vast machinery

I love bears, it’s true.

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:00:06 -0800

I love bears, it’s true.

"You’ve got to take the good with the bad. When you do something good, if it gets magnified,..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

“

You’ve got to take the good with the bad. When you do something good, if it gets magnified, you’re some Jesus. And then when you do something bad, you become Satan. But two years later, if you’re still talking about a mistake I made, then something is really wrong with you. Like when you write an article, if you’re going to bring up the gun thing, then bring up that I adopted somebody when his parents died in a fire. Put that in there, too.

I guess negative things sell, and we can tell because we’ve got these reality TV shows where everybody just beats themselves senseless and we just keep tuning in. That’s where my iffiness comes back and the reason I stayed away so long, is like, “Do I even want to be a part of that anymore?”

I’m happy now. I’m a race-car driver.

”

- Arenas opens up after lengthy hiatus from league, media by Sam Amick. Great to finally hear from the Hibachi again - hope he’s back in the league soon, preferably with a contender.

mattbors: Shoot the cops. Take your cameras out your pockets...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

mattbors:

Shoot the cops. Take your cameras out your pockets people.

untitled by Benoit.P on Flickr.

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

untitled by Benoit.P on Flickr.

untitled by super ape on Flickr.

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

untitled by super ape on Flickr.

Max Cardelli’s photos of Havana via everyday i show.

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

Max Cardelli’s photos of Havana via everyday i show.

Liturgy: Generation.

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

Liturgy: Generation.

"It may be that art films have always tended to be self-consciously wrought genre films. L’Avventura:..."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

“It may be that art films have always tended to be self-consciously wrought genre films. L’Avventura: A mystery-melodrama. Blow-Up: A detective story. Drive: the thinking person’s action film. If so, then Tinker Tailor is the smart Bourne movie. Creative novelty needs a familiar base to play off. Movies come from other movies, and originality can take a tradition, even a popular one, as a point of departure for innovation.”

- From TINKER TAILOR: A guide for the perplexed, by David Bordwell. A highlight from a long, thorough piece.

mills: The wonderful CK/CK shared this photograph, taken near...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:00:06 -0800

mills:

The wonderful CK/CK shared this photograph, taken near London in November of 1942. Breaking between missions flying machines less sophisticated than a contemporary car in a war of annihilation with a nearby and superior enemy, a pilot breaks for a haircut, reading, and a pipe. The insistence on the accouterments of culture, on leisure —the book and pipe, of course, but also the nearly formal attire of the barber and the pattern of the sheet wrapped around his shoulders— seems so British, so laudable, so impossible to imagine today for innumerable reasons one hardly has the energy even to consider.

A P-47 Thunderbolt doing night gunnery, circa 1940s. Via ckck.

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:00:06 -0800

A P-47 Thunderbolt doing night gunnery, circa 1940s. Via ckck.

While I’m super glad that gotemcoach brought this amazing...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:16:57 -0800

While I’m super glad that gotemcoach brought this amazing photo of Lob City to my attention, I wish that they would have a) credited the photographer (Noah Graham for Getty Images) and b) left their logo off of it (or at least provided a link to a clean version). I love you, Got ‘Em Coach, but I hate that you brand other people’s awesome work.

untitled by super ape on Flickr.

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

untitled by super ape on Flickr.

"Under the students’ plan, called the UC Student Investment Proposal, students in the system would..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:00:06 -0800

“Under the students’ plan, called the UC Student Investment Proposal, students in the system would pay no upfront costs for their education but would agree to pay 5% of their income to the system for 20 years after graduating and entering the workforce.”

- California universities weigh tuition pay shift to after graduation (via girlwithalessonplan).

untitled by Alvar Grav on Flickr.

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:00:06 -0800

untitled by Alvar Grav on Flickr.

"Like many 13-year-olds, Brittany knew seventh grade was a living hell. But what she didn’t know was..."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

“Like many 13-year-olds, Brittany knew seventh grade was a living hell. But what she didn’t know was that she was caught in the crossfire of a culture war being waged by local evangelicals inspired by their high-profile congressional representative Michele Bachmann, who graduated from Anoka High School and, until recently, was a member of one of the most conservative churches in the area. When Christian activists who considered gays an abomination forced a measure through the school board forbidding the discussion of homosexuality in the district’s public schools, kids like Brittany were unknowingly thrust into the heart of a clash that was about to become intertwined with tragedy.”

- One Town’s War on Gay Teens | Politics News | Rolling Stone (via firthofforth)

Dans les nuages by Flibustier et Cie on Flickr.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

Dans les nuages by Flibustier et Cie on Flickr.

Renaud Monfourny - Patti Smith. Via hotparade.

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

Renaud Monfourny - Patti Smith. Via hotparade.

"I met him four years ago. He was making pornography then. He was famous for it, sort of—famous for..."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

“

I met him four years ago. He was making pornography then. He was famous for it, sort of—famous for making the worst pornography, a pornography of transgression and violation, a pornography that seemed intended less to glorify sex than to advertise the death of the soul. People were calling him the devil back then—in fact, that’s exactly what he said when I met him: “People call me the devil”—but I liked him immediately. He was solicitous, and he was smart. He talked about surrealism and breaking down the wall between viewer and participant. Then I went to watch him make a pornographic movie out in the Valley and saw something so irredeemably obscene that I figured, Okay, Gregory Dark really is the devil, or at least someone I should stay away from.

Then, last year, I watched a Britney Spears video for a song called “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” on MTV. I kept waiting for that adorable little cutlet to break out into a suggestive hootchy-koo, but she never did. The video was aggressively wholesome—given over to a wholesomeness that was unreal and fetishized—and at the end of it, when I looked for the name of its director, I saw that it was Gregory Dark. Then I saw a video by Mandy Moore, another teenage glamour-puss, who is marketed to little girls who are still too innocent for the coy come-ons of Britney Spears and the frank sexual howling of Christina Aguilera. Gregory Dark directed the Mandy Moore video, too. I called him up, and he said, “Oh, yes, I remember you—we were sort of friends.” He said that he didn’t make pornography anymore but had, in the years since, made about a hundred music videos. He said that he was in great demand, and that in fact he was trying to work out a deal to direct a feature film for New Line. I asked him what he was doing next, and he said he was directing a video for a fourteen-year-old girl. I asked whether I could come out and see him, and he hesitated—he was, he said, a changed man, and he didn’t want to be judged as a pornographer anymore. I pressed. I said, C’mon, man, you know me. At last he gave in, and I went out to see whether Gregory Dark was indeed a changed man or had simply cut some kind of crafty deal to take control of the hearts of America’s virgin daughters.

”

- Give Me Something To Read: The Devil in Greg Dark

untitled by Mr_efes on Flickr.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

untitled by Mr_efes on Flickr.

"“The weirder strain of criticism concerns authenticity. People seem to feel that Del Rey is trying..."

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800

“

“The weirder strain of criticism concerns authenticity. People seem to feel that Del Rey is trying to trick us, though it’s impossible to figure out exactly what that trick would be, as we are dealing with an entertainer and her audience, not a naturally fractious relationship. Detractors cite a variety of presumed conspiracies, some involving the influence of her father, Rob Grant, who is a successful Internet entrepreneur; the rumor of manipulative managers guiding her; the reality of professional songwriters working with her; the question of who paid for the cartoons and the paparazzi footage of the actress Paz de la Huerta that appear in the “Video Games” clip; and how Grant’s top lip got so big so fast. (Grant says she’s undergone no surgical procedures.) Surely no equivalent male star would be subject to the same level of examination.

Why is pop music the only art form that still inspires such arrantly stupid discussion? The debates that surround authenticity have no relationship to popular music as it’s been practiced for more than a century. Artists write material, alone or with assistance, revise it, and then present a final work created with the help of professionals who are trained for specific and relevant production tasks. This makes popular music similar to film, television, visual art, books, dance, and related areas like food and fashion. And yet no movie review begins, ‘Meryl Streep, despite not being a Prime Minister, is reasonably convincing in The Iron Lady.’

”

- Sasha Frere Jones’ on Lana Del Rey and pop music via kateoplis. I broke down and listened to some of Born to Die on Spotify (and then headed over to YouTube to watch Video Games) just to see what the fuss was about. The video is quite good - a nice mash up of viral video tropes and the popular downside of fame in Hollywood - and everything about it is clearly professional. Coming this late to the party hindsight is 20/20, but I find it surprising that anyone believed that it was born from YouTube and not from the music industry. As for The Iron Lady, well, Elvis Costello said it best…