wanting it both ways

Things are bleak out there.

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:09:53 -0700

Things are bleak out there.

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 02:54:00 -0700

Ask a New Yorker about cabs to the airport

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:29:00 -0700

“i mean, i don’t think anyone differentiates between yellow cabs” — brent cox, 2013

“lol
i mean!
hm
what do you need” — jen vaf, 2013

For seventeen days as guests of the French Government and the municipality of Cannes, delegates...

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:23:07 -0700

For seventeen days as guests of the French Government and the municipality of Cannes, delegates from thirty countries saw and criticized an average of two movies a day and took turns imploring each other to save the seventh lively art and, incidentally, their own business, by making better films. With the intimacy of shipmates they gambled at the Casino, dined at every celebrated restaurant on the Riviera and attended from one to three parties a day.

…

Therefore the committee previewed all controversial entries in the morning. They discovered that a scheduled Czech “Puppetoon,” allegedly preaching peace, had unilaterally cast all Americans, French and British as warmongers. They ruled the film out of competition and, to the astonishment of everyone, the Czech delegation quickly consented. (It was the first time they, themselves, had seen the movie!) There was not nearly the same unanimity about the withdrawal of the Russian documentary, “Liberated China,” and Nicholas Semenov, U.S.S.R. Vice Minister for Cinema, objected strongly at a press conference.

— the NYT covers Cannes for the first time during its fourth year

But when I think harder . . . my ideal reading experience would involve time travel. I’d be 14, and...

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:35:34 -0700

But when I think harder . . . my ideal reading experience would involve time travel. I’d be 14, and in my hand would be the orange tickets that admitted to the adult section of the public library. Everything would be before me, and I would be ignorant of the shabby little compromises that novelists make, and I would be unaware that many nonfiction books are just rehashes of previous books by other writers. My eyes would be fresh.

— Hilary Mantel on reading

My grandmother was pretty baller. (Photo circa 1990)

Sun, 12 May 2013 07:23:00 -0700

My grandmother was pretty baller.

(Photo circa 1990)

Photo

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:50:55 -0700

D.C. — not at a hotel, but at a good friend’s home....

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:23:50 -0700

D.C. — not at a hotel, but at a good friend’s home. The place wafts of comforting Indian food, and I’m drinking ginger peach green tea. Waiting for P, whose bus got delayed over an hour, to arrive late tonight. Did not pack a thick sweater and now am warming my feet by placing the Mac charger upon them.

portmanteaurian: brocreate: glassmenagerie: henryclervall: OH...

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:34:51 -0700

portmanteaurian:

brocreate:

glassmenagerie:

henryclervall:

OH MY GOD

But have you been on CarpetsForAirports.com?

this makes him like a million times more charming to me

how to be relatable to dorians: be weirdly enthusiastic about something very strange

Hugh Dancy is, like his father, very academic.

Can we take a moment and appreciate Michel Foucault’s...

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:34:00 -0700

Can we take a moment and appreciate Michel Foucault’s hair? (As pointed out by Lindsey, “it never occurred to me that foucault once, you know, had hair. but he did. my world. rocked.”)

The silence hissed in her ears and her vision was faintly distorted—her hands in her lap appeared...

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:27:32 -0700

The silence hissed in her ears and her vision was faintly distorted—her hands in her lap appeared unusually large and at the same time remote, as though viewed across an immense distance. She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending, she was not entirely serious, and because willing it to move, or being about to move it, was not the same as actually moving it. And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind. When did it know to move, when did she know to move it? There was no catching herself out. It was either-or. There was no stitching, no seam, and yet she knew that behind the smooth continuous fabric was the real self—was it her soul?—which took the decision to cease pretending, and gave the final command.

Remember how good Atonement is?

Between his ostentatious jewelry and his corkscrew hair, Max calls to mind both the stylized swagger of Ron Jeremy and the protuberant sexlessness of Dolly Parton.

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:18:07 -0700

halekathleen:

My first column is up and it’s about the brilliant inscrutability of a 25 pound poodle.

Kathleen really gets Dolly Parton — and, I think, by the end of this interview, this elusive poodle.

TINAAAAAA

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:32:46 -0700

TINAAAAAA

Photo

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:47:00 -0700

I am never, ever getting over this picture.

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:12:09 -0700

I am never, ever getting over this picture.

I did this at the downtown Montreal Indigo just before Christmas...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:09:00 -0700

I did this at the downtown Montreal Indigo just before Christmas 2009 (until they told me to stop).

Have realized I love reading Sedgwick by way of transcribing her, but also realizing that that is...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:33:00 -0700

Have realized I love reading Sedgwick by way of transcribing her, but also realizing that that is perhaps extremely hazardous, but also don’t really give a fuck because since no one could imitate Sedgwick, there is no fear (for me) in getting too close.

I loved him as much as ever and was as happy as ever in his love; but my love, instead of...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:56:00 -0700

I loved him as much as ever and was as happy as ever in his love; but my love, instead of increasing, stood still; and another new and disquieting sensation began to creep into my heart. To love him was not enough for me after the happiness I had felt in falling in love. I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. I had fits of depression which I was ashamed of and tried to conceal from him, and fits of excessive tenderness and high spirits which alarmed him. […] I wanted, not what I had got, but a life of struggle; I wanted feeling to be the guide of life, and not life to guide feeling. If only I could go with him to the edge of a precipice and say, “One step, and I shall fall over — one movement, and I shall be lost!” then, pale with fear, he would catch me in his strong arms and hold me over the edge till my blood froze, and then carry me off whither he pleased.

Family Happiness, Leo Tolstoy

When I read it at 14 (Edmonton, after we moved, during a hot summer, at night under bedcovers), I...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:44:00 -0700

When I read it at 14 (Edmonton, after we moved, during a hot summer, at night under bedcovers), I never thought I’d be repeating Esther’s lifestyle one day, indeed barely knew what depression was. But I’ve realized the manifestations of my depression all reference somehow back to those moments where I knew Esther to be somewhere I didn’t understand (and now, revisiting, see quite clearly how she didn’t understand — though still much better than those who were supposed to). She gets the fundamental slumpidity of it all so well, and she makes it look easy (when it’s so difficult to convey) and even… aspirational? We as readers seem to be outside of the realm of intelligence (of a moody girl!), which is, I do think, also a bit of what being depressed is like.

The reason I hadn’t washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.

It made me tired just to think of it.

I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.

ES: What if you had access to a time machine? Where would you go? MG: You mean as part of a movie...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:22:00 -0700

ES: What if you had access to a time machine? Where would you go?

MG: You mean as part of a movie plot or — ?

ES: In your real life. If you, Michel Gondry, found a time machine and could go anywhere, to any period in history, where would you take it?

MG: I would travel back a few years ago and fix some screw-up I did.

ES: A personal or professional screw-up?

MG: In my personal life.

ES: Can you be more specific?

MG: I would come back and say yes to a girl. That’s all. Actually, I find the whole idea of traveling back in time to be profoundly depressing.

ES: Really? Why so?

MG: Because I know the future. Living in the past, it would feel weird to know what’s going to happen next. You couldn’t escape it. That future’s already in your head. You know it doesn’t get better.

ES: You’d rather not know about the future?

MG: The future is about hope. If you travel from the present to the past, you don’t have that hope anymore. You know how everything turns out.

Michel Gondry Interview - Michel Gondry The We and the I - Esquire

As romantically as Gondry sums up this essential fork in plot — and as only Gondry can — I disagree! Nothing says hope more than the willingness to travel back in time.