tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-103940452011-10-13T21:15:36.613-07:00I've Got a Gusset and I'm Gonna Use ItIn which a girl named gussetine takes a bracing look at the world and gathers all the most crucial ephemera her gusset will holdgussetinenoreply@blogger.comBlogger891100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112329247532481292005-03-31T20:04:00.000-08:002005-03-31T20:22:20.646-08:00Kelefa Sanneh declares Moby more than a brand: Moby is an ideology. (Is he confusing him with Momus? Easy way to tell them apart: One is bald, the other wears a pirate patch.) He calls his royal Teanyness "a pop star for a world too sophisticated to believe in pop stars - a post-pop-star, perhaps" and continues:"The end of history will be a very sad time," the political theorist Francis Fukuyama gussetinenoreply@blogger.com74tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112207285725656022005-03-30T10:26:00.000-08:002005-03-30T10:28:05.726-08:00The scoop on a new documentary about Morrissey’s latino fans in L.A. The Guardian says the Smithinos didn’t warm to the 42 year old Brit filmmaker until he got a pompadour...gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112207194410207842005-03-30T10:21:00.000-08:002005-03-30T10:26:34.413-08:00A journey into London’s sewers with Blake Morrison also leads to a long and amazing history of waste, including great details about sewer workers, who were called gong-fermers once upon a time and who apparently had "a fixed belief that the odour of the sewers contributes in a variety of ways to their general health." Morrison seems to think we don't have enough respect for our muck (Victor Hugogussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112206870640651032005-03-30T10:17:00.000-08:002005-03-30T10:21:10.643-08:00If you’re tired of all that Safran Foer-hating that's going around, Gabe Hudson has a sympathetic interview with him in the Voice. Also in the same issue is an interview with 24 Hour Party People star Steve Coogan about I'm Alan Partridge, a hysterical TV series about a loser talk show host described as a precursor to The Office:"I remember the writers sometimes saying, 'Let's do this to Alan!' gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112206659124913682005-03-30T10:14:00.000-08:002005-03-30T10:17:39.126-08:00Even Slovenian philosophers liked to wear white suits and party with hot chicks. Case in point: the wedding of Slavoj Zizek. Don’t worry though, apparently the fiance’s parents are Lacanians. (Can Padma Lakshmi say the same?) This joyous occasion reminds me of the passage in Zizek's “Kant and Sade: The Ideal Couple” in which he lingers over a scene from an Italian movie:At the film's end, when gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112035814829082932005-03-28T10:42:00.000-08:002005-03-28T10:50:29.463-08:00Elaine Showalter (described as "feminist cultural critic and, at present, the LA Times's Michael Jackson trial-watcher") gets a quick grilling from Boston Globe's resident smartypants Joshua Glenn on the subject of her new book about the depiction on academics in fiction. It made me remember Showalter's recent desecration of Tom Wolfe's "juvenile jaunt":Titillated by the sexual revolution that gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1112034099073013092005-03-28T09:59:00.000-08:002005-03-28T10:21:39.080-08:00A roundtable from the Morning News on street art (a little belatedly) includes some interesting discussion from Swoon, the Wooster Collective and Patrick of Faile, who protests: “Street art” is a term that helps to define everything in terms of the art in our urban landscape outside of what is otherwise known as graffiti. The term itself I have come to find very annoying over time through gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111592001550570322005-03-23T07:32:00.000-08:002005-03-23T07:33:21.553-08:00Literary tsunami in a teacup? Emma Garman at Media bistro sees too many similarities in the new novels by married couple Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss. One can only speculate as to what the couple was thinking when they made the decision—for this is no unwitting coincidence—to come out with sophomore novels obviously collaborative, so numerous are the similarities. Is it a cute gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111591906966248792005-03-23T07:31:00.000-08:002005-03-23T07:31:46.966-08:00Bookslut has a great roundup of links to “New New Journalists” who have content online like Eric Schlosser, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, William Finnegan and Susan Orleans.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111591843961632772005-03-23T07:29:00.000-08:002005-03-23T07:30:43.963-08:00Anne Thompson on how sex doesn’t necessarily sell movies anymore, unless it’s dumb or vulgar:Outside of the sophisticated urban art house milieu, most American moviegoers just don't want much sex in their movies. According to studio marketers, it tends to make them (especially men) uncomfortable. "If you spell sex in marketing materials, it doesn't sell," producer Peter Guber says. "If you spell gussetinenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111591751514158172005-03-23T07:27:00.000-08:002005-03-23T07:29:11.516-08:00Katha Pollitt broadens the Why Aren’t There More Female Op-Ed columnists discussion to talk about a more general sexism in which male editors tend to mentor men who remind them of their young selves Editors socialize with these acolytes, form friendships with them, offer them important career-making assignments (how often have you seen a "think piece" by a woman that wasn't about a "woman's issuegussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111425022983143042005-03-21T09:04:00.000-08:002005-03-21T09:11:09.340-08:00Just noticed (thanks to Ed) that NYRB has posted Patricia Storace's review of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (both volumes) and John Leonard's treatise on Jonathan Lethem, which has the great headline "Welcome to New Dork" and goes way crazy on Lethem's nerdy ass: We have been airpopped and multimediated unto inanity and pastiche. Philip K. Dick and Stan Lee get made into Hollywood movies. gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111424434658338152005-03-21T08:57:00.000-08:002005-03-21T09:00:34.660-08:00First it was Martin Amis reporting on misery in Columbia, now the London Times has Daniel Day-Lewis doing an in-depth article on Palestinian families in the Gaza strip. Going further down the ladder, we anticipate the next edition: Kate Moss on the African problem.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111424265947776812005-03-21T08:56:00.000-08:002005-03-21T08:57:45.950-08:00A girl named Vladimir makes delicate animated dioramas designed to be seen on one of those viewmaster toys you had as a kid. Pasting the slides and reels together by hand, she has reenacted Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Kafka’s lesser known parables, and a few of her own original stories, like Lucifugia Thigmotaxis about the life of a cockroach. She writes: “Lucifugia means light-fleeinggussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111424146118694062005-03-21T08:55:00.000-08:002005-03-21T08:55:46.120-08:00Mediabistro has an interview with new Paris Review editor (and great journalist) Philip Gourevitchgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111424104865781792005-03-21T08:54:00.000-08:002005-03-21T08:55:04.866-08:00Ricky Gervais chimes in on the American version of The Officegussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111164566413145732005-03-18T08:45:00.000-08:002005-03-18T08:49:26.416-08:00I haven’t seen Mike Mills' Thumbsucker yet, but from what I’ve heard, video director/skatepunk designer/coppola pal Mills is about to do the Spike Jonze crossover dance. The lovefest has already begun: see the NYT Times Style magazine profile. And then check out these slightly older interviews: And check out these slightly older interviews: Readymade’s How did you get your awesome job and an oldgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111163079717227252005-03-18T08:21:00.000-08:002005-03-18T08:24:39.720-08:00Tom Vanderbilt writes about professional futurists. Did you know: There is a World Future Society, an Institute for the Future, and, more recently, an Association for Professional Futurists (APF). The back pages of The Futurist magazine are filled with ads for people who offer "visioning" skills and "socio-technological forecasts." Ad agencies maintain divisions that provide "futurescaping." gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111162849415646962005-03-18T08:16:00.000-08:002005-03-18T08:21:20.596-08:00A few weeks ago I linked to an article on knitting’s debatable entry into high culture. Now Metroplis has an article on the changing status of crafts in the art and design world.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111078320986391762005-03-17T08:51:00.000-08:002005-03-18T08:16:24.076-08:00How great is this Detroit Metro Times headline: Does this make my labia look fat? It’s an article about elective surgeries that promise women a better sex life.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1111078267623094122005-03-17T08:50:00.000-08:002005-03-17T08:51:07.626-08:00Joyce Carol Oates reviews a book about American fantasies of childhood in the TLS, in case you missed it, and it's pretty interesting. Each of the seventeen chapters is a self-sustaining argument in support of Mintz’s thesis, that “a series of myths have clouded public thinking about the history of American childhood”. These are: the myth of the “happy childhood”; the myth of “home as a haven andgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110990640551533862005-03-16T08:17:00.000-08:002005-03-16T08:30:40.553-08:00A new protest group of emerging women artists called Brainstomers is protesting the gender bias in PS1's "Greater New York Show". Whatever happened to the Guerilla Girls?Over at Artnet there's a review of a show by Unica Zurn, a female surrealist best known for being Hans Bellmer's girlfriend. (Someone had to do it, but ick, creepy.) In the late ‘50s Bellmer turned from using dolls as models to gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110985385630026832005-03-16T07:02:00.000-08:002005-03-16T07:03:05.630-08:00Wes Anderson must not be as cool as we thought. He has stooped to shooting a commercial for Dasani bottled water. Who the hell drinks that?gussetinenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110985360485847752005-03-16T07:00:00.000-08:002005-03-16T07:02:40.486-08:00A review of Jonathan Lethem's essays about cultural obsession: Like such masters of the form as Nick Hornby and Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Lethem specializes in a form of smuggled autobiography: Speak, Memorex! With a few deft strokes, the reader is left with a vivid image of Mr. Lethem’s childhood: raised by hippie parents in a quasi-commune in Brooklyn with a painter’s studio (his father’s) at the gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110984055583507912005-03-16T06:39:00.000-08:002005-03-16T06:40:55.590-08:00Lee siegel brings the weight of his intellect to bear on sponge bob, because he says: “Friends, family, strangers in the street, my personal trainer and rabbi (the same person--I belong to a unique Reform synagogue that is also a dating service), and even a representative from a government agency I can't name have all pleaded with me to write about SpongeBob SquarePants.” [sub req] Wow, that’s gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110983782926017422005-03-16T06:35:00.000-08:002005-03-16T06:36:22.926-08:00A dispiriting piece in the Baltimore sun on authors who are left to do their own publicity – nothing new but seems to be getting worse [link via bookslut]gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110817058037014872005-03-14T08:02:00.000-08:002005-03-14T08:17:38.040-08:00A weird interview with Bjork in the observer-- the first paragraph tells us"She eats roast puffin." Inquiring minds want to know. Bjork says she always ignored her mother's feminist ideas until recently: 'I have been noticing how much harder it is for me and my girlfriends to juggle things than it is for men. In the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism: we thought we'd finally sorted out equal gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110813983432538222005-03-14T07:16:00.000-08:002005-03-14T07:28:13.436-08:00Zoe Heller writes about Jane Austen's juvenalia in the Guardian Review, Orhan Pamuk on Istanbul of his childhood, and Iain Sinclair on the cinematic dark novels of Patrick Hamilton, forgotten author of Rope and Gaslight: The grammar of film leaked into the novels. Where Céline, describing London, uses ellipses, a rabid Morse of dots, to sustain a centripetal charge, suburbs to centre, Hamilton gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110812913447105412005-03-14T07:07:00.000-08:002005-03-14T07:08:33.453-08:00Diane Arbus did Anderson Cooper?gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110561423711118002005-03-11T09:12:00.000-08:002005-03-11T09:20:33.063-08:00Why didn't anyone tell me Joan Didion is blonde? Am I haircolor blind? Also I would like to know why she is hanging out at an Eric Fischl show, as are Susan Minot, Francine Prose, and Frederic Tuten. Do they actually like his paintings, or is there some literary version of Lizzie Grubman doing Fishchl's publicity?gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110560009928630992005-03-11T08:52:00.000-08:002005-03-11T08:53:29.930-08:00Columbia Journalism Review on the case for serious nonfiction comics journalism (really an overview of the genre)gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110558934512865602005-03-11T08:34:00.000-08:002005-03-11T08:38:07.876-08:00Meg Wolitzer on the hazards of being the child of a novelist who writes about sex (or being a novelist with children). Wolitzer writes from both sides – she’s the daughter of Hilma Wolitzer, somehtig I didn’t know.When my mother, Hilma Wolitzer, published her first novel, "Ending," in 1974, it featured a scene in which a woman performs oral sex on her dying husband: "I kneeled and made a carpet gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110518632102188942005-03-10T21:21:00.000-08:002005-03-10T21:23:52.103-08:00A sizeable cover story/interview with Christine Vachon who is producing Every Word Is True, a movie about Truman Capote and the period during which he wrote In Cold Blood.Doug McGrath brought the idea to us, I think, a good four years ago. He said [that he] would like to make a movie about Truman Capote, specifically about the time when he was writing In Cold Blood and how he managed to actually gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110518495544448332005-03-10T21:20:00.000-08:002005-03-10T21:21:35.546-08:00An interesting pairing I missed last weekend: Christopher Hitchens reminisces about Isabelle Allende's House of the Spiritsgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110500725148544492005-03-10T16:23:00.000-08:002005-03-10T16:26:59.583-08:00There’s a new critic in town. Rosie O’Donnell reviews Fat Actress on her blog in stream of consciousness poetry, writing that Kirsty alley “still giggles like a skinny girl/someone should tell her fat gals/can't pull it off” then turns into nice Rosie again:ok she owed money to the irsand this is her hail mary i will try to cheer her on as if she werea friendThe only one who seems to like it is gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110484343449865732005-03-10T11:51:00.000-08:002005-03-10T11:52:23.450-08:00Just after I posted about Nicole Kidman monopolizing all the plum female icons, I see over at Lindsayism that she’s also starring the remake of Bewitched. If only I could twitch her into retirement!gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110318284323893442005-03-08T13:42:00.000-08:002005-03-08T13:44:44.323-08:00Damn Nicole Kidman. She already ruined Virginia Woolf for us; now she plans to play Diane Arbus in a movie . And didnt she sign on to play photographer Lee Miller too? Might as well just take your encyclopedia of 20th century women icons and slap Kidman’s face on every page. [Arbus link via MAN]gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110297104691856302005-03-08T07:49:00.000-08:002005-03-08T07:51:44.693-08:00What happens when you get sued for downloading music? Nick Mamatas describes his experience in the Voice. He introduces a new word (to me anyway) – spamigation – meaning that the RIAA is suing lots of people at a time. One expert tells him: “This makes it much easier for companies to sue people willy-nilly, even if they aren't sure that the person being sued is in fact infringing, because it gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110211169881212292005-03-07T07:42:00.000-08:002005-03-07T08:00:16.290-08:00I have a new perfume coming out, and my own line of Barbies. I compare myself to Coretta Scott King and tell journalists I'm anorexic. I have a French chef and bought my kids a $30,000 Christmas tree. I'm married to a hip hop mogul and say things like"My life is very—big!" I am Kimora Lee Simmons... and you're not. This is the one of the bitchiest and funniest profiles I've read in Vanity Fair ingussetinenoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110209554199386552005-03-07T07:31:00.000-08:002005-03-07T07:32:34.200-08:00Joshua Glenn offer a nice little eulogy to exotica maestro Martin Denny Glenn also interviews Lydia Millet , author of some very funny novels, who says “So-called sympathetic characters are vastly overrated...”gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1110209473556382442005-03-07T07:30:00.000-08:002005-03-07T07:31:13.556-08:00The 9/11 novels are finally heregussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109945415957003412005-03-04T06:08:00.000-08:002005-03-04T06:10:15.956-08:00Zadie Smith’s brother is a rapper. The two talk about british hip hop and authenticity :There's a lot of novelists who say "I" all the time - Philip Roth, John Updike, and nobody races to their door asking if every single word of it's true. It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say "I" into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109912859489290402005-03-03T21:06:00.000-08:002005-03-03T21:07:39.490-08:00Why is David Byrne fiddling with a PowerPoint? Interviews here and here show him mixing art and business.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109912695415173102005-03-03T21:03:00.000-08:002005-03-03T21:06:27.216-08:00The Observer on James Atlas’s memoir My Life in the Middle Ages (ah, that’s why he wrote that New York mag thing about being fired): Envy, rather than failure, is Mr. Atlas’ best beat—the ugly deep-green variety that most members of polite society take pains to conceal.... Real-estate envy (sure, he has a country house, but it’s ramshackle). Media envy ("I turn on Charlie Rose and there is a guy gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109912587860611422005-03-03T21:01:00.000-08:002005-03-03T21:03:07.863-08:00Food fight! Blogger Dan Dickinson reports that Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten acted like a culinary beast (sexist too) at the Museum of TV and Radio’s panel on food television with Mario Batali and Alton Brown. His wife Katherine gives her view too. (via gothamist)gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109865534185020382005-03-03T07:39:00.000-08:002005-03-03T07:58:54.186-08:00Word of mouth sells books -- or anything, a fact well known to all those viral marketers and bzz agents out there. (Check out this conversation between Bzz Agents on a possibly unsafe product they've been spreading word on, link courtesy brand autopsy) For more on the subject, Social Customer Manifesto excerpts the Times piece about Bzz Agent from last year, includes a link to Bzz vocabulary, gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109801780796302312005-03-02T14:06:00.000-08:002005-03-02T14:16:20.796-08:00I love Artforum's catty new diary ("Scene and Herd"! Purposely misspelled like they're a heavy metal band or something!) The latest entry on Larry Gagosian's big annual party juxtaposes a photo of Pamela Anderson, Anthony Kiedis, and David LaChappelle with another of painter Richard Prince and Larry Gagosian, then goes on kick the L.A. art scene in the ass:The majority of Hollywood folk only buygussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109800714439232012005-03-02T13:57:00.000-08:002005-03-02T14:36:50.306-08:00An ex-crack addict Brummie Jew filmmaker writes about the five months he spent following Kate Moss-boytoy and ex-Libertines singer Pete Doherty, currently out on bail for his sins.Blur drummer Dave Rowntree is doing something more productive with his free time by making an animated tv show.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109775368532560692005-03-02T06:50:00.000-08:002005-03-02T07:00:39.503-08:00Because we need something new to worry about, the Guardian has brought to our attention the dangers of yoga in a piece on yogarexia.Paradoxically, the characteristics that create a great yoga practice - extreme sensitivity, perfectionism and wanting to be in control - are also characteristics of anorexia," says Clare, a London-based yoga teacher. "Being sensitive, you feel the nature of the gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109775001194441702005-03-02T06:48:00.000-08:002005-03-02T06:50:01.196-08:00Robert Birnbaum does a rambling interview with the Observer’s literary editor and Wodehouse biographer Robert McCrum on authors, big name friends, and McCrum’s bout with paralysis: I was in a ward next door to private ward where there were a lot of Arab boys who had crashed their cars in the desert. They were paraplegics and a lot of the patients were young men and they were very rich. And so thegussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109625678277150932005-02-28T13:11:00.000-08:002005-02-28T13:21:18.280-08:00Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker on the financial and cultural significance of ringtones. (You know you're obsessed too.) He writes: A kid I met on the subway told me that his mother doesn’t like his new 50 Cent ringtone, “Candy Shop,” not because it features explicitly sexual rhymes but because it’s not as cool as “In Da Club,” a previous 50 Cent ringtone, which received Billboard’s first gussetinenoreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109624977753743792005-02-28T13:05:00.000-08:002005-02-28T13:09:37.756-08:00This weekend in the Observer, Liz Hoggard wonders why publishers can't figure out how to publish intelligent, feminist books about fashion. "Fashion is a way of talking about history, desire and the body. It represents the best - and worst - of 21st-century capitalism." She complains that "what, at first glance, looked like a punchy, provocative read turns out to be some bright young woman's PhDgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109306122624176592005-02-24T20:27:00.000-08:002005-02-24T20:35:22.626-08:00I love old record sleeves but never paid much attention to the fonts. Tom Vanderbilt's essay on The Rise and Fall of Rock and Roll Graphic Design (and his link to this great site for band fonts) made me want to flick through vinyl all night. But as the piece points out, a lot of people transfer their whole collections into an ipod and sever the music from any visual identity the band might have gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109305534923337472005-02-24T20:23:00.000-08:002005-02-24T20:26:32.933-08:00There have been a lot of blogversations about the ins and outs of publishing lately, and Moorish Girl has an interesting ongoing discussion of the problem of author royalties and used book sales gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109305323671192882005-02-24T20:14:00.000-08:002005-02-24T20:22:50.526-08:00The London Review of Books runs an extensive review of Ian McEwan's Saturday, a novel whose main character is a London neurosurgeon, doesn't get the point of novels. Reviewer Christopher Tayler writes: Pushkin complained about Byron's characterisation by saying that he has a conspirator 'even order a drink conspiratorially, and that's absurd'. Saturday comes close to something similar - having a gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109170806640015682005-02-23T06:59:00.000-08:002005-02-23T07:00:06.640-08:00The new issue of Chickfactor has some interviews with supercool Geoff "I'm not a chick" Dyer and Joanna Newsom, among othersgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109170749673398662005-02-23T06:58:00.000-08:002005-02-23T06:59:09.673-08:00Does counterculture equal consumer culture? LA Weekly reviews a book called A NATION OF REBELSgussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109170719421929212005-02-23T06:56:00.000-08:002005-02-23T06:58:39.423-08:00According to Salon, the Turks (those wannabe europeans) are paying families to "encourage" them to send their daughters to school, as part of its efforts to bring the number of girls in education into line with European standards. More than half of Turkey's young female population has no schooling, according to the United Nations children's fund, UNICEF [sub req]gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109089355197807322005-02-22T08:19:00.000-08:002005-02-22T08:22:35.200-08:00Douglas Wolk writes about Neil Gaiman. Locus Magazine interviews him.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109088403483758392005-02-22T08:06:00.000-08:002005-02-22T08:09:22.636-08:00I wondered why James Atlas didn’t name the place that fired him in his New York magazine article. Now Slate spills the beans.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109088354692482992005-02-22T08:02:00.000-08:002005-02-22T08:05:54.693-08:00The New York Observer has a piece on anthology mania. It concentrates mostly on how popular they are but not why writers edit them. An easy way to trade on better known reputations and get your name out there without having to write a whole new book yourself. Or is that too cynical? I'd be curious to hear anthologists respond.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109088140502025142005-02-22T08:01:00.000-08:002005-02-22T08:02:20.503-08:00Nerds aren’t even allowed to be nerdy anymore, thanks to The Sexiest Indie Gamer Awards. There are some rules, like no porn submissions. As they explain, “We demand the subtle sexiness that is genital-free.” [via coolhunting ]gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1109088072170906462005-02-22T08:00:00.000-08:002005-02-22T08:01:12.173-08:00Following on the heels of my Sontag post comes the death of Hunter S. Thompson. I won’t even bother to link, since every paper and blog in the universe has its own obit. I wonder if there’s such a thing as memorial burnout?gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108944921893968592005-02-20T16:12:00.000-08:002005-02-20T16:15:21.893-08:00If all the Susan Sontag mourning hasn't worn you out, here's a whole bunch of remembrances from academics at critics at film journal Synoptique [link via GreenCine Daily]gussetinenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108915970788559922005-02-20T08:10:00.000-08:002005-02-20T16:12:27.266-08:00Simon Reynolds in the Village Voice on musical wunderkind MIA: MIA isn’t just a perfect pushes-all-the-right-now-buttons package for media and marketers to build a buzz around. She’s a veritable vortex of discourse, catalyzing fevered debate around most-likely irresolvable questions to do with authenticity, postcolonialism, cultural tourism, appropriation, dilettantism...gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108914739377321432005-02-20T07:48:00.000-08:002005-02-20T07:58:37.943-08:00The Observer wonders if Michael Winterbottom has made “the most sexually explicit in mainstream British cinematic history”, inspired by Michel Houllebecq’s Platform, in this interview with the movie’s star, Margo Stilley: “the only images I had of this young debutante actress were close-ups of her fellating her co-star, masturbating herself, or in various contortions of penetrative sex. For the gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108914366100623572005-02-20T07:25:00.000-08:002005-02-20T08:01:46.430-08:00Put this in the “Turning over in your grave” files: Janis Joplin's estate has announced Search for the Pearl, a reality TV talent search to find the next Janis Joplin . If you'd rather be the next Jeff Koons, hope is on the way.gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108652518742429002005-02-17T06:43:00.000-08:002005-02-17T07:01:58.743-08:00J.G. Ballard reviews a book about the history of British movie industry in the Telegraph [reg req] [link via splinters]Starbucks gets all wacky and starts putting quotes from famous commentators like Walter Mosley, Ken Auletta, Goldie Hawn, Stephen Merritt, and Dr. Louise Leakey. I would love to see the group photo. Anyway, Jack Shafer at Slate suggests some new coffee figureheads, like "The Lee gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108613869379498192005-02-16T19:57:00.000-08:002005-02-16T20:18:48.510-08:00Now that there's a blog for everything, it stands to reason that there's a blog all about William Vollmann's seven-volume Rising Up and Rising Down [via Literary Saloon]Bromo-mescaline isn’t the sexiest name for a drug that sounds like a cross between ecstacy, ketamine and acid. One user writes of a group hallucination: "It started to go bad when I saw the ghosts of Indian braves in war paint gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108429964467341342005-02-14T17:08:00.000-08:002005-02-14T17:12:44.470-08:00Let's call this the hipster media mogul special. No such special would be complete without James Truman, who suddenly seems very happy to talk about life beyond the Nast.Next up we have the lesser known magazine editor James Brown (founder of the magazine Loaded, evil predecessor to FHM and Maxim) on Extreme Celebrity Detox, an english reality show where a guru forces Brown and other demi-celebs gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108353176022467582005-02-13T19:45:00.000-08:002005-02-13T19:54:24.716-08:00An essay on the influence of mitteleuropean writer Bruno Shultz on the great animators/puppeteers Brothers Quay, whose short film Street of Crocodiles was based on a Schulz story. [via news of the dead]Although resigned to their fate, the puppets make and remake themselves from mismatched doll parts, exchanging heads, replacing stuffing—all life is simply a shifting of matter. Once brought to gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108352702942245562005-02-13T19:42:00.000-08:002005-02-13T19:45:02.943-08:00The Observer interviews our favorite wacky literary psychoanalyist Adam Phillips – his new book is about the underexplored topic of sanity: 'One of the more distracting things about capitalist culture,' he says, with total seriousness, 'is that there is no stupor, no time to vegetate. What I would suggest is more time wasting, less stimulation. We need time to lie fallow like we did in childhood,gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108149551326064192005-02-11T11:08:00.000-08:002005-02-11T11:19:55.916-08:00Margaret Wertheim reports on the daily life and work of a group of young women scientists in Antarctica:Though the ice sheet is many feet thick, it is all too easy to plunge through a false surface into one of the cavelets and end up in two feet of chilling slush. “You haven’t really been to the Antarctic until you’ve fallen in,” Arnold remarks offhandedly. Every fiber of my being is praying gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108133096398311712005-02-11T06:41:00.000-08:002005-02-11T06:47:05.596-08:00A remarkably uncontroversial piece about Anna Wintour in Slate, considering how much dirt must be in that new bio. Only hit:The feature articles, too, must be consistent with a certain rarefied lifestyle. As one former feature writer complained: "She's obsessed only about reflecting the aspirations of a certain class of reader. We once had a piece about breast cancer which started with an airlinegussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1108047512704790602005-02-10T06:51:00.000-08:002005-02-10T07:55:38.146-08:00The Guardian gives us the scoop on a new movie about Ian Curtis, directed by photographer Anton Corbijn, who apparently moved to England from Holland in the 70s in order to shoot Joy Division.
His first attempt was in a tube station, with the band walking off into the neon-lit tunnel, as if to "Unknown Pleasures", in keeping with the title of their debut album. "Those pictures are connected now gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107975445858796732005-02-09T10:55:00.000-08:002005-02-09T10:59:22.556-08:00The litblogs are going gaga over Sam Lipsyte (Maud has a roundup) but he hasn’t just appeared out of nowhere. We found some fab reviews of his previous books The Subject Steve and Venus Drive. You also might want to see this profile of Lipsyte as escort, described as “A MANLY WRITER AVAILABLE FOR LITERARY ENDEAVOR & CASUAL SHOTPUTTING.” Oooh.
gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107963415159060192005-02-09T07:17:00.000-08:002005-02-09T07:36:55.160-08:00This is for everyone sitting at home dreaming about the profits of that first novel they'll write someday when there's nothing good on TV: Justine Larbalestier writes a detailed and informative update on just how small advances usually are for first novels. An editor suggests a ballpark average of $5,000-10,000, and goes into specifics on the numbers. [via tingle alley]
One of Damien Hirst's gussetinenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107902040884080322005-02-08T14:27:00.000-08:002005-02-08T14:39:12.453-08:00James Wolcott seems all excited about this new magazine called Tango --the editor in chief is his colleague Elise O'Shaugnessy, who he calls “the Murphy Brown of Vanity Fair”. But the website makes it look cheesy if you ask me. Cheesy with some big names attached: look for “Katrina Heron on her fashion reawakening.”
Now that knitting is ultra trendy, I have put down my needles. But I still wish gussetinenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107876336281372042005-02-08T07:21:00.000-08:002005-02-08T07:39:23.363-08:00Blogging can ruin your life, but then you already knew that. The BBC looks at some sad examples.
[link via minor9th]
The New York Observer discovers that mopey Emo-boys and football fans –one and the same!
Who knew that the jocks and indie rockers currently battling for the soul of the East Village have more in common than we thought? Obviously, people who are geeky and obsessive about one gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107832910364840742005-02-07T19:20:00.000-08:002005-02-07T19:21:50.366-08:00A trip inside Comedy Central’s funny lab
The future of architecture ain’t what it used to be
This new site keeps track of product placement in movies, a great idea. For example, they write of Hide and Seek:
A last minute surprise twist in this horror flick gives us another Apple appearance. Lexus’ sports model looks sporty driven by a model “children’s psychologist.” And the boxes of humble gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107789456950193722005-02-07T07:15:00.000-08:002005-02-07T07:17:36.950-08:00Martin Amis reports on… the violence in the streets of Colombia. Trying to make the best of a bad vacation, Mart? [reg required]
The Elegant Variation launches a weekly thumbnail review of the L.A. Times Book Review
Lesbians are in the air(waves): Marissa toys with it on The OC and Ilene Chaiken becomes an icon via The L Word
The Observer on a new wave of bands nurtured by Franz Ferdinand. gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107748869960856202005-02-06T19:54:00.000-08:002005-02-07T07:27:44.790-08:00Pods on the brain: an article on how impodment has inilftrated our language and culture, with some podcasting thrown in for good measure
The millionaire magazine and book publisher who’s been accused of having his work ghostwritten (and who has employed Nigella Lawson and Lulu Guinness, for what it's worth) has a chance to come clean...sort of.
For an alternative to Sundance hoopla, here’s a gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107628438347030882005-02-05T10:23:00.000-08:002005-02-05T10:33:58.346-08:00Am I annoying is the kind of site that could eat your life. For instance, who's more annoying: Star Jones or Nick Lachey? One observation is that a lot of the "most annoying" winners seem to be female.
A new website devoted to William Burroughs from the folks at supervert
Ex-Face man Robert Elms and his London stories
gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107577829598141532005-02-04T20:24:00.000-08:002005-02-04T22:06:43.746-08:00New Yorker classical crit-guy Alex Ross is loving ROAD TO STARDOM WITH MISSY ELIOT, wouldn't you know.
Benjamin Kunkel at the Nation is loving John Haskell's American Purgatoria
Also at the Nation, Village Voice refugee Richard Goldstein on Spongebob, Buster and the Right
Meanwhile at the Voice, Rachel Aviv on Darcey Steinke’s tiny new novel Milk and Joy Press reviews the new stories by Judy gussetinenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107545944587136322005-02-04T11:33:00.000-08:002005-02-04T16:45:27.363-08:00More than a dozen artworks were stolen from Seattle galleries and homes to be used in a renegade art show...and nobody noticed.
In the vein of unanswerable questions like Why Do Girls Love Horses is the latest: Why Do Celebrities Design Handbags?
gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107533471120305742005-02-04T07:54:00.000-08:002005-02-04T11:40:03.236-08:00Galleycat over at Mediabistro found this possibly apocryphal but too funny story about Jonathan Franzen and his pie
Since I mentioned Kate Moss and her crackhead-rockstar boyfriend yesterday, here's a heady profile of the aging waif from the Observer. Sample paragraph: "Disillusionment has pushed her towards a campaign of subversion. When she met Fidel Castro in 1998, he hailed her as a gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107450653373437572005-02-03T09:08:00.000-08:002005-02-03T09:10:53.373-08:00A plague on your housesLee Siegel uses the TV show Alias as an excuse to invoke the Bible, Aeschylus and Mission Impossible. Whew! {Reg required}
Bad vibes in the music world : one minor rock star (and Kate Moss boytoy) arrested while in a more biblical turn of events, an R&B singer gouges his own eyes out
gussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107355712655514912005-02-02T06:44:00.000-08:002005-02-02T07:32:01.436-08:00Hollywood hunksThis interview with Bruce Wagner, genius chronicler of Hollywood hypocrisy, reveals lotsa great details: He has a dead cellphone collection, his books sell better on the east coast and he was married to Rebecca DeMornay. I repeat, Rebecca DeMornay.
Adam Brody has so much to answer for. But really, one nerd becomes a sex symbol and suddenly the experts are worrying about male eating disorders andgussetinenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10394045.post-1107280117449557332005-02-01T09:34:00.000-08:002005-02-02T06:50:43.926-08:00The gathering beginsI'm not a big fan of lists, preferring the more chaotic gusset-gathering method of sortation, but I do like the vagueness of The Decent People list (looks like Germaine Greer just gets in by the skin of her teeth, after disgracing herself by appearing on Big Brother)
I love Marina Warner, especially when she gets up close and personal with some ectoplasm in this piece on the history of seances
gussetinenoreply@blogger.com0