An Interview with Gary Lutz
The Fiddleback: You are often noted for your ability to create marvelous first sentences. What, in your mind, makes for a good inaugural sentence?
GL: It has to sound as if it has never been said before and could have been said only by whoever is saying it. It has to sound as if there is nothing else for that person to do with what’s left of life except getting that one thing finally said.
I love Gary Lutz. I love first sentences.
(thanks, Derek)
Let’s buy two big industrial windmills
Bad Lip Reading takes music videos and does a terrible job lip reading the lyrics and a wonderful job writing music. I have enjoyed each of their songs more than the original.
For comparison, the original video
spam name
Willia Breann.
quote out of context
Hi Ernest
I took a look at the ad you wrote: FOR SALE: BABY SHOES. NEVER WORN.
I have a few issues with it.
dear clusterflock
Each decade’s most ridiculous song.
from the comments
Dang. Where was I when I needed me?
Imagine “a ball of Gruyere colliding into a ball of cheddar”
Point:
The Earth and moon have two Trojan points, one leading ahead of the moon, known as the L-4 point of the system, and one trailing behind, its L-5 point.
The researchers computed that this second moon could have stayed at a Trojan point for tens of millions of years. Eventually, however, this Trojan moon’s orbit would have destabilized once our moon’s orbit expanded far enough away from Earth.
The resulting collision would have been relatively slow at 4,500 to 6,700 miles per hour (7,200 to 10,800 kph), leading its matter to splatter itself across our moon as a thick extra layer of solid crust tens of miles thick instead of forming a crater.
Counterpoint:
A number of explanations have been proposed for the far side’s highlands, including one suggesting that gravitational forces were the culprits rather than an impact from Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues. Nimmo said that for now there is not enough data to say which of the proposals offers the best explanation for this lunar contrast. “As further spacecraft data and, hopefully, lunar samples are obtained, which of these two hypotheses is more nearly correct will become clear,” Nimmo said in a statement.
headline of the day, II
Swedish man caught trying to split atoms at home
Who does Google think you are?
So it thinks I’m a Comic-reading Political Humor enthusiast who listens to Classic Rock & Oldies, watches Online Video, likes Space Technology, has a Developer Job, uses Mac OS, and plays Video Games.
Which is completely wrong. I strongly dislike space technology.
via Amanda Wixted
from the comments
You like to drive this car while wearing only a pair of compression shorts underneath a tattered pair of jogging shorts, Henry Rollins-style. You scream into the strip mall parking lot and enter the dry-cleaners with your left arm extended straight in front of you, giving the bird. You leave the same way only now you’re also carrying your sweaters and oxfords on hangers and wrapped in plastic.
Hollywood Villains and America’s Societal Fears
It’s not a comprehensive essay by any means, but the trends of Hollywood’s villain ethnicity and motivations as a reflection of American societal fears is fairly fascinating.
America’s collective unconscious has always been reflected and amplified by the portrayal of Hollywood villains. If you want to understand the big picture broad strokes of America, there’s no better place to look than Hollywood’s action genre fare.
That’s the case starting with Birth of a Nation, which is considered by many to be the first modern cinematic masterpiece. That 1915 movie by D.W. Griffith, also known as The Clansman, featured an uncontrollable ex-slave, who’s essentially portrayed as an animal on the prowl for a piece of white female flesh.
Strangely, it is the Ku Klux Klan that are the heroes of that picture.
quote out of context
That’s the trouble with democracy, huh? The wrong people are always voting.
quote out of context
“What is quite clear in this animal is that it is hardwired to find the poison, it is hardwired to chew it and it is hardwired to apply it to the small area of hairs,” Kingdon said.
headline of the day
Idaho police tell man to stop wearing bunny suit
from the comments
Reggie Craft made his own lunch box. It sports a padlock and speakers.
tweet of the day
Adrian Searle talks about Lucian Freud’s Standing by the Rags
(via the browser)
spam name
Reggie Craft.
How do I feel about this car?
illustration out of context
Best Coast – Our Deal
The new Drew Barrymore directed video of the Best Coast song “Our Deal” is pretty great.
Featuring Chloe Moretz, Alia Shawkat, Donald Glover and more kids you might recognize.
Matt Damon on Education Policy
Huh.
‘The whole argument started when Stephen Hawking attempted to describe what happens to matter during its lifetime in a black hole’
The proponents of string theory seem to think they can provide a more elegant description of the Universe by adding additional dimensions. But some other theoreticians think they’ve found a way to view the Universe as having one less dimension. The work sprung out of a long argument with Stephen Hawking about the nature of black holes, which was eventually solved by the realization that the event horizon could act as a hologram, preserving information about the material that’s gotten sucked inside. The same sort of math, it turns out, can actually describe any point in the Universe, meaning that the entire content Universe can be viewed as a giant hologram, one that resides on the surface of whatever two-dimensional shape will enclose it.
Bellflower
If you see one movie this year that incorporates a love story, a bromance, flame throwers, an impending apocalypse, and the most beautiful cinematography you’ve seen since Malick, make it Bellflower.
This is what they mean when they say independent film. I saw Bellflower three days ago, and then again last night at the LA premiere, where the flame-throwing muscle car Medusa was in attendance, and most of the cast and crew were as well. The feature film, which cost $17,000 all told, was shot over the course of several years by a group of friends, without permits or permission. They shot digital utilizing three cameras that were hand-built for the project, including two that have tilt-shift components built into them. They submitted to one festival, Sundance, on a whim (and because they only had money for one festival) and the film sold quickly. The script (written by director/star/DIY king of the world Evan Glodell) is really funny, gorgeous doesn’t even begin to describe the cinematography, and the effects are entirely practical. There isn’t a thing about this movie that I didn’t like and this is probably my #1 movie of 2011.
“I literally went into Home Depot and $60 later, I walked out with a functioning flamethrower,” he said. But the more elaborate one in the film incorporated a backpack that held a scuba-type tank filled with diesel fuel. “I love that one because it’s pretty and it shoots really far,” he said. “And you can refill it quickly. Theoretically if you were in the battlefield and you needed a flamethrower, you could fight with that one.”
Adam Yauch, the founder of Oscilloscope Laboratories, the film’s distributor, was so enamored of the flamethrowers that he requested one for him and a child-size version for his daughter as part of the distribution contract.
Seriously, if this film is opening anywhere near you, you simply must see it in the theatre. I’ve never seen anything like it. It opens this Friday.
One Hundred Years of Butter Cow
The Iowa State Fair has boasted a “Butter Cow” since 1911. The origins of butter sculpting, however, are far older than that. Nearly 20 years before Columbus discovered America, Tibetan monks used yak butter to create figurines of animals and deities for worship. Since then, this humble craft has evolved into high art.
August 11-21, 2011. Des Moines, Iowa.
