tomartin
interesting internet thing to look at
"A TextArc is a visual represention of a text—the entire text (twice!) on a single page. A funny combination of an index, concordance, and summary; it uses the viewer's eye to help uncover meaning...."
Thanks Sarah.
you're pobably not reading enough poetry
"The collection of 50 short video documentaries showcases individual Americans reading and speaking personally about poems they love. The videos have been regular features on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and are a permanent part of the Library of Congress archive of recorded poetry and literature...."
more on visions of sin
From The Weekly Standard:
" I used to play two subliterary games with Salman Rushdie. The first, not that you asked, was to re-title Shakespeare plays as if they had been written by Robert Ludlum. (Rushdie, who invented the game, came up with The Elsinore Vacillation, The Dunsinane Reforestation, The Kerchief Implication, and The Rialto Sanction.) The second was to recite Bob Dylan songs in a deadpan voice as though they were blank verse. In addition to the risk of the ridiculous, it can become quite hypnotic. Try it yourself with "Mr. Tambourine Man": It works so well, you hardly care that a tambourine man can't really be playing a song. "Lily, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts," "Chimes of Freedom," and "Desolation Row" all have the same feeling..."
Salman Rushdie is a maniac!
will i need to buy blonde on blonde in another format?
"Experts say today's music CDs are built for longevity -- but only as long as they're kept in cases, unscratched, at room temperature, away from extreme moisture. "If it's stored carefully, it'd probably come close to a human's lifetime," says Alan Sahakian, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University. Adds Jerry Hartke, president of Media Sciences, a CD-quality testing facility, "The error correction in those things is so powerful you can actually drill a two-millimeter hole in the thing, and it'll still play."...........
That is true, but still put the cd's away when your done with them.
physics constants stay put
I find this reassuring in a vague sort of way:
"Controversy over whether the fundamental constants of nature change with time has reignited. A new study is casting doubt on an earlier claim that a key constant varied as the Universe evolved...."
the big fat double rock and roll album of my generation
The Clash's London Calling is being rereleased with extras and a dvd:
"The new edition will also feature full song lyrics, a new essay and photos by band photographer Pennie Smith, who was responsible for the blurry cover shot of an angry Simonon smashing his bass during a gig at the New York Palladium.
"London Calling," the Clash's third album, has come to be regarded as one of the best records of the punk era. Its 19 tracks feature such classics as the title cut, "Clampdown," "Guns of Brixton," "Spanish Bombs," "Rudie Can't Fail," "Death or Glory" and the final hidden tune "Train in Vain....."
The judge says five to ten, I say double that again, I'm still not workin' for the clampdown.
hollywood spots a programming trend
"Inspired by the runaway success of religion-themed novels like the "Left Behind" series and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," broadcasters are devoting more of their prime-time schedules to shows dealing with God, faith and the afterlife.
— Reuters, June 15"
Some satirical program titles from a Daily Show writer. Funny.
a show about nothing (not seinfeld)
"THE BIG NOTHING," here at the Institute of Contemporary Art, is an overstuffed mess of a survey, too long incubated in the minds of its curators and short on catchy visuals, but I'm glad to have come across it anyway. You might generally describe its subject as the impulse to say no. As Ingrid Schaffner, one of the show's curators, riffs in her catalog essay, this has led the artists on view (there are about 60) to investigate "absence, anarchy, the absurd, nonsense, zip, zero, infinity, atmosphere, ellipsis, negation, annihilation, whiteness, blackness, formlessness, the void, abjection, the invisible" � the list goes on...."
the tallest building in the world
A fairly cool looking building, but I mostly linked this because of the nifty animation at the Tech Review website. This building is the biggest in the world but there are two in the planning stage that will surpass it. One of them at the World Trade Center site.
rolling stones cover story on ray charles
I recently saw him perform "behind closed doors" on a CMT tv special. I was reminded how great he was. The song became his and it was instantly the definitive version of the song. And it's not even that good of a song.
His song from "Christmas Vacation" is one of the best Christmas recordings ever.
"The battle between sin and salvation, between Saturday-night revels and Sunday-morning sanctity, rages at the heart of American popular music. But for Ray Charles, those combating urges were one and the same, and he made the music to prove it. Beginning in 1954 with his R&B hit "I've Got a Woman," Charles set tales of desire, longing and lust to the propulsive rhythms of gospel, breaking the ground for what would soon be called soul music...."
lifelong kindergarten
More serious goofing-off at MIT:
"We develop new technologies that, in the spirit of the blocks and fingerpaint of kindergarten, expand the range of what people can design, create, and learn.
We introduce new technologies and activities in classrooms, museums, and after-school centers, nurturingÂand studyingÂthe growth of communities of playfully-inventive learners.
frank lloyd wright (style)
"When George Westbrook, his wife and their two daughters were house-hunting in 1987 in this suburb of Columbus, they noticed an ad for a Frank Lloyd Wright-style home..."
Wright didn't design these but there is an implied Wright blessing on the Ohio houses.
you should watch this show
You're a wanker if you don't.
Sorry, I got the dvd (both season's! Thanks John) for father's day. Twelve of the funniest tv shows you will ever see. "Funny" is an inadequate word. Never have I seen a show move so deftly from farcicle to heartbreaking within the sitcom format. Real characters. Perceptive insights in the workplace. Real laughs. They just get everything right.
america's first phonecam art show
They have a manifesto!:
"THE SENT MANIFESTO: Camera phones – mobile communication devices that include tiny, built-in digital cameras -- have only become widely available in the US within the past year. Their use is utilitarian; they're small and inexpensive. They capture mundane, personal moments of everyday life. But as candid and amateur-produced images of conflict and world events make their way into news, handheld mobile cameras make media history and become a force of social change. Soon, we'll use them to capture and manipulate data: camera phones are becoming handheld barcode readers, and tools for new mobile commerce applications...."
They're supposed to have an online exhibit - which I believe they are still receiving submissions for.
that's doctor bob
"The 63-year-old American who penned such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Mr Tambourine Man" will be made a Doctor of Music.
Dylan's other honorary degree, from Princeton University, was awarded in 1970 at a time when his anti-establishment songs had made him a firm favorite amongst students..."
His receipt of his Princeton degree is recounted in "The Day of the Locust" from New Morning.
Oh, the benches were stained with tears and perspiration,
The birdies were flying from tree to tree.
There was little to say, there was no conversation
As I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree.
And the locusts sang off in the distance,
Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.
Oh, the locusts sang off in the distance,
Yeah, the locusts sang and they were singing for me.
I glanced into the chamber where the judges were talking,
Darkness was everywhere, it smelled like a tomb.
I was ready to leave, I was already walkin',
But the next time I looked there was light in the room.
And the locusts sang, yeah, it give me a chill,
Oh, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.
Oh, the locusts sang their high whining trill,
Yeah, the locusts sang and they were singing for me.
Outside of the gates the trucks were unloadin',
The weather was hot, a-nearly 90 degrees.
The man standin' next to me, his head was exploding,
Well, I was prayin' the pieces wouldn't fall on me.
Yeah, the locusts sang off in the distance,
Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.
Oh, the locusts sang off in the distance,
And the locusts sang and they were singing for me.
I put down my robe, picked up my diploma,
Took hold of my sweetheart and away we did drive,
Straight for the hills, the black hills of Dakota,
Sure was glad to get out of there alive.
And the locusts sang, well, it give me a chill,
Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.
And the locusts sang with a high whinin' trill,
Yeah, the locusts sang and they was singing for me,
Singing for me, well, singing for me.
this seems a little harsh - cancelling lollapalooza
"Seth Hurwitz, an independent promoter in Washington who booked Lollapalooza into the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., said that there was waning interest in aging alternative rock acts like the ones on the Lollapalooza tour.
"How well is Morrissey going to do in the Midwest?" he said. "I wouldn't venture to guess. The problem is that there is just not a really large interest in alternative music. What was called alternative in the 90's was exploding with something new, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana. It was exciting stuff."
Mr. Hurwitz said many of his concerts, including those by younger acts like Evanescence and Three Doors Down, were selling well.
"They tried to pull together Morrissey and Sonic Youth," he said, on an alternative bill. "But there are not enough people who care about it."...."
my first turf management post
The enduring image of the tournament is that of a golfball rolling interminably.
From the New York Times:
"The controversial par-3, 189-yard No. 7 at Shinnecock created a carnival-like atmosphere Sunday. Three of the first four players who arrived at No. 7 made triple bogey. Realizing early that the green would be unplayable unless water was applied during the round, the U.S.G.A. syringed the green periodically. Some groups arrived at the seventh tee and were forced to wait while the maintenance crew watered the green. But later in the day, the crew would let two or three groups pass through No. 7 before applying water to the green, giving the perception that conditions were not the same for everyone. Fans began booing whenever water was applied to the green..."
variations on a sonnet by shakespeare
I've been working on this project for a little while. If you email me (tomartin@excite.com) I'll email you all 14 poems in a pdf file.
Following are a series of poems based on Sonnet LX by Shakespeare. The original sonnet appears at the beginning, with 14 variations on that sonnet following. The variations were constructed through random number generation (http://www.random.org/). A series of 14 numbers were generated (0-9). The numbers generated were used to determine what word would be kept. For example if the number “3” came up, the third word would be kept and the rest of the line would be deleted. The process would be repeated through each line in the sonnet. If the number was zero the whole line would be erased and would appear as a space in the remaining or “subtracted” sonnet. There are 14 variation because there are 14 lines in a sonnet. The sonnet to variate was chosen by caprice. It is not a particular favorite nor do I particularly dislike it.
LX
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand.
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
LX (1,2,3,...)
Like
do
place
all
main
crown'd,
Crooked
gift
Time
the
of
but
to
hand.
a new york city commute
A very nice little online photo essay about a New York City commute. Very nice. Very creative. Very insightful. The color of the seats is the thing that strikes me. I got this link from boingboing.
putting michael moore in perspective
I don't use the term "must read" lighty but this is the must read primer to Farenheit 9/11.
"To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery...."
more on the new dylan book
"Cherish the cultural moment: Just as Bob Dylan sells his soul for a Victoria's Secret Venetian holiday, the academy ushers him into the Great Hall of Poets. With Dylan's Visions of Sin, Boston University's Christopher Ricks, the eminent Milton and Eliot scholar, delivers his long-awaited Dylan treatise, Visions of Sin. (It was published last year in Britain.) Organizing his thoughts around the traditional seven vices�and virtues�Ricks burrows deep into Dylan's lyrics for intriguing comparisons to Keats, Tennyson, and other canon members, with enough gusto and substance to win over any remaining Dylan holdouts. The writing is admiringly learned, the observations insightful and often piquant. Yet the Ricks style is overly pleased with itself, Old School straining to sound New School, and, at 500 pages, an arduous read even for Dylan fanatics....."
Though not favorable, I would be remiss if i didn't post this Slate review of the new Dylan book.
fellini! a book of drawings
Yesterday's LATimes Book Review had a review of a book of Fellini's film drawings. The book is called Fellini! Since the LATimes has a funky archive (it costs money!) I mention the book and the great review and link to another site that has a lot of great drawings by Fellini.
a course in hydrapoetics
What is hydropoetics? I'm not sure but this is one of the most interesting reading lists (with most of the text online) that I have ever read. It covers internet information classifications and history and orginizing principles. I think this is either a Harvard or MIT course. Very interesting.
links
Let's call this an interesting link page somehow related to the below group.
one block of new york city
This is a work in progress. It is a study of a block in NYC by a couple of multi-media artists. I went to the site and it just kept loading and loading - but what I saw was interesting. I'm going to keep an eye on this.
From the site:
"One Block Radius, a project of Brooklyn artists Christina Ray and Dave Mandl [known collaboratively as Glowlab], is an extensive psychogeographic survey of the block where New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art will build a new facility in late 2004. Engaging a variety of tools and media such as blogs, video documentation, maps, field recordings & interviews, Glowlab creates a multi-layered portrait of the block as it has never been seen before [and will never be seen again]. This website, developed by Morgan Schwartz, is an interactive archive for the project, which will continue to grow over time as we build a dense data-map of the block. The information collected is organized into three categories: observation, interaction & response. Click on each category to begin exploring the block...."
mark rothko exhibit
This is a beautiful and informative online exhibit. A Mark Rothko exhibit at LACMA was the first exhibit I went to as a child - which sparked my lifelon love of art.
more on bergman
This is from a 1999 profile of Bergman:
"In a career of nearly sixty years, Bergman has written some sixty films, most of which he directed; by the end of this year, he will have added another, “Faithless”—an account of his involvement in a love triangle, which Liv Ullmann is to direct. He has also mounted more than seventy plays; next February he will stage a new production of August Strindberg’s “Ghost Sonata” at the Dramaten. When Bergman is in Stockholm, he lives in an apartment built on the spot where Strindberg lived, and the connection is more than spiritual: as Sweden’s most expert storyteller, Bergman is Strindberg’s heir. And anyone wishing to map the geography of Bergman’s genius will find clues in the streets of Stockholm, where he grew up..."
bergman retrospective in nyc
I only point this out because this article is such a nice quick summary of Bergman's film career. I am reminded of Bergman's books about film, which are extraordinary. Their titles escape me - something with the word 'lantern' in it?
(Bergman=Lutheran Surrealist?)
Favorite films: Wild Strawberries, Fanny & Alexandra, Summer Interlude, Through a Glass Darkly...
the two things game
This goes against one of my favorite sayings: "Some people think when they learn the tricks of the trade, they know the trade."
There are two things about everything - apparently. Example:
The Two Things about Blogging:
1. Everyone who runs one is a kook.
2. Everyone who comments in one is a kook.
now this is very very (very) good news
"As long as there are things to make fun of in the world, The Simpsons will continue to thrive," he (Matt Groenig) said yesterday.
"Until the world becomes more like The Waltons, there will always be room for The Simpsons."
Imagine a world without the Simpsons!
brancusi at the guggenheim
"THE eccentric spiral ramp of the Guggenheim Museum can foment exhibition heaven or exhibition hell, depending on the art, the curator and the installation designer involved. Heaven rules in the museum's small but lucid survey of the great modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who was born in a Romanian village in 1876 and lived most of his life in Paris....."
Whenever I think of seeing a show at the Guggenheim I am thinking about the building and not the art. Wright was an insidious egoist. He knew what he was doing. There was no way he was gooing to stand back and let people enjoy art. It's still my favorite building in NYC.
a great illustrator
Bob Staake - he used to work for the Easy Reader and he once judged/spoke at a writing contest I was in in high school. Wondered what he was up to. He has a beautiful, informative website.
monodology by gottfried wilhelm leibniz
I have been reading over this for the last few days:
"1. The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is nothing but a
simple substance, which enters into compounds. By 'simple' is meant
'without parts.' (Theod. 10.)
2. And there must be simple substances, since there are compounds;
for a compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simple
things.
3. Now where there are no parts, there can be neither extension
nor form [figure] nor divisibility. These Monads are the real atoms of
nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
4. No dissolution of these elements need be feared, and there is
no conceivable way in which a simple substance can be destroyed by
natural means. (Theod. 89.)
5. For the same reason there is no conceivable way in which a simple
substance can come into being by natural means, since it cannot be
formed by the combination of parts [composition]...."
And more.........
a day in the life of an irishman
A James Joyce cheat sheet
"Wednesday 16 June 2004 marks the 100th anniversary of "Bloomsday", the day celebrated by Irish author James Joyce in his controversial Dublin-set novel Ulysses.
The book has fascinated scholars and baffled readers for decades with its dense prose, obscure puns and allusions to the characters and events of Homer's epic Greek poem The Odyssey....."
lutheran surealism vs. avant lutheranism
I've been reading this blog and been fascinated by it. I was filling in a form at a website where one is to enter a number of keywords about oneself to line you up with likeminded people. I rather impulsively entered the phrase "Avant Lutheran". Later in the day I googled the phrase and came up with this blog about Lutheran Surealism. The writer seemed to be on the same page as me on a number of subjects. It's very funny and fun to read.
Sample:
"When I read the dumb myths of Greece with their squabbling soap operas, their petty politics, frivolous sexual practices, ridiculous epic poems without any sense of anything other than might is right I wonder if it's the anti-Semitism that has prevented us from realizing that the best aspects of our culture in reality comes from Jerusalem and not from Athens.
When people speak of classical culture -- all I can say is that this culture doesn't move me at all while the Jewish culture does -- Genesis, Leviticus, the stories of Moses. They are an adult culture who walked on flames and understood infinity.
And this is where Charles Olson goes wrong. The haptic sense of the primitive Greeks has nothing on the infinity of the ancient Hebrews.
The Greeks: an ignorant and bumptious people.
The Greeks sacrificed cattle. The Jews sacrificed themselves. Working out the feeling of the sacrifices of these two groups would take a book, but suffice it to say that it's different. The Greeks were opportunists who sacrificed in order to get something. The Jews operated on another plan altogether.
Our Christian culture to the extent that it remains has almost nothing in common with the ancient Greeks. It's the Jews. Why do our buildings in the Capitol resemble Greek buildings? Why do we think we look back to that lot and to the primitive conceptions of those people?
Like dinosaurs the Greeks were based on all the wrong principles.
The Jews had it all right, and so their culture remains intact.............."
I don't even know the authors name. I've posted on some of the entries with my email address. We'll see.
don't be evil
I guess when you say something like that, your asking for it. This article recounts some of the Google backlash. (I still can't use my gmail account on OSX.)
bbc to offer free content from their programming library
" The British Broadcasting Corporation's Creative Archive, one of the most ambitious free digital content projects to date, is set to launch this fall with thousands of three-minute clips of nature programming. The effort could goad other organizations to share their professionally produced content with Web users.
The project, announced last year, will make thousands of audio and video clips available to the public for noncommercial viewing, sharing and editing. It will debut with natural-history programming, including clips that focus on plants, animals and birds...."
How fun is that? And who else might do the same thing? Think of the possibilities - a cornucopia of content.
down and out in the magic kingdom by cory doctorow
A science fiction novel made available for free from the authors website. Doctorow is associated with the website BoingBoing and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He has two novels and a collection of short stories published. His books are funny and perceptive.
From the novel:
"I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work..."
Check it out.
oblivion by david foster wallace
"Clearly, David Foster Wallace is a prose magician. He can make the English language run, jump, leap, snarl and whisper. In this new collection of stories, however, he gives us only the tiniest taste of his smorgasbord of talents. Instead, he settles for self-indulgent prattling and cheap irony and ridicule.
There are too many claustrophobic portraits of self-pitying, self-absorbed individuals who are endlessly long-winded...."
Sounds like we're criticizing Wallace for being Wallace.
one of the most beautiful gifts someone can give
A demonstration of beer making.
From the NYTimes:
"To me," said Mr. Oliver, the brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, "beer and wine are both beverages meant to be served with food. And good beer, real beer, often offers things that most wine does not, like carbonation and caramelized and roasted flavors — aspects that sometimes make beer the preferable choice.
"And the most wonderful thing about beer is that it has that ability to `reset' your palate. Take cassoulet, for example: Rustic southern French reds are good, but French beer is a much better choice. Cassoulet can be like cement, but beer busts it up and makes it seem so much lighter."
Though wine snobs might disagree with him, I understood Mr. Oliver's points..."
I, too, undertand Mr. Oliver. Thank you, Mr. Oliver.
tools for thought
A book by Howard Rheingold online:
"Tools for Thought is an exercise in retrospective futurism; that is, I wrote it in the early 1980s, attempting to look at what the mid 1990s would be like. My odyssey started when I discovered Xerox PARC and Doug Engelbart and realized that all the journalists who had descended upon Silicon Valley were missing the real story. Yes, the tales of teenagers inventing new industries in their garages were good stories. But the idea of the personal computer did not spring full-blown from the mind of Steve Jobs. Indeed, the idea that people could use computers to amplify thought and communication, as tools for intellectual work and social activity, was not an invention of the mainstream computer industry nor orthodox computer science, nor even homebrew computerists. If it wasn't for people like J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor, Alan Kay, it wouldn't have happened. But their work was rooted in older, equally eccentric, equally visionary, work, so I went back to piece together how Boole and Babbage and Turing and von Neumann -- especially von Neumann - created the foundations that the later toolbuilders stood upon to create the future we live in today. You can't understand where mind-amplifying technology is going unless you understand where it came from...."
new media links
The links on this page were so good I just had to link these links. They cover journalism and other informational modalities. The term "participatory journalism" is used frequently.
a paper on new media/journalism
I found this interesting. Go to the site and download the pdf file.
"We are at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism — but it is not journalism as we have known it. Media futurists have predicted that by 2021, "citizens will produce 50 percent of the news peer-to-peer." However, mainstream news media have yet to meaningfully adopt or experiment with these new forms...."
5 bloggers to watch (besides me)
An article from Time Magazine about blogging:
"For everything from shrewd political analysis to good old-fashioned gossip, Chris Taylor finds the blogs worth a visit...."
napolean dynamite
Don't we kinda have to see this:
"Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is neither Napoleonic nor dynamic, which is, I guess, the joke. (The name, an Elvis Costello alter ego, makes Hess the second Mormon after Neil LaBute, in The Shape of Things, to use Costello to no particular end recently...."
memories fade...they're designed that way for a reason
A MIT student project about remembering. It is a hypertext web installation with various thoughts on remembering. It has the odd quality of not being able to go back to pages one has already read.
From the site:
"A warning: This story is about loss and memory, and loss of memory. There is no back button here. Once something is gone from the screen, it may reappear, it may not, it may warp and change. You may find it again, but never by going back. So read carefully before you move on. This moment may never come back..."
theory and practice of non-linear and interactive narrative
I haven't highlighted an MIT OpenCourseWare course for some time. This is from the Comparitive Media Studies section. It is loaded with online text readings and links. Very fun and Interesting - if you're into that sort of thing.
From the course description:
"This class covers a range of topics including hypertext, interactive cinema, games, installation art, and soundscapes. It examines the potential for dynamic narrative in traditional media like novels and films and as well as in computer-based stories and games. The course focuses on the creation of electronic stories and games using simple authoring systems and multimedia software tools. Students present and constructively critique one another's work in progress in a workshop setting aimed at expanding the representational powers of a new creative medium. "
hey everybody! michael moore is back!
This is a brief paper I wrote after watching Columbine:
Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine is a work so bereft of actual facts it is difficult to label it a documentary, though this is the category it awkwardly inhabits in most of the festivals and award categories it has rested in since it's release. It is clearly an attempt to persuade without any regard for truth or accuracy.
The films title is based on the idea that the perpetrators of the Columbine school shooting had attended bowling class just before going out and shooting up their school and killing and injuring several of their classmates. This is used to disabuse people of the idea that it was as absurd to blame bowling for the violent character of Harris and Klebold as it to blame the music of Marilyn Manson or the violent video games the two loved so much. The fact that they didn't attend class that morning is not mentioned.
Virtually every scene is misleading, inaccurate or a complete fabrication. One cannot walk into North County Bank, open an account and walk out with a gun a half hour later. There were several weeks of setup by Moore's staff before the filming of that scene. It generally takes ten days to receive delivery of the gun (which cannot be picked up at the bank.) The NRA meeting that was held in Denver shortly after the shooting, which was portrayed as an insensitive invasion of a grieving town by a gun waving madman, was actually rescheduled down from four days of classes and meetings to a single meeting which was legally required by their non-profit charter. The "cold dead hand" comment was taken from a speech delivered a year later, 900 miles away.
Moore shows a cartoon that paints with the broadest strokes an implied connection between the NRA and the Ku Klux Klan. It depicts the NRA pouring gas on a cross lit by the Klan. It doesn't mention that President Grant, who was president of both the NRA and the US, was one of the Klan's early opponents.
The film is a strafe of misleading information, misused facts and fabrications that are the mark of the propagandist. It is a cynical attempt to persuade without regard for truth. Opponents of the film are described in the worst terms. People that disagree with the films ideas are labeled as racist, warmongering idiots.
one of the new yorker composers websites: nico muhly
This is the composer that got the most promising review in the New Yorker article. He has a very impressive list of compositions - some of it downloadable.
I listened to Three Etudes For Piano Solo - it was a beautiful, invigorating piece of music. The sound on the website was very nice and clear.
student "classical" music composers in and around new york
Some interesting composers from around New York. It's music with orchestras and violins and such but it isn't what you would think of as classical. Most of the composers have websites and places where their music can be downloaded from. An interesting introduction to modern music.
fun with kierkegaard
Five of Kierkegaard's books online in their entirety! Including Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death. Have fun. Oh, your welcome!
more on the dylan book
"Take a look, he seems to say, at the pleasure in juxtaposing one poet with another (he abuts Dylan with a wide array: Robert Lowell, Marvell, Tennyson, Eliot, George Herbert and more): see how they seem to read one another, while you and I, reader, stand back and watch. Or consider the rewards of parsing what you've taken for granted even in songs you praise as masterworks: a lyric's exact strategy and means, what it has in common with other human utterances, and what sets it apart. Such clockwork analysis never seems to drain Dylan's work of its vitality (a tribute to Ricks and Dylan both, I suspect), but rather to renew a listener's amazement. For instance, by the end of one such disquisition Ricks may threaten to persuade you that rhyme, that corny tool, is the central receptacle not only for Dylan's wit but for the moral and emotional brilliance of his art...."
I gotta get this!
another great new york museum in the news
Frank Lloyd Wright's New York City masterpiece is getting some much needed maintenance:
"After 45 years the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's soaring spiral that has become one of Manhattan's greatest tourist attractions, will undergo a major facelift. And while it has good bones, like many Wright buildings the Upper East Side landmark is plagued with cracks, leaks and corroding surfaces..."
"Like many Wright buildings" ouch. What does that mean when your an architect - one that many consider to be the greatest of the 20th century - and your buildings are known for falling apart?
a new book about you-know-who
"Mr. Ricks, who is 70 and was born in Britain and educated at Oxford, is a professor's professor, a don's don. He is courtly, charming and fond of wicked anecdotes about academic backbiting. He is also immensely learned. It's a tossup whether he or Harold Bloom knows more English verse by heart, but Mr. Ricks surely knows more Led Zeppelin lyrics than Mr. Bloom does, and can recite them on request. His love of Mr. Dylan's work is not an affectation, though � the pathetic impersonation of an old prof trying to prove how cool he is � but a genuine passion. He has just added to the not inconsiderable body of Dylan scholarship with a book of his own, his longest to date, "Dylan's Visions of Sin" (Ecco Press), which devotes some 500 pages to a close analysis, line by line sometimes, of the master's greatest hits...."
a nice interview with a disturbing novelist
"Chuck Palahniuk's books are a wicked crossbreed of Charles Bukowski and an over-stimulated librarian. From his first novel, the "cult" book Fight Club onward, Palahniuk's unabashedly harsh and compulsively readable prose has shocked the quite world of literature. Palahniuk's prose style, terse but packed with minute details, has brought new audiences into bookstores, and spawned a legion of committed fans..."
more on moma
A NYTimes article on the process of putting together the displayed art at the museum.
the museum of modern art in new york
There is a spectacular computer generated 3D tour of the museum - which opens in November. It looks amazing. It will probably be the greatest collection of modern art on display in the world. Take the tour! now! (It's narrated by Steve Martin).
one of the troubling questions of our day
Why do more people watch Leno than Letterman?
failure 101
A new documentary on one of my favorite channels - Trio- on one of my favorite subjects - failure. How are we ever going to learn if we don't make mistakes:
"This documentary covers the massive contemporary flops in movies, television and theater from the people who were involved in making them. From cancelled series to blockbuster duds to Broadway meltdowns, creative minds reveal the stories behind the ideas that didn't work, and give first hand accounts of the thought process, the disastrous result and the fallout that ensued from not living up to the hype..."
postmodernism explained
Notes from a lecture on postmodernism at Purdue. More interesting than it sounds.
the breakup of one of my favorite cooking shows
Dweezil and Lisa have apparently broken up. I enjoyed his passion for red sauce and her occasionally sneaking bacon into her vegetarian diet.
kubrick rubric
"Kubrick seems to have saved almost everything from his half-century career, stuffing 10 rooms of his rambling estate north of London with thousands of artifacts: scripts, letters, drawings, photographs, costumes, props, scale models and even technical equipment.
Three years after he died in 1999, the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt got permission from Kubrick's widow, Christiane, to sort through his effects with a view to putting on the first major retrospective of his work....."
And a sample of the kind of vision I love, regarding his plan to make a film about Napoleon:
"Kubrick's ambitions were summed up in a letter he sent to a studio in 1971: "It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do, except to say I expect to make the best movie ever made."...............
what was i doing at 18?
A hot new blog on the cable news business is run by an 18 year old college student. There is a picture of him in the NYTImes with a bank of television sets watching all the big cable news outlets.
