Bye-Bye, Boner Party
Today Ned Hepburn shut it down. Boner Party, perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch blog of our time, (I’ll distract you with breasts but really I’m going to talk about how it’d be great to just settle down.) is over and done with.
I’m sad to see it go, but I think the last post sums it all up.
Maybe, but mostly maybe not.
“Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”
- Miranda July
dear clusterflock
Do not chase fame.
Penny Arcade Not Feeling It
The guys from Penny Arcade had a horrible experience with Jesse Thorn recently, going so far as to call him a “serial killer waiting to happen.”
I looked him up online, in an attempt to figure out what his deal was exactly, because actually being around him did nothing to illuminate his character. I stumbled upon a manifesto entitled The New Sincerity, and if you’re wondering what that could possibly mean, let me tell you. The New Sincerity is simply The Old Irony, with better PR.
I Can Be Free
Yeah yeah, I know you don’t watch videos at work, whatever. You can even watch this with the sound off and it’s amazing.
I just… I just… Simone says it’s the best thing he’s seen all month, and I wholeheartedly agree.
CreditSuisse
Credit Suisse refused a bailout last year, and made their bankers take as “bonuses” all the toxic assets that had been allocated to the bank. These “bonuses” were supposed to distribute the failings of the bank among all the investment bankers who made the decisions. To teach them a lesson. Well, as was recently disclosed, those toxic assets have risen 72% which makes all of those bankers very,very wealthy men. We’re talking billions of dollars.
Read more about it at the Wall Street Journal.
Might As Well Be Me
“So if you’re a fan of Huey Lewis and the News, or if you’ve had it up to HERE…”
About Right
“I regret how I said to you, “honey, just open your heart” when I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar. And that right there is where we are…” - Joanna Newsom, Good Intentions Paving Company
Breaking Away / Bottle Rocket
February 24th and 25th, 2010, The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles is showing a double feature of Breaking Away and Bottle Rocket, as part of their guest programming by Jason Reitman.
There’s nothing like sitting in the dark with other people who love watching movies. When I move away I’m going to really miss the New Bev as much as I will miss the people in my life, I recieved a better film education there (the first day I went was October 17th, 2004 for a Audrey Hepburn double feature) than anyone could rightfully ask for.
I wish all the Clusterflockers could be there. Perhaps we’ll show Bottle Rocket at Clusterflockstock.
Eat Your Best Friends
Strawberry rose milkshake with rose laced cream; kobe beef, mimolette with quince mustard and vanilla aioli in steamed bun
Some new-ish friends of mine put on a gourmet paid dinner party every two weeks, centered around a theme. (Think Thomas Keller in your own backyard.) For Christmas it was Home Alone, for January it was a ten-course meal based on the ten best songs of 2009. Pictured above is the song “Walkabout (featuring Noah Lennox)” by Atlas Sound
This is not your parents dinner party.
The New New York Phil Logo
I showed it to my web designer and he looked like somebody hat opened the Arc of the Covenant. I mean, look at the M! Look at the W! This is really some entry-level Adobe™ Illustrator put-text-on-a-line shit right there. But what I like about it is that you can tell that somebody hunched over a desk really loving on that W. Somebody really cared for that H, and its busted twin. Somebody manipulated that raggedy-ass K by hand and somebody else walked by the desk and said, “good work, team!” It’s touching, in its way.
Dear Clusterflock
Something to think about over the week-end:
What are your thoughts on a re-design around here?
Almost Perfect
Her arms are almost in a perfect line, and I keep looking at it wishing they were.
Let’s Talk Ned Hepburn.
Ned Hepburn is the best. He’s like this experiment in writing-yourself-to-life, as I can never tell what is a real memory and what is an invention that plays true. He’s also keenly, achingingly, hyper-aware of everything that goes on around him in this disturbing GoodFellas-level-of-detail way.
it’s rather sad, because i’ve hung out with “normie” women before and they’re really nice people. they like shitty bands like The Fray and think that “Chuck Klosterman” is something you get from sleeping with guys with leather jackets. they’re nice people, though. i just know that we can never be together. we are too fundamentally different. she says tomatoes, and i say that i liked tomatoes better before “everybody else started liking them”.
the only thing that overlaps normies and scene kids is Trader Joes, bad television, and the underlying reality that “i hate her because she owns a camera and calls herself a photographer” and “she hates me because i own a MacBook and call myself an artist”.
Perhaps it’s too-too to like it when someone points out obvious things. I don’t give a crap. Hepburn loves Los Angeles, Natalie Portman, getting high and is writing some of the funniest stuff around. Yet another person I wanna hang out with for an afternoon and interview cause it’d be a great story no matter what happened.
It’s raining outside but brightly
dear clusterflock
White Stripes.
Have One On Me
The gypsy queen Joanna Newsom releases her newest album (a triple disc!) on February 23, 2010. It’s available for pre-order here.
It has been four years since her last release Ys, three years since I last saw her, two years since things went south with Bill Callahan, and one year since I stopped spreading rumours about her dating relationship with Andy Samburg.
Experimental
Do you like experimental or noise music?
As I sit here listening to every single cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love)” it occurs to me that I haven’t shared one of the best resources for current movements in the noise/psychadelic/noise scene. Out here in Los Angeles, this is what’s happening. I’m not always into it myself, but I’ve been surprised. Like 99% of people who read this won’t even like it, so don’t feel bad but I’m hoping maybe the one person who really could use this info gets it.
Stunned Records is an incredible small distro with all the newest stuff, well worth a look. Artists on: Andreas Brandal, Sean McCann, Connector, Pine Smoke Lodge, and about a billion more.
Not Not Fun is the label with the goods. Artists on: Pocahaunted, Vibes, Sun Araw, Dylan Ettinger, Racc-oo-oon, The Goslings, Robedoor, tons of stuff like that.
Scene From Last Weekend
David Lynch on iPhone
Yeah, everyone’s seen this.
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday, Simone.
Small Comforts
I am beginning to believe that it is the small things that make huge differences in our lives.
I was given a pair of headphones as a gift, and the difference between these and the headphones I had been using is so vast, it makes a big difference in my eagerness to listen to music and enjoy finding new music.
Also the use of the Magic Mouse with my new iMac, it’s so intuitive it makes using the computer a pleasure.
What small things make a difference for you?
Live from the Apple Event
CUPERTINO, CA—Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple’s new tablet computer. “Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you’re running out of time,” the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. “Okay, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write ‘tablet’ on this little strip of masking tape here and I’m golden. Oh, come on, you piece of shit! Just stick already!” Middle-of-the-night sources reported that Jobs then began work on double-spacing his Keynote presentation and increasing the font size to make it appear longer.
(via the comments on Engadget)
Chronicles of Seymour-Hoffman
Ned Hepburn, (the genius behind, erm, Boner Party) has also been posting tidbits from his forthcoming “book” ‘The Many Faces Of Seymour-Hoffman’
“During the filming of the 1999 drama ‘The Talented Mister Ripley’, Seymour-Hoffman developed an intense infatuation with American Girl dolls, the doll company that produces historically and factually based dolls based on young women of a certain era in American history.
Inbetween takes, Seymour-Hoffman would produce a doll and start to recite his own lines in the voice of Kitt Kettredge, an American Girl doll based on a girl who would have existed the Great Depression. During the scene of his own murder, he refused to act with anyone else but her, slowly disrobing her and holding back his own tears, feeding the lifeless doll fistfuls of M&M’s. This unnerved co-stars Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, who refused to be in the same room as him during this already emotional day of filming. Using an array of mirrors, the film appears to have Philip Seymour-Hoffman in the same room as Matt Damon, when infact Hoffman was forty feet away in his own trailer playing the same five Supertramp songs on repeat before every single take while requesting fresh M&M’s for Kitt. Consequentially, each take took an hour to film.
Coincidentally, during the scene in which Hoffman is strangled, Kitt Kettredge’s hands are used.”
Needless to say, this isn’t uh, factually based.
Taxes
I made about twenty-one thousand dollars last year?
and somehow owe a thousand dollars to the government.
How is anyone ever supposed to lift themselves out of poverty?