help help help help
Glenn Beck is moving to Dallas.
headline of the day
Icelandic town hopes angry elves have been soothed by songs
Tat Musing
“O, lady on bus, I think one day you will regret your cupcake tattoo.”
My friend Alison. Musing en route home.
I told Alison I’d thought long and hard before I got my own tat back in the wayback days.
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Peter Falk || Gena Rowlands || “A Woman Under the Influence” || (1974) || d. John Cassavetes
There is a Criterion version available.
image with all the context it needs
Morning Wood
I’m rebuilding our deck. I thought it was going to be a simple re-surface job, then saw that the base needs to be redone as well. Yesterday two tons of wood and concrete mix were delivered. I had to bring it all into the back yard from the alley. I haven’t started yet this morning and it is already hot.
My phone just buzzed
Can(nes) of Worms
Lars von Trier made a monkey of himself this past week and no lie. Yeah yeah sure sure, he was indulging in low-key Scandihoovian humor. It just wasn’t funny. “Where’s my rubber chicken?”
But for the Cannes festival’s board of directors to issue the equivalent of a restraining order? C’mon, people. You just opened a can of wriggly worms.
Not all remakes are bad, but . . .
what were they thinking?
This remake of The Thin Man?
Honestly, I don’t believe that remakes are by definition bad. I’ll take the 1954 “A Star Is Born” over the 1937 original. (We won’t even speak of the 1976 version.)
But William Powell? And Myrna Loy? Asta? You just know the champagne will be flat this time around.
I hate to be an old spoilsport, but it feels like bad aesthetic judgment to me.
Lured Despite
I haven’t been tempted to reread Dune since that vacation on Padre Island when I was fifteen, and I couldn’t stick it out to the end of David Lynch’s film, but hey — I have this thing for Alejandro Jodorowsky, so I’m thinking I’ll want to see this documentary about his failed attempt to film Dune back in the seventies.
So you didn’t like it?
I love it when reviewers of poetry books just go all out with the invective. This review of a Robert Hass book contains a wonderful response to a passage:
The second volume, Praise, now reads as a primer in late-seventies period style, the kind of laid-back beach koans that led people to believe Galway Kinnell’s “The Bear” was a good poem. There are more berries, more naming of flowers, more embarrassingly tin-eared warbling in the demotic:
It is different in kind from a man and the pale woman
he fucks in the ass underneath the stars
because it is summer and they are full of longing
and sick of birth. They burn coolly
like phosphorous, and the thing need be done
only once.
—From “Against Botticelli”Does ass fucking really require such a high-minded justification? Upon being told someone is fucking someone else in the ass, has anyone ever responded, “What! Why?” I regret to inform the reader that Hass goes on to compare this sex act to the sacking of Troy.
(Thanks, Rick S.)
quote out of context
“We deal with these guys all the time, especially the clergy. It’s amazing how many of the clergy are involved in those lies to build that flock up,” said retired SEAL Don Shipley. Shipley also speculated the waterboarding and kitchen details came from the action depicted in “Under Siege.”
Also, fish poop
Environmentalists argue that intensive and unregulated tilapia farming is damaging ecosystems in poor countries with practices generally prohibited in the United States — like breeding huge numbers of fish in cages in natural lakes, where fish waste pollutes the water.
[wedding] image out of context
Tweet of the Day
tweet of the day
YouTube Musician Gets Jail Time for Clever Editing
Evan Emory tried to be funny by making a video showing him singing explicit songs to a group of little kids. Who’s laughing now?
The whole nightmare for Emory began when he posted a video of himself on YouTube singing a sexually explicit song to elementary school students. But before you take the side of law enforcement and the county, it’s not as raunchy and inappropriate as it sounds. The video was only edited to make it appear as if young children were in the classroom, even though they weren’t. Emory posted two disclaimers on the video that elementary school students were not exposed to the explicit lyrics.
On Tuesday, Judge William C. Marietti of the Muskegon County 14th Circuit Court sentenced Emory under a previously arranged plea deal to 60 days in jail, two years probation, 200 hours of community service, mandatory counseling and fines and costs. And when he emerges from jail, Emory can’t be within 500 feet of children under the age of 17. All for a comedy attempt gone awry.
The good news is he doesn’t have to register as a sex offender, so there’s that.
All Rite Now
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” (Hunter S. Thompson)
dear clusterflock
When you get to a point at which you say, “Well, it can’t get any worse,” but then it does — and then it gets even worse, what do you do?
I know, I know. Go Dao. And I’m trying to get down with the Dao. I always do.
As my friend Steve used to say, “People won’t believe it.”
Think of me as Bruce Lee sitting in the pit in the scene beginning around 4:17 of this clip (from Enter the Dragon). It shows exactly how I feel tonight.
quote out of context
The film is a low-budget affair with almost no marketing muscle. Its success will depend entirely on word of mouth. Its producer’s hopes that it will turn out to be an unexpected hit — “My Big Fat Objectivist Rant” — are unfounded.
we embarrass ourselves
I think of some of the stories I have asked people to listen to, or opinions about music I have had, or questions I have heard myself ask when interviewing someone. This is good medicine.
Dear Clusterflock
Why am I awake?
Guitar Ensemble: “Our Kindergarten Teacher” (Kindergarten of Ch’ŏngam-guyŏk [Ch'ŏngjin-si, DPR Korea])
I don’t know what to say about this.
Mid-Century Preservation — or Not — in Chicago
Talk about your perfect storm for losing a piece of architecture! This building on S. State Street has it all: it’s in a busy area, it’s a retail facade, and it’s Midcentury in origin.
It’s slated to be remodeled into something forgettable. Blair Kamin wrote a an excellent summation of the who, what, why, and why-it-shouldn’t.
(From a chicago sojourn.)
Where’s Timmy?
Super Flush Toilet Can Swallow Golf Balls
During testing, the team flushes objects with a range of consistencies, including napkins, sponges, miso paste, polyballs, saw dust and corn.
And with competition from other companies, American Standard has no problem demonstrating the punch of its products, even on smart phones.
Fifty-six chicken nuggets? No problem for these crappers. Water wigglers? You bet.
