New York City, May 22, 2013
★★★ Nobody but the toddler was inclined to wake up in the dim morning. It was too humid to feel chilly, but toward noon, the CNN sign over Columbus Circle read 18 degrees lower than the sweltering forecast in the paper. Small schoolchildren out on field trips filled the crosswalk and sidewalk. Air conditioners dripped onto awnings downtown, and anti-fracking activists accosted pedestrians. The afternoon air was beach air, thick and full of glare. In a hot patch of light by a store window, the surface of sun-splashed clothes advertisements briefly seemed to dissolve into the real world. In front of the apartment building, people were sitting out on the stone-block representations of benches, which really serve as parking-space barriers and on which people never sit.
If you are drinking at a TGI Friday's in Jersey you are probably better off sticking with the well brands. Also, if you are drinking at a TGI Friday's in Jersey you probably did something really, really terrible in a previous life, because that is like set-fire-to-an-orphanage karma right there. [Via]
Sure, Let's Shoot A Bunch Of Animals Into Space
Haven't we already figured out what happens to animals if we blast them into space? Isn't sending them up there now just asking for trouble? Like, taking the chance that they will pass through some cosmic gamma rays and come back as super-rodents bent on revenge? I mean, that is my understanding of how space travel works. I could be wrong. Anyway, if nothing else it seems kind of cruel, although I guess it is probably better than living in Russia.
53 More 'Arrested Development' Jokes You Probably Missed
Last year, we released a list of "53 Arrested Development Jokes You Probably Missed," and with the long-awaited new season set to debut on Netflix this Sunday at midnight, what better time to crank out another new list of hidden jokes from the show? Arrested Development is so dense that there are enough subtle gags, callbacks, and references to fill a dozen of these lists. So, if you're cramming the show's first three seasons in before the fourth premieres this weekend, keep an eye out for these sneaky bits of comedy including Oscar Bluth's accidental prison race riot and the Iraqi version of T.G.I. Friday's. READ MORE
Yo, We're Going to D.C. for Tour de Fat
There always comes a time in life when a person has to take a journey. Steve Jobs once said :
“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.”
For us here at The Awl Network publishing team, that time comes on June 1st, 2013. I'll be traveling to Washington D.C. with The Awl's philosophical leader and teacher, Michael Macher. A trained photographer (obviously with spacers in his ears) will also be joining us to discover and document the serendipitous joys of Washington D.C. and really, more specifically, New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat.
There's a lot in there. Let's explore: If you didn't already know, New Belgium Brewery is the producer of award winning brews, including their famous American take on the classic Belgian style amber ale, Fat Tire. They've been been kind enough—in partnership with Federated Media (shouts to @Nooch80 and the team)—to support this here web community. When thinking about how best to share the message that New Belgian wants to share with the world (and again, more specifically, indiellectuals like us) we thought sending a crack squad of content producers to check out and report back on the Tour de Fat scene would work best (and also be the most fun because, really, what is life without laughs?).
What exactly is the Tour de Fat? What exactly will we see there? The festival is all about things the Internet is passionate about: It's a celebration of bikes (#bancars) and a fundraiser for local charities. It also features musical acts like Beats Antique and performance acts like The Moth. At some point during the day someone will pledge to give up their car for a year. This festival takes place in 10 different locations throughout the year and in D.C. it will take place on June 1 in Yards Park from 11 – 5 PM. You can check out the full DC schedule here.
If you are in DC (or will be in DC on June 1) and reading this post, perhaps we can share a fine NBB Fat Tire amber ale together? Tweet at Michael and me, please. If things go really swimmingly perhaps we'll even share an appetizer whilst we drink our heady brew.
Is this a journey from which we re-emerge a little differently? We will report back.
This post is brought to you by Fat Tire. Pairs Well With People.
Ditz, Lightweight, Mooncalf, Naïf: The Second-Class Status Of Stevie Nicks
Stephanie Lynn “Stevie” Nicks turns 65 on Sunday. As the lead singer of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist she has written and sung some of the most indelible songs of the rock era.
The band has long since entered the pantheon of Rock Greatness as a “legacy act.” When your local classic-rock station plays “Go Your Own Way” and “Rhiannon” back-to-back on “Two for Tuesday,” do you drum along on your steering wheel? Of course you do! You’re only human!
And yet. While Stevie—I’m going to call her “Stevie” because, like all icons, she invites familiarity while retaining a core of mystery—has enough solo hits to avoid complete dismissal, there’s a troubling willingness among amateur and professional rock critics to explain away her success. They try to credit it to her looks, her mystical image, her boyfriends, her collaborators—anything and anyone except, you know, her.
Robert Cristagau's "Consumer Guide" entry on 1979’s "Tusk" says the album reveals band mate (and one-time boyfriend) Lindsey Buckingham’s production genius—but “shows Stevie Nicks up for the mooncalf she’s always been.”
A 1997 profile of the band in Rolling Stone (a magazine that’s never interviewed a classic rocker it didn’t want to journalistically fellate) by Fred Schruers is dismissive of Nicks’ contributions:
Bart Bull—before he was Michelle Shocked's husband—wrote this in Spin in 1987, while reviewing "Tango in the Night":
I don’t want to turn this into a Lindsey vs. Stevie prizefight. God knows they’ve done enough of that themselves. (Just count the number of times the word “win” and its permutations appear in their songs about each other.) It is not an either/or proposition. People can and do like both. Stevie is certainly the better lyricist, singer, and, I believe, all-around songwriter. Lindsey is a masterful guitarist and visionary producer.
But why is Lindsey forgiven his limitations, but Stevie not forgiven hers? Or perhaps the better question is: Why do Lindsey’s strengths carry more weight than Stevie’s? Why is Lindsey a genius and Stevie a ditz, a precocious naïf? READ MORE
Screw floods and other weather disasters, how is global warming going to change the way wine is made?
Jobs I Had Before Getting My Novel Published
The hardest part of being a writer isn't the writing itself—it's the long slog while waiting for other people to agree to pay you for the pleasure. I always knew I wanted to write, but a childhood of watching my schoolteacher mother have to go on strikes every summer to keep funding made me gun-shy of getting a degree where my only fallback seemed to be teaching. So I opted for the Michael Crichton plan: I'd become a doctor, get rich, and then write. I then went through three years of getting a microbiology degree before getting sidetracked and moving across the country with no job skills.
Here's a list of the (mostly crappy) jobs I had while writing nine novels before the tenth book I worked on got sold. READ MORE
"These fun pictures, taken by a host of photographers, show animals seeming to have a good laugh."
A Poem By Frank O’Hara
Clouds
How will I be able to keep you
if you don’t disgust me a little?
Why do you wear lipstick with trousers
that are stained and stain?
At the end of the raspberry patch
I found my own darling telephone
hiding away like a little reservist.
Why do you disgust me?
I can’t see the bridge any more.
“You look like a Dutch interior.”
“Then I guess I do know how pretty I am.”
But it is not dark, it is very sunny. READ MORE
Chaka Khan Is 60
Get More:
Chaka Khan, I Feel for You, Music, More Music Videos
Younger listeners who are curious about what the early-to-mid '80s sounded like could do worse than to just play this song over and over. READ MORE
“For 1,000 square feet [of outdoor space], typically you need to be ready to spend $100,000, minimum."
—Are YOU ready?
New York City Media Has Pretty Much Given Up On Events Listings
New York City media has finally given up, overall, on providing hand-selected calendars of events. Time Out New York recently abandoned its "things to do today" call-outs. The Village Voice, while stuffed with listings, is not really that useful; it's crowded with ongoing events and the like. The New Yorker's Goings On app is… pretty hit or miss per section. (Their "Above and Beyond" and "Readings" selection is pretty miserable, and that's where the good stuff in town is.) I think everyone has discovered that it's just not worth their energy or resources. The last "things to do" resource is the weekly Nonsense NYC email, and that's a labor of love that is full of amazing things I would never, ever attend. Should we throw in the towel too? Or should someone swoop in and save New York from itself?
You Can Buy Carl Jung's Letter To The 'New Republic' About UFOs
Hello, would you like to buy something weird? Hammer Time is our guide to things that are for sale in New York City: fantastic, consequential and freakishly grotesque archival treasures that appear in public for just a brief moment, most likely never to be seen again.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was never one to shy away from controversy. When Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie endorsed Mein Kampf without his approval, Jung attempted to eradicate pro-Nazi influence from his publication.1 He parted ways with Sigmund Freud, who once called Jung “his adopted eldest son, his crown prince and successor,” over differing theories on the unconscious. And, as the sex scenes so dispassionately depicted in A Dangerous Method suggested, he was comfortable with disregarding sexual and professional taboos, including bondage, spanking, and a liaison with a patient-turned-student.2
For his final act, Jung cast an analytical eye on UFOs.
Swann Auction Galleries has unearthed a 1957 missive Jung sent to New Republic editor Gilbert A. Harrison on the paranormal phenomena, in which he anticipates a publication that would prove to be his last. “Being rather old, I have to economise my energies,” Jung concludes, politely declining what he vaguely refers to as Harrison’s “proposal.” The editor presumably solicited an article on UFOs; Jung had already committed to writing a forthcoming book on the subject. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies would be published two years after the letter was sent, which was also two years before he died. 3 READ MORE
New York City, May 21, 2013
★★★★ Downriver, the Jersey side was almost gone in the bright morning haze. A pneumatic hammer on an excavator chattered like a monstrous bird courting. The air in the hallway was swampy. On the cross street, a man was up a ladder cleaning the metal sides of the lettering over the entrance to the music center. A group passed on Broadway wearing kilts, men and women both. There would be no sign of the forecast showers. Downtown, trapeze dresses were definitely announcing the season and themselves as a thing of it. Eventually the office air conditioner forced an escape to the roof, where sun warmed the dark shirt fabric and breeze pulled at it. Heat seeped from the metal railing into stiffened fingers. The iced coffee tap indoors had already run dry.
Ten Songs To Listen To While You Celebrate The 100th Anniversary Of The American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society was founded in New York City on May 22, 1913. (That's a hundred years ago today.) Back then it was called the American Society for the Control of Cancer. It's funny to think of "celebrating" in terms of a disease like cancer. And it sure would be better if there was never any need for an American Cancer Society in the first place. But here we are, left saying "fuck cancer" anytime someone like David Rakoff or Adam Yauch dies way, way too young, and so to the people who are working so hard to make it be so that we don't have to say that so often, here's wishing them a very productive next hundred years. Actually, here's hoping that it's less than a hundred. READ MORE
You know, if someone is going to try to pull the "cold soup" scam on you they may as well do the honorable thing and add some booze to it.
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