Join New Canaan Resident & Author James Frey for Lunch
Join New Canaan Resident & Author James Frey for Lunch
Join worldwide bestselling author and New Canaan resident James Frey at The Bedford Post ‘Literary Lunch Series’ on Thursday February 27 from 11.30am – 2.00pm.
Frey is the author of controversial bestsellers “A Million Little Pieces”, “My Friend Leonard”, “Bright Shiny Morning” and “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible”. Frey is also the Founder and CEO of Full Fathom Five, a transmedia production company responsible for the New York Times–bestselling young adult series “The Lorien Legacies”. The first book of which “I Am Number Four” (2010) was made into a hit feature film by DreamWorks Studios. His next book, “Endgame”, will be released in October 2014 in partnership with Harper Collins, Google and 20th Century Fox.
This forthcoming event has caused a great deal of excitement in our household. My husband and I are avid readers of Frey’s.
A couple of month’s ago I attended the Anjelica Huston literary lunch at the Bedford Post, which was excellent. The informal style enables you to relax, chat, eat good food then listen to the author speak freely.
Return of the The 808
UNBOXING THE 808: SHOULD WE BE EXCITED ABOUT ITS RETURN?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’ll have witnessed the nerdier corners of the web aflutter at the news that Roland is launching the “Aira TR08,” a product indebted to the TR-808 drum machine.
Aside from a YouTube teaser — which features Roland engineers poking and prodding a jealousy-inducing room full of mint TR-808s — a full announcement has yet to be made. On second hand sites, the machines tend to retail upwards of £2400, suggesting that they are more in-demand than ever and that analog synth aficionados have been praying for a moment like this one for many years. But will reality match up with the feverish expectations? Time to take a look at the 808: the history of the machine, how it came to prominence, the hits that defined it, and whether the prospect of a true reissue is at all likely.
In historical terms, the release of the original TR-808 in 1980 was a footnote in an otherwise unremarkable year for Roland. The tail-end of the ’70s had provided a wealth of new innovations from Ikutaro Kakehashi’s design team. Their behemoth modular synth, the Roland System 100, had baffled and dazzled those who could find enough money and space in their house for it, whilst the glorious effects of the VP300 Vocoder Plus had paved the way for the “singing robot” and new forms of futuristic, funky music.
He didn’t show an ounce of self-doubt
You Remember James Frey?
Is he an example of a writer who completely outgrew his addiction?
by Stanton Peele in Addiction in Society
Recovery manual, or what?
It’s hard to summarize the James Frey story. He wrote a wildly best-selling memoir about his drug and alcohol addiction, A Million Little Pieces, in which it turned out he exaggerated the extremity of his behavior and for which Oprah famously confronted him on her show.One thing that was ignored about Pieces was that it was anti-12-step and that Frey opposed the disease theory of addiction throughout his book, including his stay at Hazelden (the name of the rehab was disguised).
“I’d rather have that (relapse and death) than spend my life in Church basements listening to people whine and bitch and complain. That’s not productivity to me, nor is it progress. It is the replacement of one addiction with another.”
“I know I won’t ever believe in the Twelve Steps. People like you keep saying it’s the only way, so I’m thinking that I might as well just put myself out of my misery now and save myself and my family the pain.”
“Addiction is not a disease…Diseases are destructive medical conditions that human beings do not control…I don’t think it does me any good to accept anything other than myself and my own weakness as a root cause.”
Everyone just assumed Frey was a 12-stepper, and that his book was a recovery manual—in his earlier appearances on Oprah he seemed to play to this assumption, without declaring himself one way or the other.
Flash forward. Frey took a hit from Oprah and his publisher, but he recovered to write several more adult best sellers and then started his own production company. In subsequent Oprah shows he and the host kissed and made up. Frey has emerged from the entire experience fundamentally unapologetic about it.
He was thrilling, condescending, rude, empowering, and haughty. “He didn’t show an ounce of self-doubt,” says Philip Eil, then a first-year nonfiction student. “Not a second of wavering. He was 110 percent that there was no truth, that he would live forever through his books.”
Meanwhile, Frey turned himself into a highly profitable industry (now called Big Jim Industries!) and wrote the best-selling young-adult series “The Lorien Legacies,” of which the first book, I Am Number Four, was made into a hit film by DreamWorks.
So, there is a lot of good news about Frey, and many people find Frey is an extremely good story teller and writer.
Vice Dotcom
The Great Mae Young Gone
Mae Young, Unladylike Wrestler Who Loved to Be Hated, Dies at 90
Mae Young — make that the Great Mae Young — who pulled hair and took cheap shots, who preferred actually fighting to pretending, who was, by her own account and that of many other female wrestlers, the greatest and dirtiest of them all, died on Tuesday in Columbia, S.C. She was 90, and her last round in the ring was in 2010.
“She just was a rough, tough broad,” Ella Waldek, another early wrestler, who died last year, once put it.
Stories of her fierceness followed Ms. Young into her first professional match, in 1939. She had learned to wrestle with boys on her high school team in Oklahoma, and played football with them, too.
In professional wrestling, there are baby faces and heels, and she never doubted which one she would be.
“Anybody can be a baby face, what we call a clean wrestler,” she said in“Lipstick & Dynamite: The First Ladies of Wrestling,” a 2004 documentary. “They don’t have to do nothing. It’s the heel that carries the whole show. I’ve always been a heel, and I wouldn’t be anything else but.”
A MONSTER FOR TEA by Walter Williams
The Metrics Of The Beast
How Iron Maiden turned piracy into paying customers
Iron Maiden has done a great job of going where its fans were, even if those fans were pirates. The band has focused extensively on South American tours in recent years, one of which was filmed for the documentary “Flight 666.” After all, fans can’t download a concert or t-shirts. The result was massive sellouts. The São Paolo show alone grossed £1.58 million (US$2.58 million) alone.
And in a positive cycle, Maiden’s online fanbase grew. According to Musicmetric, in the 12 months ending May 31, 2012, the band attracted more than 3.1 million social media fans. After its Maiden England world tour, which ran from June 2012 to October 2013, Maiden’s fan base grew by five million online fans, with a significant increase in popularity in South America.
While the band did not use Musicmetric’s analysis directly, Mead notes, “Maiden have been rather successful in turning free file-sharing into fee-paying fans.” Other bands could take a lesson from the heavy metal band’s success.
Chryssa Gone
Chryssa, Artist Who Saw Neon’s Potential as a Medium, Dies at 79
By MARGALIT FOX
Chryssa, a Greek-born American sculptor who in the 1960s was one of the first people to transform neon lighting from an advertising vehicle into a fine art medium, died on Dec. 23. She was 79.
Her death, which was reported in the Greek press, was not widely publicized outside the country. Perhaps fittingly for an artist whose work centered on enigma, the place of her death could not be confirmed; the Greek news media reported that she was buried in Athens.
Chryssa, who used only her first name professionally, had lived variously in New York and Athens over the years.
A builder of large-scale assemblages in a wide range of materials — bronze, aluminum, plaster, wood, canvas, paint, found objects and, in the case of neon, light itself — Chryssa, whose work prefigured Minimalism and Pop Art, was considered a significant presence on the American art scene in the ’60s and ’70s.
Exhibited widely in the United States in those years, her art is in the collections of major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.
Reviewing an exhibition of Chryssa’s neon sculptures at the Pace Gallery in Manhattan in 1968, The New York Times called one work, “Study for the Gates No. 15,” “a pure, lyrical form,” adding, “It transcends ‘neon-ness’ to become a sculpture of light devoid of pop or Broadway associations.”
Christ The Redeemer Gives Us The Finger
Lightning breaks finger off Rio’s Christ statue
By News.com.au
Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.
Father Omar, rector of the shrine that holds the statue, told the Globo radio station that lightning frequently strikes the nearly 100-foot tall statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the Corcovado mountain.
Its right hand had been damaged sometime ago, but the finger finally broke off in a storm late Thursday.
PW Exclusive: James Frey Talks Endgame
PW Exclusive: James Frey Talks Endgame
By Rachel Deahl
James Frey doesn’t do things in a quiet way. Since his literary career imploded after questions surfaced about the veracity of his addiction memoir, A Million Little Pieces, Frey has moved on to bigger projects. In 2010 he launched his own company called Full Fathom Five, to package young adult novels and series. While some in the press railed against the outfit as a “fiction factory,” it has been productive. FFF was behind the YA series-turned-film I Am Number Four and, yesterday, announced its most ambitious project to date: a multi-platform series called Endgame that will feature a geo-location game (created by Google), a series of books and novellas co-written by Frey (to be published by HarperCollins), and a forthcoming film adaptation (being produced by 20th Century Fox).
Endgame, for which the film rights alone fetched a reported $2 million, is the kind of elaborate project, exploiting IP across a range of media, that many in publishing feel is the future. Frey talked to PW about the series, the intricacies of orchestrating a story that will exist in multiple forms, and whether he’s still angry about being ambushed on Oprah.PW: Can you explain how the project came together? Were you conceiving of the storyline, initially, as just a book? A book and a movie?
JF: It was conceived as a project that would exist across multiple platforms, and that the story would be told in books, novellas, games, film, and TV. [We also knew it] would have a social media presence, and exist in places – such as search results and mapping coordinates and YouTube – that aren’t traditionally mediums for storytelling and writing.
PW: When did the gaming element come into play?
JF: My first conversations with Google Niantic were approximately a year ago.
[ click to continue reading at PublishersWeekly.com ]
OTHER MENTIONS…
— HarperCollins to Publish New Novels by James Frey – NEW YORK TIMES
— Google’s Niantic follows Ingress with Endgame – C|NET
— ‘Pieces’ Author Frey Has Multibook, Media Deal – ABC NEWS
— James Frey wins $2m deal for young adult SF novel – THE GUARDIAN
— ‘Pieces’ author Frey has multibook, media deal – WASHINGTON POST
— HarperCollins, Google’s Niantic Labs, 20th Century Fox Collaborate With Bestselling Author James Frey On Next Generation Cross-Media Project, ENDGAME – WALL STREET JOURNAL MARKETWATCH
— ‘Pieces’ author Frey has multi-book, media deal – THE JAMAICA OBSERVER
Wow, man, like… killing people is heavy.
Death Moose
It got so cold so quickly in this Norwegian bay that it froze a bunch of fish swimming in it
By Will Lerner
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) has put up some striking photos of water off the coast of Lovund, a small island off of Norway. Though it was “only” -7.8°C (18 °F), a sharp eastern wind was enough to freeze a large quantity of fish in place.
This is not the first instance of an animal being caught frozen in a Norwegian body of water. Last week, Inger Sjøberg, came across a moose stuck and frozen in Kosmo Lake. Poor guy. The NRK reports that it is the fourth most common cause of death for moose (also known as European elk) after hunting, traffic, and bears.
Fish Eat Bird
Amiri Baraka Gone
from The New Jersey Star-Ledger
Amiri Baraka, former N.J. poet laureate and prolific author, dead at 79
By David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger
NEWARK — Amiri Baraka, the longtime activist and former poet laureate of New Jersey died today, officials confirmed. He was 79 years old.
A Newark native and resident formerly known as Leroi Jones, Amiri Baraka has published dozens of poems, essays and works of non-fiction. In 1963 Amiri Baraka wrote “Blues People,” an in-depth history of music from the time of slavery throughout the various incarnations of blues and jazz, with integrated social commentary. The book’s 50th anniversary was recently celebrated during an event at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
In 1964, Baraka published the book of poetry, “Dead Lecturer” that marked a significant transition in his career. Also written under the name Leroi Jones, the book featured more traditional poems but also laid the groundwork for the more radical, experimental work that would come to define his later career.
“He was able to put music into the work, even reading the work,” said Maria Maziotti Gillan, a poet and the director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. “Mostly he was able to capture an audience when he spoke. He was a able to capture an audience through his poetry but also through what he had to say.”
Going hot and heavy over Endgame
Fox Takes James Frey’s ‘Endgame’ In Year’s First 7-Figure Deal With Google In The Mix
UPDATED: 9:48 PM: Fox landed James Frey’s Endgame, and the deal was around $2 million with Temple Hill partners Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen. Details will be forthcoming, but Google is involved. Fox joins sister company HarperCollins, which bought publishing rights. Here is what the book’s about: In a world similar to Earth, there are 12 bloodlines, or races. Each bloodline has a champion between the ages of 13 and 17 who is trained as a warrior and is always ready to do battle. When they turn 18, the teen warrior behind them gets promoted. This has been the case for hundreds of years, but no one remembers why — they’re always ready for some sort of battle to take place, but it never does. But the tradition continues. And then one day they’re called to fight, and all the bloodlines but the winners will be exterminated. They’re fighting to be the last race. WME brokered.
EARLIER EXCLUSIVE, 2:56 pm PST: In the first bidding battle of the new year, Fox and Warner Bros are going hot and heavy over Endgame, a Hunger Games-type young-adult novel by James Frey.
Return Of Frogger
Internet Archive puts classic 70s and 80s games online
Classics like the original Donkey Kong can be found in the archive
Classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser for nothing.
The collection has launched with games from five early home consoles, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision.
The games do not have sound, but will soon, the Internet Archive said.
“In coming months, the playable software collection will expand greatly,”archivist Jason Scott wrote.
“Making these vintage games available to the world, instantly, allows for commentary, education, enjoyment and memory for the history they are a part of.”
The other machines included are the Atari 7800, the Magnavox Odyssey (known as the Philips Videopac G7000 in Europe) and the Astrocade.
Well-recognised titles such as Pacman, Space Invaders and Frogger are all in the archive – with more consoles and games expected soon.
Niagara Vortex
PICTURE OF THE DAY
The US side of the Niagara Falls pictured from Ontario, Canada. The frigid air and “polar vortex” that affected about 240 million people in the United States and southern Canada is forecast to begin moving on today.
R29: James Frey’s 6 Books You Need To Read This Winter
James Frey’s Reading List: 6 Books You Need This Winter
KRISTIAN LALIBERTE, SENIOR EDITOR
Even if one of your New Year’s resolutions wasn’t to read more, we think we could all benefit from less Bachelor-watching and more Bovary. PS, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a book first. Jersey Shore wasn’t.
To help you get your literature on during the long, dark winter nights, we turned to author James Frey for a winter-reading hit-list. Whether you’re a fan of Frey or not, we think his six picks, which range from a tale of models-turned-terrorists to a kid’s book you’ll want to steal from your nephew, are the perfect (equally gripping) alternatives to, say, Emily Thorne’s quest for vengeance. PPS: Us Weekly doesn’t count as reading, either.
THE RAVEN (Harper & Brothers, 1884)
From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division
Title: The raven – [Catalog record]
| LC Digital Collections Home | Higher Quality Images |
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| LC Digital Collections Home | Higher Quality Images |
F†ck Record
‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Breaks F-Word Record
Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is all about excess. From orgies on a plane to cocaine and cash (or “fun coupons” as Leonardo DiCaprio’s character calls them), the financial drama thrives in taking it up a notch.
So it should be no surprise that Paramount’s R-rated film sets the all-time record for the use of the f-word.
According to Wikipedia, the word “fuck” is used 506 times over “The Wolf of Wall Street’s” 180-minute running time. Previously, the record for a non-documentary was Spike Lee’s 1999 film “Summer of Sam” with 435 instances.
In A Manner Of Tuxedo
SMH: Must-read books for 2014
from The Sydney Morning Herald
Next chapter: must-read books for 2014
Jane Sullivan
There’s plenty across all genres to please bibliophiles this year.
There’s a war on in the world of books. It began 100 years ago, and publishers will mark the centenary of World War I with a barrage of history books, memoirs, first-hand recollections and Great War-themed fiction.
But it’s not only old battles being fought out on paper. From Hillary Clinton to Julia Gillard, leaders and former leaders are looking back, taking stock and producing memoirs, collaborating with biographers, or simply writing on something about which they are passionate.
Other highlights are Hanif Kureishi’s first novel in six years, The Last Word (Faber & Faber, February); Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music (Pan Macmillan, March); Alice Hoffman’s The Museum of Extraordinary Things (Simon & Schuster, April); and three titles from Hachette: David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (September); James Frey’s Il Divino Bambino (June); and Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests (September)
.
[ click to read full article at The Sydney Morning Herald ]
Working Scale-replica of The Ghostbusters Car
HAPPY 2014! The Year of The Perfect Bacon Bowl
One Argument for Why Eagles Should Be Killed
Giant yellow duck explodes in Taiwan…again
Taipei (AFP) – A giant yellow duck on display in a northern Taiwan port exploded Tuesday, just hours before it was expected to attract a big crowd to count down the new year.
The 18-metre-tall (59-feet) duck on show at Keelung burst around noon and deflated into a floating yellow disc, only 11 days after it went on display.
It was the second time that a giant inflatable duck — a bath toy replica created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman — had burst while on show in Taiwan.
“We want to apologise to the fans of the yellow rubber duck…. the weather is fine today and we haven’t found the cause of the problem. We will carefully examine the duck to determine the cause,” organiser Huang Jing-tai told reporters.
The Central News Agency cited an eyewitness as saying the rubber bird might have fallen victim to eagles which scratched it with their claws.
Those Who’ve Got Your Back Are Always The Best
Stevie Ray Vaughan doesn’t miss a note as his roadie seamlessly replaces his guitar mid-song
BY ABRAHAM
When Stevie Ray Vaughan broke a string in the middle of a song, his guitar tech Rene Martinez played his role perfectly…
Books Really Do Make Your Brain Grow
Brain function ‘boosted for days after reading a novel’
Being pulled into the world of a gripping novel can trigger actual, measurable changes in the brain that linger for at least five days after reading, scientists have said.
The new research, carried out at Emory University in the US, found that reading a good book may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a similar way to muscle memory.
The changes were registered in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, as well as the the primary sensory motor region of the brain.
Neurons of this region have been associated with tricking the mind into thinking it is doing something it is not, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition – for example, just thinking about running, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.
“The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist,” said neuroscientist Professor Gregory Berns, lead author of the study.
“We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”
F†ck you, Captain Tom
from Adrian Belew’s ‘elephant blog’
Anecdote #646 part 1
Uneasy Meetings with Gods part one.
place: a Frank Zappa concert in Cologne, Germany 2/14/1978 – my first tour of europe ever and as a member the frank zappa band. although I wasn’t aware, this night brian eno is in the audience. next day eno calls david bowie knowing david is looking for a new guitarist.
Berlin, Germany 2/15/1978 the following night david comes to the show ostensibly to see me play. there is a break in the show where I normally leave the stage while frank plays an extended guitar solo. as I’m leaving I glance over to the monitor board. I’m shocked to see david bowie and iggy pop! I walk over, shaking david’s hand I say, “I’ve always loved your music”. “great”, he says, “how’d you like to join my band?!” “well, I’m playing with this guy right now…” I stammer, pointing to frank. “yes, I know, but your tour ends in two weeks and mine begins two weeks later.” we agree to meet back at the hotel after the show.
what followed was like something out of a spy film. david and his assistant coco tried to rendezvous with me without letting anyone in on our little “secret”. I suppose the idea was to avoid letting frank know I was being wooed away from his band. I was too dumb to notice. at one point, david, coco, and I stepped into the hotel elevator when no one was around. whispering, coco said, “we have a car out front. we’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
david wanted to take me to one of his favorite restaurants to discuss my future. he had lived in berlin for several years. so his driver set off with the three of us in the back madly chatting about songs we’d play and places we’d go. we pulled up to a nice looking restaurant and walked in.
at the table right in front of us sat frank and some of the band!
the jig was up as they say.
can you imagine? how many restaurants are there in berlin?
so we invited ourselves to join them at their table.
feeling slightly uncomfortable david tried to engage frank in friendly discourse.
david said, “really enjoyed the show”.
frank shot back, “fuck you captain tom”.
“c’mon frank, we can be adults about this, can’t we?” david replied.
“fuck you captain tom.”
Go You Dirty Dogs!
Having a dog — even a dirty one — may help fend off allergies in young children
By Nathan Seppa and ScienceNews
Dogs that bring outdoor dust into the house might actually be doing a favor for babies in the home. Research suggests that exposure to doggy dust imparts immune protection to infants. A study of mice shows that the benefits derive from microbes in the dust that enter the intestines and improve the microbial mix, steering the immune system toward fighting disease and away from initiating allergic reactions.
The findings present a microbial twist in the hygiene hypothesis, which argues that a less-than-sanitary early life may prime a child’s immune system against overreacting to grass, dust mites and other ordinary substances. Past studies suggested that babies exposed to multiple siblings, day care, pets or farm living grow up to have less risk of asthma or allergy.
In the new study, researchers found that dust from a house with a dog contained more-diverse microbes than dust from a home with no pets. Since human infants ingest at least some dust, the scientists fed one kind of dust or the other to mice that were six to eight weeks old. Although unappetizing, it had the desired effect: Exposure to the dog-house dust greatly toned down reactions in the mice that were exposed to a common trigger, cockroach allergen.
Mice getting the no-dog dust had inflammation in airways. They also had evidence of excess mucus and immune proteins that are common in allergic reactions. But these reactions were virtually absent in mice that had been primed with the dog dust, the scientists reported last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Turing
Alan Turing, code-breaker castrated for homosexuality, receives royal pardon
Castrated code-breaker receives pardon
(CNN) — Alan Turing, a British code-breaker during World War II who was later subjected to chemical castration for homosexual activity, has received a royal pardon nearly 60 years after he committed suicide.
Turing was best known for developing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine that deciphered messages encoded by German machines. His work is considered by many to have saved thousands of lives and helped change the course of the war.
“Dr. Turing deserves to be remembered and recognized for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science,” British Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said in a statement Tuesday. “A pardon from the Queen is a fitting tribute to an exceptional man.”
Turing’s castration in 1952 — after he was convicted of homosexual activity, which was illegal at the time — is “a sentence we would now consider unjust and discriminatory and which has now been repealed,” Grayling said.
Two years after the castration, which Turing chose to avoid a custodial sentence, he ended his life at the age of 41 by eating an apple laced with cyanide.