I feel most movies I see don’t take me seriously. It’s like they think I’m 16 or something. Or they don’t realize that I’m sitting in a movie theater and there’s nothing else going on. They don’t need to fight for my attention. They got my attention. They can be comfortable, it’s fine.
Well, he’s unmarried. He still lives with his mother. He’s in therapy, and it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get out of therapy. And he didn’t go into literature.
Why couldn’t a pop song also contain an enormous, barn-burning guitar solo? Why couldn’t a dance hit verge on Afropop? Why did a creamy ballad about human nature have to sound like humans were singing it? Pop has in no way exhausted all the questions he and Quincy posed. Michael Died Today: Sasha Frere-Jones: Online Only: The New Yorker
This is where everyone I knew first saw the moonwalk, and if you weren’t there or didn’t watch it or maybe weren’t a kid at the time, you cannot imagine what a big deal it was. I was in middle school, and I think we all tried it. You can hear the crowd scream when he does it here — it’s not a scream of recognition, like it would be when he did it later. It’s a scream of shock. NPR: Michael Jackson: The Moment That Made Him The King Of Pop
After 2005, I thought, there’s just not a lot of good hip hop, but this mix is four years in the making and there’s a lot of great stuff in here. I searched for the least misogynistic tracks, but couldn’t resist putting in a few just for their innovative beats. Dharma Arts profiles my favorite digital DJ, CPI. You can download all 195 minutes of City Hearts Aimed Skyward at thetastates.com.
I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying. It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. Alan Moore Will Be ‘Spitting Venom All Over’ Watchmen | The Underwire from Wired.com
- Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
- The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
- Write in recollection and amazement for yourself Kerouac was a blogger.
WATCHMEN MOVIE ‘nuff said?
I have a lot of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. A Letter From Jack | Edie Kerouac Parker
I show up in a town and call up my friends, and I’m like, “Guys, we gotta go out. Let’s hang out, I haven’t seen you in forever.” And their response is “Yeah, well, our baby needs to be going to sleep and I can’t be out all hours of the night anymore. It’s time to move on in our lives into another phase; we can’t live in this perpetual adolescence forever.” Paste Magazine :: The Meaning of Life by Ben Gibbard.
As a country singer approached a microphone near home plate to sing the national anthem, our jaws slackened as [Albert] Ayler’s sax purred the plaintive opening notes of “Spirits Rejoice,” which quickly becomes a tight, triumphant military-style march before disintegrating into crushing trumpet bleats by Albert’s brother Don. On the silent screen gigantic flags were unfurled, pyrotechnics exploded, a military flyover happened and Americans rejoiced while Ayler’s band evoked twin towers of war–pageantry and battle–masterfully, if psychotically. An Ayler in My House
This collection of Stan Lee Tribute Artwork repeatedly takes my breath away.
In the art industry, it’s extremely difficult to be successful without turning yourself into a cartoon. Even Hunter S. Thompson knew this. God knows Duchamp and Warhol knew it. Some artists are turned into cartoons and others do it themselves. I prefer to do it myself. At least then I can control how my cock is photographed. stereogum: Of Montreal Talk T-Mobile: "Selling Out Isn’t Possible" by Kevin Barnes (or, as my kids would say, “Bar-NEZ”).
Took me a long time to find it out, but those words are lethal, man, and you shouldn’t just go slinging them around for effect. If you’re black or Jewish or Latin or gay those little vernacular epithets are bullets that riddle your guts and then fester and burn there, like torture-flak hailing on you wherever you go. A classic piece of rock criticism, Lester Bangs' 1979 “White Noise Supremacists” takes punk to task for “acting like racism is real hip and cool.” To read the essay, download the PDF from Lester’s Legacy under “Lester reprints online.”
This is a spiritual story, written by an American Catholic who loved the disillusioned sadness of life just as much as youthful exuberance.
What makes this book an American masterpiece is how beautifully Kerouac blends the two. To claim otherwise just perpetuates the 50-year misinterpretation of this American confession. New York Times' letters to the editor regarding an October 4 David Brooks column.
I love that Kerouac and company picked up the notion of Beat from Herbert Huncke, a Times Square hustler and writer who had picked up the phrase from carnies, small-time crooks, and jazz musicians in Chicago and who used the word to describe the “beaten” condition of worn-out travelers for whom home was the road. Paperback Writer: October in the Railroad Earth
randomWalks: Justin Quinnell’s bath, as seen by his tongue This picture is making the rounds again, and prints are for sale on Quinnell’s site as well. I might pick one up.
I read it in the decade of Dylan and the Beatles, and in its boozy, self-conscious, priapic posturing it seemed a boy’s book, as it does to this day. Its central conceit, Sal’s adoration of Dean, means that if you don’t dig Dean, the book is lost on you, and, frankly, Dean is very hard to dig if you’re a woman. – Marianne Wiggins Some people remember being blown away by “On the Road” when they were young but then find that it doesn’t stand up to mature scrutiny. My experience has been completely different. It gets better and better–the heartbreak more pronounced–with every rereading. – Geoff Dyer The LA Times asked thirty writers about the significance of On the Road: The ‘Road’ much traveled.
… no friend will wander down no one arriving brown from Mexico from the sunfields of California, bearing pot they are scattered now, dead or silent or blasted to madness by the howling brightness of our once common vision … Inscrutable Muses: The Women of the Beat Generation. Miss-Vintage.com
Digital Humanities Quarterly: Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther’s Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky “Section 2 of this article is a formal examination of Crowther’s original source code files, offering, for the first time, a clear understanding of Crowther’s innovative blend of simulation and fantasy, as well as a better appreciation of the creative contributions of Woods. Section 3 compares the game to maps of the cave site, presents photographs of an excursion to Colossal Cave, and offers testimony from experienced cavers. These key sources – the code and the cave, analyzed here for the first time – establish that Crowther’s original was not only faithful to the geography of the real Colossal Cave, but was also a fantasy remediation of that site.”
Struggle. He had a Vulcan father and a human mother — so there’s great logic and deep emotion and a great struggle between the two poles. That’s a great gift to hand an actor. It’s a struggle we all go through. Leonard Nimoy, on Spock’s internal life. ‘‘Star Trek’’ exclusive: The Spocks speak! | Star Trek | The Q&A | Movies | Entertainment Weekly | 2
The Femmes were eating dinner at Doyle’s Seafood in Sydney. Ritchie ate a live lobster served sashimi style. When Gano saw the arms of the lobster waving around while Ritchie munched the raw flesh he called a taxi and went back to the hotel. The next day Gano announced he was becoming a vegetarian and has never eaten meat since then. VIOLENT FEMMES Band Info is full of tales seemingly too good to be true.
I just finished reading Book 7 and am now back online. apophenia: processing Harry Potter
I’ve been honestly kind of freaking out about the spoilers this week. Eager for Harry and ‘The Hallows’ - washingtonpost.com
randomwalks/dj: David’s reblog is one of the only sites I can think of which I trust not to spoil my weekend.
Trying to schedule your sequestration this weekend so the end of Harry Potter isn’t spoiled for you? Me too. Let’s see. The book will be 784 pages, and I read about 300 words per minute. (How Many Words-Per-Minute Do You Read?) Now if I had a copy of one of the Harry Potter hardcovers handy, I’d count a few pages to get a figure for words per page. Anybody got a good guess?
Here’s the published version: “My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness.”
In the scroll, the section runs four times longer and wraps with: “If these men stop the machine and come home - and get on their knees - and ask for forgiveness - and the women bless them - peace will suddenly descend on the earth with a great silence like the inherent silence of the Apocalypse.”
“Holy moly, man,” said Canary. “That’s a whole different book.”
J Freedom du Lac (what a sweet name!): He Is a Rock - washingtonpost.com
Surely, Stevie Wonder is on the short list for the next Gershwin Prize. Yes?
leyink says:
I felt like I was watching all of the epic rock acts -- Bowie, Sgt. Peppers Beatles, and some glam theatre troupe all smooshed onto the stage at Great America.Intense. Awesome.
“In celebration of the 50th anniversary of On the Road, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics will share news of Kerouac celebrations around the world, updates about the School’s own Kerouac Festival on June 30 and July 1, 2007 and perspectives of special guest bloggers.”
Japan’s long been a music geek’s paradise, a Valhalla of reverent remasters of American and British albums that time and fashion have passed by in their native lands. … There’s a small but ardent underground economy among Americans in dummy addresses and e-mailed scans of Japanese iTunes Cards, picked up by friends in Tokyo convenience stores or openly sold online. Slate Magazine: The insanely great songs Apple won’t let you hear, by Paul Collins.
The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. MAGPIE » NEARER THE HEART OF THINGS: Erik Davis on Joanna Newsom, from Arthur No. 25/Winter 02006.
I do not know what “crozzled” means. Nor do I know what “kerfs” mean, or “grambeled” or “sleavings” or innumerable other words introduced into the narrative. I have a vague idea of what the word “claggy” means in the sentence sequence, “The gray and rotting teeth. Claggy with human flesh,” but I don’t want to think too much about it. The end is nigh and woe is us (on The Road by Cormac McCarthy).
The Great Old Pumpkin, by John Aegard
You must know, Doctor, that I did not choose to seek psychiatric help. I have no faith that I shall exit this room a healed man; I know now that I have been destined for the asylum since childhood. No mere conversation with you can steer me clear of that fate. That said, let us proceed with this court-compelled farce before my mad prattle provokes your crabbiness further.
As you are no doubt aware, I am the issue of solid Dutch stock – the prosperous Van Pelt family of St. Paul. Bonus (while supplies last): It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Right now, I’m trying to play the instrument, and I’m trying to write, without any restrictions of chord, keys, time, melody and harmony, but to resolve the idea eternally, where every person receives the same quality from it, without relating it to some person. New York Times: Seeking the Mystical Inside the Music: Listening with Ornette Coleman.
All you ever wanted to know about JT…. and more! - Threat Level Orange Julius
You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really. You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like – static. Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em. CDs are small. There’s no stature to it. I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, ‘Everybody’s gettin’ music for free.’ I was like, ‘Well, why not? It ain’t worth nothing anyway.’ “. . . Rolling Stone: The Genius of Bob Dylan (excerpt)
beatzo: How Alan Moore Changed My Life Part 1: Swamp Thing# 48 Part memoir, part “comics as literature”, this essay communicates both the genius of Alan Moore and the secret joys a teenage comic book fan was privy to in the 1980s.
Lowell Sun Online - Unedited version of ‘On the Road’ to be published
Jack Kerouac’s landmark novel on the Beat Generation, On The Road, will be published in its unedited “original scroll version,” John Sampas said today. The Lowell-based executor of Kerouac’s literary estate said he signed a contract Sunday with the New York-based publisher Viking/Penguin to publish the book. He hopes to have it out by the end of 2007. Tuesday’s Lowell Sun will have the full edited story.
NPR : Richard Linklater, Directing ‘Darkly’ (Interviewed on Fresh Air, 10 July 2006)
village voice > books > Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of the Quetzalcoatl by Carla Blumenkranz
Lowell Sun Online - Kerouac film bid brings crew 'On the Road' to Lowell
We are not starting with preconceived concept of what it should be. We are talking to people about what they think it should and should not be.
Walter Salles, director of Frances Ford Coppola's "On The Road," is filming a documentary "in search of the feature film."
Sitting at home with the window open, listening to the tree branches brush against each other outside and the occasional horn-honks of Flatbush Ave, bark of dog and squeal of child... this uncomposed ambience is my creativity engine lately.
From a comment on Click opera - Ubiquity is the abyss.
A Short History of America in twelve panels by R. Crumb.
I advise a 12-hour-a-day TV viewing regimen!!
Understanding Zippy (how to read the never intentionally obscure comic strip).
A line of Kerouac clothing will hit stores soon, including dinner jackets. It is inspired by his sense of style, if not the jeans and khakis he actually wore.
Lowell Sun Online - Why is Kerouac on Lowell's back burner?
"Excuse me. Are those Kerouac™ jeans you're wearing?"
Star Wars: Episodes I-VI - The greatest postmodern art film ever. By Aidan Wasley
Emperor Palpatine, the embodiment of the Dark Side, taunts the despairing Luke in Return of the Jedi, "Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design," and we are led to understand in Sith that it was Palpatine himself who set the entire plot in motion by manipulating the Force toward Anakin's virgin birth. Palpatine is the emblem of the artist as clockmaker or puppet master, the omniscient manipulator of his hapless characters for the purposes of a satisfying narrative payoff. At the end of Jedi, in a scene out of Pirandello or one of Ashbery's own plays, the characters assert their autonomy and kill their author.
Think about these things, reader. Don't sigh and turn the page. Think that I have written them and you have read them, and the odds against either of us ever having existed are greater by far than one to all of the atoms in creation.
From Roger Ebert's review of Kieslowski's Red.
"Sometimes, you're able to create a very distinct voice . . . from just the pace of their speech," Dale says, eyes twinkling, his voice drifting into the cadence of south London. "Did you know. That Michael Caine. Can only speak. In three words. At one time.
Poynter Online - Harry Potter And The Imbalance of Race
I'm sure she's a fine person. I'm saying she should stop writing as though white is normal and needs no identification, while every other race is so one-dimensional that a single word — black — sums up shade of skin, expression of eyes, length of nose, color of hair. She should describe my black friends with the same gifts of language that she uses on the white people.
The onset of one's 30s does not necessitate a blanket disregard of new music; that would be self-defeating and a bit weird. Indeed, this is a fecund time for what was once touchingly known as "indie", with Trail Of Dead, Art Brut, Bloc Party and the Rapture all doing fine things with the gifts the good Lord has bestowed upon them. Yet the appeal of such music is so intrinsically linked to youth - it's about possibility, about arrogance, about contempt for authority and middle-aged men in denim gilets - that to be really into it beyond one's 20s demonstrates a fundamental lack of self-awareness. It is, in other words, time to move on.
Holy Sh*t! Dinosaur Jr.?! | Ask MetaFilter
I remember reading an interview with Lou Barlow a few years back where he said his dream was to play on SNL and behead J Mascis with his guitar before killing himself live on TV.
One day I walked down Broadway in New York and where Broadway crosses 52nd street there's a drugstore that has a black, plate glass window. Very clearly you can see your reflection in it, if you are of the nature to seek out your reflection in drug store windows. So, anyway I look and Pow! there I am, so I was shocked, I hadn't seen myself in about a year. So I was you know, truth be told, I was digging myself for about 45 seconds, an intense dig. When this bird that was perched overhead, like total disregard for me, just, he defecated on me. I don't know if this has ever happened to you but if it has, you know that it is virtually impossible to maintain your cool under those circumstances. Right? And all I can think of, you know how thoughts raise through your mind in moments of crisis, all I can think of is "there goes a happy bird". And then I'm fantasizing, saying : 'can you imagine this bird, sort of floating above the city of New York for a week, looking for a place to land, like saving up.' Don't dig yourself.
Simon And Garfunkel Concerts or TV appearances with spoken introduction to the songs in RealAudio.
The Village Voice links to a handful of ambient and other unpop musical recordings.
To me, The Smiths mean cheap hair gel, unwashed sheets, damp walls, badly ventilated gas fires and impossible expectations. A beautiful fury with everything, because it isn't you.
The Independent Online Edition > Some bands are bigger than others. "It seems entirely right to me that there should be a symposium - although academia needs The Smiths far more than The Smiths need academia."
Pitchfork: Daily Music News: “J. Mascis and Lou Barlow will perform together under the Dinosaur Jr. name for the first time in 15 years.”
Arthur Magazine issue 15 is available as a free pdf: Meditation as a subversive activity; Jessica Yu talks about her Henry Darger documentary; "Hotel and Farm" by Ben Katchor and a special feature with lots of other comics; new columnist Douglas Rushkoff; Ian Svenonius has a conversation with the Secret Service. Ok!
He was arguably the best breaking-news editor of his generation. He had incredibly sharp instincts about the real news angle of any story. He was a writer's editor as well and made substantial improvements to a story without changing the writer's voice or tampering with the style. Rather, he would get the writer to make the changes the story needed and then he would organize the rewritten prose logically so that it really flowed.
Lucien Carr was one of several fascinating real-life characters, like Neal Cassady, Carl Solomon, and Herbert Huncke, who became legendary through their association with the Beat writers. Lucien holds a special position here: he introduced Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs to each other.
I printed my writer's tips on one side of a sheet of paper and a .pdf map of Middle Earth on the other. It is perhaps the single most useful piece of paper ever printed. I can mock my friends' extensive use of the passive voice and their barbarously bad use of adverbs and then diagram the battle of Minias Tirith with a single piece of paper.
The first thing to do is carry a notebook and during quiet times or as the thought occurs to you, compile a list of anything that really interests you.
On the occasion of the DVD release of "Pee Wee’s Playhouse," PEE WEE HERMAN — who hasn’t been heard from since 1991 — joins Elvis Mitchell, host of the nationally syndicated public radio program, The Treatment for a special broadcast,* *Monday, December 6th, 2:30 to 3 pm on 89.9 KCRW and KCRW.com*.
You heard it here first. Find the stream at KCRW.com.
The scene shows fewer tumbrils but more maimed citizens in painted cars and they have strange license plates and engines that devour America
from In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Mark Romanek directs music videos. His website is a great example of the web providing supplementary and explanatory material to more traditional forms of media. His music videos are all online in quicktime and you can read original treatments and see on set photographs. Romanek directed the video for Jay-Z’s 99 Problems this year and the video for Johnny Cash covering NIN’s Hurt in 2003. These are both great videos, and they complement each other perfectly. They are both by quintessentially American artists who work in quintessentially American forms, but their music could not be more different. Both videos offer recapitulations of the artists path and the choices they have made. The video for Hurt suggests that Cash wouldn’t change a thing, while the video for 99 Problems suggests how easily things could have ended differently for Jay-Z. And they both illustrate what music videos can do best: provide an alternate narration for a song, expose meanings you hadn’t considered before, evoke new resonances.
"Yes, I personally ended up in the Amazon," she says. "In my own mid-50s, I wanted to study plant medicine. In the Amazon I spent part of a year trying, three or four times, ayahuasca. When Kate relates the initial nausea, then the experiences, I have done this, too."
Star Telegram | Alice in wonderment. Alice Walker's new book includes an autobiographical account of her recent drug trips.
You think just because the words are garbled in his mouth, they're garbled in his mind?
A pause that discourages in the development of the On the Road movie.
The Slack Album is a mostly tongue-in-cheek project fusing Jay-Z’s The Black Album to Pavement’s classic lo-fi album Slanted and Enchanted, combining the songs track-by-track in order of the original album sequences. Some of the resultant music is hip-hop-ish; some is not.
The New Yorker Profiles Aaron McGruder
There is, at first, something disappointing in this vision of America’s most radical cartoonist at work: slouched on the sofa, armed with a remote and TiVo, not a pencil or a drawing board—or even a snarl—in sight. McGruder is not yet thirty, and already he is jaded, content to settle for the kind of perfectly passable work he so often eviscerates others for. Or maybe this is the point: he is not yet thirty. He has aspirations to raise hell for a whole new audience, in a whole different way, and he is afraid of blowing the opportunity on a stupid youthful mistake.
With that in mind, he has decided to lay off Condoleezza Rice—seemingly a prime target these days, in the wake of Richard Clarke’s allegations—for the near future. ‘Having that show on the air just opens up a whole new realm in terms of power and influence,’ he said. ‘I want to say the things no one else can say, but it’s a tightrope walk. Up till now it has always paid off for me. I’m waiting for the moment when it will not pay off.’
Via leuschke.org:
- Grab the nearest book
- Open the book to page 23
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence [on your website] along with these instructions
From Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? by Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D.:
When patients are kept on ventilators despite being dead, their hearts stop within hours to days.
The main focus of my art is currently the exploration of the infinite ever-changing worlds contained within the subconscious mind. In Heaven and Hell Aldous Huxley wrote:
"Like the giraffe and the duckbilled platypus, the creatures inhabiting [the] remoter regions of the mind are exceedingly improbable. Nevertheless they exist, they are facts of observation; and as such, they cannot be ignored by anyone trying to understand the world in which he lives."
The worlds inside the mind are just as real as the world outside, but describing and documenting the inner worlds can only be done by using similes and symbols from the outside world. I see my work as symbolic representations of subconscious landscapes, creatures or events. Each work is a piece of an infinite puzzle representing my subconscious mind.
Update 2023/04/22: Link above just goes to the homepage now, but Ben Tolman is on Instagram
Chicago Tribune | Jack Kerouac in Orlando
I want people, especially young people, to embrace the idea of history in the suburbs. I call it suburban archaeology. This idea of Kerouac as the precursor of the hippies — he was Catholic, he was conservative, and he lived with his mother in the suburbs.
So says Bob Kealing, a reporter for WESH-TV and the author of a new book, Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends. Read an excerpt in Orlando Magazine.
