Choire Sicha: Yay Books! →

Thank you all for the book recommendations.

1. I have beef with The Maze Runner, recommended here, because I think all these YA books that are about “specialness” (I include Twilight and Harry Potter in this group) are evil (maybe even including the Ember semi-series and even Ilium and the…

Choire, to your point #1, it’s so true, right? So many kid books about how you are secretly super special in this awful world as a way to make the kids face the gaping empty maw of life, buoyed by lies. (Working on a project at the moment that is kind of in the vein of The Magicians, but will probably lean over into the “special” side.)

The Hunger Games is at an entertainment level of 10. Get that and #2, Chasing Fire, and read them in a total of 4 days. Mentally cast all the characters in the inevitable movie in your head.

It cuts off abruptly (Vevo is the worst) but here’s the theme for today: “Mis-Shapes” by Pulp. I will probably post this until I am done with my book. (I should be done today/tomorrow.)

The best thing I saw about Jarvis Cocker recently was a pap photo of him and his son and somebody said, “Why does Jarvis dress his son up as Jarvis Cocker?” Ha!

Do I go to Sweden for two weeks in April if a) I have the time b) there is a sale on roundtrip tickets (they are about 600!)?

This is hysterical

bestdamnthing:

I play a failed writer who is … Woody Allen. It’s funny how he gets you to do that. This is my second Woody Allen film — I worked four days in Melinda and Melinda. Two years ago, Woody saw me in W., where I played George W. Bush, and he sent me an e-mail that I have framed, that read, basically, “I don’t know if you remember me from Melinda and Melinda. I was the director.”

Can I tell you guys something? So when I was sitting at the MILK press conference in late ‘08, you know who just seethed a rollicking good-time sexuality? You know who was the most fuckable there by a mile? JOSH BROLIN. (Dustin Lance Black = also fine, obviously)

Franco looks like a Michelangelo in person, a face sculpted by the gods, and had nothing too interesting to say.

Hey - I’m writing something where the main character meets a boy at a coffeeshop that is near Columbia. Since I never made it above 14th st - would anyone know off hand what would be the cool college kid coffeeshop in the Columbia area?

I am in the weeds on a writing project now. (I would like to expand on this in the future, but working with your SO on a project? Brilliant and crazy. I’m really enjoying it, though. It is rooted in comic books so his Whedon-y nerdiness balances out my desire for a buildingsroman.)

I find when I am trying to get into one particular mind-set, that’s when a certain band’s music on repeat can help. In this case, it’s Shearwater; a band who makes beautiful music fronted by a beautiful man (that beatific blonde, ex-Okkervil Riverer Jonathan Meiburg) with drumming by THOR.

I suppose Shearwater sound like Talk Talk, but I don’t listen to Talk Talk. What they do sound like to me, with their songs about birdies and the environment and a vague encroaching evil and threat, is nothing more than a boy’s guide, perhaps, to Kate Bush ethereality? Although Bush sounded like she sang about sex, kind of, and this band just doesn’t. It’s a field of noise and then you hear Meiburg trilling “it was a FUCKING distaster!” They’re a very beautiful band, melodramatic in points, and overall a little bloodless? So I always feel a little silly when I listen to them. It’s why I like punk bands better, songs about sex, short Jewish guys instead of angelic blondes (who, it should be noted, I tend to get silly crushes on even though they’re not my “type”).

A life rooted in the mundane.

But Melissa’s book brings up another issue that I like to call the “Good Sex Worker.” White, educated women who do or did sex work, and then write about it... →

karaj:

(via lavenderlines) (via kimberleecline) (via clingtomymouth)

Spot-on piece - this has been a phenomenon that’s needed some classifying for a while - and “good sex workers” chime in, in the comment section. What’s interesting is that, at least for a period in the 00s, the “good sex worker” story just seemed like a shortcut to a book deal and greater media presence, and in any case where there’s a series of books detailing the same event, good lord the returns are diminishing. (Love Strip City by Lily Burana, would not recommend Bare by Elisabeth Eaves.) I would love to see more stories from a whole spectrum of sex workers.

I wrote a piece on Biggie Smalls’ Brooklyn last year, during the release of the flick Notorious. (Biopics are better when the mother isn’t involved. The Biggie biopic that I would like would be about his mom and Tupac’s mom. That would be fascinating.) One fact that I learned that I LOVE is this: Jay-Z put up a Rocawear billboard that overlooks his high school. Would you do that? Isn’t that the best?

Here is a quotable quote: “We drive past the Catholic school and a little kid throws a rock at the bus. The Californian ducks and yells, "We shootin’?” Barrow laughs, “We are DEFINITELY in Brooklyn!”

Read these books

They’re both good and - dare I say it? - some of the best Hollywood books I’ve ever read.

Flight of the Conchords’ finest moment, arguably. A song that would be a fine song on the radio, is also very funny, and the video’s amazing. Michel Gondry worked so well with these guys, right? Because the magic of the show was when their goofy songs would start and they’d transcend their mundane JV-start up New York existence with the power of music and images, and Gondry’s amazing at making the mundane ethereal.

(Unrelated, but sort of so: I saw Adam Horowitz, you know, Ad Rock yesterday, and realized that my whole taste in dudes stems from my teenage crush on that guy. When I saw my SO later, I was like, cool, I did a pretty good job. My SO looks like Jemaine Clement if he was shorter and more Jewish. So, you know, dark and handsome crush-material.)

He still reminds me of my Swedish brother-in-law.

slow motion crawl: how school will go tomorrow →

Everyone: Hey guys, Sandra Bullock won! Aren’t you so glad? We all saw that movie on a field trip together!

Me: But that movie was terrible!

Everyone: No it wasn’t!

Me: And all the girls that sat in front of me, currently Nice White Girls, who will one day be Nice White Ladies, not unlike…

Whispery: That was me at 13, too.

MAGIC MOLLY: Whoa! I'd hate to see the grindstone →

This is not something to place high on your priority list, but if you have the means and the time: it is fun to re-watch movies that you loved as a kid in order to assess your development by assessing the movie.

Did this last night with Roxanne, a 1987 romantic comedy starring Steve Martin and…

YES YES YES YES YES. This is the reason I had an Annie Liebowitz photo of Steve Martin poster in my room for the WHOLE DURATION OF MY CHILDHOOD. I completely agree!

Okkervil River, “A Stone.”