Vidiot Tumble

"The final strip is scheduled for Oct. 3, after the end of the swimsuit season."

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:53:17 -0400

“The final strip is scheduled for Oct. 3, after the end of the swimsuit season.” -

A couple of months ago, I invited the internet to make and send...

Sun, 23 May 2010 17:28:26 -0400

A couple of months ago, I invited the internet to make and send me mix CDs. I received about 15 of them, from friends, internet “friends”, total strangers who identified themselves, total strangers who didn’t identify themselves (see above). I promised, in various venues, that I would write something about this experiment/the CDs themselves. But at this point, I can’t keep that promise. There are a few things going on right now that are making me extremely reluctant to put non-professional traces of myself, including non-work writing, into the world. So: if you sent me a CD, thank you. I listened to it, and if you want to talk to me about it privately, please get in touch. That is all.

"This is worse than remaking Casablanca."

Thu, 06 May 2010 19:20:42 -0400

"This is worse than remaking Casablanca.": My favorite things about this — other than, you...

Status Update 4/7/2010

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:17:09 -0400

(The carpet at the abandoned Hollywood Video store on the ground floor of the Wiltern complex. They...

Newsstands are for parties.

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:48:18 -0400

To try to will that theory into reality, I’m going to read from my book at Sherwood Magazines...

make me a mix CD.

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:22:00 -0400

On Monday, March 22, at the age of 29 and three-quarters, I got my drivers license. It, so far, has...

That is now this:

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:38:23 -0400

That is now this:

This is very important news.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:29:10 -0500

This is very important news.: fimoculous: Max Headroom is finally coming to DVD.

Don’t ask how I found this. Just say thank you.

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:34:13 -0500

Don’t ask how I found this. Just say thank you.

This band, Best Coast, opened for Vivian Girls the other night....

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:34:57 -0500

This band, Best Coast, opened for Vivian Girls the other night. I haven’t been able to stop listening to this song since.

Obomanomics One Year Out

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:45:59 -0500

If you want to understand Obamanomics one year out, look at the demand-side hole we’re still in,...

"I’m not ready for my rant yet. It’s snowing about two inches an hour; I’m gonna go..."

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:12:46 -0500

“I’m not ready for my rant yet. It’s snowing about two inches an hour; I’m...

silvercinema: Lillian Gish in Way Down East (D.W. Griffith,...

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:53:54 -0500

silvercinema:

Lillian Gish in Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920)

How they shot this scene I don’t even know.

From Bright Lights:

…in Way Down East’s climax…Lillian Gish, David Barthelmess, and Billy Bitzer’s beleaguered camera submit to an actual, godawful blizzard, brusquely defining itself on screen by allowing little more than ten feet visibility. Ice forms on Gish’s eyelashes, and, when she collapses in a drift of real snow, the actress, we learn, had actually fainted from the exposure, and this before being told to collapse all over again on a real ice floe on a real, freezing river […]

There’s no doubt that the irreducible actuality of the blizzard/ice floe sequences is the major reason they complete Griffith’s vision so successfully. The cold and the dim light especially challenged Bitzer and his camera, but as a result, the often-compromised photography has its own visceral integrity. As for the performers, the blizzard shoot was bad enough for Gish, but the weeks of photography on the river had both actors submitting to further dangers and potential frostbite.

Shooting Anna’s rescue in ferocious weather and on real, bobbing ice floes — and visibly threatening the actors’ lives in the process — is thereby something of a stunt, just as making a movie is, fundamentally, a stunt. But in D. W.’s hands, it’s a stunt with an expressive intent that’s both intuitive and considered.

"Some of the greatest architectural minds in California have obviously expressed themselves here..."

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:38:50 -0500

“Some of the greatest architectural minds in California have obviously expressed themselves...

The best part of this is the sad trumpet (wah-wah) and the...

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:08:47 -0500

The best part of this is the sad trumpet (wah-wah) and the very-nearly-adult-contemporary sax flourishes.

tylercoates:

bg5000:

The Afghan Whigs - “Miss World” (Hole cover)

"February 5, 1936: At the New York premiere of Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times, riot police are..."

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:04:03 -0500

“February 5, 1936: At the New York premiere of Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times, riot...

ask + answer

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:58:04 -0500

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that in five days I’m moving back to...

Anybody want to come have dinner with me on the Upper West Side...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:44:28 -0500

Anybody want to come have dinner with me on the Upper West Side Friday night? I need to go to Seppi’s to say goodbye to the one man who’s always been there for me since I moved to New York in 2003: Danny Stiles.

Danny Stiles (above right, next to Jackie Mason) is a spry octogenarian who has a ridiculous old-timey radio show on WNYC-AM (yes, only AM) every Saturday night from 8-10pm. The official title of the show is Big Band Sounds, but Danny usually refers to it on-air as The Danny Stiles Music Museum, and to himself as the Vicar of Vintage Vinyl. He mostly plays rare recordings of showtunes and American standards, sometimes from movies, mostly from the 1930s and 40s. In between songs, he tells long stories, sometimes about movie stars, but mostly about his life and times in New Jersey and his sixty years in radio. Sometimes he forgets what he was talking about mid story. It is awesome.

I discovered Danny Stiles my first weekend in New York, in the summer of 2003. I listened to the show on long nights studying in grad school, whilst closing up the pasta factory that I worked at in 2004-2005, on dates, at the start of all-nighters working on my still unfinished book, and pretty much any Saturday night that I spent alone in New York, and there were a lot of them. I will still be able to listen to Danny in Los Angeles, on the internet, but it won’t be the same. Mostly because it’ll be at 5:00.

So, to get to the point: every Friday night at the restaurant in the Parker Meridien on W. 56th street, Danny Stiles basically does his radio show, but with a live band. It starts at 8:30, and this Friday night (my last before I move to Los Angeles), I’m going to go there around the beginning of his show to eat dinner and spend one last night with Danny. I have a couple other things I should be at later that night, so I probably won’t be there long, but if you want to come with me for dinner, and we know each other in real life (or don’t, but know each other well enough on the internet for me to not be scared to have you at my dinner table), let me know.

Physical media is an albatross. Or so Wiley wrote on my Facebook...

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:35:00 -0500

Physical media is an albatross. Or so Wiley wrote on my Facebook wall. Behind me on my dining room table is the pile of physical media that I’m firmly determined to give away before I move to LA. There is another pile—of 40-odd books, maybe 20 records, and some DVDs in one of those black sleeve folder things—that I’m having trouble moving over to the dining room table pile.

I know that Wiley is probably right, and that it would feel terrific to show up in Los Angeles with nothing but a suitcase and a laptop (maybe not even that—my Macbook seems to be nearing its expiration date), to start a new life without these physical reminders of my various old lives. I liked the light backpack bullshit part of Up in the Air.

Maybe I am an addict. Please, God, give me the courage to accept the things I cannot change … and also to give up the copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again that I’ve had for over ten years and have already shipped back and forth across the country three times.

I do not, under any circumstances, need my tribble mittens where...

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:39:07 -0500

I do not, under any circumstances, need my tribble mittens where I’m going. But I don’t think I can bear to give them up.