April 2013
1 post
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March 2013
2 posts
3 tags
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October 2012
1 post
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September 2012
2 posts
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Best. Inflatable lawn ornament. Ever. →
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August 2012
2 posts
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“You might be thinking to yourself, “How do you know the fear never goes away?”...”
– Chris Gethard, “The Chase Is the Thing and the Thing Is the Chase: Learning to Love Failure,” Splitsider
An answer to the question, “I’ve always really wanted to get into acting and/or comedy but I’m terrified of failing at it. How do you get the courage to perform?”
Also...
June 2012
2 posts
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“Learning to live with the given is the great humbling educational process of...”
– —David Milch, creator of Deadwood and Luck, “The Men Behind the Curtain: A GQ Roundtable”
I could easily hear this coming out of a very weary Doc Cochran.
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“Four years ago, when I started tweeting, people would say, “How do you feel...”
– Rob Delaney, The AV Club interview
April 2012
1 post
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The Shattering Effect of a High Explosive: On a... →
slaughterhousefive:
The soliloquy considered best and most famous in cinematic history is probably the one at the end of Blade Runner. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading here and go watch it. Then come back and read this, because I’m important. I don’t feel bad about spoilers because this movie’s been out for more…
February 2012
1 post
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October 2011
2 posts
4 tags
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August 2011
3 posts
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“Being mellow is okay if you wanna be a piece of cheese. The trouble with being a...”
– James Ellroy, interviewed on The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website
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July 2011
3 posts
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“I was the Bruce Lee of Hearts, no joke; knew all the nerve clusters to paralyze...”
– Colson Whitehead, “Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia: Part 4,” on Grantland (entire series here)
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“You finally have to settle down to do well the few things that your brain really...”
– Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (via austinkleon)
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“The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that...”
– Brian Eno (via the mighty austinkleon)
Reminds me of my response to a friend who, upon discovering she had a complete day to herself, asked on Facebook what she should do with it: “N O T H I N G.”
June 2011
1 post
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May 2011
4 posts
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“Reporter explaining why he stayed up all night writing when he wasn’t on...”
– —Overheard in the Newsroom
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“Go, little book, trot through Texas and Vermont and Alaska and Maryland and...”
– —Joanna Russ, The Female Man (1975), as eulogized lovingly in this Making Light thread.
A science fiction writer whom, shamefully, I had not known until her passing.
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“We have to have our dark corners and the unexplained. We will become...”
– Werner Herzog (via austinkleon)
Only thing better than reading this is hearing Herzog saying this in my head.
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March 2011
7 posts
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Psychedelic Icon Owsley Stanley Dies in Australia →
(REUTERS)—Owsley “Bear” Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was believed to be 76.
I first learned who Owsley was not through chemical experimentation, but through the man who acted as my...
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Vegas Lent, Defined
While listening to a recent episode of Five Hundy By Midnight, the Original Las Vegas Podcast, I was introduced to the term Vegas Lent. Hosts Tim and Michelle defined it as that 40-day period of planning, packing, practice gambling, buildup of tolerance for drink or buffet binges, and mounting anticipation before one’s next trip to Sin City.
I shall have to keep that in mind when this...
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Covering Politics the David Broder Way (by Richard...
From the 3/10/11 POLITICO Playbook, by Mike Allen, one of several tributes from fellow news reporters and editors to David Broder. Good guide for being a political reporter, hard worker, and mensch:
Richard L. Berke, National Editor and former National Political Correspondent, The New York Times: It was hard not to feel like an imposter covering politics alongside David, let alone trying to...
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“Bradlee wrote in his memoir, “A Good Life,” that Mr. Broder was...”
– Ben Bradlee, as quoted in “David Broder, 81, Dies; Set ‘Gold Standard’ for Political Journalism”
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“Broder’s appetite for working long hours and weekends was legendary....”
– “Washington Post columnist David Broder dies at 81,” Yahoo! News
February 2011
3 posts
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Kottke: "Don'ts: Walking While Texting"
If you run into me on the sidewalk while you are heads-down texting, emailing, IMing, reading, sexting, Angry Birdsing, or whatever elseing on your mobile device, I get to slap that fucking thing out of your hands a la Alex Rodriguez slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove in game six of the 2004 American League Championship Series, except way less milquetoasty. And you do the...
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January 2011
5 posts
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Wordle creator Jonathan Feinberg on (not) changing...
It pays to read FAQs, for answers, entertainment, and to avoid asking asinine questions like the one Jonathan Feinberg, creator of word-cloud generator Wordle, dispatches handily in that application’s Q&A page:
Could you remove or change the name of the “Sexsmith” font? I don’t want my students to see it.
Yes, with pleasure. First, please write to the musician ...
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Gene Weingarten on quitting pre-med and deadlines
Mother Jones: According to—uh—Wikipedia, you majored in psychology, but spent most of your time at the school paper. What were you writing then, and at what point did you know you wanted to do this for a living?
Gene Weingarten: I entered NYU intent on being a doctor, a career choice that got derailed for reasons pragmatic, emotional, and philosophical. Pragmatic: I flunked chemistry, probably the easiest course in the pre-med syllabus. Emotional: I walked into the college newspaper and discovered the elation delivered by a byline. Philosophical: I understood that with the combination of a doctor's license and my attraction to opiates, I'd likely be dead at 30. I wound up quitting college with three credits to go, to hook up with a teenage Puerto Rican street gang. It led to this [http://nymag.com/news/features/crime/48271/]. I never went back to college.
MJ: To parrot the predictable-journalist question you asked Garry Trudeau: Where do you come up with your ideas? Do you have a process?
GW: Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline.
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Londo Mollari, on Drinking on the Job
Londo: You are sure you will not have a drink?
Mr. Endawi: Not while I am on duty.
Londo: There you see, we Centauri are always on duty. Duty to the Republic, to our houses, to one another. And so, we have made the practice of joy another duty. One that must be pursued as vigorously as the others. You should try sometime.
—Babylon 5, "Matters of Honor"
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“1. Improv will save your life.
I don’t mean this literally, but I do mean that...”
– Felicia Day, “Five Things of 2010.” All five tips are well worth reading.
December 2010
5 posts
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“Editor is a formidable stealth position: an editor can launch 20 books a year...”
– Harriet Rubin, publishing colleague of Jackie Onassis, on the female editors at Doubleday, in Greg Lawrence’s “Jackie O, Working Girl,” Vanity Fair
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“In many ways, I am my father’s son. Once, in my 60s, I told my father, in his...”
– Pat Jordan, “What I Learned From My Father, the Grifter,” Men’s Journal.
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“And [Paul Muad’Dib] thought about the Guild—the force that had specialized...”
– —Frank Herbert, Dune
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“I recognize that there are certain types of games for which the photorealistic...”
– Shigeru Miyamoto, quoted in The New Yorker.
October 2010
3 posts
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No child has ever been killed by poisoned candy.... →
Like a Stinger missile against the flights of helicopter parents darkening America’s skies, here comes “America’s Worst Mom,” Lenore Skenazy, to debunk the multiple stranger danger myths that blend imagined fears with the vicarious ones kids used to be able to enjoy each Halloween:
Even when I was a kid, back in the “Bewitched” and “Brady Bunch” ...
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“The muddy red mud rose up until it covered the tiled front porch, leached in...”
– “Hungarians Raced to Escape Caustic Sludge,” The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2010 (online edition of story). Updated; see PPS.
So much to fix in one sentence. I count one homonym error, a needless up, two redundancies, a misuse of terminology (leach implies liquid passing through a porous...
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“His miniature pinscher, Rocco, was leashed next to Bugsy, a slightly larger...”
– “Dog Spat Leads to Fatal Stabbing,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 1, 2010, p. A23 of the print version.
I don’t know if this was a matter of Word’s AutoCorrect, or merely a writer (or proofreader) in dire need of some touch therapy, but clearly they were looking for “Shih...
September 2010
7 posts
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Motown Becomes Movietown (WSJ) →
Detroit is attracting much-needed commerce by offering Hollywood production companies hefty tax rebates to shoot series and movies on its recession-wracked streets:
The dilapidated Michigan Central Station, once a transportation hub, with marbled floors and Corinthian columns, has served as a symbol of urban ruination for years. It’s now a key location for productions including...
