May 2013
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'Better Than a 10-Inch Dick': Showgirls Lives... →
Showgirls the Musical probably shouldn’t work as well as it does – crucial to Showgirls’ charm is its obliviousness. In an essay in its photo book companion that’s as misguided as the film itself, Showgirls: Portrait of a Film, Verhoven gushes, “I got to direct an MGM musical!” Slate writer and Barneys creative-ambassador-at-large Simon Doonan is an opening-weekender...
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Social media are not self-expression →
Barthel lauds the “demos, experiments, collaborative public works, jokes, notes, reading lists, sketches, appreciations, outbursts of pique” that are “absolutely vital to continuing the business of creation.” But the degree that these are all affixed to a personal brand when serially broadcast on social media depletes their vitality. If PJ Harvey released the demos as she made them to a Myspace...
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For sale: baby shoes, never worn
citationneeded:
Link (Thanks, Stillsaw!)
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Yahoo reportedly eyeing Tumblr for possible $1... →
fatmanatee:
Is Yahoo trying to acquire Tumblr? Earlier today, All Things D reported that the two companies were in “serious” talks about some kind of deal, and now Adweek is saying that Yahoo is looking to do…
I always thought Tumblr was built to be acquired by another company but I didn’t think it would be Yahoo.
Great, now none of us are going to be able to work from home anymore
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'The Office,' 'How I Met Your Mother,' & Why... →
The Office has been nearly unwatchable for a few seasons and crossed the line into full irrelevance soon after Steve Carell left. Jim and Pam had moved from romantic tension into a functionally perfect relationship, and Ed Helms’ Andy seemed to change his basic personality traits every few episodes, making him very hard to care about. But halfway through this final season, Jim and Pam began...
“Why, exactly, is it more in reporters’ interests to be more aggressive in its...”
– When the Village turns on a President (via firthofforth)
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WatchI appreciated this skit about taking compliments from Inside Amy Schumer last night.
“But from public space, all you can see is a Koons, a balloon dog. You can’t see...”
– Who Are the People That Get to Make This Thing We Call Art? - by Sarah Nicole Prickett (via mollycrabapple)
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Who Owns the Future? Not the Middle Class →
Technology itself was not the cause for the disruption in the U.S. labor market that limited entry-level jobs and made work in general less secure and more contingent. Tech giants Kodak and IBM once offered stable long-term careers with the best benefits in America. The layoffs there and elsewhere that reshaped corporate America and eliminated hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs began...
How Are We To Listen To Contemporary Classical... →
This is a great exploration of what makes music “work” for listeners - melody, “narrative,” familiarity with the kind of music you’re listening to - in the context of contemporary classical, which makes it applicable to “difficult” forms of music in general. (It’s also a Socratic dialogue, which is fun.)
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A side note about the whole Angelina Jolie thing is that until a few years ago there was a really strong economic disincentive for women to get tested for the gene. If it was found, it would be part of their official medical history, and they could be charged much higher insurance rates. They had to hope that a male relative (ideally their father) would get the testing done, since it didn’t put...
ayeeeminniebit asked: Umm… how do you comment
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Now's as good a time as any to post this
Here is what I think, maybe: when a lot of people are doing something new, they probably don’t need to be told that the new thing is good or new. They already know that, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. But they do need to be told that just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s good. It could be bad, and it could be done differently. Pointing to good things as an example of...
davebloom asked: Hope this doesn't come off as nitpicking, but it's Breakwater, not Shearwater. "Release the Beast" does sound like a Jonathan Meiberg song title, though, which had me checking Shearwater track lists for a few minutes and trying to remember exactly how "Robot Rock" sounded.
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How Daft Punk's Career Mirrors the History of Rap... →
A series of videos preceding the album’s release highlighted the musicians they worked with on the project, from contemporaries like Chilly Gonzales to electronic music elder statespeople like Giorgio Moroder. Most notably, they’re working with Paul Williams, a songwriter who composed, among other things, “The Rainbow Connection,” and their first single (and the only music we’ve heard so far)...
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Discovery: The Oral History of Daft Punk's First... →
In 1996 - before they got lucky with Pharrell, before they were in Kanye’s clique, before the robot helmets - Daft Punk were two Frenchmen playing in a wet Wisconsin field.
This is also fantastic.
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“White people in urban environments were what viewers wanted, and white people in...”
– An Oral History of Late-’90s NBC Time Slot Hits
A) Previously.TV launched today and it’s already so great! B) This [fake] oral history is beautiful and C) Have we talked about my weird fascination with Caroline in the City and how many times I’ve watched that series? It’s a cry for help.
(via...
cookiepuss:
Someone at work just listed “Jay Gatsby” as their hero in our “New to the office” survey. Eeeesh.
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Substance and Style: What's the Point of Savages'... →
Along with The Knife, whose Shaking the Habitual is equally fantastic (if not as immediately accessible to rock fans), Savages have chosen to foreground the radical beliefs from which their music springs. What they haven’t done is used their music as a mere delivery system for those beliefs. Their politics are integral to their music, but so is Gemma Thompson’s guitar, Jehnny Beth’s voice, their...
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“When I was 28, I thought that making my living exclusively by writing was the...”
– I wrote on my blog about how I’m not a complete idiot about my career as much anymore. (via emilygould)
The Growing, Hidden Problem of Re-Recordings →
A little while back, I was compiling a playlist of ’60s hits in Spotify. The song I started with was “This Diamond Ring,” a 1965 single by Gary Lewis and the Playboys. About 20 instances of the song showed up when I searched for it—some of them on Gary Lewis best-of collections, some on compilations like ’60s Jukebox Hits and 60 Hits of the 60s. Clicking on one at random, I soon noticed that...
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Buffalo Wings
vickyj:
Apparently there are TWO former (mid-1980s) Buffalo Bills players working as commercial pilots - Jim Ritcher for American Airlines and Justin Cross for JetBlue.
But are there any former San Diego players working for credit card companies
THANKS EVERYONE
I bought and library requested a bunch of stuff, and saved more to a wishlist, since I am flying to London for a conference next month and so will need sad bastard books then. The recommendations are all HERE if you want to see some very smart people suggest good things to read.
Hiiii please recommend me some books to read on...
I am awful at keeping up with fiction, it is a great shame of mine. SAVE ME PLS.
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What's Behind the Phenomenal Success of Ru Paul's... →
Small, focused creative communities are where new kinds of art generally emerge, at least as a comprehensible thing: the Harlem Rennaissance, the French new wave, and riot grrl all started as small groups of artists and audience members in a handful of places making an intense new thing insularly before it broke wide. In so doing, these movements were successful in structuring how we think about...
anthonyisright replied to your post: dogunderwater replied to your photo: I think I’m…
Is there an example of this type of show that you think was consistently successful? I’m done with “ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED” serials because when have they ever pulled it off?
Well, Game of Thrones, but that has the advantage of a source that already looks multiple seasons ahead. (Lost seemed to get around...
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dogunderwater replied to your photo: I think I’m done with Revolution. Every episode…
I’m actually impressed you made it this far into Revolution.
The original run was pretty good! I was willing to give it a shot, see where it went. Then they got picked up for the second half of the season and they clearly didn’t take enough time to plan everything out. I dunno, I’m a sucker...
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softcommunication replied to your photo: I think I’m done with Revolution. Every episode…
But the real question is will you continue to watch…The Killing?
I am certainly going to give it a try! It kinda lost me near the end of last season but when watching the broadcasts of shows that I already know aren’t going to get renewed it becomes hard to concentrate, they seem so sad. Like,...
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semperidem:
barthel:
Some people like a little mystery in their show names. They want to draw the viewer in with uncertainty, guaranteeing nothing but obfuscation, offering nothing but the sublime wonder of the unknown. Mysteries will be left unresolved. Characters’ motivations will remain obtuse. Indeed, the viewer may never be truly sure what the show is even about.
Then there are the...
Why I Listened to Deerhunter Between My Breakdowns... →
katherinestasaph:
Martin Douglas explains the emotional resonance of Deerhunter by remembering his own bouts with monomania.
This is very good.
