“The Magical Negro and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Go on a Date.”
Hilarious, right?
Unfortunately I’m super busy at the moment so can someone else take the reins on this? ASAP, tks.
Research trip?
A Piece I Want to Write
September 18, 2014Oof
September 18, 2014I’ve been gone for quite some time, and I’m so, so sorry, but you see, I have four weddings to attend in the span of four weeks (only one left!) and that, plus other travels, have taken me to Providence, Rhode Island, Ohio and Boston. So needless to say, I’m a little tired. I thought that I would spend my many hours in transit, however, catching up on some reading I really should have done in high school, so I took the collected poems of Emily Dickinson out of the library. I think in high school, I found her work too quaint and formal for my tastes, but then recently I was thinking about poem 260 (“I’m Nobody! Who are you?) and I figured I ought to give it another shot. If you want don’t want your baggage to go overboard or your mind to feel sharp and lively, though, I wouldn’t recommend it. The below, though, took me aback; my reaction perhaps belies my mature exterior.
159
A little bread –– a crust –– a crumb —
A little trust — a demijohn —
Can keep the soul alive —
Not portly, mind! but breathing — warm —
Conscious — as old Napoleon,
The night before the Crown!
A modest lot — A fame petite —
A brief Campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor’s business is the shore!
A Soldier’s — balls! Who asketh more,
Must seek the neighboring life!
Debate
September 10, 2014Resolved: the only thing in the entire world that is worse than Lady Antebellum is the Muzak version of Lady Antebellum.
Procrastination
September 9, 2014ID: “Dylan reportedly visits Chabad synagogues; on Yom Kippur in 2007 he attended Congregation Beth Tefillah, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was called to the Torah for the sixth aliyah.”
can you imagine?
you’re in synagogue
atoning for your many, many sins
and BAM
bob dylan
ML: yes i can, bc i’ve contemplated just this eventuality
ID: HA
ML: look at this
ID: HOLY FUCK
HARRY DEAN STANTON???
Casting for Biopics of Poets
September 9, 2014So, Robert Lowell in the biopic Locked Razors (too morbid? Title open to discussion) will be played by…
Kinda dreamy, no? In a bad boy sort of way.
… MICHAEL SHANNON!
Grows out his hair a little, and bingo bango.
My boyfriend and I, just apropos of the above, happened to see Michael Shannon recently, looking quite disheveled and walking the streets of Brooklyn muttering to himself. This segues nicely into the following scary tidbit: I see Philip Seymour Hoffman all the time. Mostly in subway stations, but on a super regular basis. A pallid face zooms by me, and I turn around to catch a glimpse of a strawberry blond head, and I think, “Hey, that’s Philip Seymour Hoffman!” But… isn’t he dead? you’re thinking. Yes, he is. Hence the “scary.”
Tehching Hsieh
September 7, 2014You guys don’t know who Tehching Hsieh is? Man, that is so embarrassing. Google him immediately, or at least read this interview of his with the Brooklyn Rail from 2003. Hsieh retired from art back in 1999 basically (I think that’s the right year) but apparently in 2003 he was allowing artists to live for free in his building in Williamsburg. Siobhan is tracking down the gatekeeper right now. The world shall know my micrographic masterpieces!
Hsieh: I have a building in Williamsburg and I let artists live there for free from 1994 until now. There are different artists in there every year. They have a 1000 square feet to work in. I don’t call that art; it is just a visiting artists project.
Rail: You bought buildings there?
Hsieh: I bought a building, renovated it, and built another building that was entirely new.
Rail: You financed it yourself?
Hsieh: Yes. You see, before I came to the U.S. I was a painter and I did many paintings until 1973. In 1994, they were all sold at an auction and I made about $500,000.
I have four floors. One floor I rent to cover expenses. The rest I give to visiting artists. This year, one is a Mongolian filmmaker and another is a Ukrainian folk singer.
Rail: How do you find the artists?
Hsieh: I have a person who helps me select the artists. And that person gets one floor, and the other two floors are given to two artists a year. But again, that is not art to me, because to me any person can do that kind of “art.” Rich people for example can do it without any problem. So, that is the kind of action I do, the life I create.
Recipes
September 3, 2014included in the most outrageous cookbook ever, Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone to so Much Trouble, compiled by Lady Caroline Blackwood and Amanda Haycraft
Sonia Orwell’s Tagliatelli with Truffles
Marianne Faithfull’s Different Sweet/Sour Pork
Barbara Cartland’s Filets de Sole Caprice (“cooked by her chef Nigel Gordon in 10 minutes”)
Quentin Crisp’s Tibetan Workhouse Soup (ed note: oooo boy)
Bernard Shaw’s Vegetable Salads
Beryl Bainbridge’s Stovies
Anne Dunn’s Cold Omelette
Lucian Freud’s Tomato Soup au Naturel
Nicholas Haslam’s Fake Mayonnaise for Masking Cold Chicken
Natasha Spender’s Ukrainian Eggs
Jonathan Miller’s coleslaw
Roald Dahl’s Norwegian Cauliflower
Doon Plunkett’s Caviar Soup
Francis Bacon’s Thick, Fat, Genuine Mayonnaise
(The author would like to thank Nancy Schoenberger for her help compiling this list)
Reasons Susan Sontag and I Might Be the Same Person
August 28, 2014We’re cinephiles
We were raised in non-religious households with catholic nannies
We both change our minds and pretend our new stance actually was what we believed all along
We both worship intellectuals as if they’re movie stars
Testing
August 27, 2014Do you get it?
Temple Grandin Sums Up Society
August 27, 2014And methinks she’s pretty on the mark:
“I take all the rules of the world and place them into four categories: Really Bad Things, things like burning down buildings, robbing banks, killing people, torturing people. Things that any civilized society you would go to jail for. Then you have your Courtesy Rules. They help people get along. There is the Illegal But Not Bad, where someone might download a movie illegally. And then you have Sins of the System that are very society-specific. You’ve got to behave yourself at the airport now. In this country we are allowed to criticize the president but we’re not allowed to threaten him. You’d better know the difference. If you go to some other country you get thrown in jail if you just criticize the president. That’s Sins of the System stuff. There are rules, especially about sex. If you break those rules there are draconian penalties.”
