♥ still-life with internet ♥

secondopiano: A Literary Map of Manhattan (NYT)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:01:53 -0700

A Literary Map of Manhattan (NYT)

What’s compelling about this recitation of Franklin...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:00:49 -0700

What’s compelling about this recitation of Franklin O’Hara’s poem is Jon Hamm’s wounded, despairing tone. The score is utterly haunting as well. 8/16 can’t come soon enough.

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

- excerpt from Frank O’Hara’s poem Mayakovsky.

desaturated: The Girlfriend Experience(the tagline!) (via...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:00:49 -0700

desaturated:

The Girlfriend Experience
(the tagline!)

(via adyeu)

"John Grisham wrote A Time to Kill for 20 minutes every morning on his subway ride in to work…..."

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:00:48 -0700

“John Grisham wrote A Time to Kill for 20 minutes every morning on his subway ride in to work… He ran his own law firm. What can you do in 20 minutes?”

- dchly

"Good writing consists of using ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results."

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:00:49 -0700

“Good writing consists of using ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results.”

- James Michener, author of numerous novels including Tales of the South Pacific and Hawaii

Bb 2.0 - YouTube collaborative music / spoken word project

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:00:52 -0700

Bb 2.0 - YouTube collaborative music / spoken word project

At the 'End' of Revolutionary Road

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:51 -0700

What I was struck by, as I raced to finish Richard Yates’ book in time for the movie’s arrival (current Netflix queue position #1), was the intense self consciousness of main characters Frank and April Wheeler. The degree to which we, as the readers, sit in their minds and eavesdrop on their affectations is nearly maddening. For example, here is Frank simply walking across a room:

… Walking toward or away from her across a restaurant floor, for example, he remembered always to do it in the old “terrifically sexy” way, and when they walked together he fell into another old habit of holding his head unnaturally erect and carrying his inside shoulder an inch or two higher than the other, to give himself more loftiness from where she clung at his arm. When he lit a cigarette in the dark he was careful to arrange his features in a viril frown before striking and cupping the flame (he knew, from having practiced this at the mirror of a blacked-out bathroom years ago, that it made a swift, intensely dramatic portrait), and he paid scrupulous attention to endless details: keeping his voice low and resonant, keeping his hair brushed and his bitten fingernails out of sight; being always the first one athletically up and out of bed in the morning, so that she might never see his face lying swollen and helpless in sleep.

The main characters are essentially paralyzed by their own dreams — of who they should be, could be, ought to be. I found this to be incredibly interesting. Here’s another example of April in the act of hugging her husband:

… There was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of the effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications.

Beyond the self consciousness of Yates’ characters is their role-playing (and their arguing, two points that make Revolutionary Road and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf an excellent double-feature). Not only are vague daydreams getting them through the day, so too are the roles they play within them.

This reminds me of one of my favorite maxims — “When walking into a room, act as if you’re walking into a room” — by Barney’s window dresser Simon Doonan.

In other words, when you’re about to enter the room of, say, a party, you should be acutely aware that you are, in fact, entering the room of a party - and you should act accordingly. Hold your head up. Arc the fingers and flash your cigarette. Blink at the right people as you pass. Smile wide enough for your white teeth to glint beneath the lights. Pretend not to notice how fabulous you are.

Doonan’s is a finely wrought truism that describes a very specific way of viewing yourself from a third person point-of-view. It’s also a maddening way to exist, as though you’re being pressed in from all sides.

"To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for..."

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:00:50 -0700

“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”

- Alain de Bottom, as snobby as ever

The Art of the Tweet

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:00:52 -0700

The Art of the Tweet:

I like what Rands has to say about brevity and the question-behind-the-question on Twitter (not “what,” but “why”).

I don’t want just the content; I want to know what you think about it. Retweeting an article? Great, what’s the one line you love? Think that lolcat is funny? Me too, but why? BEFORE: NYTimes Graphic: Home Prices in Selected Cities: http://bit.ly/4CjL (@khoi) AFTER: Ouch. Phoenix: http://bit.ly/4CjL (@khoi) … In Twitter, you follow people, not content.

Reminds me of a WSJ article that stressed the following point about “Tweets as literature” — Good writing, no matter where it occurs, raises questions; it doesn’t answer them. You’re left wanting more. As for myself, I’ve started a variety of Twitter accounts (@greaterthan, @lunging), only to veer from intense dislike to intense respect for the format. I’m never comfortable, though. — and one more point, for all of those who defend “Twitter as art” and point to the multitude of writers, who, were they not dead, would be writing on Twitter (Hemingway, Dorothy Parker), it’s important to similarly point out the many writers who most certainly would not be writing on Twitter (DFW, Doystoevsky).

Cops: Woman Cut Baby From Pregnant Friend's Womb

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:00:49 -0700

Cops: Woman Cut Baby From Pregnant Friend's Womb:

What’s even crazier about this entire mess is that it’s a fairly common occurrence:

The story is not the first of its kind. About this time last year, a Pennsylvania woman was charged with murder after she cut a baby from another’s woman’s body and tried to pass it off as her own. The mother died. In 2004, a Missouri woman strangled another woman with a rope and then used a kitchen knife to cut a baby girl from her womb. She was arrested one day later after showing the child off as her own.

"I’ll consider my life a success when I can wake up on a Monday and have no idea what day it..."

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:00:47 -0700

“I’ll consider my life a success when I can wake up on a Monday and have no idea what day it is.”

- sacca

The score is brilliant too. moviesinframes: Buffalo 66, 1998...

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:07:57 -0700

The score is brilliant too.

moviesinframes:

Buffalo 66, 1998 (dir. Vincent Gallo)

By ancientforever

hrrrthrrr: By Tom Gabor

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:58:04 -0700

hrrrthrrr:

By Tom Gabor

"Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One..."

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:06:45 -0700

“Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One without the other leaves you short of elegant. And sometimes the “unusual simplicity” isn’t about what’s there, it’s about what isn’t. At first glance, elegant things seem to be missing something.”

- Matthew E. May, author of In Pursuit of Elegance, in an interview

someecards made the headlines today for closing a Series A round...

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:06:46 -0700

someecards made the headlines today for closing a Series A round of funding.

this gives me hope that non-suck e-cards might actually make it.

7 Common Characteristics of Prolific People

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:06:00 -0700

from the always listy ZenHabits, my favorite 3 of the 7 habits of the highly prolific:

Highly prolific people tend to:
#1 Be firmly settled in their creative identities: Prolific artists don’t question their artistic identities. They own the title of artist, writer, musician, etc. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important. Prolific people aren’t shy about what they do, or about their love of art. When they have corporate jobs they tend to view themselves as writers with desk jobs rather than a corporate employees who also write.

#3 Get “adopted” early by mentors or sponsors: Prolific artists tend to have received significant artistic mentorships at the beginning of their creative careers.

#4 Get an early start: Prolific artists tend of have developed the rapid production habit early in their careers. They tend to have developed the production habit very shortly after beginning their artistic endeavors.

"Films are composed of ‘meanwhile’s, not ‘and then’s."

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:06:45 -0700

“Films are composed of ‘meanwhile’s, not ‘and then’s.”

- Bill Chambers, in his review of the Once Upon a Time in America Special Edition DVD, summing up the magic behind cinematic narratives quite nicely

What happens when adults catch teenagers "sexting" photos of each other?

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:06:46 -0700

What happens when adults catch teenagers "sexting" photos of each other?:

Human behavior is merging with technology in fascinating — and sometimes perverted — ways. I keep thinking of that scene from American Beauty where Jane disrobes for Ricky’s handheld.

In a 2008 TRU survey of 1,280 teenagers and young adults (all of whom had volunteered to participate), 20 percent of the teenagers and 33 percent of the young adults said they had transmitted nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves, a phenomenon the media have dubbed “peer-to-peer porn” or “sexting.” This practice might be considered relatively harmless, the 21st-century version of “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” if it weren’t for federal and state laws that deal harshly with those who traffic in child pornography.

If Objects Could Talk They’d Say, “SendMeHome.”

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:06:44 -0700

If Objects Could Talk They’d Say, “SendMeHome.” :

SendMeHome lets you register any object with a unique code, which is printed out on a small sticker that you place on the object. The object can be anything from your wallet or iPhone to a beloved frying pan. Ostensibly, the purpose of doing this is that if you should ever lose the object, anyone who finds it can contact you through SendMeHome. By entering the code on the sticker, they can learn anything you’ve decided to share about yourself or the object, and can contact you anonymously. SendMeHome offers this service for free, but charges $3.99 for a pack of stickers. (It doesn’t get involved in actually getting your item back to you). The lost-and-found feature is the only practical reason you would use the service. But once you’ve attached a sticker to a favorite object and registered it on the site, there are other things you can do with it. You can tell a story about the object, pass it around, or put it on a mission… For instance, here is the story of a disposable camera that was left on a bench in LA with instructions for passersby to take photo with it.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes by the grandmaster short story writer Alice Munro - “Objects have lives too, you know. They bear witness.”

Alan Clarke’s proposed posters for the London 2012...

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:06:47 -0700

Alan Clarke’s proposed posters for the London 2012 Olympics are some of the most striking interpretations of athletics I’ve ever seen. They’re both abstract and highly specific.

Which one is your favorite?

(via kottke)