January 2011
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“Today “the cultural elite” is almost a redundancy — the culture part is...”
– “Revolt of the Elites”
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Want to eat less? Try staring at food porn →
“People who spent time looking at images of M&Ms and thinking about eating M&Ms actually ate 40 to 50 per cent fewer candies when invited to eat real M&Ms”
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In which we all go home and turn on our favorite...
Every conversation comes around to TV shows these days. Get people together, and once they realize TV shows they have in common, THAT becomes the enthusiastic, focused dialogue that’ll dominate for minutes on end—what the show’s doing right, the virtues of a particular season, the flaws, the humor, the inevitable comparisons to other shows, etc. etc. etc. Mention a show people...
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“Ms. Portman can now claim what appears to be a unique distinction: She may be...”
– heh.
‘No Strings Attached’ With Natalie Portman - Review - NYTimes.com
(via ericasavestheday)
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“I never thought I was that difficult. I thought I was writing for a fairly hip,...”
– Novelist Barry Hannah in conversation with Wells Tower in The Believer and excerpted in Harper’s. Hannah died last year.
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Snarky Old Harper's
I like and usually read Harper’s, but Jesus Christ has the past year been a workplace whirlwind for them or what? I remember reading all those wild, surreal Observer pieces from like a year ago when Roger Hodge was getting bumped, and recent news suggests things are just as crazy.
See the New York item yesterday? Crazy:
On July 29, 2010, Metcalf, Rosenstein, and about a...
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The Decemberists—“This Is Why We...
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A Portrait of the Artist in a Massage Parlor
Thy Neighbor’s Wife is a sneaky, skillful little book. I read another 75 pages or so yesterday and am up to page 200 now. It’s a little more disconnected than I had initially imagined it might be—more a series of related anecdotes speaking to a greater point rather than one overarching non-fiction narrative. The start of Playboy, sex-radical swingers’ groups, the battles...
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“If you ask nine out of 10 Sonomans what Patch is,... →
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Magik Markers—“Taste”
Coming...
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The world, it seems, is still actively hunting... →
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“In the late 1960s, George Bush Jr was at Yale, branding the asses of pledges to...”
– So begins Eliot Weinberger’s London Review of Books review of George Bush’s memoir Decision Points.
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Down to the wire of The Wire
I’ve made it—almost. I’ve made it through all five seasons of The Wire, minus the season 5 finale, which I’m likely to see tomorrow depending on how post-work drinks evolve.
Five seasons’ worth of Baltimore—more the bad than the good, from cops to schools, gangs to politicians, journalists to lawyers. I started watching the first season last year, I believe,...
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“I was 23 at the time and could not comprehend why anyone would be obliged to...”
– Workaholism in America: A European’s Perspective
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The Atlantic’s Rise, Harper’s Fall, and the... →
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Duckpin bowling
Although 2011 has many fantastic things to recommend it so far (Baltimore fireworks, some terrific people, another six months at The Atlantic, the lingering hangover of a lovely St. Louis visit, etc.), I also discovered on this first weekend of the new year the strange and completely brand new (to me) sport known as duckpin bowling:
The balls used in duckpin bowling weigh 2-4 pounds...
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