We’re off to never never land…
The 21 Pics That Will Make You Wish You Were at Comic-Con Right Now
By
OK. DEEP BREATH. Let me put my nerd googles on and see if I can identify all these Comic-Con cosplayers. (And a huge thank you to our intrepid reporter Michael Roha for the pics!)
Spidey and the Human Torch (sort of half-assing that wing, though, aren’t ya, kid?)
Sandman
[ click to view all the beautiful weirdness at The WOW Report ]
Levenbutt
Levenbutt Goes Ass-Backwards All Over NYC
Jen Selter has nothing on Jeremy Levenbach.
By Esti Jungreis
(Photo via @Levenbutt Instagram)
In what is perhaps the greatest utilization of social media ever, Jeremy Levenbach (a.k.a. @Levenbutt) has been Instagramming his early morning, bare-bottomed misadventures all over the city since mid-2012.
“The first one was taken on my old roof in the East Village,” Mr. Levenbach said. “I texted it to a bunch of friends. They liked it. I did a few more and then started posting them to Instagram.”
Since then, Mr. Levenbach, who takes his friends along to capture the butt shots, has amassed over 2,000 followers on Instagram.
The End Begins October 7. ENDGAME Is Coming.
Black Swan Fear
Market ‘Black Swan’ Fear at Record High
BY ANTHONY MIRHAYDARI, The Fiscal Times
iStockphoto/The Fiscal Times
After last Thursday’s volatility surge, driven by the horrific missile strike against Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and fresh violence between Israel and the Palestinians, the stock market has calmed down. Large cap issues in particularly seem largely unfazed by all this, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average not suffering a meaningful close below its 20-day moving average since April.
Moreover, the Dow finished last Friday with its 11th straight weekly gain — the second longest winning streak of the bull market to date. Bidding stocks up into the weekend is a classic sign of confidence, since it assumes that nothing will go wrong in during the two days the market is closed.
One way to interpret this is that while most investors are very, very complacent now, many are growing more fearful about the future. In other words, fears of a “Black Swan” event are increasing.
Giant Rubber Duck Gone Missing In The Global Bathtub
Giant Rubber Duck Vanishes in Chinese Flood
Hendrik Hansson
Florentijn Hofman, Rubber Duck (2011),
Auckland, New Zealand. Photo: courtesy the artist.
A giant rubber duck designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman has disappeared amid heavy storms in China’s southwestern Guiyang City, the Wall Street Journal reports. The 54-foot-tall, 2000 pound inflatable artwork was perched upon a floating metal platform, tethered to the bottom of the Nanming river by steel wires.
The work has toured the world since 2007 and has been on display in the Netherlands, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan and Australia, drawing millions of spectators along the way. The sculpture’s tour, entitled Spreading Joy Around the World represents the union of people, according to the artist. “We’re one family and all the waters in the world is our global bathtub,” Hofman previously told the Guardian.
THR: James Frey’s ENDGAME… to call it only a book would be vastly oversimplifying things.
Comic-Con: James Frey to Introduce ‘Endgame’ Universe With Panel, Puzzle, Interactive Game (Exclusive)
by Rebecca Ford
Frey’s upcoming YA book, which has interactive components and is being developed into a film, will be promoted with a tie-in to the popular augmented reality game Ingress.
Endgame is James Frey’s upcoming book, but to call it only a book would be vastly oversimplifying things.
While the first novel will hit stores Oct. 7, Frey’s project is made up of the books (a planned trilogy), e-books, a puzzle, a game, a treasure hunt and an upcoming movie. The first YA book, set in the near present day, follows 12 teens as catastrophic events lead them on a worldwide search for three ancient keys that will save not only their bloodlines but the world.
“Endgame was always conceived of and designed and created to be this pretty vast universe,” says Frey. “The idea was that we would build everything before it came out. We’d be proactive in creating the universe instead of reactive.”
Lord Of The Dance
Gina Gibney, Virtual Unknown, Becomes Power Broker of Contemporary Dance
Dibney, Gibney? “Who is this woman?”
By Alex Traub
On the night of May 14, a small group of dancers were smoking outside a fundraiser in downtown Manhattan. As they discussed the work of various underappreciated choreographers, attention was suddenly turned to a short redheaded woman who had just exited the event and was walking away. “That’s Gina Gibney?” asked Connor Voss, a startled young dancer. Yes, the group confirmed, it was. Mr. Voss watched Ms. Gibney round the street corner. “Fund me, please?” he said in her direction.
Mr. Voss is not the only one asking: Ms. Gibney is currently one of contemporary dance’s most powerful figures in New York. The center of her new influence is 280 Broadway, a two-story building just north of City Hall on which she signed a lease in January. Ms. Gibney now has 17 studios, three theaters, and 51,000 square feet under her control. This past year she received millions of dollars in donations to help her run it all. The Connor Vosses of the city turn their heads when she walks by.
Beloved spaces like Joyce SoHo and the Trisha Brown dance facility have closed; many others have had to move or shrink. Since the early ’90s, Ms. Gibney estimates, the death toll around Union Square alone includes 20 venues where she once performed.
Charlie Haden Gone
Appreciation: Jazz musician Charlie Haden spoke for beauty
Charlie Haden founded the Cal Arts jazz program in 1982. His instruction made an impact on generations of jazz artists around the country, including Ravi Coltrane and Ralph Alessi. (Tom Copi)
I’d probably only been covering jazz for the Los Angeles Times for a year or so when the phone rang at my desk and on the other end was Charlie Haden.
For a half-second, I was terrified. Was this how I was going to find out that the tiny voice in my head, the one that plagues so many writers, was right all along? Was Charlie Haden, an unquestionable music giant who contributed to a skyscraper’s worth of immortal jazz recordings, the one who finally figured out I was a fraud?
Of course, that wasn’t the nature of this phone call — or, for that matter, Charlie Haden. Instead, we talked about music. He spoke with a joyful, bebop-like cadence that pushed against his recognizably thin voice — a wispy reminder of the bulbar polio that afflicted him as a child and eventually claimed his life Friday at age 76.
Endgame: The Calling – 2 p.m., Room 7AB
Comic-Con: Highlights From the Film Lineup
by Borys Kit, Rebecca Ford
Comic-Con heads back to San Diego beginning on July 23, with more than 120,000 geeks, cosplayers, and film and TV fans invading the convention center for comics, swag and first looks at some of their favorite upcoming films.
Most of the studios are planning to show off footage from the more genre-oriented part of their slates, bring some big stars to the stage and throw in a few surprises.
Here, The Hollywood Reporter breaks down all the film highlights hitting San Diego. Some of the information is official, while some of it is just rumor. Heck, even the official schedule says “TBD” under some studios’ entries. After all, flying in stars and making sure footage from movies that are still in production dazzles isn’t easy; thus studios sometimes find themselves juggling until almost the very end.
Check back for updates as the Con nears.
SATURDAY, JULY 26
Endgame: The Calling – 2 p.m., Room 7AB
Author James Frey will speak about his new YA book Endgame: The Calling (out Oct. 7), while producer Wyck Godfrey will talk about the upcoming Fox movie. John Hanke, leader of Google’s Niantic Labs and creator of Google Maps, will discuss the augmented-reality game Google is crafting based on Endgame, and puzzlemaster Mat Laibowitz will talk about the puzzle in the book.
Rick Hincks’ World Cup
Artist Captures Every Detail of the World Cup’s Biggest Plays
Sarah Cascone
Rick Hincks.
Photo: Courtesy Rick Hincks.
If you’re looking for World Cup-themed art that truly captures your obsessive need to replay each and every goal and crucial play over and over, reviewing multiple angles to truly experience the match, British graphic designer Rick Hincks has you covered. As reported by the Huffington Post, Hincks, a big-time fan of the Manchester City club, has created a series of elegantly simple posters (available for $20) that capture the movement of the ball and the players during key plays of important games.
Since beginning the series in November, Hincks has covered both historic past matches and major plays in the 2014 World Cup currently headed for a Germany-Argentina final. The purely graphic images feature just two colors, marking the players’ positions by their numbers, and the ball’s trajectory as it approaches the goal, bouncing, ricocheting, and being passed and shot.
Crazy Huge-ass Hole Emerges At The End Of The World
Mysterious giant hole appears in Siberia
A team of Scientists travel to the site of a huge crater in Northern Russia to investigate this unusual geographical occurrence
A huge unexplained crater has appeared in Siberia, Northern Russia.
The Gas rich area where the hole was discovered – which is the main production area for Russian gas supplies to Europe – is called Yamal which translates to ”end of the world”.
The strange emergence of the hole has resulted in internet theories ranging from a possible UFO landing to a large meteor striking the earth.
Art In The Land of Assad
Syria speaks: Art from the frontline
A new generation of Syrian artists, cartoonists, photographers and writers has emerged from the region’s bitter conflict
by Malu Halasa
Our Saigon execution, Khalil Younes, 2011, 40x 30cm, Ink on Paper
An alternative revolution is taking place in Syria, while the three-year long conflict between rebel forces and President Bashar al-Assad rages on. Its weapons are not sectarian violence or chemical warfare but spray paint, cameras, pen, ink and digital illustration. For Syrian artists, filmmakers and writers, creativity has become the first line of defence against violence and tyranny.
Since the civil war began in 2011, there has been an outpouring of art and expression across all levels of Syrian society, from small towns to its war-battered second city Aleppo. This work challenges the increasing violence on all sides, which has left more than 162,000 people dead and nearly half the country’s population displaced.
A new generation of underground Syrian dissident artists, writers and thinkers has emerged—a movement that is gaining international recognition for its aesthetics of resistance. The British Museum recently announced the creation of a new archive of Syrian art at a discussion entitled “Behind the Headlines: A Revolution in Syrian Art.” And this month, graffiti stencils of Syrian martyrs will be included in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition Disobedient Objects, a history of protest through objects.
iOS Ingress
Google Rolls Out Ingress to iOS Devices
By Michael Andersen
In November 2012, Google introduced its Ingress scanner app to the Google Play store. And for almost two years, the central point of interaction for Google’s deeply immersive alternate reality game has been an Android exclusive. That changes today: with the release of Ingress‘s scanner app to the iTunes Store, the world of Ingress has officially rolled out on iOS devices.
The Ingress scanner app asks players to join the green Enlightened or blue Resistance faction in a battle for control over portals tied to real world landmarks. The game has a sizeable player base within the Android community. Over 12,000 players have gathered for the game’s frequent live events in cities across the globe so far in 2014, and the game boasts over 4 million downloads. With the expansion into iOS devices, an influx of new players is likely.
Ingress‘ long-awaited transition to the iOS platform isn’t the only major update the Niantic Project team have been teasing. Earlier this year, HarperCollins announced a partnership with Google’s Niantic Labs to produce a similar mobile game for Android and iOS devices tied to James Frey’s forthcoming young adult series, Endgame. The first book in the series will be released October 7th: and while Niantic Project’s mobile app is set to launch that same day, many of Endgame‘s characters have started becoming active on social media following a series of meteorite impacts on June 11th, kicking off the narrative. Ingress‘ recent release on iOS devices will likely help inform the development of its Endgame counterpart.
Hef Turns The Whole Issue Over To Terry
Playboy Set to Release an Issue Shot Entirely by Terry Richardson
by Kate Dries
While some commercial and editorial clients are distancing themselves from Terry Richardson, others are celebrating their relationship with the photographer-slash-sexual harasser. Playboymagazine plans to release a 100-page special issue shot by their “great partner” Richardson called California Dreamin’ in February of next year. (Images NSFW.)
Playboy has worked with Richardson before; he most recently shot the 2014 Diesel calendar that came with their Kate Moss 60th anniversary issue, posting behind the scenes photos of their offices on his blog from that shoot last August. He was also responsible for a 2009 cover of the magazine.
On Friday, Richardson teased a tease of the spread in Playboy‘s July/August 2014 issue on his blog, which says it’s supposed to come out in September. When asked for details about the issue, a spokeswoman emailed Jezebel the following:
The Last Ramone Gone
Tommy Ramone created an essential punk rock beat
The Ramones are shown in 1978, from left: Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy and Joey. Tommy, the last remaining original member of the seminal punk band, died on Friday. (Los Angeles Times)
If it’s true, as punk band the Slits have argued, that “in the beginning there was rhythm,” then Tommy Ramone’s drum pound marked a new day rising. The original drummer for seminal New York punk band the Ramones, Tommy, born Erdelyi Tamas, died Friday at age 65 after a long battle with cancer, but his basic, urgent contribution to popular music over the course of the band’s first three albums remains wildly alive.
Any time you hear a punk band tearing through a three-minute jam, the drummer in the back is likely echoing a no-nonsense beat that Tommy helped codify. If you’ve ever sung along to the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” you’re repeating lines that Tommy wrote. Struck by the sonic force of the Ramones? The drummer co-produced those early records and more — including Redd Kross’s “Neurotica” and the Replacements’ “Pleased to Meet Me.”
Born in an age of endless solos and weird prog-rock time signatures, the Ramones ditched the mid-’70s pretense and ego-heavy musicianly indulgence in favor of face-punch brevity in three-minute, fast-paced sprints such as “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Teenage Lobotomy,” “Beat on the Brat” and “Judy Is a Punk.”
On these tracks and more, what’s notable about Tommy’s drumming is how vital yet invisible he remains. You can’t imagine the songs without him, but he so effectively vanishes to become the rudder that few would have pegged him as essential to the Ramones’ sound.
The same could be said about Tommy’s role in the band’s early success. He wrote the Ramones’ first press release, in which he verbalized their simple but ingenious philosophy.
Insane Germans Invade Kansas
Verrückt water slide to open at Schlitterbahn Thursday
BY KATHY LU / THE KANSAS CITY STAR
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A test raft on the Verruckt water slide Wednesday morning at the Schlitterbahn water parkJOHN SLEEZER/THE KANSAS CITY STAR
The world’s tallest water slide is finally, finally set to open.
Officials at Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kan., announced Tuesday that Verrückt will open to the public on Thursday.
At 168 feet, 7 inches, Verrückt was certified in April as the tallest water slide in the world by Guinness World Records. Riders, who must be at least 54 inches tall and 14 years old, will have to climb 264 steps to reach the three-person raft.
The ride — its German name means “insane” — was originally set to open on May 23, when Schlitterbahn opened for the season.
Miley and Wayne Go Bangerz Again
Where’s my telephone?
Oklahoma farmer reunited with lost phone found in Japanese grain mill
OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma farmer is celebrating the return of a cell phone lost in October and found nine months later in Japan after it took a trip in a grain shipment down the Mississippi River, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean.
Kevin Whitney of Chickasha said he lost his smartphone when he bent down and the device fell out of his pocket into grain that was heading to a grain elevator.
“I thought I’ll never see that phone again,” he told Oklahoma City TV broadcaster KFOR.
The phone was found by mill workers in Kashima, Japan, in a shipment of about 2 million bushels of sorghum. They sent the phone back to a company in Louisiana that shipped the grain, which then tracked it down to its owner.
Cheadle Plays The Prince Of Darkness
First Look: Don Cheadle as Miles Davis in biopic ‘Miles Ahead’
By Nina Terrero
Image Credit: Brian Douglas
Actor Don Cheadle’s obsession with Miles Davis began as a child with the jazz trumpeter’s album Porgy and Bess, a beloved staple of his family’s music collection.Now, Cheadle will make his feature film directorial debut with a crowdfunded biopic on Davis that will focus on the musician’s transition into music after a five-year hiatus—otherwise known as his “silent period”—and tumultuous relationship with first wife Frances Taylor Davis.
EW exclusive of the actor in character, Cheadle gave fans a first look at his interpretation of the icon during in the period leading up to his 1969 jazz-rock fusion recording In a Silent Way. “It’s surreal,” says the 49-year-old House of Lies actor, who in the photograph totes a trumpet and sports Davis’ trademark jheri-curled mullet.
The biopic—which will co-star Ewan McGregor, Michael Stuhlbarg and Emayatzy Corinealdi—begins shooting this week in Cincinnati after being in development for nearly a decade. Cheadle spoke to EW about the independent film—which he co-wrote—and shared details about how he was approached by the Davis family to profile the prodigious talent, why he turned to jazz heads to crowdsource funding, and explained why he’s set on making a movie that Davis himself “would want to star in.”
Argentavis magnificens Unseated
A newly declared species may be the largest flying bird to ever live
An artist’s drawing of the newly named species Pelagornis sandersi shows the discovered bone fragments in white. The strikingly well-preserved specimen consisted of multiple wing and leg bones and a complete skull. (Liz Bradford)
By Rachel Feltman
When South Carolina construction workers came across the giant, winged fossil at the Charleston airport in 1983, they had to use a backhoe to pull the bird, which lived about 25 million years ago, up from the earth.
But if the bird was actually a brand-new species, researchers faced a big question: Could such a large bird, with a wingspan of 20 to 24 feet, actually get off the ground? After all, the larger the bird, the less likely its wings are able to lift it unaided.
The answer came from Dan Ksepka, paleontologist and science curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn. He modeled a probable method of flight for the long-extinct bird, named as a new species this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If Ksepka’s simulations are correct, Pelagornis sandersi could be the largest airborne bird ever discovered.
The Revenge Of Frey
BEA 2014: Big Children’s Books at BEA
By Diane Roback, Carolyn Juris, John Sellers, and Matia Burnett
Jim Brosnan Gone
Jim Brosnan, Who Threw Literature a Curve, Dies at 84
Jim Brosnan in Chicago in 1964. “The Long Season,” his groundbreaking 1960 book, began as a diary. Credit Associated Press
Jim Brosnan, who achieved modest baseball success as a relief pitcher but gained greater fame and consequence in the game by writing about it, died on June 29 in Park Ridge, Ill. He was 84.In 1959, Brosnan, who played nine years in the major leagues, kept a diary of his experience as a pitcher, first with the St. Louis Cardinals and later, after a trade, with the Cincinnati Reds. Published the next year as “The Long Season,” it was a new kind of sportswriting — candid, shrewd and highly literate, more interested in presenting the day-to-day lives and the actual personalities of the men who played the game than in maintaining the fiction of ballplayers as all-American heroes and role models.
Written with a slightly jaundiced eye — but only slightly — the book is often given credit for changing the nature of baseball writing, anticipating the literary reporting of Roger Angell, Roger Kahn and others; setting the stage for “Veeck — as in Wreck,” the vibrant memoir of Bill Veeck, the maverick owner of several teams; and predating by a decade Jim Bouton’s more celebrated, more rambunctious (and more salacious) pitcher’s diary, “Ball Four.”
Happy Independence Day
Giacomo Balla, Fireworks (sketch) (1915).
Photo: Wikipedia Commons.
Castaneda Confirmed
Psychedelic mushrooms put your brain in a “waking dream,” study finds
By Rachel Feltman
A man displays dried mushrooms. Reuters/Elijah Nouvelage
Psychedelic mushrooms can do more than make you see the world in kaleidoscope. Research suggests they may have permanent, positive effects on the human brain.
In fact, a mind-altering compound found in some 200 species of mushroom is already being explored as a potential treatment for depression and anxiety. People who consume these mushrooms, after “trips” that can be a bit scary and unpleasant, report feeling more optimistic, less self-centered, and even happier for months after the fact.
But why do these trips change the way people see the world? According to a study published today in Human Brain Mapping, the mushroom compounds could be unlocking brain states usually only experienced when we dream, changes in activity that could help unlock permanent shifts in perspective.
The study examined brain activity in those who’d received injections of psilocybin, which gives “shrooms” their psychedelic punch. Despite a long history of mushroom use in spiritual practice, scientists have only recently begun to examine the brain activity of those using the compound, and this is the first study to attempt to relate the behavioral effects to biological changes.
Tim Howard Saves America
“Keep your arms in, kids!”
Most Insane Amusement Park Ever Returns
“Part of the fun was actually surviving the day”
“The Alpine Slide was essentially a giant track to rip people’s skin off, disguised as a children’s ride,” recalled a survivor.
Action Park, a death-tempting water park that operated from 1978 to 1996, returns this summer under its original ownership, on its original property.
Some laughed when the park’s hallmark rainbow logo replaced the Mountain Creek sign in Vernon, New Jersey on April Fool’s Day this year. But the timing was intentionally wry and the purchase was for real. Founder Gene Mulvihill’s son Andy has revamped and reopened Action Park as similarly to the original as he could legally manage. So, New Yorkers, get your teenage crew together and hit this place up, if it’s the last thing you ever do.
Nicknamed Accident Park and Class Action Park, the stomping grounds for teenage daredevils saw ten casualties during its prime. And five to ten patrons went to the emergency room per day, so that Action Park literally purchased additional ambulances for the town of Vernon to accommodate the demand rise, the Post reported.
But Action Park was a right of passage for daring teenagers, and nostalgia haunts those lucky enough to have once called the original a summer staple. “It was by far one of the most dangerous situations I’ve ever been in in my entire life,” a New Jersey native recalled fondly in a short documentary.
The old rides included an “utterly chaotic” wave pool and a ride called Cannonball Loop that was “almost physically impossible.”
Of course, none can forget the Alpine Slide, frequented by Jersey’s finest.“You have to take the ski lift to get up there,” former park patron Chris Gethard recalled, “so while you’re on the Alpine Slide you also have people just spitting at you. And you know that’s true because you tried to hit them with your spit on the way up.”
This summer the park will feature several of the old rides (with safety upgrades) plus a new million dollar Zero G water slide.
Founder Gene Mulvihill had his teenage kids operate the rides. “Everyone running the place seemed to be a combination of teenage and drunk or completely apathetic,” a regular recalled in the documentary. With Andy Mulvihill at the helm this summer, the exact same hands run the show.
According to the Post, deaths at the original park resulted from a kayak ride electrocution, drowning in wave pool suction and a heart attack in ice-cold water, to name a few. “When you got to the top of the lift you actually saw photographs of other people that had been maimed,” formerly fearless Seth Rogin explained, “with a sign that said keep your arms in, kids!”
Scenius
AMBIENT GENIUS
The working life of Brian Eno.
BY SASHA FRERE-JONES
In January, 1975, the musician Brian Eno and the painter Peter Schmidt released a set of flash cards they called “Oblique Strategies.” Friends since meeting at art school, in the late sixties, they had long shared guidelines that could pry apart an intellectual logjam, providing options when they couldn’t figure out how to move forward. The first edition consisted of a hundred and fifteen cards. They were black on one side with an aphorism or an instruction printed on the reverse. Eno’s first rule was “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.” Others included “Use non-musicians” and “Tape your mouth.” In “Brian Eno: Visual Music,” a monograph of his musical projects and visual art, Eno, who still uses the rules, says, “ ‘Oblique Strategies’ evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation—particularly in studios—tended to make me quickly forget that there were other ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach.”
Eno is widely known for coining the term “ambient music,” and he produced a clutch of critically revered albums in the nineteen-seventies and eighties—by the Talking Heads, David Bowie, and U2, among others—but if I had to choose his greatest contribution to popular music it would be the idea that musicians do their best work when they have no idea what they’re doing. As he told Keyboard, in 1981, “Any constraint is part of the skeleton that you build the composition on—including your own incompetence.” The genius of Eno is in removing the idea of genius. His work is rooted in the power of collaboration within systems: instructions, rules, and self-imposed limits. His methods are a rebuke to the assumption that a project can be powered by one person’s intent, or that intent is even worth worrying about. To this end, Eno has come up with words like “scenius,” which describes the power generated by a group of artists who gather in one place at one time. (“Genius is individual, scenius is communal,” Eno told the Guardian, in 2010.) It suggests that the quality of works produced in a certain time and place is more indebted to the friction between the people on hand than to the work of any single artist.
Tucker Pukes Up Mama’s Wedding Ring
Diamond dog returns missing wedding ring
By Rose Heaphy
STEVENS POINT (WAOW) – A Stevens Point woman found a special surprise in an unlikely place.
Five years ago, Lois Matykowski lost her wedding ring. Matykowski had given up all hope finding it, until her dog, Tucker, led her to a shocking discovery.
Tucker is your typical mutt. He likes playing with his frisbee and rolling on the grass on a hot summer day. “You wouldn’t think he’s ten years old by the way he acts,” said Matykowski.
Like every pup, he likes getting into trouble. “He’s known in the family to be the food burglar,” said Matykowski.
Two weeks ago, Matykowski and her granddaughter were eating popsicles outside.
“After I turn around and look at my granddaughter and the popsicle is gone and there’s Tucker smacking his jaws,” she said. The “Food Burglar” had struck again, swallowing the popsicle whole.
But the snatched food soon came back up and two days later, Tucker started vomiting again. Only this time, it wasn’t a popsicle stick.
“I look in the paper towel and here is my wedding ring,” Matykowski said. “I kid you not. My wedding ring was in Tucker’s puke!”
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet…”
Secrets of the Creative Brain
A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ—and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness.
Kyle Bean
As a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies creativity, I’ve had the pleasure of working with many gifted and high-profile subjects over the years, but Kurt Vonnegut—dear, funny, eccentric, lovable, tormented Kurt Vonnegut—will always be one of my favorites. Kurt was a faculty member at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the 1960s, and participated in the first big study I did as a member of the university’s psychiatry department. I was examining the anecdotal link between creativity and mental illness, and Kurt was an excellent case study.
He was intermittently depressed, but that was only the beginning. His mother had suffered from depression and committed suicide on Mother’s Day, when Kurt was 21 and home on military leave during World War II. His son, Mark, was originally diagnosed with schizophrenia but may actually have bipolar disorder. (Mark, who is a practicing physician, recounts his experiences in two books, The Eden Express and Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So, in which he reveals that many family members struggled with psychiatric problems. “My mother, my cousins, and my sisters weren’t doing so great,” he writes. “We had eating disorders, co-dependency, outstanding warrants, drug and alcohol problems, dating and employment problems, and other ‘issues.’ ”)
While mental illness clearly runs in the Vonnegut family, so, I found, does creativity. Kurt’s father was a gifted architect, and his older brother Bernard was a talented physical chemist and inventor who possessed 28 patents. Mark is a writer, and both of Kurt’s daughters are visual artists. Kurt’s work, of course, needs no introduction.
For many of my subjects from that first study—all writers associated with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop—mental illness and creativity went hand in hand. This link is not surprising. The archetype of the mad genius dates back to at least classical times, when Aristotle noted, “Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.” This pattern is a recurring theme in Shakespeare’s plays, such as when Theseus, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, observes, “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.” John Dryden made a similar point in a heroic couplet: “Great wits are sure to madness near allied, / And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
Compared with many of history’s creative luminaries, Vonnegut, who died of natural causes, got off relatively easy. Among those who ended up losing their battles with mental illness through suicide are Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent van Gogh, John Berryman, Hart Crane, Mark Rothko, Diane Arbus, Anne Sexton, and Arshile Gorky.
“With that tush, who’d need to be literate?”
Olivia Wilde responds to GQ film critic claiming she is too hot to portray a writer: ‘Kiss my smart a–’
Olivia Wilde has a witty response for someone who claimed she couldn’t have beauty and brains.
The actress portrays a writer in the romantic thriller “Third Person,” but GQ film critic Tom Carson didn’t find her believable in the role due to her looks.
“She’s supposed to be a writer … but your belief in that won’t outlast (Olivia) Wilde scampering naked through hotel corridors,” Carson wrote in his review of the film. “With that tush, who’d need to be literate? Who’d want to?”
When Jezebel tweeted about Carson’s backhanded compliment, Wilde responded with acerbic humor.
“HA,” she tweeted Tuesday. “Kiss my smart a–, GQ.”