Category: writing

Advertiser Shoutout

A round of applause to the advertisers who keep greg.org swimming (ok, maybe wading…ok, maybe slightly damp) in MoMA tickets. Please show them we’re not ALL poverty-stricken Marxist anti-consumerists:

  • KevinKringle.com (it’s getting to be some time of year, anyway)
  • Moretosee.com (this mysterious campaign isn’t just for high-end flatscreen television anymore.)
  • The Life Aquatic, directed by Wes Anderson, who I believe you all know.

    • Note to self: Feuillade, Richie, Gonzalez, Falluja

    Just what’s been on my mind:

  • Louis Feuillade was the French anti-Griffith, whose crime serials and mystery, Les Vampires embraced elusiveness over narrative primacy; they were met with disdain from French critics. The director in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep was trying to remake Les Vampires with Maggie Cheung. BFI’s Sight & Sound has an article on him. [via mefi]
  • Donald Richie is the self-appointed chief gaijin. If he’s Paul Bowles, Tokyo is his Tangiers. His The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 are discussed at Metropolis. [via mefi]
  • Alberto Gonzalez is probably the single least likely person in Washington to empower an independent investigation or special prosecutor.
  • In his second term, Clinton cynically and deftly supported extensive testing of the missile defense system to avoid an unwanted fight with ongressional Republicans over it. Likewise, Congress’s loud but conflicted action on the 9/11 Commission recommendations enabled Bush to demand action, so he can sign something, even as all the Republicans knew nothing would actually be done.
    In this way, well-publicized planning for the invasion of Fallujah innoculated GWB against mid-election criticism of the administration’s failures in confronting the Iraqi insurgency.
    Now that the election’s over and the invasion has begun, Fallujah is exactly the kind of operation that the US military can succeed at, will “succeed” at. This could change the tenor of coverage of the war, even if it does not actually improve stability. Leaders on the ground were extremely critical of the entirely political/Washington-driven Fallujah invasion and pullback last Spring. Who knows if we’ll find out about this one?

    • So, ‘The Gays’ Are The New Nader?

    That’s the gist of just about every pundit I’ve heard today: those pesky gays and their persistent existence cost Dems the election.
    Sounds like it’s going to be a long, hard, punishing four years for gay folk in this country. At least the submissive bottoms will make out alright…

    Nick Nolte Diary’s Diary

    Hats off to writers Christian Newton and Casey McAdams for their hilarious NickNolteDiary.com, and for their help in putting together the timeline in the Times Sunday. I happily traded a greg.org mention in the piece for the byline, duh.
    Alas, during rewrites, we cut the gratuitous digs at LA residents and my secret blogging shoutouts; for entertainment purposes only, here’s the intro I originally tried to sneak by the editors:

    Even the best website ideas can languish unrealized for months, pushed off even the back burner by day jobs, intractable schedules, and inescapable inertia. So it was for Christian Newton and Casey McAdams, two Los Angeles residents (aka aspiring screenwriters), who took more than six months nurturing their vision: a fictional diary in the persona of actor Nick Nolte. The story of how their little weblog went from private homage to inadvertent global news hoax to cease-and-desist letter to sitcom pitch- all in one week- reveals the workings of the blog-powered buzz machine. And it may encourage would-be Hollywood players to get back to their laptops and finish that site.

    The Positively True Adventures of the Counterfeit Diary of Nick Nolte [NYT]
    Nick Nolte Reviews Movable Type [the greg.org post that started it all, after Andy Baio’s one-man meme-machine Waxy.org, of course]

    Happy (Belated) 2nd Birthday to Gawker

    Which was registered two years ago last week, it turns out.
    Registrant:
    Pending Renewal or Deletion
    P.O. Box 430
    Herndon, VA 20172-0447
    US
    Phone: 570-708-8786
    Domain Name: GAWKER.COM
    Record expires on 05-Oct-2004
    Record created on 05-Oct-2002
    Update: Trying to think of a gift for Gawker? They already got a sharp stick in the eye from Network Solutions… (Nick says the whole thing’s an NSI screwup, although I’d suspect BMW.)

    The Making Of

    That’s what I’m thinking of changing the subtitle of this weblog to, although I’m still unconvinced.
    It works in Europe, where I am not, at least most of the time. Top ten lists on the radio are called “le best of,” as are McDo value meals (“menus best of”). Also, “the making of” has become a programming genre all its own.
    But it still looks a little funny. And this ain’t Europe. And so I remain undecided.

    Almost like TiVO for Public Radio

    I just assume that everyone knows about PublicRadioFan.com, Kevin A. Kelly’s up-to-the-minute online programming guide for public radio stations.
    The more I listen to radio online, the more frequently I find myself crafting my own programming schedule; I’ll listen to All Things Considered on Pacific Time, and This American Life and other weekend programs whenever I want by finding a fresh stream from some station, somewhere. The only problem is when you get in the car, and the local station is playing a show you’ve already heard.

    The Woman in the Hefty Bag Speaks

    hurricane_garbagebag_dechillo.jpg“We are starting to go buggy, just getting on one another’s nerves,” Mrs Mildred Mauney, 81, told The New York Times, after spending the night with some strangers in a classroom-turned-shelter in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
    Whatever, Millie. Join the club. Mrs. Mauney’s must-have accessory for evacuating their mobile home, an inflated trash bag, reminded me of a Bill Cunningham snap of hard-core fashion muse Isabella Blow that was used to illustrate a NYT street photography story in 2002.
    I can’t believe that just two years ago, I would’ve mused so hard on Walter Benjamin, Jean Paul Gaultier, “accidental” street photography, and documentary film staging.
    “Well, you have to be a nut, kid.” [greg.org, oct. 2002]

    Jessica :: Choire , LaToya :: Michael

    Until I see them standing side by side, I’m going to assume that “Jessica Coen” is really Choire Sicha indulging his “breast-wielding, 24-year old D-girl” side. I mean, it’s not like he needed an excuse to read WWD…
    Or waitaminnit, maybe Nick is the Remington Steele to Choire’s Laura Holt… or maybe Nick is Remington and Ana Marie is Laura Holt, and Choire is just that other guy, who got booted after the first season…Or maybe Skyler and Raven had to leave Port Charles when […]
    [next day update: ok, maybe not LaToya and Michael.]

    From the Metropolitan Diary “Yow, did I just hear that?” dept.

    To be filed under P for Playah Hatah:
    Setting: the downtown 6 train, 59th – 50th street.
    Dramatis Personae: a shapely 20-something woman of a certain race with a JPMorganChase totebag, two 30-ish gentlemen of a certain race with knee-length T-shirts, sitting three occupied seats down from the woman. A 30-something white guy standing in front of them all.
    The young banker studiously ignores numerous gestures and pleas from the playah: [waving across 2 people] “Miss, Yo, miss!” Playah hatah, meanwhile, pulls on his friend’s arm, trying to get him to stop.
    Finally making eye contact, the playah mouths something about a number. “you a model, right?” “No.” “Awww, you should be. Now–”
    The train pulls into 50th st and begins to slow. The banker grabs her bag and moves toward the door. She’s decided to walk the last 8 blocks to Grand Central, or wait for the next train. She disappears.
    Playah [loudly]: “Yo, why you messin’ with me while I’m workin’?”
    Hatah [louder, exasperated]: “Damn, bitch ain’t gonna give any shit up. Why you embarass yourself like that?”
    Playah: “You see that ass and don’t even try nothin’? What, you a faggot? Damn.”
    Same train, same car 42nd-33rd st.
    Dramatis Personae: two seated whitey white white office casual guys behind a 30-something white guy.
    WWWG1: “A thousand bucks?? You can’t expense that!”
    WWWG2: “But it was client development.”
    WWWG1: “There is NO code for a lapdance [pause] Dude, a thousand bucks??”

    From the Metropolitan Diary “Yow, did I just hear that?” dept.

    To be filed under P for Playah Hatah:
    Setting: the downtown 6 train, 59th – 50th street.
    Dramatis Personae: a shapely 20-something woman of a certain race with a JPMorganChase totebag, two 30-ish gentlemen of a certain race with knee-length T-shirts, sitting three occupied seats down from the woman. A 30-something white guy standing in front of them all.
    The young banker studiously ignores numerous gestures and pleas from the playah: [waving across 2 people] “Miss, Yo, miss!” Playah hatah, meanwhile, pulls on his friend’s arm, trying to get him to stop.
    Finally making eye contact, the playah mouths something about a number. “you a model, right?” “No.” “Awww, you should be. Now–”
    The train pulls into 50th st and begins to slow. The banker grabs her bag and moves toward the door. She’s decided to walk the last 8 blocks to Grand Central, or wait for the next train. She disappears.
    Playah [loudly]: “Yo, why you messin’ with me while I’m workin’?”
    Hatah [louder, exasperated]: “Damn, bitch ain’t gonna give any shit up. Why you embarass yourself like that?”
    Playah: “You see that ass and don’t even try nothin’? What, you a faggot? Damn.”
    Same train, same car 42nd-33rd st.
    Dramatis Personae: two seated whitey white white office casual guys behind a 30-something white guy.
    WWWG1: “A thousand bucks?? You can’t expense that!”
    WWWG2: “But it was client development.”
    WWWG1: “There is NO code for a lapdance [pause] Dude, a thousand bucks??”

    Hawking on Hacking, or How Utah is the Center of the Mediaverse

    So I get out of the city for a couple of days, take the kid to Grammy’s house (not to be confused with Latin Grammy’s, whose calls we don’t return), take a break from the hubbub.
    Little did I know that Stephen Hawking would pick the day I arrive to alter the laws of physics and dump me into the middle of just about every slow-summer, lame-ass media story in existence. It turns out the new elemental particle in physics is the ‘ward,’ the Mormon term for a parish or congregation, and I’m getting bombarded by them.
    With highly tawdry, slow-summer news approaching morning-of-Sept-11th levels (Remember the headlines that day? Lizzie Grubman.), the end of the world is coming up fast, or as they say here, “It sure is the Latter Days.” So start repenting:

  • My sister was in the same ward at BYU with that high priest of Jeopardy, Ken Jennings. Some friend of hers works with him now, and they’re making estimates of his ultimate winnings by reconstructing his time off.
  • The daughter of my mom’s friend is in the same ward as the Hackings, the couple at the center of a “less and less Elizabeth Smart, more and more Laci Peterson” saga unfolding on basic cable. They all spent the last year trading med school application horror stories.
  • But it says in the Bible to visit the sick… My 9-year old niece and a friend from her ward somehow convinced a supposedly rational parent to drive them to Mary Kate’s “anorexia” clinic. “She’s not here now. You’ll have to leave.” was all the thanks these little fans got for their mission of mercy.
  • And I’m sure this plot was hatched at the ward: Someone has been “cleansing” books at the local library, blotting out swear words and replacing them with “gosh,” and “darn.” What satanic books are these, you ask? “Murder, She Wrote.” That’s right, Angela Lansbury is the whore of Babylon. Bea Arthur, you’re free to go.