing with the jet-setting crowd, laughing as we push through the throngs of tourists - don’t they know how to walk any faster? - we’re playing hooky, we’re catching a matinee (student rush, always the best), we’re sitting in hotel lounges and not ordering anything; the high life by proximity. we watch children stare up at the buildings and live vicariously through their wonder.
grab a drink at the campell apartment (make sure we’re not wearing sneakers!) at 5:30, right as the wealthy get ready to catch the trains out to westchester and fairfield. the prices are outrageous, of course, but damn the expense, we have jobs - let’s mortgage the future to pay for the present, like they did. you put on your glasses and do your best dorothy parker, I scowl and knock back my rum with a few bon mots and I’m every liberal artist’s dream of hemingway. the night air turns nippy but we walk back crosstown to catch our subway, you, me and bud powell, coy interlopers for a day.
late that night, I dream of the first times I can remember seeing the city, pressed up against the window panes of the train as it crossed the bridge. A stray thought: “my children will never see the world trade center,” and when I wake up, I am crying. you are still asleep, and our stereo has quietly moved back to bill evans. I shut it off, wipe my face and crawl back into bed, and my dreams bring me back out into manhattan.
May 08, 2009, 12:53pm Comments
