May 2010
118 posts
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5/27/2010: Film: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
So, Yesterday was Peter Cushing’s birthday and today is Christopher Lee’s, and I thought, what better way to celebrate than With some Frankenstein action.
(P.S. That lady, Hazel Court I think, is showing a ton of cleavage for 1957)
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5/27/2010: Comic: Kill Shakespeare by McCreery/Del...
Kill Shakespeare is exactly what it sounds like: a comic in which Shakespeare’s death is plotted by his own characters. This could be really bad. But the art looks good. And I’m super intrigued.
Del Col admits they’re toying around with the timelines for the characters a bit. For instance, they take Hamlet directly from the play. In the play, Hamlet is banished from Denmark...
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5/27/2010: Music: Peekaboo by Siouxsie & The...
Siouxsie Sioux is 53 today!!
This video is almost as ridiculous as this song is amazing.
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5/27/2010: Birthdays
Dashiell Hammett - 1894
“I’ve been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.”
John Cheever - 1912
“All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.”
Herman Wouk - 1915
“I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about...
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5/26/2010: Books: Good News for Small Bookshops -...
Well, ok. Not bad news. Membership in the American Booksellers Association is up! Yay! The rise is tiny, only nine, but compared almost all other years and the 20 year trends, thats not just good, but great news, especially in the wake of the recession.
Teicher credits last year’s turnaround mostly to the smarts of the independent community and a willingness to experiment, such as the literary...
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5/26/2010: Music: Songbird by Oasis
Talkin to the...
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5/26/2010: Concert Review: Pearl Jam - NYTimes
New York Times’s Nate Chinen reviews Pearl Jam’s recent Madison Square Garden concert, and he says, basically, they nailed it.
Pearl Jam hasn’t budged over the years, unlike most of its old contemporaries. Lately the reunion trail is crowded with grunge or proto-grunge bands, from Alice in Chains and Jane’s Addiction to Stone Temple Pilots, which has a new album coming out on...
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5/26/2010: Books: Twain Memoirs To Be Published -...
Mark Twain asked that his memoirs not be published until a hundred years after his death, well guess what?
Twain had specified that his autobiography remain unpublished for a century after his death, to ensure that he felt free to speak his “whole frank mind”, knowing that when his “Final (and Right) Plan” for relating the story of his life was eventually published, he...
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5/26/2010: Music: The Births of Jazz
Today is also the birthday of:
Miles
And Al Jolson
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5/26/2010: Birthdays:
Aleksandr Pushkin - 1799
“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten-thousand truths.”
Edmond de Goncourt - 1822
“The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.”
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5/25/2010: Philosophy: Existentialism IS Hard -...
Maybe I can comment a little on ethics today (tonight) and post one more for the road. I found this phenomenal article in the Guardian, it’s from way back at the end of March, but it’s far too pertinent and insightful to pass by. The article comments of the difficulties of living an existential existence, of being authentic, of being decisive, of being honest, especially with...
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5/25/2010: Excerpt du Jour: The Basic Writings of...
John Stuart Mill’s birthday was last week, and while Millsie didn’t invent utilitarianism, but he did help to popularize it. He has also a celebrated liberal and feminist.
While utilitarian ethics, along with Kantian ethics, compose the majority of non-contemporary secular ethics, it is not without it’s flaws. However, understanding any and all systematic approaches to ethics...
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5/25/2010: Taoist Duesday
There are eighty-one chapters each in the Tao Teh Ching and the Hua Hu Ching by Lao Tzu, my plan is to post one each Tuesday until they’re all done. Sounds good, I’m starting with the Tao Teh Ching.
TWO
As soon as the world regards something as beautiful,
ugliness simultaneously becomes apparent.
As soon as the world regards something as good,
evil simultaneously becomes apparent.
In exactly...
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5/25/2010: Film: Evil is Good! - Eddie Murphy
Here’s a surprising and profoundly deep clip from Vampire In Brooklyn. It’s always stuck with me and I still find it a great explanation for the relationship between opposite things (as described in the next post!)
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5/25/2010: Kierkegaard: How To Believe (Part 4):...
This episode of How To Believe (I really cannot give Clare Carlisle enough credit!) is all about passion, which is incredible, because the history of philosophy is largely the history of the promotion of reason at the expense, intentionally, of passion (emotion, etc.). It’s one of the things at the core of existentialism; this reaction to Hegelian philosophy that tried to put down passion...
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5/25/2010: Poetry: The Waking by Theodore Roethke
I know it’s philosophy day, but I found the text of this poem while looking for Roethke quotes and it just …
The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so...
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5/25/2010: Birthdays:
Ralph Waldo Emerson - 1803
“A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.”
Theodore Roethke - 1908
“A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.”
Robert Ludlum - 1927
“I have always preferred conflict of individuals over...
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5/24/2010: Music: Hurry Up And Wait by Nocando
Seriously, I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I may be, to an extent, the Simon Cowell of Rap. Think about what Simon can do. He isn’t an artist, he isn’t a critic, he just KNOWS when something will hit. So, I’m really not saying much. So, while my taste in other music may be esoteric, and some may say snobbish, my taste in rap music is anything but.
For one thing,...
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5/24/2010: Book Review: Should You Judge This Book...
Should You Judge This Book By Its Cover: 100 Fresh Takes On Familiar Quotations And Expressions by Julian Baggini is mostly a book on the history of and proper use of, what are correctly called ‘aphorisms.’
Click here for the full review or to listen to the All Things Considered story.
Here’s a really interesting tidbit:
As his own cover suggests, Baggini’s book takes...
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5/24/2010: UK Radio Listeners At All Time High -...
More Britons are listening to the radio than ever before. Digital Radio (HDRadio) has seen the most significant rise.
Click here for the full Article.
Do you listen to radio? Why or why not? What do you listen to?
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5/24/2010: Birthdays:
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov - 1905
“I have not infrequently read and heard recent statements which have quite frankly astonished me, in which the novel has been declared an outdated form that does not correspond to present-day demands. Yet it is just the novel that makes possible the most complete comprehension of the world of reality, that permits the projection of one’s...
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5/23/2010: Excerpt du Jour: On Literature by...
The following passage comes from the essay, “On Some Functions Of Literature,” which is the first essay in the book. Paraphrased, it is one of my favorite quotations of all time, and it feels great to be able to share it in this larger context. Also, excellently, this is the first time I’ve reread it since I read the passage In Les Miserables he mentions.
Page 14:
With a...
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5/23/2010: Birthdays:
Margaret Wise Brown - 1910
“Goodnight Moon”
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Mitch Albom - 1958
“The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
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5/22/2010: Only You by Portishead
I cannot stop listening to this damn song. Even though I have this song, I hadn’t listened to it in years, and I heard it on the radio and and and. I cannot stop listening to it.
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5/22/2010: Book Review: The Dream Of Perpetual...
The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a fantasy novel of an alternate, steampunk, America. That being said, it still sounds fascinating.
Click here for the full review.
Here’s une blurbe:
Why is Winslow imprisoned, Prospero dead and Miranda ethereal? The answers lie in the deep past, and have much to do with Winslow’s attendance at Miranda’s 10th-birthday party after a chance encounter at a...
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5/22/2010: Music: A Big Bag of Win
I haven’t bought much music in a long time (except Pearl Jam bootlegs), but last night I ordered myself a big bag of Win from Half dot com:
Be jealous.
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5/22/2010: Birthdays
Gerard de Nerval - 1808
“It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.”
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Arthur Conan Doyle - 1859
“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with...
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5/22/2010: Various: Movies R Fun by Josh Cooley
Pixar artist Josh Cooley is releasing a book of animated prints in the style of our childhood ‘Little Golden Books.’ Except the images are all classic scenes from R-rated films. This is going to be amazing. I put my favorite below. Click here to see more.
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5/21/2010: Francais Friday: Film: Over Your Cities...
French director Sophie Fiennes’s documentary on artist Anselm Kiefer, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, premiered at Cannes earlier this week.
Click here for the full review.
Here’s a smidgen:
Fiennes’s movie is almost entirely wordless. Her camera roams around Kiefer’s creations, allowing the audience to focus on light, shape, colour and texture, to music by Jörg...
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5/21/2010: Francais Friday: Music: The French...
I’m not going to lie, I don’t hate Lady Gaga, but I get how people think she’s ridiculous. Also, I’m constantly hearing comparisons between her and Madonna, while I think David Bowie is a much more apt comparison. Yeah, you’re thinking about it aren’t you. I know it’s crazy (bonus: Both Bisexual … ). Now that I’ve blown your mind, none of that...
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5/21/2010: Francais Friday: Books: Dimanche and...
I’ve never heard of this writer before, but her work sounds fascinating.
Click here for the full review.
Here’s a tidbit:
Sixty-two years after she died at Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 39, the Russian-born, French writer Irène Némirovsky became a literary sensation with the publication of “Suite Française,’’ her long-lost, incomplete novel about France under siege. After its...
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5/21/2010: Birthdays
Alexander Pope - 1688
“I’m Alexander Pope, bitch. Fuck your couch, John Milton.”
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5/21/2010: re: SERIOUS moonlight
I demolished ‘Let’s Dance’ tonight.
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5/20/2010: Excerpt du Jour: Player Piano - Kurt...
Player Piano, Vonnegut’s first, is an amazing book, it’s a first class dystopian satire. It deserves to be taught alongside 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. The novel is anti-machine only so much as it is pro-human, the primacy of the individual, if you will. In several places it demonstrates the emptiness of mankind, once alienated from ones work, from meaningfulness. It’s also...
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5/20/2010: Stones May Play 'Exile,' 'Let It Bleed'...
Keith Richards said recently in an interview that the band was toying around with the idea of playing their old albums, start to finish, in a series of concerts in the near future. I’ve already paid an arm and a leg to see The Rolling Stones live, but I’d throw in a head and some kidneys to see them perform Exile On Main Street in its entirety, to guarantee that I could hear...
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5/20/2010: Book Review: Theatre by David Mamet -...
Let us start by saying that I like David Mamet and also that this is a negative review of his book. Then let’s say that I spell ‘theatre’ t-h-e-a-t-r-e, (because theater is a place, not an artform) and the first comment this review makes about Mamet’s book is “Mamet, always one of late to demonstrate how American he is, uses the British spelling of “theatre,’’ but...
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Landlocked Blues by Bright Eyes
and there’s...
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5/20/2010: Lost Shakespeare Play IS a Hoax - Slate
Ok, you may remember the NPR story I shared a few weeks ago about Double Falsehood, well this guy at Slate seems to think it’s a definitely not Shakespeare and that Arden is including it in his canon solely to create attention and make money. I reread the NPR piece, and there is no compelling evidence listed in it, and this Ron Rosenbaum guy over at Slate has a bunch of...
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5/20/2010: Music: Happy Birthday Joe Cocker
Joe Cocker is 66 today.
Yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to hear “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Tough. I love this song, it’s damn sexy. It’s a free internet, go look up Beatles covers if you want … AFTER you listen to this.
Joe Cocker: You Can Leave Your Hat On
Did I mention how damn sexy this song is? That gravely voice, those horns. But the lyrics are...
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5/20/2010: Birthdays:
Honore de Balzac - 1799
“Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.”
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John Stuart Mill - 1806
“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”
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5/19/2010: Interview: Sebastian Junger on War - EW
Entertainment Weekly interviews best-selling journalist Sebastian Junger about his new book, War, among other things. I’m not sure how to take a couple of his comments. It’s really interesting that he gets asked about Jon Krakauer, because reading Krakauer is what got me interested in this kind of non-fiction in the first place.
Click here for the full interview.
Here are two of his...
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hipsterdiet:
Giant Drag - Wicked Game...
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“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human...”
– Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
This is the Frankl Quote I was looking for yesterday. Thanks to fuckyeahexistentialism!
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5/19/2010: Comic Review: The Troll King by...
NPR reviews some crazy $#!%. I don’t even know really what to say about this one, so I’ll just let you read the review and the excerpt.
Click here for the review.
Then Click here for the excerpt.
Here’s a tantalizing tidbit from the review:
But there’s where the childlike simplicity ends: He painstakingly delineates each hair on the creatures’ faces, each branch...
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5/19/2010: Music: Four Score and Seven by Titus...
Heard this on The Voice. It’s pretty long, but check it out anyways. I’m a little less excited about it now than I was when I first heard it. Hmmmmm. It rocks pretty hard though especially the last two minutes, so it’s whatever.