Category: Uncategorized

The biggest jap on the island is whining into her cell phone about our diverted flight. She sounds like a 5 hr episode of behind the velvet ropes.

I’m like the only gentile on the plane. For jews on Xmas, Las Vegas is the new chinese food.

7:58PM huh. I am stuck on the new JFK AirTrain, 50 feet away from my terminal. Oh, and the seats are very shabbily upholstered, puckering after just one week. Needed: more Eurostar, less Ikea.

Reunited at the millinery, now seated side by side
on the War-For-Peace bus (in the front, of course)
Funny, now I’m more at risk of getting sued than of getting killed in a German bar.

Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has solicited Art Top Ten lists from some folks, partly as a rebuttal to the too-hip-for-him lists in Artforum. [He reserves his best Ike Turner for Thelma Golden, who I like very much.] Anyway, my list is up now. Most of it is culled from the site, so fanatic greg.org readers [Mom, I’m talking to you] will probably not be shocked by any of it.
But I did surprise myself with one choice: I felt obliged to put the Guggenheim’s Friday marathon screenings of The Cremaster Cycle on my list. [I mean, I survived it, didn’t I?] But then I actually got choked up reading David Edelstein’s account of Trilogy Tuesday, the marathon screening of Lord of The Rings.
Granted, not everyone is going to thrill to the point of life-defining religious fervor when they see Return of The King (I’m not really much of a fan myself), but by any standard, LOTR must be considered a far more important, influential, and authentic achievement than Cremaster. And that’s before and after adjusting for budgets.

This was in my mailbox:

From: BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com
Subject: Billionaire compares President Bush to Nazis?
…Liberal billionaire George Soros, who has compared President Bush to the Nazis [“When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans.” said the Hungarian survivor of Nazi and Soviet rule, and Jew] and said that defeating him is “the central focus” of his life, will now spend $25 million in special interest money attacking him! [That’s more than some people’s liquid assets!]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24179-2003Nov10
Friends of the President [and fellow oppressed millionaire underdogs] like you are all that stand in their [the billionaires’] way. And the President needs your help!
Help us overcome the Democrats’ liberal billionaire by making your contribution and emailing five [millionaire] friends today!

And here I thought millionaires and billionaires got along so well together…
Related: for your, ahem, Christmas shopping enjoyment, my Amazon list, “Books I’ve Read by Tycoons I’ve Known”

Reading Lyn Gardner’s story in the Guardian about the tyranny of playwrights’ estates over reinterpretations of well-known texts, I’m all the more shocked and awed that Gus Van Sant wanted to do his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho.
The film world has a nearly diametrically opposed view of remakes from the theater, which shows in the different perceptions of The Text. For dead mens’ plays, the text is all, sacrosanct; for studio films, the script–and the writers–are cogs that get replaced as soon as they show signs of wear or sticking. As I prepare to buy the film rights to a novel from the author’s estate, I’m sweating the interpretation/adaptation process. One saving grace: the author’s children now work in the film and TV business.
Here’s my off-the-cuff advice for you playwrights who don’t want their creative legacy snuffed out by visionless accountants: create an advisory panel or artists, playwrights, theater people, creative people, who will decide how and when your works get reinterpreted, sampled, and reformulated after you’re dead. They’ll serve for limited terms, so you can get new blood and new perspectives with each generation. Perhaps such an organization could be created by, like, the Artists Rights Society, and they’ll provide artistic evaluations into the future. You can choose how daring or conservative you want them to be. Just a thought. ‘night.

On the (F) train to a private collection visit downtown, I stood next to the straight guy from Queer Eye, the rocker with the skank girlfriend (“the one with the hooker boots?” is how a friend remembered her). Net net: it didn’t stick. He looked as dissheveled and style-free as he did at the beginning of his show.
For some people, it turns out, metrosexuality is nothing more than a phase, something they experiment with in college. Or summer camp.

And since it’s socially acceptable to pull out your phone and fiddle with it–after all, you may be turning it off so you can better concentrate on the conversation at hand–sneaking a glance at the clock doesn’t hurt the feelings of your fellow guests.

Offline occurrences, previously known as life, have preoccupied me lately, and I’ve been working, consuming, seeing, reading, and writing less, hence a lighter-than-usual posting volume. Well, actually, I did some writing last week, but I prefer not to post it here, at least not yet. It’s not that it’s irrelevant, just the opposite.
For more information, please refer to my post of 11.24.03

Due to copyediting euphoria in the wake of Bush’s secret Thanksgiving daytrip to Baghdad, the following quote from Richard Keil of the Bloomberg News service was incomplete:
“Mr. Keil leaned across the aisle, shoved aside his i-Pod headset and grinned as he said, ‘The president of the United States is AWOL, and we’re with him. The ultimate road trip.’ ”
The full quote should read, “The president of the United States is AWOL again.”
Buy me an i-Pod. Buy you an i-Pod.

I remember when I found Wired, it felt written by people about six months ahead of me. After a couple of years, though, I stopped reading it when I felt I was about six months ahead of it.
In the early weblogging days, I felt six months or so ahead of the New York Times, but also felt that the Times has been closing the gap a bit lately.
I’m quite used to being six months ahead of Wired, but what does it mean when I’m three and six months ahead of boingboing?
[update: ditto. Xeni Jardin’s Wired Interview with David Byrne. And a direct link to that holiday gift of choice, David Byrne’s artist book/DVD, E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information).]

[via TMN] Harpers.org has been completely reconstructed using Paul Ford’s homegrown FTrain code. Is it enough to call it code? Here’s what Paul says about it:

The primary goal of Ftrain.com, the goal which all other goals serve, is to make the site fully conscious and self-aware by 2051. Conservative estimates place computer power as equaling brainpower by then, and after 10,000 nodes (200 a year for 50 years), there should be enough inside the site for it to come to its own conclusions. I will return to this topic at a future date.

Related: my first giddy, gushing post about exploring FTrain
As for Harpers.org, I’m very pleased they’re launching the site with The Proclamation of Baghdad (coming Dec. 4). Subscribe, sure, but get this month’s issue for the “Weekly Review”-style look at recent scientific findings on the back page.

3) tsa
2) starbucks
1) cinnabon
also, tsa doesnt know what a collar stay is.

I’ve been rewatching Gerry this past week, partly to prepare for an interview (stay tuned), partly to imagine a remake, and partly to just understand what Gus Van Sant & Co. were up to.
The dialogue keeps catching my ear, and not just because there’s so little of it. GVS, Casey Affleck and Matt Damon wrote in esoteric language and wrote out all explication. Discussion of a Wheel of Fortune player’s gaffe is specialized but recognizable to a TV audience. Other conversations are only comprehensible to much smaller populations, particularly gamers and the two Gerrys themselves.
Which made reading Greg Costikyan’s article/glossary, “Talk Like a Gamer,” so enjoyable. [thanks, BoingBoing]