Handsome
I’ve been thinking a lot about hands in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, specifically the father’s, who, I think the first time I noticed it, was holding his newborn son and all you could see was his rigidity, in constant effort to control the baby’s movements.
Over time you see the father holding or hugging or directing his sons — even the hand on the back of a neck as a form of guidance or control — how that can be beautiful and calming in one moment and controlling and dictatorial in another.
But the scene that stood out for me was the one contrary to his holding of the child. It was after he lost his temper at the dinner table, after his anger broke through to his son, and his wife was so upset she struck out in an effort to turn her rage to blindness.
It wasn’t so much about his anger, then, or an attempt to control her character. It was only about his response, his ability to acknowledge her, even if he couldn’t articulate an apology for the anger he had caused, in the way he accepted it by holding her.
And, I think, he for the first time showed — regardless of what you thought of him throughout the film — an ability to turn the desire to control into a humility to hold.
I said
I’ve been mad at you, but I still wish you were around. I guess that’s what love is.
Vote which one is a weiner.
You know, for kids!
Still looking for somewhere to send the kids this summer? Try Tea Party summer camp.
The organization, which falls under the tea party umbrella, hopes to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to principles that include “America is good,” “I believe in God,” and “I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.”
(via TPM)
We should sue
Coming Soon: The Moogerfooger MF-108M Cluster Flux™
from the comments
Fact: Bald eagles live in Alaska
Fact: Sarah Palin is from Alaska
Fact: I heard she might have killed a guy
Fact: Bald eagles have tried to kill postal customers
Fact: The Post Office is an example of big government
Fact: Sarah Palin hates big government
Fact: Birds are smart and easily trained
a screenshot from the documentary
What the hell Nintendo
“I think my heart is more open to all interactions with other people,” one volunteer reported
Researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of psilocybin, a chemical found in some psychedelic mushrooms, that’s credited with inducing transcendental states. Now, they say, they’ve zeroed in on the perfect dosage level to produce transformative mystical and spiritual experiences that offer long-lasting life-changing benefits, while carrying little risk of negative reactions.
Looks like this may finally be gaining traction.
quote out of context
The upshot is that talking is poised to become a major way we produce written words, and the shift will produce weird new forms of composition and thinking.
(via @tcarmody)
after farting
And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.
headline of the day
Bald eagles attack post office customers
spam name
Mr. Banki Moon.
things I heard at A-Kon, day three
Don’t they all look so creepy?
Hey, trolls! Happy 6/12!
Do you know where there is a family restaurant?
Sleeping in the forest like a mother fucker
Man, that white girl ass to me grotesque, brother
He’s one of the only people who likes girls who’s ever been to our house
Yeah, pulling Fritos out of your pants is quite a feat
from the comments
I think the suit is fine, he just had an ill-fitting body.
IT Crowd Bloopers and Outtakes
Amanda sent me this link to an IT Crowd blooper reel, and I just had a chance to watch it this evening. Man, I miss that show.
Richard Ayoade to Chris O’Dowd after O’Dowd is asked by the director to change his facial expression:
Pull your second face…. You know, the back up one you have.
from the moderated comments
It was fucking retarded! Sooo slow, I thought I would really fall asleep in there. How stoned should one be to like this movie?
I was one of the people who laughed at it when the “screensaver” part began. And I’m telling ya, if my mom wasn’t there, I would have scream smth at a screen as well.
Ow, and btw, I was at a cinema in Moscow, Russia and all the audience was silently staring at the screen all-movie long. Weird, huh? I thought, they were the sheep.
The Pope Walks into a Bar
An Australian morning show anchor tells the Dalai Lama the joke about the Dalai Lama walking into a pizza shop.
Update: Romney jokes that a waitress grabbed his butt.
Protein Synthesis Dance
Thanks to Paul B., who says, “Don’t ask me about the biology. And remember, 1971 really occurred in the late ’60s. Downside: No music credits.”
this is a metaphor for something
Mike Lee on Victimhood
This is not going to be a good essay. This is going to be a terrible essay, which you should not read, for two reasons.
It deserves to be read anyway.
How to land your kid in therapy
MFT intern Lori Gottlieb writes:
Dan Kindlon, a child psychologist and lecturer at Harvard, warns against what he calls our “discomfort with discomfort” in his book Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age. If kids can’t experience painful feelings, Kindlon told me when I called him not long ago, they won’t develop “psychological immunity.”
“It’s like the way our body’s immune system develops,” he explained. “You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won’t know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle. I know parents who call up the school to complain if their kid doesn’t get to be in the school play or make the cut for the baseball team. I know of one kid who said that he didn’t like another kid in the carpool, so instead of having their child learn to tolerate the other kid, they offered to drive him to school themselves. By the time they’re teenagers, they have no experience with hardship. Civilization is about adapting to less-than-perfect situations, yet parents often have this instantaneous reaction to unpleasantness, which is ‘I can fix this.’”
Kindlon also observed that because we tend to have fewer kids than past generations of parents did, each becomes more precious. So we demand more from them—more companionship, more achievement, more happiness. Which is where the line between selflessness (making our kids happy) and selfishness (making ourselves happy) becomes especially thin.
Neil Patrick Harris’ 2011 Tony Awards Opening Number
In case you missed it (go mavs?).
Post-Artifact Books and Publishing
Go the fuck to sleep: an audio book
Remember the children’s book? Werner Herzog will be doing the audio version:
Mansbach said that “the best possible person in the world” was narrating the audiobook: Herzog. The film director’s recording will be unveiled at an event to launch the book, illustrated by Ricardo Cortes for small American publisher Akashic Books, at the New York Public Library.
