tomartin
illusions
This page is fun. Especially after drinking a bottle of Bogle merlot on New Years Eve.
A list of good tv this year
Regarding TV: I have always said that I would rather my kids watch a good tv show than read a bad book. Here is a pretty good list of tv shows from this year.
another year end movie list
I'm not sure why this was called the 32 best movies of 2003 but it is a very good list. What an odd time for movies. I have been watching the Decalogue by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski and than took my kids to see Cheaper by the Dozen and was extremely affected by the comparison/contrast. It was as though I were watching two completely different mediums.
Check out the Decalogue: ten movies about the ten commandments -- amazing!
the iranian earthquake part 2
Dennis Praeger said this much better than I did:
"If you want to understand the Middle East conflict, Iran has just provided all you need to know.
A massive earthquake kills between 20,000 and 40,000 Iranians, and the government of Iran announces that help is welcome from every country in the world . . . except Israel.
This little-reported news item is of great significance. It begs commentary.
Israel not only has the world's most experienced crews in quickly finding survivors in bombed out buildings, it is also a mere two-hour flight from Iran. In other words, no country in the world would come close to Israel in its ability to save Iranian lives quickly.
But none of this means anything to the rulers of Iran. The Islamic government of Iran has announced to the world that it is better for fellow countrymen and fellow Muslims -- men, women and children -- to die buried under rubble than to be saved by a Jew from Israel.
That is how deep the hatred of Israel and Jews is in much of the Muslim world........"
only in the village voice...
Only in the Village voice would the Lord of the Rings and American Splendor tie for 8th on the best movie of the year list. Bill Murray tour de force, Lost in Translation is, by far, the leader for best movie of the year. I liked it.
diets in history
I found this funny.
literature 101
About.com's Literature: Classic page has a nice list of books to read and how to read them. There are also breakdowns in several catagories of literature with reading lists in each catagory. There are also a number of links to other literary sites. In fact, there are about.com pages for just about anything.
fun with legos
An earnest little manifesto:
"We are a community dedicated to the art of stop motion animation. Our main focus is the animation of plastic building toys, or bricks (LEGO, Mega Bloks, Best-Lock etc), which we call "brickfilms" (these films are also commonly called "LEGO Movies"). We also encourage other forms of animation, including 3D and Flash. On this site you will find a searchable directory of hundreds of films, contests, a busy forum, and great resources to help animators of any level in the creation of their movies...."
good television
Ken Tucker's top ten list. Number 1? BBCAmerica's The Office. Brilliant television. I'm fascinated by the copy machine collating bumpers between the scenes. Very low budget. Almost always filmed with a single camera in the same office set/location.
Alias is on the list and, of course, The Simpson's.
moviemaking madness
Is this another manifestation of the crap art movement. A New York City movie contest: write, cast, shoot and edit a movie in 24 hours. Most of the films are "unwatchable". It does seem like a lot of fun.
tetris is hard....and fun
More fun at MIT. Erik Demaine, a professor of math at MIT has written some studies of the popular (and addictive) computer game tetris. There are some interesting articles linked from his website. Tetris is one of his side interests. His main area of study is folding things -- work for which he just won a MacArthur Fellowship.
There are eight total forms, or tetramino, comprised of four squares in all their two-dimensional combinations. They fall from the top of the screen and can be rotated to land without leaving spaces. When one line is complete it disappears and the remaining squares fall one space. I've noticed how helpful it is to know the next shape that is falling. The article listed talks about how no matter how many shapes we are informed of in advance it is still extremely difficult, with a finite number of times one can create full rows.
those iranian charmers
"Iran says it will accept assistance from everywhere except Israel, according to the NYT." -Today's Papers: Aftershocks
room with a view
Some of the most gorgeous photography on the net. Take a look at the panorama from the top of the Himalayas. See the world!
kevin smith's top five movies
"When he is asked, as he often is by young fans, to name his favorite films, Mr. Smith says he always cites the same five: Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," Martin Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ," Oliver Stone's "J.F.K.," Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and "A Man for All Seasons."...
This was from an article on Smith's website reprinting a "Watching movies with....." article from the New York Times. The movie he 'watches' is the surprisingly highbrow choice of "A Man for All Seasons", the story of Sir Thomas More. The other choices make alot of sense especielly "Do the Right Thing" which has the feel of alot of Smith's movies.
the flourishing crap art movement
The interesting part of this to me is the write and record an album in 24 hours challange. The site has a few of the albums recorded under these terms available for download. They advocate similar projects in the visual arts as well. They seem to have the gnostic belief that not thinking, planning or even working very hard is extremely pure artistically. A fun and interesting game; not great art -- aptly titled.
"Crap Art is a new art movement. We're still working out our manifesto, but here are a few of our principles....... " (down with elitism blah, blah, blah)..........
a list of things you don't want
I love a good list, but I find the premise of this list questionable -- albums released this year that should be avoided. The only album that I am somewhat familiar with and believe shouldn't be on the list is The Raven by Lou Reed.
modern film adaptations of shakespeare from fathom.com.
A Fathom seminar on Shakespeare on film. The course is centered around Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet. A pretty good modern interpretation of the play. High points: the balcony and party scenes, Claire Danes. Low points: Leo Di Caprio.
genocidal maniac of the millennium
There are apparently no hard feelings for the Cultural revolution. The Chinese people, in their newfound zeal for making money are mining the works of Mao for business tips. They are also quite fond of Spencer Johnson's "who moved my cheese?".
has anyone seen my posting?
I read this really great blog by a homeless young woman and wrote a nice thoughtful and observant little essay to go along with the link. I had covered the amazing things she was accomplishing and made subtle little ironic comments about how she was getting done all these amazing things (she's applying to Harvard) juxtaposed against her complaining about being homeless. She apparently has a touch of brain damage and described a feeling I have since my stroke -- trouble focusing, expressing myself, organizing myself, making decisions,...
unfortunately, I lost the post. I think it was my fault but I wish I had it and I am just so inconsolably annoyed by the idea that I will never see it again.
On top of that, AOL was just not working for me last week. It worked fine for the six other people on my account but not me. And there was the holidays.....
So anyway.... I haven't posted in about a week but here I go.
smile, internet, and get your finger out of your nose
This is beautiful and interesting. A map of the internet put together in one day on a dare.
" This project was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe. The data represented and collected here serves
a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and esthetics/art...."
having fun with noam chomsky
A website that creates paragraphs from left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky text. It combines sentences and phrases from things that Chomsky has said to create new Chomskyish paragraphs.
about begley and payne
An interview with the author of the novel, About Schmidt. He is a Harvard graduate and a soon to be retired lawyer. About Schmidt is a great movie by a great writer/director, Alexander Payne. He also did Citizen Ruth, Election and the underappreciated Jurassic Park III--
top 10 american epic poems of the 20th century
Is that not one of the best lists you have ever seen? The only book on the list that I own is the Cantos by Ezra Pound. That book is crazy! I read it when I need my brain loosened up a little bit. The only other book on the list that I have even heard of is the Charles Olsen book. Is the definition of an epic poem just - a really long poem? Apparently. Is this a time to complain about the state of modern poetry. Who can name a living poet?
A slightly related list, that I don't completely understand, 10 novels poets should read:
http://poetry.about.com/cs/contemporarypoets/tp/tpnovelstoread.ht
a euclidean moment
David Foster Wallace frequently cites Euclid in his book about infinity. I found this version online. Click around on it for a while.
writer's boot camp
I'm enrolled in a writing program called Writer's Boot Camp in Santa Monica, developed by Jeff Gordon. I had to give a brief speech there tonight. It went something like this:
My breakthrough at WBC came at the front door --"the secret to writing is writing". Or as the ganja smoking catapiller in Alice in Wonderland said,”I have improved it” to simply : writer’s write. It, however, took more than a drive by the building to absorb that little nugget of biadic alliteration. It took some time before I understood the idea that it is much more likely to give birth to an undeveloped thing that can be fixed, than it is to sit around waiting for something perfect to come out.
It has been fun writing with my writing partner, Larry, and coming to understand the complimentary set of working skills that have joined to create work that I enjoy and which wouldn’t have existed without our collaboration.
I have enjoyed two of the best teachers I have ever encountered in my eclectic educational career - Michael Lippman and John Dardis. I have also been fascinated and inspired by my classmates. I have heard stories that I am sure I will one day watch in a movie theater.
My time at Writer’s Boot Camp coincided with a very strange time in my life. Since beginning the program I have had a heart attack , a stroke, 2 separate incidents of heart failure, lost half of my field of vision, had a pacemaker installed and reconnected due to a bad connection and been left with a lingering case of what I can only call “feeling weird all the time”. I only cite my recent medical history to point out what can be accomplished with the generously paced WBC Program. I hardly missed a class! and we managed to write a Scrubs, a Raymond and a zippy little version of the fox melodrama, 24, as a sitcom; not to mention a dozen or so dynamic feature premise lines just begging to be written into fullblown screenplays. And I do know this: writing is what makes me happy and I am very grateful to have been given a set of well thought out tools that have helped me to be a better writer -- whether it is a screenplay, a play, a poem or an e-mail to my wife or children. I have even developed the courage to identify myself as a writer and for that I am very grateful to Jeff Gordon."
field report
This is one of those strange internet moments that fascinate me. I am sitting at a party with an HP laptop, wirelessly connected to the internet through my yahoo account. I just fed a group of twenty people with mass quantities of comfort food and didn't know what to say to anyone.
Anyway............I have a huge backload of items to post and hope to get to it tomorrow.
I did a yahoo search for "tomartin" and was the top search among over a hundred finds.
Indeterminacy of john cage
This is a website with a batch of one page stories/poems/writings by John Cage. Most of the observations have a sort of banal profundity to them. Read the instructions and use the very intricate randomization instructions. They use an unconventional spacing which is supposed to represent silence which makes the reading of each entry about one minute long.
a visit to the national gallery
One of my first field trips as a child was to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At the time there was a Mark Rothko exhibit -- a strange choice, looking back, for a field trip for a group of Catholic school kids. I remember it was a huge collection of paintings. Rothko has a distinctive style -- huge canvasses with large amorphous blocks of colors. At the beginning of his career the colors were bright and humorous and as time passes they become darker, with the canvases looking almost completely black before Rothko ended his own life.
The National Gallery has a nice website with a number of well-conceived theme tours. The tours go by art movement, time periods or individual artists.
