I Met The Walrus
This has been floating around for some time now, but I don’t think it’s been here and it is fantastic enough to mention for the um-teenth million time on the web. The short story on the video:
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack
hat tip to It’s Nice That for the reminder.
Truth In Advertising
Got to love Hulu’s choice of tags for the “Seaver-Fever” segment on NBC’s Today Show.
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.
That little girl from Texas
People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.
(via Austin Kleon)
suspended animation, metabolic flexibility in mammals
Mark Roth is a cellular biologist who has studied using hydrogen sulfide to induce suspended animation as a way to increase the likelihood of survival in both traumatic injury and surgery.
But then you have these freaks of nature. . . . There’s a retrospective study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine ten years ago that shows that 50 percent of people who have been without a heartbeat for three hours [in cold conditions], and are re-warmed appropriately, survive without neurological problems. The people in that study spent at least three hours below 28 degrees. The record is a 29-year-old skier in Norway who went for nine hours. Her core temperature fell to below 14 degrees C. Remember, people are large bags of water; they take a long time to cool off and a long time to re-warm. It took her nine hours to get to a point where they could re-start her heart, and she went on to be the head radiologist in the hospital that treated her.
werewolf evolution
A short interview with Rick Baker, the makeup artist behind An American Werewolf in London and Thriller, about the transformation of his art in the digital era.
Wired: Have you worried that your work can’t keep up with evolving technology?
Baker: I had that concern. I wondered whether today’s kids, who grew up on CG, would accept a guy covered in yak hair. But I actually embrace digital stuff now — I do it for fun. I was heavily involved in the digital work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I like any trick that helps me achieve what I can’t with rubber. I try to make the right choice for the circumstances of the movie.
Energy. Tax. Lift American Spirits.
an interview with Garry Winogrand
I saw a photograph that — there’s a photograph that had “Kodak” and there’s a kid holding a dog —
GW: Yeah.
— and the people kind of wandering in and out. Now, it might be due to my own ignorance or something, but could you give me like a straight answer as to what you’re trying to say in that photograph?
(via kottke)
David Simon on Bill Moyers Journal
Quote Out of Context
I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.
Freddy’s is fighting and they’re doing it on Fox News, baby
A couple of friends of mine were on Fox News yesterday morning, to talk about their fight to save Freddy’s, a hugely loved local bar in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn – as well as many homes and businesses - from being snatched in a landmark eminent domain ruling.
Basically, the New York supreme court has decided that billionaire developer Bruce Ratner can seize property in the 22 acres of the “Atlantic Yards” footprint in order to build an arena and some tower housing that is deeply unwanted by the people of the neighbourhood. It is now enshrined in law that it is fair game for the state to seize property from small businesses, homeowners and renters, if the billionaire or corporation who wants to seize their properties can pay higher real estate taxes to the state. This is an outrageous abuse of the idea of eminent domain which was originally designed to be used ‘for the public good’.
The community has fought against this for 6 years now, and the last appeal against this use of eminent domain was decided last month in favour of the billionaire. Two days before Christmas, Forest City Ratner initiated proceedings to seize the homes and businesses in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
The message is: if you are a homeowner in the United States of America, anyone who wants to seize your property is now enabled by law to do that, so long as he is richer than you. That is now enshrined in law, in a decision handed down by the highest court of the land.
Freddy’s is more than a bar. It’s a community, a true neighbourhood sanctuary, and a fantastic music venue. It is expected that the site that Freddy’s sits on will fit a few SUVs in the parking lot that is planned for it. Handcuffs have been installed in the bar, and there are more than enough people willing to chain themselves to the bar and go to jail to defy the bailiffs if and when they arrive at Freddy’s door.
The fifth amendment to the United States Bill of Rights
prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Well, they got their due process of law, but it is bad bad law indeed. More legal challenges are on the way.
UPDATE: I have now amended this post to reflect the fact that this decision was originally handed down by the United States supreme court, which means that it can happen legally anywhere in the US. It has been challenged in the state of New York in this case, but the ruling apparently (and I am not a lawyer or an American citizen) stands countrywide.
UPDATE again: George Will wrote this op-ed column in the Washington Post about the ruling and “the twisted meaning of ‘blight’”. Read it.
On Nico Muhly
Here’s my seven minute answer to the question Deron asked, who is Nico Muhly?
Read more
clusterflock interviews clusterflock
Amanda: who is Nico Muhly?
Richard Mosse, Saddam’s Palaces
BLDGBLOG: Beyond the most obvious reasons—for instance, there’s a war going on—why did you go to Iraq? Was there something in particular that you were hoping to see?
An interview with Richard Mosse on the photos he took of the transformation of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.
PRATE Interview: Brian Beatty
I’ve probably ruined a lot of perfectly decent jokes trying to justify what I think about the world. So it goes, to quote Vonnegut. I’m not doing stand-up to become famous. I only started telling jokes because of a magazine article that nobody remembers. I took a four-week comedy class, wrote about the experience and was instantly addicted to the immediate response of a live audience. I’d never gotten that kind of feedback as a writer. Now it’s about figuring out new ways to exploit the limits of the stand-up genre. That’s why I sometimes perform in a bear suit.
Here.
Michael Kenna’s Hokkaido
Michael Kenna. Fading Light, Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. 2004.
Ordinarily I’d not want to follow so swiftly on Deron’s post about the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, but if I don’t do it now, I might be some time.
A short while ago Phil Bebbington sent me a link to this documentary interview with photographer Michael Kenna. I found Michael Kenna’s Hokkaido calming and beautiful, and I want to share it.
“Even in the midst of a storm, it’s a wonderful place to come to ground, in a sense.”
an interview with Thomas Bernhard
In an interview from 1986, the late Austrian author Thomas Bernhard discusses the musicality of language, the eroticism of old men and the incurability of stupidity.
It’s hard to recommend Bernhard because of readers’ expectations, but to my mind, there are few better.
(via marginal revolution)
Sufjan’s Privacy
There’s nothing personal anymore. To me, there is a real sacredness to privacy, especially because we live in an exhibitionist culture. There’s such a magnitude of record taking. It’s so exhaustive. Bandwidth and hard drive space are able to accommodate limitless capacities to take a record of anything and everything. Maybe I do really value the kind of personal-private creative endeavor that’s done in isolation. My Dad used to say that the balance of the world relied on all of the monks who were living outside of society in creative isolation. I don’t quite understand the ascetic life or the private life or the monastic private life. But I definitely understand privacy’s value.
Sufjan Stevens, speaking in an interview with Brandon Stosuy, Interview Magazine.
An interview with Cooper Renner
at The Collagist:
“Running Night” is part of a short collection which is substantially finished, but it falls within a larger grouping of Malta-related lycanthropic work which is ongoing. The first entry, in terms of being written, is the novel A Death by the Sea, which I drafted during NaNoWriMo in 2008. Four sections of it have been published (New York Tyrant, Keyhole, Anemone Sidecar, Unscroll), and I’d love to find a publisher for the whole thing. Anyway, that started the Malta ball rolling for me. Once I got my mind really wrapped up in this world, ideas kept coming. The framework for the story collection, which I’m calling Dr Fenech’s Guide to Lycanthropy in Malta (1913), is that the doctor is collecting old tales from older men and women on Malta and Gozo and hoping to publish them in England.
. . . and an interview with Phil Bebbington
I just wanted to play and I had never shot medium format – what came after was the wonder of not being tied down by apertures and shutter speeds. Of course you still are as the Holga does have at least one shutter speed and aperture! But it is the freedom, using your time thinking about the shot as you have no control over the shutter and aperture.
Of course, there is a skill to using the Holga – it’s not quite as random as people think.
Spam considered, 14th century to the present
Open Book TV: Graham Parker at Brooklyn Navy Yard from Graham Parker on Vimeo.
An interview with Eminent Man of Science and Art Graham Parker, by way of whom we have seen this lovely chart.
Sendak Documentary on HBO
Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze have created a remarkable short documentary, Tell Them Anything You Want: a Portrait of Maurice Sendak. In a mere 41 minutes, Sendak–presented through the sublime filmmaking abilities of Jonze and Bangs–captures what it means to be an individual, what it means to be human, and what it means to be a child. The film is so short and so casually presented that its hugeness sneaks up on the viewer. I’ve watched it twice and am ready to see it again.
I’m inarticulate this morning and can’t find my words. The film speaks beautifully for itself. Please watch it.
Meg Pokrass was kind enough
to interview me for SmokeLong Quarterly.
fathers, brothers, and crosses
A European court has ruled against the display of crucifixes in Italian classrooms.
“The presence of the crucifix could be … disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities,” the court said. “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities… restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions,” it added.
And Barack Obama’s half-brother gave his first interview.
“My father beat my mother and my father beat me, and you don’t do that,” said Ndesandjo, whose mother, Ruth Nidesand, was Barack Obama Sr.’s third wife. “It’s something which I think affected me for a long time, and it’s something that I’ve just recently come to terms with.”
Tracy Morgan on NPR
I am not a huge fan of Tracy Morgan or 30 Rock, but below is an engaging and mostly serious interview that makes you think the man never turns off. (via fimoculous)