Category: Uncategorized

While poking around The Memory Hole, I found a Reuters report of a 10.27 Spiegel cover story [English link] which gives many new details of the planning and execution of the September 11th attacks.
Spiegel bases their report on US interrogation transcripts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. Germany is currently prosecuting several accessories to the plot, which was hatched in Hamburg. In various ways, the US is refusing to cooperate with the trial; the transcripts obtained by the Spiegel reporters had previously been denied to the court.
Two details: The US Capitol–not the White House–was the other intended target in Washington that day, and the terrorists use the code name, “Porsche 911” when discussing the plot on the phone.
Annoyingly, according to Google News, except for Wired News, which publishes the Reuters filing, no other US news outlet has mentioned this story.

And I do mean last minute. Look at the time…

Dig up your VHS copies of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev in the pristine, never-been-rented Kozmo.com boxes, put on some bikershorts, kneepads, and your Kozmo Goretex shell, and go as a lost delivery guy, like one of those Japanese soldiers who never heard the war was over. [note: doesn’t work if you’ve showered today. Or yesterday. And if you slept on the couch in your office.]

Put on a cashmere cableknit sweater, a suede jacket, and some loafers and go as Whit Stillman. [note: only works if you have showered today. And exfoliated. And hydrated.]

Put on a featherweight ice-climbing shell with more pockets than you know what to do with and a baseball cap and go as a director from Imagine.

Mosaic together a giant Powerpoint slide that says “Jobs Jobs Jobs Jobs” or “War War War War” all over it, sprayglue it to some foamcore, rig it into a backpack behind your head, and go as George Bush.

Wear whatever you’re wearing right now, don’t think about what you’re going to say, don’t even smooth your hair, and go as a guest star on K Street.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner.
[update: I ended up going as pregnant by tying a feto of the world around my neck, a legacy of Jason‘s post about fetosoap. Moral: always keep a small pile of feti handy for parties.]

Hannes Neidner‘s images from the fires in California. More at emese’s photo blog [via Lightning Field and Jason]

The folks at artblog were going through their trash and found my article on the unsanctioned trading of video art screener tapes. They were upset about my outing Chris Hughes, the Pamela and the Richard Kramlich of screeners. “Who benefits [from exposing and shutting this nice guy down]? Not the public, certainly” they criticized.
They kindly posted my response. I don’t think screener tapes automatically harm video art or artists; net net, they help spread the art’s influence and impact. I still feel that writing about this practice was a good thing, and good things have come from it.
Then I see Jack Valenti, picking yet another misleading, irrational and disingenuous fight against the evil VCR by banning screener tapes, and I worry. I worry that maybe, just maybe, could the screener tape seed have been planted by my article? After all, I worry, I have a friend at the MPAA.

Is it a coincidence that The Cremaster Cycle, the filmic ordeal-in-a-black-box, is playing in London at the same time as David Blaine, the Brooklyn ordeal-in-a-clear-box?
Read Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian review as if you’re seeing the movies for the first time.
And read about David Blaine getting out of his box as if you thought you’d already heard the last of him.
Late Saturday night, after a party for Doug Aitken at the Wapping Project, an artspace, the gridlock surrounding David Blaine’s impending egress was blamed for the complete absence of cabs that left 20 of us (including Doug and Thomas Demand) stranded in B.F. East London. Result: a group of us walked back to our hotel in Westminster, along the Thames, for about two hours. Ordealism.

Chicken cutlet curry at Tokyo Diner off Leicester Square (just west, I think)

Your Sun Machine, Olafur Eliasson, 1997
Marc Foxx Gallery. Image:Sao Paulo Bienal
I’m heading to London for a few days.
Going to one friend’s exhibition opening and another friend’s art fair. I’ll be doing a little reporting, even though I’m not sure where to find the “Internet” over there.
I have a great idea; at a moment to be appointed (but it has to be today, in time for my trip), everyone goes outside and marks up the outside of their building with their wi-fi network information. Then, a few minutes later, we all disperse into the crowd.
Forward this message to all your friends.

“It’s Nike Ground! This revolutionary project is transforming and updating your urban space. Nike is introducing its legendary brand into squares, streets, parks and boulevards: Nikesquare, Nikestreet, Piazzanike, Plazanike or Nikestrasse will appear in major world capitals over the coming years…”
And where does this new and friendly revolution begin? Oh, where so many of western civ’s not-so-great-after-all ideas heil from: Austria. “Starting from 1 January 2004 Karlsplatz (in Vienna) is going to be called Nikeplatz.”
! indeed.
[via Archinect]
[update: this turns out to be art by 0100101110101101.org, which released it’s press release Oct. 10, four days after Nike denied its involvement, and a full three days before Archinect or I posted it. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good conclusion, I guess.]
[update 2: and to answer reader Chris’s question, no, all of Austria’s not all that bad after all. Schwarzenegger’s our problem now, anyway.]

The first rule of Mystic River, on the other hand, is don’t discuss Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil.
The director of both films, Clint Eastwood, talks largely of the former with Michael Parkinson in the Guardian.
Not at all related: my examination of the unexamined similarities between Midnight and Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. [Buy Adaptation on DVD. Whatever you do, don’t buy Midnight. Rent it if you insist, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.]

POV looks at The Film Movement, which moves, um, films–indies and foreign films, mostly– through a combination of theatrical release and subscription DVD’s. Interesting but not ideal, she finds.

Felix Salmon looks at Directors Label, which is launching with DVD collections of music videos by Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry. It’s all very RESfest, as it should be, since it’s the same company. [On the same day my video art bootlegging article ran in the Times, Kelefa Sanneh interviewed this directin’ trio. You can either buy or bootleg the interview.]

DVD’s turn out to be the arbitrary driving force in (some) fashion. If I could have any less tolerance for the supercilious pretenses of designers, I’d be Guy Trebay, who bursts some bubbles in the Times: “John Galliano often has some canned hoo-ha he uses to deflect attention from the fact that, like everyone else at a certain moment in fashion, he bought a DVD of the documentary about the San Francisco drag troupe, The Cockettes. At least another stylist cops to copying 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Remember, Soderbergh’s Schizopolis is finally coming out on DVD this month, thanks to Criterion.

No DVD link list would be complete without a plug for GreenCine, the thinking person’s Netflix. Sign up today.

Making money with micropublishing: Matt Haughey & PVRBlog (via Anil)

Making money with macropublishing: OJR on Time, Inc. & AOL (via mediabistro.com)

Micro vs. macro idiocy: Indiewire on “unprecedented in-person meeting of Indiewood chiefs” convened to write a letter to Jack Valenti (via TMN)

Grant’s slow descent into karaoke (also via Anil) (My own theory of karaoke: more than just Japan’s revenge on the world for losing WWII, it’s v2.0 of Japan’s own New World Order, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

A barritone. At first, I assumed it was my cabaret-singing neighbor (who’s performing in “Croon” at the Firebird Cafe, 365 West 46th St., Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 2. Call 212-586-0244 for times and reservations.) but it lacked his flair. (and the songlist is different, too.)

I recently informed a disappointed Allen & Co. that greg.org is not considering a bid, and my reasons for not getting plastic surgery have nothing to do with not knowing where Stephanie Seymour gets her fat harvested. But thanks to Elizabeth Spiers, I now have an excuse to visit New York Magazine.
Though she explained the origin of her new weblog’s name, The Kicker, on her own site, where I come from, um, down on the farm, ‘kickers are boots, boots that connect up from time to time with piles of dung. This may explain why Spiers put a connection–or link, as they say ’round here– to my site.
All of which led me (via Google, the indie’s Lexis-Nexis), to Lillian Ross’s 1995 New Yorker hangout with her 10th-grade, Manhattan private school girlfriends, “The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue.” You all must read it. And not just because now, eight years later, these are the women making notes for a vapid tell-all book about the publicist industry when they should be dolling up Lara Shriftman’s invitations with a “cute stamp.”)

Alana’s wonderful Venn Diagram, “Compleat Diagram of Strange Persons 2003” inspires me to refine the similar universe I have post-it noted on foamcore under the bed. Stay tuned. [via TMN]
As befits a Washington hipster, Listen Missy posts in near-realtime about K Street and her friends&fans post back. We all post because we care, Steven. Because we care.
Coming yesterday: A limited-edition Lost in Translation soundtrack CD, complete with on-the-set pictures by Sofia Coppola. [via Fimoculous]
TMF, TML runs a piece on covering the death of George Plimpton that his a little close to home. “Jacob Weisberg, Editor, Slate: Well, it’s a no-brainer. Really, what do you do? Call a couple of people up and then transcribe their responses verbatim? And, you know, failing that, cut-and-paste quotes from existing interviews. Probably one of the easiest forms of journalism there is.” [Jacob, have I got a story for you. via Gawker]

For a couple of years before I left the corporate world, I had a film in my head: I’d interview my grandfathers–two men who lived within a couple of miles of each other yet who led rather different lives– seeking advice on whether I should get married and, if I did, whether I’d get divorced someday. I’d explore the extent to which our families affects us, the ways in which we are likely/prone/destined to become like our parents.
But there was an IPO, a huge gig in Europe, etc, etc, I kept putting it off. Make a little more money, I thought, and making films’ll be that much easier. I got engaged, so one question of the movie was already answered, but some big ones remained. Then in 2000, one grandfather passed away; followed, within a couple of months, by the other. I’d waited too long.
After my grandfathers’ deaths, completing their film became an imperative, a way of dealing with (our/my) their loss. I started shooting, not quite sure how it’d turn out. I figured it’d become clear, eventually. That was August 2001.
All through the Fall of 2001, I could barely bring myself to screen the tapes I’d shot. Indirect explorations of personal loss seemed a little, well, it seemed like there were bigger issues to deal with at the time. Souvenir November 2001 was, in part, a way to make sense of things; SJ03 is a first attempt at returning my attention to my earlier questions: how do our family and our past influence us? How do we deal day-to-day with someone’s absence?
With a little more mental bandwidth this summer, I started re-viewing the earliest footage we shot for my grandfathers documentary. A little time has helped, and I think I can see a way to cut some of it into a Souvenir-length short. In the mean time, however, I’ve had to revisit the whole idea of timing.
It seems the Andrew Marvell phrase, “world enough, and time” is popular among those who find themselves on the short end of the time stick. This week, I and my family have suddenly joined that crowd. And all the “understanding” I thought I’d gained gets wiped clean, and again, I feel the raw imperative that I have to do something. For a time, I feel like I have to focus, not on memory, but on living, before it is, again, too late.