The Best First Sentence Of A Novel This Year (So Far!)
"The summer following the winter that my mother took off into something called Women's Land for what I could only guess would be all eternity, my father decided that there was no choice but for him to quit his despised job and take me and my brother to the beach for at least the entire summer and possibly longer."
—How can you not want to read September Girls since it has one of the great first sentences of all time?
• Indiebound • Amazon • Powell's • Barnes & Noble
Would You Like To Hear Some Jokes About The Freud Museum.
Our website is currently down following a hacking attempt (presumably by Jungians).
— Freud Museum London (@FreudMusLondon) May 21, 2013
London's Freud Museum is in a… spot of bother.
@freudmuslondon @mrjohnofarrell Not "hacked" but "penetrated".
— Ms Slide (@sliderulesyou) May 21, 2013
@freudmuslondon Melanie Klein's distributed denial of "difficult conversations" attack?
— Alex (@blangry) May 21, 2013
@freudmuslondon from the error code, looks more like "His host has become ‘uncanny’ to him" to me…. (hope you're back up & running soon)
— Danny Birchall (@dannybirchall) May 21, 2013
@freudmuslondon You know what else is down? The subconscious. [...]
Oh God It Sure Is "Internet Week"
Things, you can do them, or not. Oh my God it's so Internet week today. Robert Scoble is giving a talk! Here is a description of a panel! "From actors and musicians to writers and producers, the Internet has provided unprecedented opportunities for New York's creative class. A panel of content creators discusses how this powerful disruptive digital medium has helped jumpstart their businesses and accelerate their careers." POWERFUL, DISRUPTIVE, DIGITAL. #brands #social #digital #life
Your Smart-Person Beach Read Arrived Early: "The Bling Ring"
Nicki likes Lip Gloss, Purses, Yoga, Pole Dancing, Uggs, Louboutins, Juice Cleanses, Iced coffee and Tattoos. @blingringmovie
— Emma Watson (@EmWatson) May 2, 2012
Nancy Jo Sales published "The Suspects Wore Louboutins" in Vanity Fair in March of 2010. Sofia Coppola announced optioning the article by December of 2011; Emma Watson was cast by February of 2012; the resulting movie, The Bling Ring, opens in a month.
But first! Tomorrow comes The Bling Ring—the book. Nancy Jo Sales started afresh. She already had, after all, endless hours of interviews with the crowd of young people in Southern California who burgled celebrity homes. In [...]
One Of The Best Rock Albums Of All Time Returns Tomorrow
Tomorrow Matador Records is reissuing Come's "11:11." If you don't remember the 90s, and really why would you, it's one of the great rock records of… all time? Yup, absolutely. Come toured with Pavement and Nirvana, considered their major label options, and put out three more albums in the 90s, even as half the lineup left. And then… everyone sort of drifted away. Now the original four-some is on tour in Europe; they'll wend their way to America in mid-June. Over the weekend, we Skyped with Come's Thalia Zedek about getting the band back together. She was in Berlin, getting lost; she also has a new album [...]
Why A News Portal Snapped Up A James Deen Furry Cosplay Gif Site
Yahoo buying Tumblr is digital gentrification.
— Jason Chen (@diskopo) May 19, 2013
The question of the weekend is: "Why did Yahoo! spend one-third of their cash on hand to buy a company that by all accounts is about to run out of money?"
And here are some fairly sober answers, including: "if you were given 1.1 billion dollars, would you be able to build a service used by more than ten million people for more than an hour a month? You could not. That's a bigger audience than American Idol, or for that matter anything else (except Facebook or Twitter)." That's very attractive!
(I mean [...]
Let's Talk About Books, Baby, Let's Talk About You And Me
Things to do include: Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, Katha Pollitt on Muriel Rukeyser at McNally Jackson, and Gary Greenberg with Gideon Lewis-Kraus on the DSM at BookCourt.
You Know What Era Can't End A Moment Too Soon? The Bloomberg Era
.@mikebloomberg says, because it can't be automated, becoming a plumber is a better deal economically than going to Harvard.
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) May 17, 2013
Bloomberg: "We would love to get billionaires from around the world to move here; they're the ones who go to the stores, spend a lot of $."
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) May 17, 2013
Good grief! I mean "at least he doesn't smoke crack" I guess?
Woe, Woe, Your TumblrCities Lies In Dust
Mark Ghuneim and David Peris dug up this delicious chestnut from January, 1999: "Internet search engine Yahoo! Inc. confirmed Thursday it will buy GeoCities, a fast-growing Web site community, in a $3.6 billion deal that will further solidify Yahoo!'s position as a frontrunner in the online popularity contest." RIMSHOT.
Makes a billion dollars for Tumblr seem like a steal. Here's what I don't understand: who's blabbin' about the potential acquisition of Tumblr by Yahoo!? Oh, gosh, whoever benefits from that. Tumblr made $13 million in 2012, so $1,000,000,000 sounds totally natural.
Oh, and how was GeoCities at the time of its Yahoo! acquisition? "In [...]
And How Is America's Human Rights Violation Nightmare Doing Today?
While you're planning your outfits for this weekend, let's check in with what's going on at Guantanamo! There'll be a live-chat at 2 p.m. today, but, spoiler! "The current hunger strike at Guantanamo has entered its fourth month, with resistance growing to involve 100 detainees. More medics have been flown in to assist with force-feeding 29 inmates, and five are currently hospitalized."
11 Great Things To Do In NYC This Weekend And 1 Thing To Maybe Avoid
Can't even tell you how good this weekend is, just look and indulge.
Stupid And/Or Corrupt Politics Coverage Mocked
This is amazing. I wish it was sponsored by the Kochs though.
For The First Time Ever, We Thoroughly Agree With The 'National Review' Crazies
The lady seated to my immediate right (very close quarters on bench seating) was fairly insistent about using her phone. I asked her to turn it off. She answered: “So don’t look.” I asked her whether I had missed something during the very pointed announcements to please turn off your phones, perhaps a special exemption granted for her. She suggested that I should mind my own business.
So I minded my own business by utilizing my famously feline agility to deftly snatch the phone out of her hand and toss it across the room, where it would do no more damage.
Good for you! Behavior at the [...]
Get Paid To Be Funny, Ask Them How
Tonight Julie Klausner and Chris Gethard talk about pathways to Lucrative Careers In Comedy. LOL, IT'S EASY. (JK it's not.) Oh there are other things to do too.
Enjoy Your Extra Perfluorocarbon, Straphangers
"Now the study is being done in public, using what the researchers say is a harmless chemical, already present in the city’s bouquet of gases." —Spoiler: the gas they're pushing out in the subway as a "terror test" is in the "perfluorocarbon family" but apparently that's all they'll tell us? Don't worry, your sterilization by "bouquet" will be painless. (By which I mean, your government-enforced sterility. Bloomberg's final revenge against the poors!)
Interns: Definitely Just Be Yourself In The Office, Including "Edgy" And/Or "Nude"
Hey, young ladies! Do you regularly exhibit your nipples and/or pudenda on the streets? Young millennial fellas: are you a balls-out kinda guy in general? Good news! While some uptight fools will tell you not to dress like a slanch for your internship, we believe you are more likely to Find Your Unique Path and also to Make It In New York City in general if you just "be yourself." An office is an extension of your lifestyle, after all, and if your lifestyle is nipple-centric or "neo-burlesque" or "embodying James Deen gifs," that is fine, and don't let anyone tell you different. You're only young and pretty once!
Faun Fables Really Is The Best Band Ever
Dave Bry (at noon on Leonard Lopate and tonight at the Park Slope Community Bookstore), Faun Fables at the Knitting Factory, Har Mar Superstar at Le Poisson Rouge, plus James Salter and more! Tonight, so amazing.
Will You Welcome Your New Silicon Valley Emo-Choad Oligarch Government?
Here is a pretty epic and accurate description of the hubris of the new Internet-rich. Now that a small group of people has accumulated vast amounts of money, employing desperately few Americans, paying very little in taxes, isolating itself in wealthy bubbles while the rest of America slowly smolders, what will we do when they try to take over the government? Nope, not in some hypothetical far future; pretty much it all starts right now. First one off the Internet wins.
Our Hawaiian President Winning War On Birds
Finally, our president has taken the battle home in our long war against birds. So long, eagles and hawks! Get stuffed! (If they can still stuff the twisted half-carcasses—more than half a million a year!—that remain after our wind turbines do their work.) MAKE LIKE THE BEES AND DROP DEAD.
Oh man, this total environmental collapse is going to be awesome!
"The Good Gay"
Bret Easton Ellis' quite excellent essay on gay uptightness puts him pretty firmly back in my good graces forever.
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