bookshelves
Stapler of the Week
Parrot Speed Fastener Corp ‘BABE’ chrome finish with corrosion (via Monoscope)
Real Housewives Make Me Question My Morality
“The Real Housewives of New York” premieres tonight, and once again I’m left wondering many things: Which city’s show do I like the most? (“Atlanta” had me at “jury” for “jewelry,” but makes me feel like the same icky guilt I used to have watching “Flava of Love,” and though I used to think the original “Orange County” series was the gold standard of terrible rich people on television, this last season has been really boring. So that leaves New Yawk and its braying, preening society climbers. Huzzah!) Does Bravo mean to present these horrible women and their lifestyles as “aspirational” or as a cruel joke that no one but the audience is in on? Am I part of the crime for watching?
I feel the same disorientation when watching MTV’s “My Super-Sweet 16″–am I meant to smugly mock the over-the-top vulgarity and greed or wish wish wish I could afford my own pink Ferrrari driven to me on a rose-petal-strewn red carpet while Miley Cyrus sings and I’m gowned in a custom harem-girl outfit, eating a piece of $10,000 cake and whining that I should have gotten a Maserati?
My friends think these shows are presented to us with a very large wink, that the viewers are supposed to be appalled at the gluttony and spending, even if the “stars” are completely unaware that they’re being mocked. But the New York Times clearly does not buy the “it’s just a big joke on these people” explanation:
Money is the only currency: the status markers understood by a huge faction of the privileged class figure not at all in the “Real Housewives” universe. Here there is no premium placed on education or refined tastes, and a businesswoman is someone who makes cuff bracelets at her kitchen table. The whole enterprise, like so much else on Bravo, the “affluencer” network, feels like a moldy leftover from the pre-Obama age; the currently fashionable values — humility, intelligence, restraint, style — are eclipsed by money-grubbing witlessness and big-carbon-footprint living.
“The Real Housewives of New York City” continues to feel especially yucky in this regard — and fraudulently offensive to a certain kind of New Yorker who would never actually envy someone like Alex.
I don’t know if I agree. Bravo is savvy enough to know that its audience likes to watch (and judge) the freaks in their freak show while perhaps feeling a tinge of jealousy that so much money is being wasted by people with no taste. It’s a guilty pleasure, and Bravo knows from guilty pleasures. At least I think they do.
At any rate, I totally have a love/hate relationship with these trainwrecks and I CAN’T STOP WATCHING. I just can’t!
dear clusterflock
What is your preferred schedule? Meaning, if you had your choice, how would you organize your sleep / wake routine?
Manhattan
Without the cinematography and the city, Woody Allen’s Manhattan would be?
there’s still work to be done
Following a link from kottke.org on David Bayles and Ted Orland’s Art & Fear, this short review.
I agree that this is a very clearly, respectfully, and unpretentiously written book that can serve as a companion to any artist. Making art can otherwise be a lonely, daunting undertaking. My concern for readers of this book, as with readers of The Artist’s Way, is that it can be a pacifier. If it gets you to your work sooner and with greater courage and confidence, all the better. But if it substitutes for the process itself — makes you feel better but does not get you “working” — then it’s something to pick up but let go of. There’s a growing genre of books like this out there, some (such as this one) better than others. The sage advice gets recycled, as do the homilies from famous people. And again, that’s fine, as long as they get us to a place where we are working with more energy and joy, but perhaps not so fine if the internal process becomes more interesting than the art-making. Did you paint today? No. But I reread passages of Art & Fear…
The death of news
What is really threatened by the decline of newspapers and the related rise of online media is reporting — on-the-ground reporting by trained journalists who know the subject, have developed sources on all sides, strive for objectivity and are working with editors who check their facts, steer them in the right direction and are a further check against unwarranted assumptions, sloppy thinking and reporting, and conscious or unconscious bias.
If newspapers die, so does reporting. That’s because the majority of reporting originates at newspapers. Online journalism is essentially parasitic. Like most TV news, it derives or follows up on stories that first appeared in print. Former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll has estimated that 80 percent of all online news originates in print. As a longtime editor of an online journal who has taken part in hundreds of editorial meetings in which story ideas are generated from pieces that appeared in print, that figure strikes me as low
Cottage Cheese
fake foreigner drummer steals corvette
Authorities said a transient man convinced a woman that he was the drummer for the rock band Foreigner, stole her Corvette and then crashed it. Police said a 48-year-old man befriended the woman at a Tampa hotel, claiming to be Cory James, the drummer for Foreigner.
Money shot.
The band has had more than a half dozen drummers over the years, none of whom were named Cory James.
peeonastick.com
It’s not what you think it is.
neighbor’s window
Were it not for the branches that extend beyond the edge of her house, I might think that the tree is inside her upstairs bathroom.
(This is Pittsburgh drawing 100, by the way. Thank you so much for inviting me to this gathering.)
The way he dresses
Yeah, definitely, the way he dresses.
(Via)
Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough
Michael Jackson has finally been forced to put a bunch of his belongings from his Neverland ranch up for auction to pay off some of his creditors. Although it’s all rather sad, the auction catalog is worth a look.
Here are a few of my favorite things. If I had a few extra thousand dollars hidden in my sparkly sock drawer, I might pick up one of these specialty items:
The King of Fop
This might be nice in my living room. It would go nicely with my ermine Corgi coverlet. Also, humbleness is a good quality to immortalize, especially in these troubled times.
Peter Pan Golf Cart
Now this is both economical (great gas mileage!) AND inspirational (what mature adult doesn’t fantasize about being Peter Pan while driving around the golf course?). A sound investment any way you look at it.
Hands In Glove
I like that E.T. is in the same pantheon as Lincoln. And of course Michael himself.
There is something for a variety of budgets in this auction. There’s a rhinestone crown brooch for an estimated $80-100, a fire engine tea kettle for $100-200, and of course a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves figure set in a glass case for $1,000-1,500. Perfect for the little boy in everyone’s life!
A look
at Paris long ago, based on a very old photograph.
Chris Rock on the Black Experience
via Five Whys
Those Piratebay.org fellows are smart
Torrentfreak’s coverage puts a human face on the characters (via):
A member of the media then posed this question: “Do you feel like defendants, or defenders of technology?”
Peter responded: “I think it is something in between actually. We have a personal liability for this, we have a personal risk which has some impact on our feelings. But definitely it’s not defending the technology, it’s more like defending the idea of the technology and that’s probably the most important thing in this case – the political aspect of letting the technology be free and not controlled by an entity which doesn’t like technology.”
Gottfrid added that the prosecutor of the case seems to focus a lot on the individuals in the case. “At least one fourth of the evidence is character assassination of the people involved,” he said.
Peter went on to explain that when he was arrested the police didn’t immediately start questioning him about site, rather his motivation. “When I had my only hearing with the police the first question was if I wanted to explain my ideology and my politics, not if I was involved in The Pirate Bay, which kind of sets the tone for all of this.”
Ants and Superorganisms
To pick a single paragraph of this New York Review of Books review of The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson as representative, would be impossible. If you have the time for a longish read — on ant societies, evolution, and the ways in which the pieces of a social order can mimic parts of a larger organism (among a dozen other things) — you won’t be disappointed.
Okay, I can’t help myself.
In explaining what a superorganism is, Hölldobler and Wilson draw up a useful set of “functional parallels” between an organism (such as ourselves) and the superorganism that is an ant colony. The individual ants, they say, function like cells in our body, an observation that’s given more piquancy when we realize that, like many of our cells, individual ants are extremely short-lived. Depending upon the species, between 1 and 10 percent of the entire worker population of a colony dies each day, and in some species nearly half of the ants that forage outside the nest die daily. The specialized ant castes—such as workers, soldiers, and queens—correspond, they say, to our organs; and the queen ant, which in some instances never moves, but which can lay twenty eggs every minute for all of her decade-long life, is the equivalent of our gonads.
Los Alamos Limo
One of three modified Packards that transferred scientists to Los Alamos has been found and will be restored to its original condition.
It is no wonder that when the need for a vehicle to transport scientists working on the Manhattan Project from the railway station in Lamy to Los Alamos and the Trinity base camp, a custom built Packard limo met those requirements. Of the 16,600 1941 Packard Clippers produced, the Fitzjohn Coach Company converted 100 into custom limos. The National Atomic Museum (NAM) has the opportunity to restore this limo used by the Manhattan Project and only one of three of these vehicles currently known to exist.
QuadCamera
A neat little iPhone app (via).
Fashion Week: As Luck Would Have It
The past thirty days have not been my best. It’s hard to focus on my work, or even on the possible reasons why I might not be able to focus on my work. Everything I eat tastes like aspirin and chalk. I can’t digest food or important information.
What news anchors do during commercial breaks
Via Amateur Gourmet’s Twitter feed.
I want to check on Mike Dresser
Mike packed and moved to New York recently…. Mike, are you well? Are you getting enough to eat? Are you happy? Lonely? Is there anything you need? Questions (and answers, hopefully) in comments.
the uncanny valley of movie greatness
In response to my brief review of the documentary Zoo Dave Vogt asks:
Deron, regarding your comment, “I thought they got really close, which is maybe why I ended up slightly disappointed,” is there a sort of uncanny valley for great film making? Would you say that a film that is almost great is less enjoyable than a film which is merely good, or is it just more disappointing?
For context, a description of the uncanny valley.
Mori’s hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
I know this isn’t a discussion of white towels but thoughts?
Xe
Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning its tarnished brand name as it tries to shake a reputation battered by oft-criticized work in Iraq, renaming its family of two dozen businesses under the name Xe.
Is nothing sacred? “Blackwater” was so deliciously evil. So much for truth in advertising.
“I’m a Loser”
Well, sure, or I wouldn’t be posting on Valentine’s Day night, eh? But actually I’m talking about the Beatles’ song. I remember hearing this live TV performance on the radio the next day.
