Dick Cavett: The “Depression Column” and After
“Smiling Through”, Parts I and II.
Part II includes a video excerpt of his 1974 interview with Tennessee Williams.
‘The Dumbest Generation’ by Mark Bauerlein
In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!
Cover shot
a man for Cindy
Here’s an interview I did with the Dalai Lama’s youngest brother — he’s bipolar and has anger management problems.
McCain Admits He’s an Absolute Illiterate When It Comes to Computers
No worries, I’m sure his wife will be around forever. Besides, computers are really not that popular, and I don’t think this Internet thing has much of a future anyway. To be honest, I don’t see any practical application at all for technology when it comes to the land’s highest office. None.
Huffington Post: McCain Admits He Doesn’t Know How to Use a Computer (Video)
Erik De Nijs explains his keyboard pants
Erik De Nijs, the designer behind the keyboard pants, explains the process behind his creation.
Instead of picking two brands and finding a combination, I was looking for a combination of two products, which would create a new kind of product which would be special. And afterwards I could brand them. So I came up with the idea of putting a keyboard in your pants, and to make jeans with all the important computer stuff (like a mouse, keyboard and the speakers) in it. Besides the new look the jeans would get, there was some sort of freedom behind your computer screen. You didn’t have to be stiff behind your screen, but you can move in any position you want because the keyboard would be in the same place.
David Sedaris on The Daily Show
David Sedaris talks about how he moved to Japan to quit smoking.
Listen to an audio excerpt here from his new book, “When You Are Engulfed In Flames”.
Hitch
Oh, and I do not “profess” to despise religious extremists. I really do despise them.
From “Just one question,” The Guardian, May 27, 2008. Part of a longer piece in which luminaries at The Guardian Hay festival ask each other questions. The full classic Hitchens comment is after the jump.
Nigel Tufnel, the Stonehenge Interview, Part 1
To promote its upcoming movie on Stonehenge, the National Geographic Channel composed a series of interviews with Nigel Tufnel of This Is Spinal Tap. The other four videos are available on the National Geographic website.
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office.
In December 1950, President Harry S. Truman approved the establishment of a continental nuclear proving ground 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Between 1951 and 1992, 1021 nuclear detonations took place at the Nevada Test Site — one hundred explosions were in the atmosphere and 921 were underground. It is estimated that the test site employed 125,000 during the Cold War. The photograph [above] shows the De Baca test, detonated on October 26, 1958. Five days later the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to a nuclear testing moratorium which stayed in effect until the Soviets resumed testing in 1961. In 1992, a second nuclear testing moratorium went into effect. Subcritical tests and other national security programs are ongoing at the 1375-square-mile Nevada Test Site.
Cassavetes, Falk and Gazzara Promote Husbands on The Dick Cavett Show
Ten-minute segment from a 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show featuring John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara; other chunks available on YouTube. Start here. Plus or minus (depending on your point of view): Inclusion of the original commercial breaks offers cultural context.
(P.S. The subdued brilliance of Dick Cavett still shines. See his NYT blog.)
clusterflock interviews: Hillman Curtis
Hillman Curtis is a designer, author, and filmmaker whose work has informed, inspired, and influenced a generation of designers interested in the possibilities of new media. His books include Making the Invisible Visible: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer and On Creating Short Films for the Web, a book that was instrumental for me as I set out to film my own documentary. His series of interviews with artists and designers continues to set the standard for video on the web. This interview was conducted via email and I am grateful for his participation.
Can you give us a brief overview of your career? How did you get started, what led you here?
I started designing in ‘95 or ‘96. I was a rock musician and had just been dropped by MCA records. I had made a small amount of money from a publishing deal and I took the money and bought a used Mac II. I had made all of the band’s posters and flyers and — having come to the obvious conclusion that I was through with the music business — thought I’d have a go at design. I worked my way up to an Art Director position at Macromedia and from there started hillmancurtis.
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Hillman Curtis’s latest design video
This with artist Lawrence Weiner. Perhaps the most beautiful in the series and worth it for his — Weiner’s — comments about Helvetica.
Phillip Toledano, Phone Sex
Phillip Toledano photographed and interviewed phone sex operators for a photo series. The first interview reminded me of my voice for phone sex post.
I never thought I would work in the phone sex industry. All those years doing customer service, my customers would comment on my sexy voice. I thought I was being professional, not sexy. This work is customer service.
(via swissmiss)
Video Highlights of the Marc Hauser, Errol Morris interview
Seed posted video of the Marc Hauser, Errol Morris interview I posted yesterday.
Ellen DeGeneres and Gladys Hardy of Austin, Texas
Am I the last person in the world to see this?
Marc Hauser, Errol Morris interview
An interview between Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist researching the idea of a universal morality grounded in biology, and Errol Morris, director of, among others, Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary about the photos taken at Abu Ghraib.
Morris: It’s fascinating that whenever we come up against something that is really complex, there is this very deep human need to find a simple explanation that can account for it. If it’s something that’s really bad, really wrong, people feel uneasy and want to figure out how to distance themselves from it; to tell themselves, “This doesn’t concern me. This isn’t about me. This is about somebody else, or some other group I don’t belong to.”
Hauser: Okay, but you left out a huge question: How do you know it’s wrong?
Flight of the Conchords Is Back!
HBO has signed on for a second season of Flight of the Conchords!
He’s just saying “jet packs” because he knows Wired is a technology magazine.
hand job
An interview with Michael Perry, whose book Hand Job compiles 50 examples of hand-drawn typography.
Is there any particular font you think would be improved were it hand drawn? Any particular magazine cover?
I think a watercolor version of Adobe Garamond would be beautiful. I would love to see a handful of newspaper logos hand-drawn. Black letters always look great done by hand.
naked chicks on post-it notes
(via reverse cowgirl, who composed an interview)
Today’s “Good Kid”
Tiger Woods and Leonardo da Vinci.
clusterflock interviews: Jason Kottke
The second in a series of clusterflock interviews, Jason Kottke, of course, runs kottke.org and has been instrumental in shaping contemporary blog culture. I had the pleasure of guest blogging at kottke.org a few weeks ago, and the experience prompted me to want to know more about the person behind the site, the process of creating what kottke.org has become, and the pressures associated with running it. The interview was conducted by instant message and edited from there.
I wanted to start by finding out how you got to this point, what the process of creating kottke.org was.
Well, I’d been putting stuff online since early 1995. First, a personal site, then a site called 0sil8, which was a series of experiments in design, writing, etc. Pushing the limits of HTML. kottke.org started as an online diary for me because I wanted something I could update continually, not just once a month or every two months. I drew my initial inspiration for the site from the online diaries of the time…not so much from other weblogs. The process was very gradual. No planning, really. I almost never plan anything out…I just head towards things that hold my interest.
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thoughts after reading Diane Williams’ latest
If you’ve read Eudora Welty, you’ll know what I’m talking about, the way the words are constantly with you, your tongue figuring them out, making the sounds against the roof of your mouth.
Even if they make no sense they make plenty of sense.
They always show you something even if it is just a sound.
Here is an interview with her. Here is a review of The Stupefaction. Here is a review of Eudora Welty’s The Wide Net and Other Stories. This is Diane Williams’ latest.
at the risk of sentimentality
From an interview with photographer Joel Meyerowitz on contemporary photography.
I’ve always been a photographer less interested in the academic and formal side of photography than for the feelingful side. I always opt for feeling. I think my pictures have in them–at the risk of sentimentality, which I try to avoid…nonetheless, I think people are suspicious of feeling and beauty. They’ve become sort of no-no’s in the modern, contemporary art world, and so if you make pictures that evoke some form of beauty, people are suspicious…and you see a lot of flat-footed, boring fucking photography out in the world today, that passes as conceptual or high-valued, art-world photography. I look at most of that stuff and I think, ‘these guys are boring, they have nothing to say, they’re walking around formulaicly making bands of modern life…industrial things or supermarkets….’ I don’t give a shit if it’s Gurksy or…any of the others who are playing that game. Most of that stuff bores the shit out of me.
Squid pro quo
Briefly Quoted. “Do you think she could talk sexy so I can pinch my squid? … Obama has cute ears.”
— An unidentified rogue caller on a media conference call with campaign staffers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday, talking dirty before the moderator cut him off.
from Roll Call, via The Plank (Note: the comments are worth the read; this post’s title is lifted from one of them; also, look for williamyard’s contributions)