December 2009
38 posts
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I am so proud of him.
Stephanie, over at your favorite New Jersey-based tumblelog I Can See New York City from My House, has re-posted an anecdotal comment I left on an earlier post of hers about the great Steve Prefontaine. I now re-re-post it here so that it is formally entered into the record:
I was once on the train wearing a Prefontaine t-shirt, a tasteful portrait in red, and some guy asked me if it was my son. I...
November 2009
36 posts
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Your art degrees are worthless!
In reference to today’s earlier post on the wonders of No Limit album art of the 1990s, I’ve cooled a little on the idea of the coffee table book. The ever-reliable Ben sent along an interesting interview with the (white, it turns out) creative team behind the album covers. This part in particular jumped out and slapped me in the face:
“My brother was more into business, I was...
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A few Thanksgiving traditions.
“We Gather Together.” This is the hymn that our family sings before the meal every Thanksgiving. It’s a Dutch patriotic hymn from the 16th Century, translated into English in the 19th Century and first appearing in American hymnals in the early 20th Century. I’ve often wondered, why a hymn? The portion of the Sturdevant family from which this tradition has been handed down...
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“Now Black Floor retires to the endless string of defunkt artistic collectives...”
– As you wish. S. 12th is proud to begin those collective future memoirs here at the end of 2009. May I present to you, for Philly Art Kid Week, Philadelphia’s late, great Black Floor art collective, 2004-2007.
Biographies here, with many great photos of PAKs in their native element.
Archive...
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Man Man helps us continue the celebration of S....
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Second-tier, USA.
All this talk of Philly art kids reminds me of a somewhat tipsy, rampaging conversation I had with my friend Matt last year about something we called The Second-Tier City Art Kid Playoffs. It sort of seemed like an interesting idea at the time, I guess, but I’m a little hazy on what it entailed precisely. Something about all of the second-tier cities in America sending their best multimedia,...
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“South Street,” the Orlons, 1963. Same...
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“Stephanie Wilbur Ash had her phone stolen by a ninth-grader, who, like the idiot...”
– I am not usually in the habit of posting my friends’ Facebook statuses as Tumblr quotes, but this was just too good to let go, a terrifying little revenge narrative in three sentences (with a stunning betrayal built in — thanks indeed, Kevin!).
Sorry, Preston: you fucked with the wrong...
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Maybe I am just a naive quasi-Midwestern southern...
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"A bunch of twee old farts reliving the...
For Filmosophy’s Wes Anderson Week, here’s a piece I wrote previewing the maestro’s later years. Includes many of your late-period Anderson favorites, from The Dreyfus Affair all the way through Well-Respected Men.
Who else writes a mean Wes Anderson speculative future piece? Tess Lynch, that’s who.
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Elvis Presley, “The Yellow Rose of Texas /...
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Who had the best outfit on the walk back from the...
The couple biking east down Lake in identical matching South Minneapolis Autumn Fixie-Riding Uniforms (head-to-toe skintight red flannel)?
The blond party girl in the seasonally inappropriate but absolutely mesmerizing shimmering black retro silver-spangled Edie Sedgewick minidress staggering towards the northbound LRT platform in stilleto heels?
The surprisingly young-looking Minneapolis cop...
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Michigan’s own Death, emanating from a...
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Two pizzas and a six-pack.
Here is a great joke from Robert Towne’s 1982 film Personal Best. A pentathlete tells it to her friend in a steam room following a practice.
So this drunk guy hails a cab and gets in. He knocks on the plastic partition between himself and the cab driver. The cab driver opens it.
“Hey, driver,” says the drunk guy. “You got room up there for two pizzas and a...
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He's a Mike Whiskey.
Raynor’s stupendous (and stupendously unhelpful) unhelpful phonetic alphabet reminded of a particular instance in my own life where the more traditional NATO phonetic alphabet, the one that Raynor’s will shortly replace, proved extremely helpful in the pursuit of some dubious sociology.
There was once, several years ago, a new-ish band made up of some guys Nate and I knew. This...
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I thence invoke thy aid to my adventrous Email.
I just received an email from an account executive in Philadelphia letting me know she was “reaching out” to inform me of an upcoming publication deadline. I love it when people unintentionally use really grandiose language to describe very mundane situations. Reaching out, from far beyond the muddy banks of the River Schuylkill, across prairies and plains and the watery depths of Lake...
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Die magische Welt von St. Paul!
I was waiting for the 21 on University Avenue in the Midway this afternoon, when I heard the chattering of young children behind me. Children! I thought. In St. Paul! Why are they not in a St. Paul school? But of course they were: I turned around, and there I saw in front of me a large, tidy playground, populated by chattering groups of elementary school-aged children. The bus stop was right in...
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Mel Tormé, “Comin’ Home, Baby,”...
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In tribute to improbable feats of birthday-related...
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Occasional clock shifts present other challenges.
I am very likely in an embattled and sleepy-eyed minority here, but I really love the end of daylights savings in the fall. You can spend the entire summer enjoying long, lazy, well-lit evenings that dip off imperceptibly into twilight sometime long after supper, where you bike around without lights in white pants rolled up to mid-calf until at least 9:30 pm, at which point you realize the...
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Neil Simon, rendered obsolete by powerful...
“Mr. Simon was a forefather of situation comedy writers, and his scripts for stage and screen were embraced by actors like Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. But sitcoms have given way to reality shows like “American Idol,” one-liners to the sardonic humor of “The Office,” and the heavily plotted comedy of Mr. Simon’s film “California Suite” to the animated wit of...
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“Sheesh, simmer down, crybaby—the rest of us middle American die-hards have been...”
– My old pal Katie, a diehard Reds fan, writing over at Mercy Missiles on the subject of postseason baseball misery in flyover country.
If you’re not following Mercy Missiles, you’re missing out on the best of pro baseball, Louisville politics, old television shows, mixed drinks and...
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