El Wingador
Errol Morris interviewed competitive eater El Wingador:
El Wingador is a man truly committed to a certain kind of excellence — or at least, a certain kind of excess. Sure, I could have picked a different eating champion, but I guess I have an affinity for chicken. It is evident that chicken is his favorite competition food — particularly chicken wings. I asked him, “Why not hot dogs?” The simple and compelling answer: “Hey, my name is ‘El Wingador,’ not ‘El Hotdogador.’”
The Amish Project
A 24-year-old student went 90 days without using a cell phone, email or social media. Yahoo News interviewed him about the experience:
I definitely just lost complete contact with people that normally would have been part of my life. I mean it’s also an interesting metric for your life to see who some of your closest friends are, you know, and who’s willing to take the time.
I find it an interesting thought experiment to contrast this idea with Clusterflock, which is the clearest example in my life of the relationship-building power of the internet and social technology. The internet made it possible to seek out an entirely new tribe of people – people with which I have so much in common and so much to talk about, but that I hadn’t realized existed.
But then there are social networks like Facebook, which at their worst takes all of the people who are already part of your life – your co-workers, your school chums, your family – and hands them a level of intimacy about our lives that they haven’t really earned and don’t particularly deserve. I think that’s why it’s so interesting when these online relationships predicated on intimate knowledge but passive communication go bust when one party pulls out of Facebook – we’re just learning a hard lesson about the differences between that kind of intimate knowledge and true friendship, which for the longest time I thought were one and the same.
A couple relatives recently found me on Google Plus (I use it primarily for the sad remnants of what was once Google Reader). I hadn’t even acknowledged their existence before they were already commenting on every single piece of information attached to my name. This, I’m told, is keeping in touch.
Metta World Peace thanks Jesus Christ that he still has his teeth
So not only did he build the world in seven days and seven nights, but he also said, “OK, let them lose their teeth early, rather than late.”
Five Minutes with Jason Kottke
From a five minute interview with Jason Kottke at The Verge:
You wrote a post about David Foster Wallace’s idea of the Decider a few years ago. Since then, has anything changed when it comes to your process?
It’s much easier to find interesting things to read and look at online than it used to be…the web is now largely filters on top of filters on top of filters. So I don’t have to sift through as much stuff as I used to. But also around the time I posted that link, I got much better at blogging. I don’t know if the 10,000 hours thing kicked in or what, but what used to take me 6-8 hours to do now takes me 2-3 hours.
(via @tcarmody)
from the spam
but what do they do here?
A Five Minute Interview with Maurice Sendak
As part of their TateShots series of artist interviews, the Tate Galleries spoke with Maurice Sendak about his books and career. I love this bit about his subject matter:
I do not believe I have ever written a children’s book. I don’t know how to write a children’s book. How do you write about it? How do you set out to write a children’s book? It’s a lie.
Also, he’s obsessed with William Blake and comic books.
Via: Papertastebuds
from the moderated comments
Mormons go door to door also. LDS say Jesus came to America gave Mormon founder golden plates.
Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus returned second coming October 1914.
Both religions have doctrines scams no better or worse than other religions.
Think we’ll get a Mormon President?
The Lake, The Hood & The Golf Course
After we’d talked for a while, we got in my rental car and went for a drive around his ward. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not for us,” Knowles said, as we rode through Harbor Shores. “It’s not for poor people.” I had asked Knowles if he slept at City Hall, and he took me by his house, which he said he rents for about $250 a month. “I don’t sell dope,” he volunteered, explaining how he pays his rent. “I come out and hustle — electrical jobs, cutting grass, whatever.” […]
When I dropped him back at City Hall, Knowles got out of the car and said goodbye, then poked his head back in the passenger window. “Hey,” he said, “can you spare a couple of bucks so I can get myself a bag of chips and a pop?”
This is an excerpt from Jonathan Mahler’s Simon-esque piece on Benton Harbor, Michigan, for the NYT Magazine a few weeks back. The bit above is from a conversation Mahler has with an unemployed Benton Harbor resident who is also a city commissioner for one of the city’s poorest wards.
For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in the area and my family has lived there for a few generations. The article is a longer piece focusing on the city’s socio-economic problems and new divisions over a golf course and property development on Lake Michigan called Harbor Shores, which is hoped to improve the impoverished city’s attractiveness for future investment. The only problem is that most of the developers and proponents for Harbor Shores are affluent and white, while most of Benton Harbor is impoverished and black – oh, and the golf course was built on a chunk of the city’s one nice park at the lakefront.
It’s a feature worth reading and not just because it’s about the clashes between a city’s residents and a group of well-intentioned (if not woefully ignorant) outsiders that believe they can solve deeply-rooted problems of poverty and crime by introducing the game of golf. I like to think it’s also because Mahler turned my old stomping grounds into a moral fable for today’s social, cultural and economic divisions.
from the spam
If a turtle doesnt have a shell, is it naked or homeless?
11/22/63
Stephen King interviewed by Errol Morris about his new novel on the JFK assassination:
It’s a little bit like the blind man describing the elephant. One’s got the trunk and says it’s a snake. And one’s got a leg and says it’s a tree. One’s got an ear and says it’s a banana plant. They all say different things because none of them can see the whole thing.
The Sword Maker
Korehira Watanabe is one of the last remaining Japanese swordsmiths. He has spent 40 years honing his craft in an attempt to recreate Koto, a type of sword that dates back to the Heian and Kamakura periods (794-1333 AD). No documents remain to provide context for Watanabe’s quest, but he believes he has come close to creating a replica of this mythical samurai sword.
(via Product by Process)
from the comments
My favorite part of that interview was when Tom was discussing the vinyl popping noise he had added to a couple tracks to make them sound more dated — when it was actually just a recording of chicken on the barbecue.
‘He was the Machiavelli of English kings’
The late 15th and early 16th centuries is a distinctive age in its own right. It’s a world in which England is still part of Christendom, owing allegiance to the Pope. England is still a feudal kingdom, one that’s recognisably medieval — but at the same time you have the emergence of what we think of as the early modern world — the discovery of America, new Renaissance ideas about politics and government, and the widespread appearance of print culture which in terms of communicating these ideas is absolutely crucial.
So this is a volatile world, a world in flux. In a sense Henry VII is typical of this age. He’s somebody who seems to come out of nowhere, seizes power and makes the throne his own.
And much more on the father of Henry the VIII….
Unknowingly, I was probably always a designer, I just didn’t know what that was
A lovely interview at The Great Discontent with good friend of clusterflock, Chris Glass:
I completed the 4 year program at Ohio State and studied in Switzerland along the way. That time abroad really started to inform my minimalism. I’m a clean, simple designer. Some may see this as laziness. It goes back to that whole, what’s the least amount of work I can do? But ultimately, that’s the work I don’t hate. There’s a joke among friends that know me. When asked if I like something, I say it doesn’t displease me. So much of design displeases me, but if it’s clean, functional, and does its job, I’m happy.
You can find his site here, and Wire & Twine here.
I think that almost everything I do – this book included – is of a genre that I guess you could call detective nonfiction
We think we know what we’re looking at when we look at a photograph. We think we’re looking at something objective. We think we can see reality. But often we’re just looking back at ourselves rather than out into the world. We are reinforcing our beliefs with what we see. The idea of my book is that there’s a mystery in every photograph. What are we really looking at? In my experience, trying to figure out just what’s going on inevitably involves an investigation. I like to think of myself as the new Sherlock Holmes of photography.
From an interview with Errol Morris on his new book Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography.
Kevin Sampsell in Conversation with Gary Lutz
The Rumpus did a short interview with Gary Lutz about his new collection Divorcer:
Kevin: Do you drive? What kinds of cars do you like?
Gary: I hate all cars, but I drive a black Chevrolet Cavalier filled with trash. The driver’s side of the body has been keyed so intricately, so all-over-ishly (though perhaps keying isn’t quite the word; there might have been ice picks and chisels involved as well), that the vandal (should she ever get caught) might benefit as much from a gallerist as from a social worker.
(thanks, Derek)
things I texted Aaron I heard at Animefest and his responses
I [something] overhead, and shot them with frozen penguins.
I find that a protein-heavy snack around 10 am really chases away the grumpies.
Oh my God, The Undertaker, when I saw his eyes, I like jizzed everywhere.
Ever since I started eating those glutathione injections, my dick has been as hard as a cadillac axle.
Sir, your mouth is blinking.
She kept coughing and coughing. And after awhile a golfball-sized chunk of that Doritos Nacho Cheese seasoning flew out of her. Then she wouldn’t stop crying.
Where’s my rape whistle?
tweet of the day
A Talk with Blaine Dunlap
In March [Unfair Park] screened one of the greatest films made in or about Dallas, director Blaine Dunlap’s 1973 Sometimes I Run, about Stanley Maupin, who worked for the city’s Public Works Department flushing downtown’s streets in the wee small hours of the morning. Some Friends of Unfair Park said they’d seen it before, in high school long ago or in a sociology class at SMU. For most, though, the blue-tinted black-and-white short was brand new, a riveting revelation — 21 minutes’ worth of downbeat cinéma vérité, Pennebaker rolling with the Public Works Department as his leading man played country Kerouac.
And a couple of weeks ago, Unfair Park’s Robert Wilonsky published this feature on my dear long-time friend Blaine: Sometimes I Direct: A Talk With Blaine Dunlap, Who Once Captured Dallas Better Than Anyone.
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)
question out of context
You gave your talk at the TED conference last week wearing your mushroom death suit. How does the suit work?
Did Amanda just interview Errol Morris?
Previously on clusterflock.
American Elegy: An Interview with Phil Bebbington
Phil Bebbington (aka Terrorkitten to many on the web and Flickr) is an Englishman with a keen sense for photographing the US. On his photographic journeys to America, he has captured an amazing array of “disappearing America” shots. Upon starting American Elegy, Phil was one of the first photographers that popped into my mind as an artist that needed to be featured here. Though based in Bath, England, I consider Phil Bebbington to be one of the best American Elegy-type photographers working today. I want to thank Phil for working with me for this interview and letting us use some of his wonderful images.
A terrific interview with one of our own. Recommended reading and viewing.
Vetiver: “In Studio” on WNYC’s Soundcheck
Gorgeous-sounding Vetiver release, The Errant Charm, out tomorrow. Till then, an interview and live-in-the-studio performance on Soundcheck.
Joyce McKinney calls Pete Ashton
In honor of the impending release of Errol Morris’s Tabloid, I give you Joyce McKinney’s call to Pete Ashton.
Update: clusterflock’s visit from Joyce.
