December 2010
40 posts
8 tags
two bottles of andré for ten bucks
Here is a recap of 2010, not remotely in chronological order.
There weren’t many photographs from the first half of the year. There were a lot of hags doing bad things on television. My grades were good. In February I slid down a snowy hill. Got a job as a barista, learned how to make a latte, washed dishes, learned to appreciate a red velvet cupcake. Then I was paid well for doing...
3 tags
craw
This is a ring that is supposed to be shaped like a scorpion, though it looks more like a lobster. (“We’ve been given our parts in the nativity play. And I’m the lobster.”) Paired with an Uma-Thurman-in-Kill Bill claw hand, this is gonna be the best NYE ever.
3 tags
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - “Y Control”
Easily...
3 tags
telly
Good thing about Judge Judy: it shows the human impossibility of ever getting a story straight. The narratives that the plaintiffs construct are always horribly twisted, worse than the worst postmodern novelist! ”Well he said he’d pay for half the car.” ”Did he say that then?” ”No, it was before. But here is a text message. He promised! On...
1 tag
boxing, ballet, drugs, and stuff
A ‘serious’ movie is has the same egocentric quality as celebrity journalism or hardcore porn: so involved in itself that it can appear, to an outsider or a cynic, as humorous. One recent serious movie avoids this trap by exposing the ridiculousness of taking things seriously. Another, not so much.
The Fighter (perpetual little brother achieves boxing glory in spite of his crazy...
christmas quotables
Allison: My blood has been replaced with onion dip.
*later*
Dad: Hey, that band Vampire On The Weekend was in the top 10.
*later*
Molly: That orange on your sweatshirt looks pretty sinister.
Allison: Yeah, well, he has to look that way, because he’s an orange. He’s a FRUIT.
grahh!
Took a Christmas vacation from tumblin’. So full of various dips, cheeses, breads, cookies, etc. plus super-satiated with the E! channel and Real Housewives from Everywhere. The wireless went down in my house and we fixed it intrepidly, with much troubleshooting skill (i.e. we unplugged the modem and plugged it back in). The brain will begin working soon.
1 tag
top thirteen albums o' the year in no particular...
Bieber-ish pop stars and bands-no-one-has-heard-of are both absent. ’Pologies to those who love them.
Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
Jenny and Johnny - I’m Having Fun Now
Kid Cudi - Man On The Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager
Robyn - Body Talk I + II
Best Coast - Crazy For You
Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
Kanye West - My...
1 tag
blogging
I like this. I don’t like this. This is a memory I have of something. This is like that. This is kiiind of like that (overstretched metaphor). This is a good song. This is a good movie. Why does this happen? I want to invent this. This is a bad thing about this. This is a list of stuff. These are bullet points. What a cool picture. Here is something I did.
ooh
Dear Coke Talk’s interpretation of the Sufjan Stevens song “For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti” is worth reading.
1 tag
moving out
It’s the worst! Goodbye television. Goodbye movie posters. Goodbye assemblage of miniature refrigerators. Goodbye friends. Dang.
Last night a bunch of people came over, primarily to hang and watch Marissa Cooper scream her lungs out at the beginning of the second season, but also to literally eat us out of house and home. “Are these Wheat Thins up for grabs?” Yes....
'branding'
My logo. Just kidding. It’s the logo from this restaurant, located in Arkansas. They offer tasty deals on stromboli, ribs, and something called ‘Bosco sticks.’ Pasta is served with unlimited bread. The pictures of food look unappetizing (as Kate Winslet’s character in The Life of David Gale says, never eat at a place that has pictures of their food on the menu) but...
1 tag
tout le bagel
Everything bagels are delicious. This must have something to do with their assertiveness. An everything bagel is assertive in taste — salty, garlicky, oniony — and in the way it tends to spread out over whatever surface you set it on, poppy and sesame seeds flying everywhere territorially.
2 tags
new film genre
Estrogensploitation, otherwise known as a category of movies in which tokens and signifiers that supposedly tap into ‘what women want’ are conspicuously present. This is the combined work of many movie people, though it can be assumed that the director and producers take primary responsibility. Estrogensploitation might, at some points, cross-pollinate with the ‘lifestyle...
error 404
Some of the messages are really depressing, in an almost existential way. This one just happened:
Seems like something a Wes Anderson character would take seriously.
1 tag
derezzed
Here be my review of Daft Punk’s score for Tron: Legacy. It is exactly what you would expect from a Daft Punk film score. Very Daft Punkish, take it as you will. Now, who’s up for some light disc throwing?
4 tags
beep
It is sad to think of all the things — small things — which aren’t possible to execute now simply because it’s 2010 and technology has moved us on. I watched Manhattan the other night. The sight of Diane Keaton, frizzy-haired, cigarette clenched between her incisors, talking on a phone, a home phone with a fat white curly cord, simply would not be the same if she were...
primitive
The “what’s in your toolbox” segments on Design*Sponge are so addictive. Half the allure of artists and designers and crafty people comes from learning what model of hot glue gun they prefer, or what kind of drawing pencils, as if using the same tools as talented people might give you the power to be just as talented.
Here are some personal faves: Mod Podge, 1¢ Staples...
wish i could add
One fun game to play on freezing days is Wish I Could Add. It’s a simple game: as you are walking to your destination, you think about how cold you feel, and what you are wearing, and you make a mentally itemized list of what clothing you would add to your ensemble to make yourself less cold. Sometimes you are lucky and think, wish I could add a hat, and that is that. Sometimes you think...
3 tags
soda
Ordered a Tom Collins* at a nice restaurant on Saturday. Noticed an certain foaminess on the top layer of the concoction. Turns out it was egg whites! A fancy addition that my simple, liquor-in-plastic-bottle palate found extremely delightful. Looked it up and technically a Tom Collins is called a Silver Fizz when egg whites are added.
Apparently you can make a fat-free cake with cake mix by...
5 tags
this is procrastination blogging
I am in an unfamiliar library; all of its signage (COPIER, REFERENCE, PUBLIC COMPUTERS) is in the exact same sort of ‘bibliographical’ font and serious maroon color as the public library at home. I’m tickled by this. It is a dignified library, not the sort of place to listen to “Roman’s Revenge”, even on headphones, but oh well.
Also I’m writing a paper...
2 tags
A Remarkable Orgasm, A Dying Pig, and a Scarlet... →
Robert Atwan pokes around at the fine line between fiction and ‘autobiographical essay.’
1 tag
$79 a night
A note for The O.C. musical director Andrea von Foerster: when aging sexpot Julie Cooper seduces hunky beefsteak surfer boy Luke, playing Bob Seeger was a good choice, but “Maggie May” would have been a better one.
ho ho ho
This photo represents a fraction of the house on Broadway that people call “Château Excess.” Every year a wealth of pumpkins and other autumnal goodies show up as decorations, swiftly followed post-Thanksgiving by garlands and holiday doodads and enough lights to blind a medium-sized Santa Claus. The groundskeeping staff is of considerable size. I imagine the woman who lives there...
a big old snooki 'waaah'
Goodness gracious. Here is a list of things at which I have recently teared up: You’ve Got Mail (tearjerking yuppies), Rent (tearjerking singing people with AIDS), Love, Actually (tearjerking interconnected holiday stories), Lauryn Hill’s singing in Sister Act II: Back In The Habit (tearjerking gospel music by future Fugees member) and my friend Jon singing “Fake Plastic...
good news
Finished with classes today!
1 tag
jeopardy! categories i would totally own
“Corporate Fraud”
“2004: A Great Year For Indie Music”
“Snack Foods”
“The French Revolution”
“Language Learning Videos”
“Misplaced Modifiers”
“Modern Writers or Perverts?”
“Disgusting YouTube videos”
“Origami”
“Bands That Rip Off The White Stripes”
2 tags
is what it is
Cake. So many good associations. Mother bringing out beaters dripping with batter for us as a snack implement - did anyone have a mother who didn’t do this? A testament to the iron will of motherhood, in that it is difficult to share such things with anyone. Ruby’s birthdays always involved a watermelon ‘cake’ cut with jagged sides, whipped cream on top. Her birthday...
odette/odile
Today, I wear legwarmers. They were a birthday gift and their presence on my calves makes me want to point my toes as a ballerina might.
Speaking of which, the reviews of Darren Aronofsky’s ballet psychodrama Black Swan are mostly good, and they are all variations on a theme: that the film depicts dancers who are brutal to their bodies in order to be graceful. Such an impulse is the...
rad lady
Infatuated with (now posthumous) Mary McCarthy in her Paris Review interview. She wrote short stories with titles like “Dottie Makes An Honest Woman Of Herself” and “The Man In The Brooks Brothers Suit,” and she accidentally became a Trotskyite. Too cool.
On writing The Groves of Academe: ”I really wanted to make a weird imaginary college of my own. I even took a...
nedhepburn:
The Beatles “In My Life”
ill not sick
Nothing wrong with having a cold while doing work. It provides a sort of protective screen, like a radiating wave of sinus stuffage and sniffling that separates outside distractions from the task at hand. The only thing to do is focus; plus, there is the reward of tea when all is done.
Library neighbors may get irritated by all the nose-blowing, but it is necessary to be intrepid and persist.
i've got jesus and moses on my side
One of the most potent holidays. Seth Cohen Starter Pack, anyone?
2 tags
on bartenders
Seems like the ideal service position. A bartender gives people what they want (alcohol in many forms), what they need (social interaction) and extra goodies too (good stories, winks, extra limes). There is always the possibility of rude customers, but the difference between a waitress and a bartender is that the bartender has a physical barrier (the bar) between him/her and the rude customer in...
1 tag
wonder
If, once science gets the hang of animating inanimate objects, fashion designers will eschew models in favor of walking mannequins and/or clothes hangers with uniform 23-20-23 measurements and/or Svedka robots.
If there is a way to engineer an alcoholic granola bar: the night’s inebriation and sustenance packed into a handy, raspberry chocolate chip flavored brick!
What James Franco will...
blurbs
Down Home with the Neelys is a Food Network show hosted by Patrick and Gina Neely. In the show, they share the secrets behind their favorite dishes and their passion for food. They’re known for their singing and dancing while cooking and for their mild bedroom humor.
Paula’s Home Cooking is a Food Network show hosted by Paula Deen. Deen’s primary culinary focus isSouthern...
good
Boys who usually don’t wear suits and who suddenly start wearing suits
Girls in baseball t-shirts and Converse (Now & Then style)
Boys wearing extremely fly-looking sneakers
Girls and boys with MCAT study books in public places
Old ladies in tracksuits
Old men in motorcycle jackets
drugstore display
Tower of gift-wrapped Russell Stover candy boxes. Big stack of cardboard boxes containing an “Animated Village Scene.” Another stack of light-up snowmen. Hanging rack of various sizes of batteries. Standing rack of extra strength Excedrin.