There Goes the Neighborhood

Saw this heartbreaking story on last night's 60 Minutes.  Watch it.

Glass, Reed, and Occupy

Last week composer Philip Glass and rock legend Lou Reed (see another post on him here) made an appearance at an Occupy protest in front of the Lincoln Center Plaza, where Glass's opera Satyagraha was being performed.  The opera is based loosely on the life of Gandhi, and its title refers to his concept of civil disobedience in times of social injustice.

The original video clips of Glass's and Reed's speeches were not of the best quality, but amateur artist Jean Thevenin produced a more sophisticated short film documenting the scene.  The music is from Glass's song "Protest," which plays during the second act of the opera (and is strikingly similar to his score from The Hours).

Visible Shape (Philip Glass & Lou Reed occupying Lincoln Center) from jaune! on Vimeo.

Beauty Is in the Eye of Kubrick

Before he was a film director, Stanley Kubrick worked as a photojournalist.  In the summer of 1949, he shot pictures for a story called "Chicago City of Contrasts" for Look magazine.  Below are some of my favorites from the Chicago collection; you can see them all here.  

The Museum of the City of New York and VandM.com have also teamed up to showcase and sell some of his best work as a photographer.  The images are phenomenal--take a look here.

It's easy to see his photography roots in these cinemagraphs from his movies, too (Blogspot won't let me embed GIFs).  They're awesome.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Award Season...

...with the announcement of the New York Film Critics Circles winners.  Here are the major winners.  Thoughts?

Best Picture

The Artist

Best Director 

Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist

Best Screenplay 

Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin for Moneyball

Best Actress 

Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

Best Actor 

Brad Pitt for Moneyball, The Tree of Life

Best Supporting Actress 

Jessica Chastain for The Tree of Life, The Help, Take Shelter

Best Supporting Actor 

Albert Brooks for Drive

Best Cinematographer 

Emmanuel Lubezki for The Tree of Life

Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary) 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Best Foreign Film 

A Separation (Iran)

Best First Film 

J.C. Chandor for Margin Call

The Tree of Life--you can see my original post about the film here--certainly was a beautiful movie, no hesitation on the cinematography award there (side note: Lubezki also filmed Children of Men, which has some mind-blowing, super-long action shots without any cuts.  He's awesome.).  But is it too avant-garde for the Oscar community?  Brad Pitt was great in it too, but I'm wary of Jessica Chastain's appearance on this list, although I haven't seen her other two movies.

And can Aaron Sorkin pull off best screenplay two years in a row?  We shall see.

Debunking Sybil's Multiple Personality Disorder

Thanks to Kathleen for sharing this story with me.

All thanks to the famous case of Sybil, multiple personality disorder (MPD)--today called dissociative identity disorder (DID)--is officially listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  But did Sybil, whose real name was Shirley Mason, really have sixteen different personalities?

Shirley Mason, more famously known as "Sybil"

Debbie Nathan doesn't think so.  In her recent book Sybil Exposed, Nathan investigates the three women behind the Sybil pop phenomenon and psychotherapy revolution.  As the description on Amazon advertises,

"Nathan reveals what really powered the legend: a trio of women—the willing patient, her ambitious shrink, and the imaginative journalist who spun their story into bestseller gold."

In October WNYC interviewed Nathan about her investigation, and some of her most interesting comments come at the end when she discusses the relationship between MPD and the role of the woman in American society.  According to Nathan, MPD is less of a mental disorder and more of a part of the cultural fabric that shapes how women understand themselves:

"I think [MPD] is a cultural artifact for right now.  People feel it deeply.  I think it has done mischief to the culture, particularly for women. . . . We have to think of ourselves as separate selves, separate beings in order to do the things we want to do.  There's the sexy me, and then there's the me that knows how to make bookcases with the hammer and nails, and there's the me that knows how to cook.  I think these are reified ways of thinking about women, and I think they come about because we are conflicted about our roles."

Radiolab Wins Again

Just discovered that there is a festival called Third Coast International Audio Festival based in Chicago that awards radio programs for their feature and documentary audio work.  This year, a story titled "Finding Emilie" from Radiolab's "Lost and Found" episode was one of the winners!  If you haven't heard this story, listen to it NOW.  If you have, well, listen to it again.

Listen to "Finding Emilie" here.
Listen to the entire "Lost and Found" episode here.
Listen to all the winners from the festival here.

Trailer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The trailer makes it seem too mushy compared to the book, but let's be honest--I'll probably still see it anyway.

Read my original post on the film here.

Also, apparently there's some controversy that the New York Film Critics Circle would not wait for Extremely Loud to be released before voting for the best films of 2011.  Details here.

Neutral Milk Hotel Coming to Chicago!

Starting to notice that several of my posts lately have been just about music...

BUT I had to post about my overwhelming excitement that Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel will be performing at the Athenaeum Theater on February 6 and 7!  Read the full story here from WBEZ.  Tickets go on sale November 11.

You can read my earlier post about the CD I acquired in high school that originally got me hooked on NMH and other indie rock artists here.

Joy and John Paul Have Stolen My Heart

Credit to Puccimama for first telling me about this band.  Who knew the two of us would agree on liking folk/country?!

Saw The Civil Wars at the Vic Theatre last night.  They are simply a phenomenal duo and put on a fantastic live show.   The video below is from an earlier concert in New Orleans, but it was my favorite of the entire set last night in Chicago.  Most of their songs are solemn with heartbreak; "From the Valley," on the other hand, reminds me of an old, uplifting hymn you'd hear at Hurricane Camp Meeting in Tolu, Kentucky.

History in the Making

All politics aside, I find the Occupy movement fascinating.  How can historians in the future not look back on these events as an age of shifting twenty-first-century cultural paradigms?  In addition to the Tea Party movement and the Arab Spring, it's been awesome to witness the role of social media networks in contemporary political and social grassroots revolutions.

This article by Michele Elam provides some insightful commentary on the relationship between art and Occupy Wall Street specifically.  Below is the Occupy Wall Street invitation Elam discusses--the image was designed by Shepard Fairey, the same artist who gave us the infamous "Hope" poster for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign--and some highlights from the op-ed.

• "Occupy art might just be the movement's most politically potent tool in its dramatic reframing of the racial dynamics of a populist uprising frequently characterized as largely white and 'hippie.'"
• "The poster's retro look recalls a militant past, almost startling in our new millennial moment, and surely is meant as a challenge to the idea that as a society we are anywhere near 'post-race' enlightenment."
• "Imagine its even more revolutionary effect as a poster carried by people of all backgrounds and social position, symbolically calling for a pan-ethnic alliance."
• "But 'You Are Invited' is powerful precisely because it invites identification with this long history of marginalized people striving for social and economic equity, however imperfect and unfinished those efforts."
• "Let the Occupy movement's camps and protests and marches continue generating such art -- art that inspires interracial unity where it may not yet exist, art that reminds us of the voices unheard, art that galvanizes practical social change when nothing seems to give, art that, in Du Bois' words, tries to make the world both beautiful and right."

If you find this interesting, you may also enjoy this earlier post about the Black Power and Black Arts movements.

Trapped in Beirut

I've been listening to Beirut just about every day for the past month.  I went through a bout of listening to The Rip Tide on repeat this summer, drifted away for a bit, and then picked them back up when I finally updated my music library (all thanks to Erica!) and completed my collection of all three albums and a couple EPs.  Beirut is truly a fantastic band--I might even venture to say one of my all-time top favs.  Only time will tell.

Have a listen to a few my favorites!  They're coming to Cincinnati and Lexington in the next couple weeks, so if you're nearby, you should check them out!

"Nantes" from The Flying Club Cup

"Scenic World" from Lon Gisland EP

"Elephant Gun" from Lon Gisland EP

"Postcards from Italy" from Gulag Orkestar

"Santa Fe" from The Rip Tide

We Need to Talk About Kevin

This looks terrifyingly great.  And Tilda Swinton never lets me down.

Nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and just recently won best film at BFI London.

The Bare Minimum

What I love most about poetry is that it strips language bare to the essential.  So much relies on every single word, and in many cases every single syllable.  Take the haiku, for example--all you get is three lines, 17 syllables (5-7-5 breakdown).

Considering our trying economic times, then, we could perhaps agree that the haiku would be an effective way to voice the heart of our woes.  Featured in The Economist, these haiku poems come from submissions to a survey conducted by the The Kauffman Foundation.  Below are a few of my favorites (although some of them messed up their syllables!).  You can read them all here and vote for your favorite here.

jobs and Jobs are gone
need more Jobs to get more jobs
innovate to grow
-Arthur Diamond

Those kids blame the banks.
Is Wall Street pre-occupied?
Next: capital strike.
-Michael Munger

Double dip at bay
Despite moronic Congress
Europe sinks us all
-Ryan Avent

This is not so hard.
Helicopter money please.
Wired straight to households.
-Steve Waldman

Uncertainty rules
While the economy suffers
Politics rejoices
-Pedro Albuquerque

Update: The Child in Us All

See the original "The Child in Us All" post here.

Shel Silverstein seems to be everywhere these days.

Here are two features, both from Brain Pickings, that celebrate the late great children's author's musical achievements.  The first is from a 1970 episode of The Johnny Cash Show, when Silverstein performed a children's song he wrote called "Daddy, What If."  The second is a preview of the recent album Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute To The Songs Of Shel Silverstein.  The album features covers from My Morning Jacket, Andrew Bird, and more indie legends.

Note: I think the playlist operates better if you are using Firefox or Chrome rather than Safari.

When Books Come to Life

Love this.

I wish all book covers were designed with hand-stitched felt.

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.

via Open Culture

I Want to Hold Your Hand

In the sixth grade, Mrs. Rushing had Karaoke Day, an event where individual students or groups dressed up and performed a song of choice with a choreographed dance.  I'm not sure how such an activity pertained to science, but I am certain in saying that I was terrified for this day.  My group somehow decided on The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and since the track was recorded on this day in 1963, I found it fitting to share here.

The Child in Us All

Certainly Maurice Sendak and Shel Silverstein figured out the solution to the problem Picasso describes.

Both authors/illustrators have new publications out this fall: Silverstein's Every Thing On It, a collection of poems and illustrations released by his family and published posthumously, and Sendak's Bumble-ardy, a picture book that tells the story of an orphan pig planning is ninth birthday party.  You can read more about the books here and here.  Click on the images below to get a closer look!

***

Rock 'n Me

In elementary school, while my friends were raving over Hansen, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, and the like, I was sneaking into Kathleen's room and listening to the Jamiroquai, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and Hootie & the Blowfish albums she left behind in her room at home while away at Centre.  To be accurate, it all began around the age of seven, when she gifted me with my first tape, Alanis Morissette's single "You Learn" (it was also the first time I heard the 'f'-word, on the B-side live version of "You Oughta Know"). That day, sitting in Kathleen's little white Honda in the driveway, gripping the green-and-yellow cardboard cassette sleeve, my love affair with alternative rock commenced and would continue throughout my adolescence.

By the early 2000s, indie rock began to emerge from the alternative scene at a commercial level, and in 2004, just as I had been endowed a genre of music by my older sister, my friend Sarah experienced the same with her older sister, Meg, in the form of a mix CD Sarah would later title "Wierd" (yes, it's spelled incorrectly, but I'll cut her some slack--she was only sixteen).  Sarah, of course, shared with me the CD--which, I believe, had originally been burned by one of Meg's friends at college--and to this day I keep it stored along with my other favorite CDs I have vowed never to throw out.

While I realize not all of the songs fall under the indie rock category, I generally attribute my current appreciation for the genre to this compilation:

1. Anecdote--Ambulance LTD
2. All the Way up to Heaven--Guster
3. Baby Britain--Elliot Smith
4. Magic--Ben Folds Five
5. In the Aeroplane over the Sea--Neutral Milk Hotel
6. Strange Condition--Pete Yorn
7. She Sends Kisses--The Wrens
8. Where Is My Mind?--Pixies
9. Flake--Jack Johnson
10. Comfortable--John Mayer
11. Jesus, etc.--Wilco
12. White Christmas--Guns N' Roses

Update: Stars and Galaxies

I wasn't kidding when I said this class from senior year has been following me around as of late: yet again today I found more relevant material to share (check out my earlier post for other astronomy-related goodies).

I think Carol showed me this video some time ago, and since then I have learned that it is part of a seven-video series, called The Sagan Series, honoring the late Carl Sagan.  The videos are quite beautiful and touching.

Today, I discovered that a spin-off series is in the works titled The Feynman Series, narrated by the late Richard Feynman.  The Feynman videos that have been produced so far are equally as awe-inspiring.  Check out "Beauty" below!

Stars and Galaxies

My apologies for the recent hiatus...I've done a poor job recently of managing my time well.

Senior year at DePauw, Carol, KJ, and I signed up for what we thought would be a breeze--Physics 104: Stars and Galaxies.  Much to our surprise, Mary Kertzman's freshman-level class gave us a run for our money.  I found the course fascinating (although I think Carol and KJ would beg to differ), and lately it seems to have been following me around, so here are some articles, photos, and videos I've been collecting from the world of astronomy.

Not only is our universe expanding (that is, the space between objects is expanding; the objects themselves are not moving away from each other), but it's also accelerating due to what scientists believe is a mysterious dark energy linked back to the Big Bang.  I had an embarrassing breakdown in the middle of class one day when trying to understand this concept, and just yesterday I woke up to this story on NPR about the three scientists who were recently awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering this phenomenon.  This NPR blog has a nice compilation of interviews and videos about the subject.

Photo of the Milky Way from NPR's Tumblr:

An awesome time-lapse of flying over Earth from Radiolab's Tumblr:

Another time-lapse of the Northern Lights from space from Open Culture (watch how it works here):

Some 2011 award-winning astronomy photographs from BBC News:

Mad Men Meets Mark Z.

From the first season's episode "The Wheel," the video below is a scene from one Don Draper's most famous sales pitches on the show so far.  In the original episode, he's working on an ad campaign for the Kodak Carousel slide projector, but as the mashup makes clear, his pitch eerily applies to the principle behind Mark Zuckerberg's new "Timeline" for Facebook.

Many thanks to Jorie for sharing.

via Jezebel

Happy Birthday, Bruce

His wisest words ever spoken: "Give that big final good luck and goodbye to your all time top-five and just move on down the road."

Last Words of Literary Greats

Funny how their dying words tend to be representative of their oeuvre.  See the full collection here.

Missing from the list, though, is Virginia Woolf's: "I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."

Henry David Thoreau

James Joyce

Leo Tolstoy

Mark Twain

W.C. Fields

J.M. Barrie

George Bernard Shaw

L. Frank Baum

Ernest Hemingway

Thomas Edison Makes a Movie

Isn't this beautiful?  She reminds me of Florence Welch.

According to Open Culture...

The world’s first hand-tinted motion picture was produced by Thomas Edison’s company, Edison Studios, in 1895, more than 115 years ago. The dancer, Annabelle Moore (1878-1961), was just a teenager when this film was released, and her dance caused both a sensation and a scandal. (Note the flashes of undergarment, all the way up to above the knee, about 29 seconds in.) The film is also worth comparing with a similar but much more delicately painted version done just five years later by the Lumiere brothers.

Project Runway: Where Are They Now?

Though I was rooting for Korto during Season 5, winner Leanne was pretty solid.  I haven't really seen or heard about her since the show (along with most of the other past contestants), so it was a pleasure to see this video featured on Etsy about Leanne's upcoming line for New York Fashion Week.

Leanne Marshall Takes on Fashion Week from Etsy on Vimeo.

Homage to Radiolab

I reference Radiolab way too much on here (see other related posts here), but today is a must-post.

First, congratulations to Jad Abumrad, recently named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow!  Here's a description of the Fellows Program from the MacArthur Foundation website:

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.

There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

The announcement led me to this article by Ira Glass, host of the great--but not as great as Radiolab--radio show/podcast This American Life.  In the article, Glass breaks down every specific thing that is simply awe-inspiring about the show; it's tedious but extremely accurate. Here's a basic summary/outline:

Every Great Thing about Radiolab:

• The Aesthetics: "Simply put: it’s a show that’s out for fun. It’s no surprise that a much younger audience loves Radiolab. It’s no surprise that a huge part of its fan base is people who don’t consider themselves public radio listeners."
• The Banter: "Thus the utterly effortless chitchat that floats you so cheerfully from plot point to character moment to scientific explanation to the next plot point is actually worked over second by second and beat by beat, over the course of weeks."
• The Music: "Jad’s an Oberlin-trained composer so he’s always either writing the music to fit the stories on his show, the way a composer writes a film score, or he adapts other people’s music so well you can’t tell it wasn’t custom made. No other public radio show has this."
• The Editorial Sensibility: "Listening toRadiolab I have the unusual experience where nearly every story is something I’ve never heard of or thought about before, and the stories lead to ideas I’m utterly unfamiliar with. That’s a standard very few of us even aspire to, much less achieve."
• The Flow: "Radiolab also does a beautiful job figuring out a mix of stories that’ll move us from one idea to the next over the course of an hour. Lots of their episodes have a coherent argument to them, an argument that takes an hour and several stories to lay out."
• The Generational Gap: "Sometimes when I listen to the show, I feel like Jad has taken all the key elements of Robert’s 1980 sensibility – the humor, the insistence on entertaining, the surprising story choices, the amused intimate interviews and the chatty narration style – and retooled them for the digital age and a completely different generation. It’s Jad’s ear and astonishing production chops that define the sound of Radiolab, but the DNA of that sound comes from Robert."
• The Number of Episodes: "For my part, I find it comforting that this level of excellence is so labor intensive that they only can make ten full shows a year (plus, sure, 16 “shorts” that they distribute on the Internet). If they could do an hour of this every week, I think I’d have to quit radio. What would be the point of continuing? How could anyone compete with that?"

"Because Yelp Needs Cormac McCarthy"

Last week Laughing Squid featured a new blog called Yelping with Cormac that writes Yelp reviews in the style of author Cormac McCarthy.  I've only ever read The Road--which I dare to say falls on my Favorite Books Ever list--but even from that single novel, I am fairly certain in saying that his rhetoric is unique among contemporary writers.  The weight of his diction counterbalances the brevity of text itself; he is a skilled curator of words.

And as the "What" page of the blog says, "The real Cormac McCarthy is out there somewhere pulling a novel out of a horse skull."  Nicely put.

Anyway, Cormac-McCarthy-as-Yelp-Reviewer is quite entertaining for obvious reasons.  All are written by EDW Lynch.  Here's one of my favorites so far:


PAPALOTE MEXICAN GRILL

Mission - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Two stars

The young cowboy lies in the afternoon sun, gut shot. The bitter tang of cordite and blood mingles in his mouth. In his hand, a pearl handled revolver, still warm. He lies propped against the lone cottonwood. A mile distant, dust trails mark a coming reckoning. Three riders, maybe more.

His eyes shift upward to a circling vulture, a sentinel of inevitability. The blood is almost black. He has another hour at most. The pain comes in waves, lingering like the burn of bad whiskey. One bullet left in the Colt.

Something as yet unheralded has died when a quesadilla comes on a spinach tortilla.

Update: Andy Warhol Gets Rowdy

Only a few days after posting the complaint letter from Andy Warhol's landlord, I watched this clip of video from Open Culture (big surprise) about Andy Warhol's artistic pursuits as the manager and producer for The Velvet Underground:

And speaking of The Velvet Underground, yesterday I also came upon a sad/funny/semi-shocking clip from an interview with Lou Reed:

 

Me Encanta la Argentina

Stumbled across this video from Open Culture today and was obliged to post.

It's been just over three years since I studied in Buenos Aires, yet now, as a city-dweller, I think about my time there more than ever.  I certainly owe my decision to move to Chicago to the five months I spent in BsAs, for I never would have been ready to live on my own in an urban environment had I not experienced that ciudad bárbara.

Anyway, the short below is a sweet tribute to Argentina's own Jorge Luis Borges.  The song, "De Usuahia a la Quiaca" by Gustavo Santaolalla, is from The Motorcycle Diaries (it also is the most frequently played song on my iTunes because I like to play it on repeat any time I write a paper).

Buenos Aires: Las Calles de Borges from Ian Ruschel on Vimeo.

Black Power and the Arts, Yesterday and Today

This summer I took an African Amerian Lit course, and I was particularly fascinated by the Black Arts Movement.  The movement, as the Norton puts it, aimed "to create works that would be--in the words of Maulana Karenga--'functional, collective, and committing.'  Hence, the Black Arts of the 1960s proposed to create politically engaged expression as a corollary to the new black spirit of the decade."

Amiri Baraka is one of the most recognized Black Arts writers, and his poem "Black Art" gets at the heart of the period, I think.  Here are a few excerpts:

Poems are bullshit unless they are
teeth or trees or lemons piled
on a step.  Or black ladies dying
of men leaving nickel hearts
beating them down.
...
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns.  Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.
...
Let there be no love poems written
until love can exist freely and
cleanly.  Let Black People understand
that they are the lovers and the sons
of lovers and warriors and sons
of warriors Are poems & poets &
all the loveliness here in the world


We want a black poem.  And a 
Black World.
Let the world be a Black Poem
And Let All Black People Speak This Poem
Silently
or LOUD

Baraka's poem resonates with the same violent anger that propelled Black Power during the sixties and seventies.  Today marks the official release of Göran Olsson's documentary The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975; you can read the NPR review here.  It looks pretty interesting--it's a take on the movement from Sweden, which apparently was pretty anti-US at the time.  Check out the trailer below:

Forms of Figure 5

I stumbled across a poem by William Carlos Williams the other day that reminded me of a Charles Demuth painting on a postcard Kathleen had once given me...when I looked up the painting, I discovered it was directly inspired by the poem (but you probably already knew that, Kathleen?)!

The Great Figure

"The Figure 5 in Gold" by Charles Demuth

by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

Andy Warhol Gets Rowdy

About a month ago, Letters of Note, an awesome blog that scans fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos, posted a complaint letter that Andy Warhol received from his landlord after his parties were becoming a nuisance.  Here's a little background from the post:

One can only imagine the parties that occurred on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street during the 60s, for this was Andy Warhol's Factory, the very studio in which his famous silkscreens were created on a daily basis; a veritable hot-spot that welcomed a steady stream of visitors that included, amongst many, many others, Jagger, Dylan, Capote, Ginsberg, Dali, Morrison, and Burroughs. From 1965 the Factory even had a house band of sorts, in the form of The Velvet Underground. No wonder the parties were so regular and legendary. It was the place to be.

With that in mind, it's hard not to sympathise with Warhol's landlord at the time...

Transcript follows. Image found in the stunning book, The Velvet Underground: New York Art.

Transcript

ELK REALTY, INC.
1107 BROADWAY
NEW YORK, N. Y. 10010
AREA CODE 212
WATKINS 4-3560

November 15, 1965

Mr. Andy Warhol
231 East 47 Street
New York, New York

Dear Mr. Warhol:

We have been advised that you have been giving parties in the fourth floor space occupied by you. We understand that they are generally large parties and are held after usual office hours. We have found that your guests have left debris and litter in the public areas which you have never bothered to clean. Further, we feel that a congregation of the number of people such as you have had may be contrary to various applicable governmental rules and regulations and also might present a serious problem with the Fire Department regulations.

Your lease, of course, does not permit such use and occupancy and you hereby directed not to have any such parties in this building.

Very truly yours,

ELK REALTY, INC., Agents

(Signed)

Alfred R. Goldstein
President

ARG:sd

Mad Men Mania

Self-initiated posters for AMC's Mad Men Season 5 by Radio.

2012 come quick!

Update: I Will Never Use GPS...

In response to my post "I Will Never Use GPS for Navigating the Road," I share with you an appropriate commercial:

Summer of '65

Before cable or the Internet turned us into the Big Brother of Hollywood stars, silent home videos captured the intimate lives of celebrities and were tucked away for safekeeping.  A collection of films from the summer of 1965, belonging originally to Roddy McDowall, has recently surfaced on YouTube, and the videos are simply amazing.  The 60s are my personal Golden Age, and these videos feed into my longing for the decade like woah.

Note: The Robert Redford video is for you, Alexa.

From Open Culture

To Read: House of Leaves

My friend Sarah shared with me recently an image collection of twenty curious literary tattoos, and one of the quotes particularly caught my eye:

"and this great blue world of ours / seems a house of leaves / moments before the wind"

Looked up the quote, found out it's from Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.  I've heard about the book before, and after reading more about Danielewski's experimental form, I want to find a copy ASAP.  Here's a brief description from Wikipedia:

"The format and structure of the novel is unconventional, with unusual page layout and style, making it ergodic literature. It contains copious footnotes, many of which contain footnotes themselves, and some of which reference books that do not exist. Some pages contain only a few words or lines of text, arranged in strange ways to mirror the events in the story, often creating both an agoraphobic and a claustrophobic effect. The novel is also distinctive for its multiple narrators, who interact with each other throughout the story in disorienting and elaborate ways."

"Separation" by W.S. Merwin

Separation

by W.S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.


W. S. Merwin, “Separation” from The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

Source: Poetry (January 1962).

It's Movie Season!

The Atlantic has compiled a great list of films hitting the festival circuit this fall, all of which are predicted to be possible Oscar contenders.  Awards aside, just about all of these films look fantastic based on their trailers.  I'm looking most forward to Martha Marcy May Marlene, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and The Artist.

Note: I couldn't find trailers for My Week with Marilyn, W.E., Albert Nobbs, or Rampart.

Time's a-Tickin'

So Jad and Robert have already taught me some mind-blowing facts about time in both the "Time" and "Memory and Forgetting" episodes (sorry for all the Radiolab-related posts lately); though parts of the conversation about time will forever remain impossible for me to comprehend, most of the facts below are quite intriguing.

To read more behind these ten statements about time, check out the explanations here. The points in italics are the ones whose explanations I find the most interesting (among those that I understand, that is).

Ten Things Everyone Should Know about Time
by Sean of Discover Magazine

1. Time exists.
2. The past and the future are equally real.
3. Everyone experiences time differently.
4. You live in the past.
5. Your memory isn’t as good as you think.
6. Consciousness depends on manipulating time.
7. Disorder increases as time passes.
8. Complexity comes and goes. 
9. Aging can be reversed.
10. A lifespan is a billion heartbeats.

Baltimore Club Speaks to My Soul

This post is dedicated to my HWI partner Puccimama.

Thanks to DJ Solly, a fellow DePauw alum from the class of 2010, I was introduced to Baltimore club music my senior year.  I don't know what it is about this specific genre of house music, but every time I hear that Bmore beat, I can't help but move.  Today I've been updating my iTunes with some more dance music, so I figured I should just go ahead and share some of my favorite mixes here!

"California Dreaming" by The Mamas & The Papas (Solly Remix)

"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk (Diplo Remix)

"You're a Jerk" by New Boyz (Diamond K Remix)

I, Robot

This is awesome.

I really need to listen to the "Talking to Machines" Radiolab episode now (apparently it features the Cleverbot).

I Will Never Use GPS for Navigating the Road

My father is in love with maps.  On our hearth in the family room rests a withering State Farm Insurance atlas: only a quarter of the cover remains intact (the rest most likely consumed by one of our many pets over the years), the staples of the bind have fallen out, the corners of the pages roll toward the center fold.  Inside, intertwining lines of neon pink and yellow slither along the rough pages--these are the roads my father has traversed over the seventy-five-and-counting years of his life, and he still keeps track of traveled highways each new route he takes.  You can imagine, then, that my siblings and I from an early age were exposed to his many maps and, subsequently, were taught how to read them.

Here begins my rant.

Regardless of whether he/she has a map-loving father or not, everyone should know how to read a map.  Everyone.

GPS, of course, has handicapped so many people today when it comes to navigating the road.  And it frustrates me.  So when I came across a blog post titled "Does the GPS Take the Fun Out of Driving? And Make Us Stupider, More Locked Up in Ourselves, and Less Open to the World?", I was obviously moved to read it.  The Big Think post highlights the main points of another essay, "GPS and the End of the Road" by Ari N. Schulman.  It is a long read, but well worth it (with some fantastic references to Kerouac and other literary figures!).

NB: I will be using an atlas only on my road trip next summer.

George Harrison + Martin Scorsese...Yes, Please!

Premieres October 5 & 6 on HBO...a channel I don't have.  What to do?!

What to Do about Education?

Fixing U.S. public education--not an easy task, is it?  There is an infinite amount of theories out there about what problems and solutions there are for America's failing schools, but one thing is for certain: we have a systemic mess on our hands.  This article from the Washington Post (thanks to Mary for sharing!) was written by an administrator who has served at both a failing and a high-achieving NYC school.  Though his comparison of the two experiences lacks discussion about major socioeconomic factors such as class and race, I find his overall distinctions on-target and bitingly honest.  I've outlined the five major differences on which he comments for you here, but the entire article is truly worth the read.

1. Parent support and involvement: "How can any school be effective when parental involvement is not there?"
2. School- and city-wide tracking system: "When a system allows schools to be tracked while segregating its highest achievers in specialized schools or academies, schools such as Jamaica are left with a student body that is made up of lower performing students. It is academic apartheid."
3. Discipline: "By pulling higher achieving students out and replacing them with more disruptive students, an anti-academic, disruptive climate is created."
4. Leadership: "How many years working in a public school do former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, current New York schools chief Denis Walcott and former New York City Chancellor Cathleen Black (who was in the job only a few months) have combined? Less than any member of the administrative team in my new school."
5. Hiring method: "Now the solution is Teaching Fellows and Teach for America. Young people who never intended to teach receive a crash course and teach in urban and rural schools. Since most of them will move on after a few years, a revolving door of inexperienced teachers is created. An army of short-timers is not the solution to troubled schools."

And then the conclusion...

"Although there are many other factors that distinguish an ineffective school system from an effective one, it is interesting to note that the five that have been listed above are not under any teacher’s control.

Yet modern education 'reformers' think that evaluating teachers by test scores and closing schools will produce schools like South Side. Perhaps it is their own lack of experience that makes them believe that is true. Or perhaps it is their lack of courage to make the tough political decisions that would result in more equitable schools. In either case, the kids of Jamaica High School and its teachers lose."