The Awl

Mary J. Blige Sings "Stairway To Heaven" On Oprah

Dave Bry — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:20:36 +0000

Here is the undisputed Queen of Hip-hop Soul singing the all-time number one definitive classic-rock song on Oprah Winfrey's daytime TV talk show. I love Led Zeppelin. I love Mary J. Blige. But this never should have happened.

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Filming Nature Footage Arduous, Amazing, Disgusting, Beautiful

Dave Bry — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:45:12 +0000

Nice piece in the Times today about the process that went into filming the state-of-the-art nature footage featured in the Discovery Channel's new series "Life," which debuts Sunday. "In that first episode viewers see a strawberry dart frog's tadpoles come to life, then watch the mother carry each baby up a rainforest tree to a safe perch inside a bromeliad plant. Then they see the mother lay eggs to feed the newborns until they can move on their own, weeks later. Without any dialogue the shots tell a gripping story about a mother's commitment to her offspring." The National Geographic clip above, from 2008, shows the same. The Discovery version (which will by narrated by Oprah Winfrey, who will hopefully refrain from the funny-style inflection and corny jokes) was shot by a guy named Kevin Flay, who used a camera slightly larger than a tube of lipstick.

"Mr. Flay mounted the Iconix camera on a tripod and a track to capture the mother making her way across the canopy floor. Then he had to find a way to show the frog making the arduous climb up a tree to find a new home for her tadpoles. 'For that, we decided we needed to take some sort of crane device,' he said, 'just to help give the sense of the epic journey the frog was taking.' After the cameras were set, 'it's just patience-waiting for the frog to do the right thing for you, he said."

Like feed her own eggs to her young. Ewww, gross! But, also, Wow, cool!

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Chris Lehmann Live Blogs Sarah Palin on Oprah. For Reals!

Chris Lehmann — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:00:28 +0000

Sarah on the Couch

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Tweeting Yourself To Death

Choire Sicha — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:55:14 +0000

First Virginia Heffernan announced she hated her iPhone; now the NYT mag columnist on all things webby is totally over Twitter. And she goes to a dark place! "I used to think that writers on the Web who feared hate mail and carping bloggers were just being old-fashioned and precious. But now, while I brood on the maxim 'connectivity is poverty,' I can't help wondering if I've turned into some banged-up street kid, stuck in a cruel and crowded neighborhood, trying to convince everyone that regular beatings give you character." Still, we're kind of thinking she's pissed she filed this column right before Oprah joined.

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