“Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth.”

“It says much for McTeer that the obvious question — ‘What are the chances of two cross-dressers meeting trouser to trouser in late-nineteenth-century Dublin?’ — hardly enters our minds. Stately and swaggering, taller than most of the men, and sporting the dark forelock of the natural rake, McTeer, who has been Oscar-nominated for best supporting actress, carries conviction as easily as she wears her breeches and corduroy jacket, transforming Hubert’s rangy physical confidence into a larger embrace of life’s amusements and kicks. She is no perhapser but a thoroughgoing yes-woman, like Molly Bloom.”
 — Anthony Lane is totally on board with my campaign: Janet McTeer must win Best Supporting Actress this year (for the mediocre Albert Nobbs) or all is lost and nothing means anything any more. (Sorry Melissa McCarthy, love you!) Also get excited: she’s playing Mary McCarthy in Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt! Okay don’t get too excited but get a little excited.)

A Poem By Dorothea Tanning

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Are You?

If an expatriate is, as I believe, someone
who never forgets for an instant
being one,
then, no.

But, if knowing that you always
tote your country around
with you, your roots,
a lump

like a soul that will never leave you
stranded in alien subsets of
yourself, or your wild
entire;

that being elsewhere packs a vertigo,
a tightrope side you cannot
pass up, another way
to show

how not to break your pretty neck
falling on skylights:
reward-laden
mirages;

then, yes. All homes are home; mirages
everywhere. Aside from
gravity, there are no
limits,

never were, nor will there ever be,
no here and there to foil
your lotus-dreaming
legend.

Stay on the planet, if you can. It isn’t
all that chilly and what’s more,
grows warmer by the
minute.

Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) was a painter, sculptor, and writer.

This poem was published in Tanning’s first book,

A Table of Content (2004), and in LIT. It is reprinted here by kind permission of Graywolf Press.

What’s that you say? One poem isn’t enough for you, you want all the poems? Very well. Here are all the poems.

You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

That Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith can’t use his own name at his new job, due to his “exit agreement” with his last employer, Politico, is hysterical. Get a grip! Also making the rounds: digital media jobs in “journalism” that require a drug test. How crazy are these people? (But yes, if you want to work at Gannett or NBC or what have you, be prepared to be degraded and give up your rights.) Drug-testing is maybe — maybe! — for people who operate forklifts or drive trucks, so they don’t kill us all while baked. Even then, though…. Well, drug-testing is a real bad look for organizations that want independent, American-minded employees. Anyway, even pettier is that Politico won’t link to Buzzfeed in his bio on their site, for his weekly columns. GOOD STUFF.

Awl pals Tim Sutton and Seth Bomse have been known to make surprisingly watchable short films starring a not-so-good-looking aging person puttering around his apartment. So imagine what they might do with attractive teenagers diving into a glassy Appalachian lake, or hiking through a lush summer forest, or riding bikes in the desert at sunset. People who attend this year’s South-by-Southwest Film Festival won’t even have to imagine it, as Sutton’s first full-length feature film, Pavilion, has been chosen as one the festival’s “Emerging Visions” selections, and will have its world premiere in Austin between March 9th and 17th. Seth edited the film, which has an original score by The Sea and Cake’s Sam Prekop — who wrote the languid and beautiful “Parasol” for his band’s 1995 album Nassau. Pavilion is kind of like that, but as a movie.

I used to love boxing, before I finally, inevitably came around to the idea that it is pretty much barbaric. I basically have a year or two before I finally accept the same thing about football, so I’m hoping the Saints win one more in that time. But, yeah, there comes a point where you can no longer watch something that is essentially damaging its participants for your entertainment. But thank God there was a time before we realized that, and could celebrate men like Angelo Dundee, one of the sport’s greatest trainers, who passed away yesterday at the age of 90.

Somehow, some way, Graham William Nash turns 70 today. I am a big proponent in wanting everyone in the Baby Boom generation and all who inspired it to die, but there is something about his greatest song that makes me feel a little protective of him. Then I remember all those car commercials and “Wonder Years” episodes and am like, good riddance, but that is a churlish thought on a milestone like this.

They Play To Win The Game

Last week, Animal Planet announced the rosters for Puppy Bowl VIII, the annual canine celebration of unmotivated running in circles and dead serious butt-sniffery that represents the best and most successful bit of Super Bowl counter-programming on record. While the VIII’th iteration of the Puppy Bowl will stick to the format fans came to know through the first VII — smallish dogs with their tongues hanging out, tear-assing around a small field aimlessly and excitedly — Animal Planet also added some new elements this year, including a new human referee. This week saw the public announcement of another new twist: the addition of veteran NFL coaches to the mix. We were there at the press conference. At Animal Planet’s request, we’ve embargoed the coaches’ identity and redacted the questions.

Q:

A: Same way you’d prepare for any important game, really. You hear a lot of things — oh, spaniels are uncoachable, or some of your terriers are not good with other dogs. But I came in trying to assess these young dogs for their playfulness, energy, performance. Not, you know, fall back on the clichés. “Oh, Maltese is a difficult breed” or what have you. It’s garbage. So we use that for motivation. I tell them, you know: they’re saying you’re tough to train, you shed a lot. Fine. Don’t just yip about it. Go out there and show them.

Q:

A: I see it like this: I’m here to provide leadership. Look, Animal Planet doesn’t need to bring in some old guy like me to tell puppies how to play, okay? All puppies know how to play, all puppies are playful. My job as coach is to come in here and get them to play the right way.

Q:

A: I figured you guys would ask that. (Laughter) Simple answer is of course I’d love to be coaching in the Super Bowl. But I’ve got a job to do here, too. I’m telling my team, look, we can’t worry what’s on the other channels, who’s watching who do what, none of that. Come February 5, we’re on the channel we’re on, we’re playing in the Puppy Bowl, and that’s our first order of business.

Q:

A: Sorry to cut you off, but I don’t call them that. You guys can call them whatever you want, but I don’t call them that.

Q:

A: That was, when I said “puppies” earlier I was referring to younger dogs in general. Those are puppies, that’s what you would call the technical term for it. But I call my guys “young dogs,” not puppies. I see them every day, how hard they play, how much they play. These aren’t puppies, to me. A puppy’s going to gnaw on your slippers, okay, or just kind of trot around. Climb up on the couch and grab a nap, eat a cigarette butt or whatever he finds out there on the sidewalk. That’s puppy stuff, okay, and my guys will do that, too. But it’s about how they do it. I look at my team and I don’t see puppies, I see playful young dogs, period. You can call them what you want, but that’s what I see.

Q:

A: Well, for me that meant watching a lot of tape. The good news is there’s a lot of tape out there. YouTube and the like. Very helpful. So I spent a lot of time watching tape on Corgis, for instance. Very energetic, very vocal, what I guess you’d call comically short legs, so not necessarily all that great with going up or down stairs. There’s a video of a Corgi that — and this has millions of views, okay, so it’s not exactly news — was really helpful to me in just answering the question, “How good are Corgis at jumping into a lake?” And the answer is “not very,” and so that’s reflected in the game plan, which isn’t giving too much away because there’s not a lake on the field. That’s just a for-instance. But there’s a ton of tape on all of them. You just need to know what to look for.

Q:

A: Absolutely, absolutely. Animal Planet runs a tight ship, really scouts well, so there’s talent all through the roster. The key for me, my job is making the game plan fit the talent. To give you another for-instance, one of my guys is named Baskin. Fine young dog, loves to play, pretty much there in terms of housetraining. But we’re talking about a Jack Russell/Pug mix, which means there’s certain things I can expect Baskin to do and certain things I can’t. So am I going to ask him not to, say, make on the carpet? Yes, because I think that’s fair to expect of him. But am I going to ask him, to give you another for-instance, to play the way Gracie plays? No, I’m not, because Gracie’s a Chihuahua/Dachsund mix. That’s just knowing your personnel.

Q:

A: To a certain extent, yes. These are dogs. To a great degree, and I hate to keep using him as an example, Baskin is only ever really going to understand the world through his nose. And that, you know, that’s not on him, and it takes nothing away from how hard he’s played for me. Everything you hear about Jack Russell Terriers and more, with Baskin. Terrific breed, terrific young dog.

Q:

A: Of course. Coach Billick’s going to have his side ready, so we’d better be, too. If we go out there and get our squeezy toys taken from us, that’ll be on us, but it’s not going to be because we haven’t prepared enough, I promise you that.

Q:

A: Funny you ask. The answer is no. I’m allergic.

Related: Brief Interviews With Hideous Football Players

David Roth writes “The Mercy Rule” column at Vice, co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix,, and is one of the founders of The Classical. He also has his own little website. And he tweets inanities! Photo courtesy of Animal Planet.

“He achieves continuous sperm transfer after having been removed by the aggressive female, or has moved away himself. At the same time, his palp (sexual organ) plugs the female, thereby monopolizing her.”
 — Arachnologist Matjaz Kuntner describes the findings of a study wherein 90 percent of male spiders were observed cutting off their penises during sex, which increases the chances of successful impregnation and also of the males escaping from their mates, who generally try to eat them after copulation.

M. Ward’s Transfiguration of Vincent is somehow nearly ten years old, which means it must be really, really good given the number of times I still play it. Anyway, he’s got a new record coming out in April called A Wasteland Companion, and here’s the first video. Give a look and listen, this is a man who deserves more attention. [Via]