We were having dinner at Westville when Leonardo DiCaprio came in for takeout. David immediately moblogged the moment with his phonecam, the dork.
(Note A-list superstar blogger Anil in the bottom left corner, sharing the frame with the manchild who inexplicably made millions of young girls and women wet their panties in excitement while watching "Titanic".)
Louise Glück is the new U.S. poet laureate.
In honor of the occasion here's a repost from over a year ago, one of my favorite Glück poems:
Fable
Then I looked down and saw
the world I was entering, that would be my home.
And I turned to my companion, and I said Where are we?
And he replied, Nirvana.
And I said again But the light will give us no peace.from The Seven Ages
[ via randomWalks ]
Those of you who love your dogs as much as I do mine are sure to develop massive crushes on Cary Tennis after reading this recent column of his, just like I did.
(Those of you who don't get the whole dog love thing might want to read it, if only because it will either finally explain to you what we're about, or show you how poorly suited you are to date any of us.)
If you've been anywhere near a New York tourist attraction in the past few weeks you've seen a zillion of annoying "I Survived Blackout 2003" t-shirts like these for sale; some enterprising jerks had shirts out the day after the blackout, even before all the boroughs had power back.
My favorite take on them so far is from "The Daily Show":
T-shirt: We survived 9/11 and now the blackout. What next NYC?
Lewis Black: Wow! You survived the blackout! ... You're made of sterner stuff than ice cream!
I didn't even know what straight edge was until recently, when a friend confessed he'd been one through high school and college, but thank goodness a) he's over it now and b) he's not this guy.
I've seen lots of lame tattoos in my life, the worst of all being a gigantic smiley face (five inch diameter!) on a girl's lower back, but this guy's tattoo places a very close second.
i look at girls boobs. i don't stare for super-long periods of time, but i definitely have my share of glances. i'm not subtle about it either, because, well - girls know they have boobs, and guys (straight) know we like them. girls know guys like them too. it's not objectifying to think yours are nice, it's a compliment. we still think of you as a person (and not a piece of meat), we just think you've got a nice rack to boot.
Me, I don't mind the occasional stare—after all it's not like I don't check people out myself, because I do—but the guys who do nothing but, ugh. They're easily the worst part of going to (sadly) traditionally guy spaces like comic book stores* and computer user groups.
[ via jish.nu ]
*The first thing I noticed when I got to MoCCA was how many girls were there, easily two-fifths of the attendees; the only way MoCCA could've possibly been better in my book is if as large a percent of the exhibitors had been girls too. I can't wait till next year.
So I saw Björk last Friday out in Coney Island and the reason I haven't posted at all since then is because I haven't really gotten over it yet. Fireworks and fire, wild dancing and two out of my three most loved of her songs, oh my.
I love Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" (I've been a semi-closeted Destiny's Child fan since "Bills Bills Bills"—the balls of "can't pay my automobills" is what got me) and from what I hear many of my friends back in Manila have gone insane about a Taiwanese boyband called F4 and the soap opera they star in, "Meteor Garden".
Our worlds collide in the Chinese release of Beyonce's album, which has Vanness Wu of F4 rapping (in Mandarin, natch) over the bridge instead of Jay-Z. (mirror)
[ via little. yellow. different. ]
Paul Newman has always been pretty near the top of my Old Men I Definitely Would list—on the list because he's so yummy, and near the top because he's a serious philanthropist, and frankly that's just sexy in my book. Discovering that he's got a lovely sense of humor (and politics too!) moves him up a few more notches.
[ via Bookslut ]
Oh, and did you know that Gil Kane modelled Green Lantern after Paul Newman? No wonder I always thought Hal Jordan was smoking hot.
(while talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger and other celebrities running in the California gubernatorial recall election a few days ago)
lia: I hope David Hasselhoff runs.
nedlog: I hope David Hasselhoff runs... then, since Gary Coleman is also running, we can find some way to deploy this picture. "Former bosom buddies, united by a love of KITT, now bitter political foes!"
Armida Siguion-Reyna is sorta kinda maybe supporting Fernando Poe, Jr if he decides to run for president next year:
She said the reason why the country has not prospered was the lack of a model that would inspire the people to do great things for themselves and for the country.
"Gusto ba natin ang mga nakaupo sa Malacañang ngayon?" Siguion-Reyna said during the news conference. "We don't need an economist. We don't need a lawyer."
Clearly she's fallen off her rocker, and hard, if she actually believes what she's saying. (And if she doesn't and she's saying it anyway, then she's a scumbag.)
If anything one of the main reasons why the Philippines is so unsuccessful is because so many pin their hopes on others (the national government, politicians, the church, local bigwigs, relatives who are better off) or worse yet, dumb luck (lotto, betting on jueting, game shows) instead of taking responsibility for their own lives and their own futures.
How many people effectively sell their votes and lifelong loyalties to a mayor just because he gives them handouts, never questioning where the money comes from or why none of that money ever makes it to their area hospitals or schools? How many people say they don't have enough money to put their kids through school but then turn right around and buy full-blown entertainment systems so they can watch vcds and sing karaoke with the neighbors? Why is it that we have a painful dearth of entrepreneurs, especially compared to our Southeast Asian neighbors? People are deathly afraid to go into business for themselves despite the fact that that's how the rich get rich and then get richer. The four richest men in the Philippines all started out dirt poor children of Chinese immigrants, and had to struggle with poverty and racism to be successful—what's everyone else's excuse not to try?
Excuse me lang, Tita Midz, but we don't need a role model in Malacañang to inspire our people—or for that matter, more role models. We have plenty of them everywhere. Every doctor who chooses to practice in a rural area, every teacher or nurse who chooses to stay in the country even though they'd make more money in a month working abroad than a year at home, every person who gives up years with their family to work abroad so their loved ones can have better lives is a role model. Every college graduate who gives up white collar paychecks to work for an NGO, every girl who leaves the Visayas for Manila to work as a katulong so she can send her siblings to school is a role model. Honestly, if you asked any Filipino success story who their role model was, would any of them name a Philippine president? I don't think you'd find a single one. (Except maybe children of Philippine presidents, but hey, that's public relations so it doesn't count.)
Maybe we don't need an economist, or a lawyer, or a general in office. But we've tried people who were ill-prepared for office twice (in history and my lifetime both)—Cory, the Radcliffe-educated heiress who chose to be a politician's housewife, and Erap, the actor who couldn't be bothered to do basic things like prepare for meetings or even show up for them even when he was a mayor, just like he couldn't be bothered to finish high school—and they were both disasters. I have yet to hear a single argument, compelling or otherwise, on why FPJ would be any different.
On another note, in the same article (Siguion-Reyna's half-brother) former senator Juan Ponce Enrile says he will "support whoever would be the standard bearer of the opposition. If it happens to be FPJ, "I will support him 100 percent." Not that he would ever run for president, but imagine anyone justifying supporting FPJ or Ping Lacson over Juan Flavier. It boggles the mind.
From "Bloggers Among Hardest Hit by Massive Blackout":
A widespread electrical power outage affected some 20 million North Americans tonight, but none were so hard hit as writers of so-called weblogs, a kind of online journal.
With no electricity, many "bloggers" were forced to post their latest musings to the Internet by candlelight. Some resorted to using old-fashioned kerosene-fueled personal computers. Others wrote their thoughts out longhand on paper then ran through the streets reading them aloud to the passing crowds of stranded commuters.
[ via The People's Republic of Seabrook ]
Kiri took photos of the blackout from her roof in Brooklyn, as well as this video (16mb, but worth it) panning 360 degrees in the darkness. The Statue of Liberty was lit up during the blackout!
[ via Uffish Thoughts ]
No one I saw during the blackout was really seriously complaining about the power outage, other than wondering when they'd get home or where their loved ones were. I guess everyone realized it could be much much worse (I mean, hello September 11) and so everyone who could get home last night made the most of it, there were lots of impromptu barbeques on roofs and street parties in New York. Lots of people caught in Manhattan figured out they wouldn't get home before morning so they might as well party in bars or at a friend's house. There were lots of people walking around with drinks in hand (and quite a few who were staggering or worse) when I finally went in at two a.m.
The weird thing for me was seeing how unprepared most people were to deal with an emergency, even people who'd been in Manhattan two years ago during the attacks. Most people didn't have flashlights in their bags or even at home (our building's stairwells and halls were pitchblack, so the doormen had to walk people without lights up and down the stairs—and there are twelve floors in my building), many didn't even have candles or a bottle of water at home in case the water went out too, or even contingency plans for meeting up with loved ones in case the phone networks were down.
(Meanwhile back in Manila, as a result of the power shortages in the early 90s that had electricity going out for at least four hours every single day for about a year, everyone's got stacks of candles and boxes of matches at home just in case (even though we've now got a power surplus), and all the malls and hotels have generators to power lights and refrigerators so food doesn't spoil and lights and elevators still work. Yes, people actually go shopping even when the lights are dim and the mall's airconditioning is off. No one gets to stay home from work or school even when the power goes out—I was in high school during the power shortages and as much as I hated chemistry, it was even less fun learning it in a dark room.)
stereolabrat loves caffeine more than you do:
Caffeine, I fucking love you. You make me feel so good. I love the way you feel inside me. You are the best boyfriend ever. Always around to slip it in. And even though I want it every fucking day, ten times a day, you still give it up to me without one of those embarrassing moments. Cuz you appreciate me. And respect me. As a woman. You are more beautiful than a plastic bag in the wind. I love how you leave me notes in my lunch like "You are the most important person in my life. I love you. Love, Coca-Cola." I just drank like the biggest fucking coffee known to man, the size only available in America. I feel like a fucking ABBA song. Seriously gay I know, but talk shit as much as you'd like you little cocksucker, you will not kill my caffeineboner.
Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan, the non-profit organization of illustrators for children, decided to dedicate their annual exhibit to the late Larry Alcala, pioneering cartoonist and professor at UP's College of Fine Arts
"Ala Alcala" opened on August 16th and will run till September 20th at Corredor, the College of Fine Arts Gallery in UP Diliman. Please go check it out, there will be lots to see even if you're not an Alcala fan, as the members of I.N.K. will be exhibiting their work and they always have interesting things to show.
If you want to read up on Mang Larry and I.N.K., this recent article from Malaya does the trick quite nicely.
"Gov't warns: Aquino coin sale may be 'pyramid' scam
Let's see... Almost US $1K for a gold coin worth less than $300), with commissions of $400 paid for every ten people you can sucker into buying in. Sounds like a multi-level marketing scam to me.
I thought GoldQuest sounded familiar so I googled them and turned up this BusinessWorld article from 1999, which is around the time I first heard about them, probably through an episode of "The Probe Team". Hard to believe they're still around—but then again, as David Hannum once said, there's a sucker born every minute.
From "David Byrne's Alternate PowerPoint Universe":
To view the medium creatively, he says, "You have to try to think like the guy in Redmond or Silicon Valley. You feel that your mind is suddenly molded by the thinking of some unknown programmer. It's a collaboration, but it's not reciprocal."
Starting with parody, he adds, even incompetent imitations, is a legitimate first step. Eventually, if you persevere, the obsessive nature of the process yields unexpectedly beautiful results. For him, then, the challenge became "taking a form that's purportedly logic and rational and making it poetic."
Yet one suspects that there is another agenda behind his attempt to subvert the global uniformity of PowerPoint. "Corporate culture," he says wistfully. "What if I could set it free?"
Amazon currently has E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information) for $56 bucks, a whopping $24 off the cover price. Not bad for a book and DVD boxed set, especially not one by David Byrne. If you don't have the cash or just don't want to spend it, and you happen to live in New York, his "End of Reason" (a four-minute long Powerpoint presentation with new music by Byrne) will be at 4 Times Square from September 10-17.
The gallery LipajePuntin has lots of images of Byrne's previous work, for those of you who haven't seen much of it. Good stuff.
Lucky for me I'm a procrastinator or I'dve been trapped in the elevator right when the lights went out here in New York—instead I was standing in front of my microwave with a plateful of orange chicken and shrimp fried rice I was just going to put in and reheat for lunch.
I went to the window to check if it was just my building and saw Allan, who runs the super expensive vintage store across the street, standing outside telling everyone there's no power, there's no power. Lucky me again, living on the third floor it's no big deal to hustle Jarvis down the stairs and out the front door. Our doorman Fred had his favorite little radio out and said he'd heard the lights were out all through the Eastern Seaboard and wouldn't be on for quite a while, so I decided to hang out at the dog run until it got dark since it's always cooler there than anywhere else in the neighborhood. Every two hundred feet or so on the way there I'd see this:
People crowded around cars with their radios on, listening for any news about the power. There were already people picnicking in the park, some of whom were from out of the neighborhood and looked like they were psyching themselves to maybe spend the night on benches if the subway system didn't get working.
On my way home at 7:30 I found that most of the neighborhood restaurants and stores had either closed early (all the cafes), sold all their perishables on the cheap (Zabar's moved their product to the sidewalk and were mobbed, Emack and Bolio's were selling a scoop for a dollar), or had long lines snaking outside and down the block. Up till about 11 there were still crowds walking up the avenues trying to get uptown, and to Queens and the Bronx. All the bars on Amsterdam (and there are a lot of bars on Amsterdam) were open and packed with people, not just from the neighborhood but lots of people who'd been walking for hours and just given up on getting home that night.
One of my neighbors stayed in our lobby waiting for her boyfriend, who was working in Brooklyn when the power went out; he got here at 10:30, four and a half hours since they first talked, having walked all the way. He had photos of the crowds from Manhattan he struggled against crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and the buses packed tighter than sardines he didn't even bother thinking of lining up for that passed him as he made his way to the Upper West Side. Weird but I was even happier to see this guy that I'd never even met before get home to his girl last night than I was when the power came back on again this morning.
(I'll update this post later on tonight. Power came back to the Upper West Side early this morning but Verizon DSL is still down, the wifi in my neighborhood is currently non-existent and so the only reason I can even get online now is that NYU's finally got their slow-as-molasses dial-up working again.)
More on the blackout from other New Yorkers: Ranjit took tiny Sidekick photos of his walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge, Chris started the day craptastically but made her ordeal sound almost fun, Paul watched as Brooklyn slowly drunkened, Grant wrote his story in the dark, on his laptop's batteries, Gina was caught at work and walked the Manhattan bridge home, Robert took photos all the way home to Williamsburg, Elayne reflected on the behaviour of New Yorkers in the crisis on her way home to the Bronx, Matt took lots of photos, Tien Mao saw a sign at a bar that said "BLACKOUT SPECIAL, Smoking Permitted, Fuck Bloomberg", and Amy was stuck on the Q train. Gothamist was out of town (do I smell an alibi? Gothamist has been loving the photoblogs and flashmobs, after all) but picked out the best photos from the wires.
A man suspected of drunk driving in the German city of Koblenz failed his sobriety test, but his West Highland terrier passed with flying colors:
"The dog did very well indeed," an official at the Koblenz police department told BBC News Online.
"The man was unable to perform various tasks - such as touching his nose repeatedly, walking up and down in a straight line and doing a 360 degree turn. He fell over as he was doing this.
"The dog, however, carried out all the tests perfectly, with the exception of the nose-touching exercise, which he did not take part in.
"His 360 degree turn was excellent."
I love it when the BBC writes like The Onion.
A little diarrhea every now and then might be good for you:
Call it Montezuma’s Revenge, traveler’s trot or simply a nuisance, diarrhea may do at least one good deed by protecting people against colon cancer, researchers reported Monday.
They said their findings offer one possible explanation for why people in poorer countries seem less prone to colon cancer, the fourth leading cause of cancer in the world and the third biggest cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
[ via Uffish Thoughts ]
(The Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation's Colossal Colon Tour will be winding up in New York from October 31 to November 1, although they don't have a location yet. The Colossal Colon looks both gross and beautiful in all the photos I've seen of it, so naturally I plan to crawl through it when it comes to town.)
"As "Gigli" vanishes from U.S. movie theaters following dismal ticket sales, alternative rock station WBCN is offering to give "I survived Gigli" T-shirts to anyone left in their seats when the lights come up after the final showing at a Boston cinema this Thursday."
I still wouldn't watch it.
update: Shockingly, not only did my friend George watch it, he's even willing to admit so in public. I'm not sure if he deserves the shirt or a straitjacket.
Takashi Murakami, he who collaborated with Louis Vuitton to make this spring's impossible-to-find must-have item, opens his first outdoor show in the US this September 9 at Rockefeller Center.
Are the New York socialites and fashionistas who've packed their bags away now that they're no longer red hot going to troop to his new show anyway? (I know I'm going, albeit midweek and at an odd time of day because I hate crowds, even though what I'd really like to see is a Haruki LV Murakami bag.)
[ via Geisha asobi ]
I was happy to read in Neal H. Cruz's column today that the Comelec is requiring voters to revalidate their registration as part of their modernization efforts, to eliminate flying voters. Happy until I read this bit:
Just go to your "barangay" [village or neighborhood] center, give your name, address and other information. They will encode the data in the machine, plus your fingerprints and photograph, and that will be your permanent record and identification for the elections. The same procedure goes for new voters. You can't register more than once because your fingerprints will betray you-and the punishment for flying voters is stiff.
Wow, a national fingerprint registry! Why don't they just force a national identification card on us like Marcos tried to do and then throw in retinal scans, just for fun? It would make the more fascist-minded of our ASEAN neighbors (i.e. all of them) drool with envy.
Later on Cruz says that "those who fail to revalidate their names will still be allowed to vote, they will have to undergo a long process necessary to weed out flying voters." Long process, schmlong process, no one's getting my fingerprints if there's another way.
I'd like to read Dean Jorge Bocobo's blog Philippine Commentary because I think he's an interesting writer, but I love having 20/20 eyesight so much more and so I won't unless there's a redesign somewhere along the way. I mean, come on, it's long blocks of large, italicized white text on a royal blue background—each of those things is bad enough on a Powerpoint slide but on a computer screen all together they're just unforgiving. I'm all for customizing and personalizing things (especially since many of Blogger's templates are hideous) but I'll take the simplest, blandest black on white page any day over one that's impossible to read on purpose.
I'm not quite sure if it's a photolog or not, but Ryan Allen's photos from Las Vegas on muffinsandfruit are lovely nonetheless.
And so is his girlfriend Jackie! We should all look so good in bikinis.
As some of you know, I beta-tested Typepad, the new blog hosting service run by Six Apart (i.e. the people who do Movable Type, which is what powers this site). Now that Typepad's gone live I have some extra 20% lifetime discount codes to give away, if any of you are interested in them.
Take a look at the features and pricing page —the basic plan is less than four dollars (less than P250) a month with the discount, and the discount is good even if you eventually decide to upgrade or downgrade plans, so if you're thinking about starting a blog in the next few months you might want to sign up now. Now that Typepad's around there's almost no excuse for sucky old Blogspot. The codes are only good till the 13th so send me an email right now if you want one! Anil pointed out in the comments that the codes are good till November, my mistake. So you've got lots of time to decide to use them, but you might as well ask me for one now before I run out of them. Don't be shy, 20% is 20%. And Typepad is excellent.
I always forget how funny Melissa Howard from "Real World "Season 9 (New Orleans) is until I stumble onto her site again and burst out laughing at something she's written in her journal. This is from last week when she spent five hours as a Hooters girl for the comedy show she's on now:
The nude colored pantyhose are the worst. They’re super tight and very thick and compounded in their disgustingness by having to be worn with thick white crunch socks circa 1992. Luckily, the feet are cut off. For those of you that worried about having a girl whose vag was nearly exposed next to your food, the pantyhose ease all those fears. Not a single microbe of DNA can escape these pantyhose. So pull up a chair and order up all the buffalo wings your heart desires. The shorts? Well, those are bright orange and would be cute if you were allowed to wear them one size bigger. But instead, it may just be a requirement that you wear them up your butt even though the “up your butt” look has a big red X through it on the Hooters Regulations poster. Every girl I saw had them up her butt. And most of the girls were telling me to “fold the top of the shorts over” to achieve this look, but I said “No thanks.” They sweetened the offer by saying they’d give me a mini apron to put around my waist to hide the camel toe that folding the shorts over would cause. I still said, “No thanks…”
I love the responses in this BBC story about embarassing passport photos. My favorite is Steve Whittingham's, I'd like to see what his photo looks like:
Whilst travelling from the Canadian Rockies to Seattle I had to present my passport at the U.S. border. The border patrolman took one look at the photo in my passport and spent the next two minutes laughing so much he couldn't speak. He tried to apologise, claiming he hadn't had much sleep the night before and then proceeded to laugh uncontrollably again for another couple of minutes. Far from being embarrassed by his outburst I was rather proud of the effect my passport photograph had.
My current passport photo isn't awful, it's not even half-bad really, but I still can't wait until I can replace it in a few months. Thank goodness Philippine passports are only good for five years!
"I never play any music by Hungarian composers," said Tom listlessly.
"That little devil didn't tell the truth," Tom implied.
"Let's all play an A, a C sharp, and an E," cried Tom's band with one accord.
Incorrigible punsters (like The Boy) will probably enjoy this collection of Tom Swifties more then most. I thought it was neat but I still hate puns, except when executed by Terry Pratchett.
[ via Anil Dash ]
Go read "Icy Death" by Kevin Fanning now. You won't be sorry if you do.
(You will be sorry if you don't read it now and then stumble on it by accident in a few months or years, maybe even so sorry that you first write Kfan a long, rambling and slightly creepy fan letter and then me a long, rambling and slightly creepy letter apologizing for ever having doubted my taste. And then neither one of us will ever, ever be your friend. And then you'll be really really sorry.)
Today, while reading the Village Voice, I saw the following:
DAN SIMMONS Get your geek on with the author of the Hyperion series as he imagines The Iliad in space with his new epic space opera, Ilium.
Then I saw the date and time: 7 p.m on Thursday. Today is Thursday and I read the ad at 7:40 p.m. The one time I decide to slack off and read the Voice the day after it comes out is, of course, the time I lose the opportunity to meet the author of my all-time favorite science fiction novel.
Now why didn't any of you fuckers tell me he was on tour? It turns out I missed three opportunities to see him while I was in California!
*wails, pulls out hair, gnashes teeth*
Amazon has Ilium for almost $8 off the cover price, for those of you who haven't bought it yet. I'm sending off for it tonight.
From Kevin Kearney's "Stop Pretending You Saw That Movie on an Airplane, I Know You Rented It":
Remember that time when you told me that you saw “What Women Want” on cable? Actually you said you saw “most of it” to imply that you didn’t intentionally watch it and there must have been nothing else on. And remember I found out a couple weeks later that you don’t even have any movie channels? It was big of you to come out and say that you actually saw a Sunday matinee when it was still in theaters. I mean, I may have thought less of you for a little while but I eventually forgave you. I will, however, pretend that you didn’t admit that you actually liked it. Let’s not have this be a similar situation, ok? It will feel good to get it off your chest. I know how these things really eat at you.
This post is dedicated to Andrew, just because.
One of the hawks that patrols Bryant Park went and attacked a Chihuahua yesterday. The falconer thinks Galen the hawk must've mistaken the tiny doggy for a rat, which is what, as some of you may remember, just what happened to my little friend from a few weeks ago, Speck of the jaunty sombrero. No one tell Dos Pesos, or Tigger and Chieka!
[ via Gothamist ]
Happy birthday to friend Markus Andersonicus! Some of you may already know of Mark from his wonderful lending library project Booklend. If you're short on good reading material or have lots of books you want to get rid of get off your hands share with strangers, give Booklend a visit. Mark is awesome and New York is lucky to have him, even if it's only part-time.
I love Christopher Walken—and not just because, as Conan O'Brian loves to say, he has the best hair in show business—but jeez, the man does so many shitty movies. Now, Stockard Channing does the same thing and I love her even more, but the dreck she pops up in from time to time is still usually much better quality dreck than Walken's. Fametracker explains why we Walken fans must suffer so much:
Because Christopher Walken is not a bad actor—he has already won one Oscar, and been nominated for another—and because he does also frequently star in movies that aren't completely terrible, we have only one explanation for Walken's apparent willingness to tarnish his reputation with dreck like The Country Bears, Nick of Time, and this week's Gigli: in order to get Christopher Walken to be in your movie, even if it is clearly going to suuuuuuuck, all you have to do is ask him. Apparently, he'll do anything if you just ask him. You don't even have to ask him nicely or pay him very much.
Rover, 2002-2003.
Goodbye, you silly sweet goofy puppy dog.
ADM of the always great Amy's Robot thinks that flash mobs are stupid:
The intended effect of a flash mob is, in large part, to create an "inexplicable" gathering of people, causing surprise and confusion among onlookers. However, because invitation lists are now emailed to everyone, including police, management companies, and newspapers before the gathering ever occurs, there isn't really any unexplained behavior going on at all, and this will only become increasingly true as the efforts get documented—IN ADVANCE—in such places as the NY Times and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. People who are at all connected, either socially or through the media, will be fully aware of these gatherings ahead of time. Even if they have no specific information, within a few weeks, people will begin to surmise "oh, this is another flash mob." Is that fun? Is it entertaining? Is it clever? The elements of surprise and inexplicability should, if you think about it, be an essential component of this or any similar performance art. The intended audience of these "performances" are people who are not in the loop. But once everyone is in the loop, what's the point of the performance?
I like rain much more than most but yo, New York, this is getting really fucking ridiculous:
Gigli Focus Groups Demand New Ending In Which Both Affleck And Lopez Die:
"The danger here is succumbing to what people in the business call 'option paralysis'—being caught with so many good ideas that you're not sure which one to use," Brest said. "Getting shot is fine, but what about an automobile fire in which Ben and Jennifer are shown perishing in a slow-motion montage, their newfound love discarded as they try desperately to claw their way past each other's melting bodies, while slowly roasting to death in their own fat? You'd be surprised at how many people came up with that one. Or having them crawl through a field of broken glass while a safely booted and gloved Christopher Walken casually advances on them with a spray bottle of acid and a pair of bolt-cutters? I must say, a part of me loves the idea of them chewing each other to death during a 14-minute dolly shot."
I would pay to watch this movie if it ended this way.
Well, okay, so I would pay and watch another movie and then sneak in to see the glorious death sequence, but it would still be remarkable as the first time I'd be voluntarily watching something with Affleck or Lopez in it that wasn't Mallrats or Selena. Every time I see one of those awful Gigli trailers on TV I feel intense pain, like how I imagine it would be like to have my eyeballs sliced by razor blades and then doused with vinegar.
[ via Do You Feel Loved ]
We're back in Manhattan The streets smell just as bad as they did when we left for our little California adventure and that's just the way we like it, it's good to be home. Jarvis is tired and sleeping even more soundly than this wild pig we saw at the zoo and I think I'm going to be joining him soon.
