Honeydew And Basil Pops
Honeydew and Basil Pops
Michael McNamara/The Arizona Republic
Martie Sullivan of Sweet Basil
1 small honeydew melon, rind and seeds removed, and cut into 1-inch cubes
6 basil leaves
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup watermelon chunks for garnish
For Zoku Quick Pops, puree 12 cubes of honeydew, basil leaves, lime juice and sugar in a blender. Pour into…
National Donut Day
- Today is also National Egg Day & Repeat Day & Chimborazo Day
- June is Gay Pride Month & Great Outdoors Month
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Hookahs Can Be Unhealthy – No Shit.
Putting a Crimp in the Hookah
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
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Steve Kagan for The New York Times Kevin Shapiro, 20, and his sister Allison, 18, on the deck of the family home in Chicago. |
Kevin Shapiro, a 20-year-old math and physics major at the University of Pennsylvania, first tried a hookah at a campus party. He liked the exotic water pipe so much that he chipped in to buy one for his fraternity house, where he says it makes a useful social lubricant at parties.
Like many other students who are embracing hookahs on campuses nationwide, Mr. Shapiro believes that hookah smoke is less dangerous than cigarette smoke because it “is filtered through water, so you get fewer solid particles.”
“Considering I don’t do it that often, once a month if that, I’m not really concerned with the health effects,” he added.
But in fact, hookahs are far from safe.
Bob Dylan On PAWN STARS
Lost Films
LOST FILMS is a new internet portal aimed at collecting and documenting film titles, which are believed or have been declared “lost”. The ARCHIVE currently contains over 3500 entries, a number of which are extensively illustrated with surviving documents contributed by archives and individuals worldwide.
The IDENTIFY section contains images and short video clips of around 50 unknown or unidentified films, which face the danger of also becoming lost if not identified by members. The aim of LOST FILMS is not to produce a definitive list of lost films but to provide a platform where members can frequently – and freely – exchange, add and update information.
To become a member of LOST FILMS, please click here.
The Inflatable Salad Bar for Just $2.99 (+$4.99 shipping)
Zombie Love Teresa Palmer
from the LA Times’ HERO COMPLEX
Teresa Palmer on ‘I Am Number Four’ sequel and ‘Warm Bodies’ zombie love
Teresa Palmer is Number Six in “I Am Number Four” (John Bramley / DreamWorks)
Teresa Palmer may have gotten her face on the DVD box cover for “I Am Number Four,” but the Australian actress has surprisingly little screen time in this sci-fi release from February that hits home video Tuesday. She talked recently about writer James Frey, her lack of knowledge about Mogadorians and her hopes for a sequel. Apparently, her character – Number Six — will be around a whole lot more in the sequel, as you might have expected from the ending of the first film.
PKD: Does “I Am Number Four” have a fan base? Have you heard from them?
TP: Oh yeah! I mean the whole reason I started on Twitter [was that] I was meeting so many people who were fans of the movie and the books and they wanted to ask questions. Then someone suggested I get on Twitter. So what I’ve been doing is that every now and then I’ll do a Q&A on Twitter. But the majority of the questions are about the film and Number Six and the sequels. People have really embraced the movie, which is exciting.
PKD: There were a lot of bigwigs behind this movie: Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, James Frey. Were they all hanging around during the making of the movie?
TP: I met Spielberg for the first time at the premiere. He was calling me Number Six. He was very sweet and very humble and down to earth. Unaffected by his great level of fame and success. Michael Bay I’ve known for a couple of years now. He was shooting his own movie while we were shooting “Number Four.” He was making the latest “Transformers,” so he wasn’t around. But James came to set. And he hung out and he pitched us the idea for the second book and definitely had a say in the film. He’s obviously seriously talented.
PKD: Did you talk to him about the “Million Little Pieces” controversy? Was he open about it?
TP: Yeah, he was open about it. He certainly didn’t try to brush it under the carpet. He’s a really good guy and did an amazing job on the film. It was a pleasure to work with him.
From The Breakfast Club to I Am Number Four
From The Breakfast Club to I Am Number Four: 9 of the Sexiest High School Outcasts in Film
Hollywood has a habit of tapping unrealistically attractive actors to play onscreen outcasts, like in I Am Number Four (available on DVD and Blu-ray this week from DreamWorks), which boldly appointed bad boy Adonis Alex Pettyfer as its alien loner and blonde beauty Dianna Agron as his nerdy shutterbug crush. In honor of these ironic casting choices, Movieline has compiled nine other knockouts that played high school outsiders.
Just click here to launch the gallery.
Gil Scott-Heron Gone
Musician, poet Gil Scott-Heron dies
Poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron died Friday at age 62 in New York, NPR reported, citing his book publisher.
He is best known for his spoken-word piece “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” but he also recorded the seminal “We Almost Lost Detroit.” He is considered a progenitor of hip-hop and inspired a generation of rappers with his no-nonsense street poetry. Rapper Kanye West has sampled Scott-Heron’s voice.A cause of death was not immediately reported.
Richard Phillips Gets Biblical @ Paddle8
Richard Phillips for Paddle8
The Pop Artist Gets Biblical for a Groundbreaking Online Exhibition
Matchmaking art stars with collectors, new digital platform Paddle8 teams up with high-profile galleries to mount online exhibitions devoid of geographical constraints. The site’s inaugural group show, Saturation, presents work by such heavy-hitters as Cerith Wyn Evans, Roe Ethridge and pop maestro Richard Phillips, who opened his studio for the images above. Phillips, who is represented by the Gagosian and White Cube, will show his pastel and gouache drawing “II Esther,” which sees model Gemma Ward stand in for the Old Testament queen. “The idea came from James Frey asking me to create an illuminated manuscript for his new book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible,” he says.
Blackberry Arugula Salad With Peppery Pork
Malerie Marder: LABOR OF LOVE
Malerie Marder
LABOR OF LOVE
by Charlie Finch
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Celebrated actor spouses Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard hosted a party last week at their Park Slope home for photographer Malerie Marder‘s comprehensive new volume of her entire oeuvre to date, Carnal Knowledge, just out from Violette Editions. Malerie, a friend of Peter Sarsgaard since their student days at Bard College, is one of the most gracious artists around, blushing at compliments from Philip-Lorca diCorcia her dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who told me she is only doing guest appearances on Work of Art this season, and Artforum publisher Knight Landesman, once again wearing road-reflector orange. When asked why, Knight responded, “These days, I am addicted to orange, Charlie, I cannot wear any other color.”
I am addicted to Malerie Marder’s work, proud to have a piece purchased eight years ago, Emma, included in the book, and I would also be blushing at all the frontal nudity therein, if it were not for the democratic nature of Marder’s vision. Peter Sarsgaard modeled for Malerie at the start of her career and, since then, she has gently stripped and visually caressed all kinds of people, making them all as sweetly naive as fauns and as sexy as movie stars in the process.
A luxurious volume, which includes essays by writers such as A.M. Homes and James Frey responding to individual snaps, Carnal Knowledgesapped Malerie’s strength for four years, as she struggled to get the images right and secure the finances to publish.
Art Healing Ministry
Can a Picasso Cure You?
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
The conceptual artist Alexander Melamid has created a storefront clinic in SoHo where visitors will be “treated” through exposure to fine art.
By CHARLES McGRATH
The Russian-born artist Alexander Melamid is by nature an ironist, so adept at serving as his own straight man that it’s hard to tell how seriously he means to be taken. He may not know himself.
Mr. Melamid and Vitaly Komar, a fellow Russian émigré, were for years a highly visible Conceptual art duo in New York. They were known for monumental paintings, including one of Stalin killing himself in a New Jersey motel, in the style of Socialist Realism, and for teaching elephants in Thailand how to paint like Abstract Expressionists.
Their most famous project was probably “The People’s Choice,” in which they polled people about their preferences in art and determined that what everyone really wanted to look at was a landscape with lots of blue, some animals and a historical figure or two. A painting they did according to this recipe — the ideal painting for Americans, they maintained — featured George Washington and some present-day picnickers by a bucolic lake with a hippo in the background.
Digital Killed The Physical Book
The End of the Book?
By John Steele Gordon
Saturday, May 21, 2011
| The book business will go through a transformation in the next decade or so more profound than any it has seen since Johannes Gutenberg introduced printing from moveable type in the 1450s. Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the country, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more books in its electronic Kindle format than in the old paper-and-ink format. That is remarkable, considering that the Kindle has only been around for four years. E-books now account for 14 percent of all book sales in this country and are increasing far faster than overall book sales. E-book sales are up 146 percent over last year, while hardback sales increased 6 percent and paperbacks decreased 8 percent. Does this spell the doom of the physical book? Certainly not immediately, and perhaps not at all. What it does mean is that the book business will go through a transformation in the next decade or so more profound than any it has seen since Gutenberg introduced printing from moveable type in the 1450s. |
Everything’s A Remix: Kill Bill
Yahoo! Spike
What’s Spiking on Yahoo! 5/24
These are some of the top items that we are seeing spike in Search on Yahoo!
American Idol: If searches are any indication of a winner this year, Scott McCreery has quite the race ahead of him against Lauren Alaina — Lauren Alaina gets nearly 9 times the searches of Scott McCreery on Yahoo!, based on data from the past 7 days.
Dancing: The finale for Dancing With The Stars is tonight and people are turning to the web to search. According to searches on Yahoo! the top dancer is: Kirstie Alley followed by Chelsea Kane.
Who Is ?: People often turn to the web for answers to their questions. Some of the top “who is” questions this week on Yahoo! include: “who is Hines Ward”, “who is the Schwarzenegger staff member”, “who is james frey”, “who is the girl with the dragon tattoo”, “who is the girl in the t-mobile commercial”, “who is big papa” (referencing Real Housewives of Atlanta), “who is the richest man in the world.”
[ click to read full item at The Daily Buzz ]
Research Study Proves That People Like To Say The Word “Fuck” on Facebook
47% of Facebook Users Have Profanity on Their Wall
By reppler
It has been a little over a month since we launched Reppler so we thought it would be a good time to share some statistics we have collected. These statistics, based on the scanning of the Facebook Wall of the over 30,000 users that have used the Reppler service so far, might be surprising to you:
- 47% of our users have profanity on their Facebook Wall.
- 80% of our users who have profanity on their Facebook Wall have at least one post/comment with profanity from a friend.
- 56% of the posts/comments with profanity on a user’s Facebook Wall come from friends.
- Users are twice as likely to use profanity in a post on their Facebook Wall, versus a comment. Whereas friends are twice as likely to use profanity in a comment on a user’s Facebook Wall, versus a post.
- The most common profane word is derivations of the “f-word”. The second most common profane word is derivations of the word “sh*t”. ”B*tch” is a distant third.
The prevalence of profanity on Facebook Walls is an increasingly important issue as a user’s Facebook profile comes under closer scrutiny, particularly by employers as they screen job applicants. Here’s a recent Washington Post article that talks about how the use of obscenity in a work environment can impact how others perceive a person.
Most Outrageous Lady Gaga Move Yet: Full-album Download of BORN THIS WAY for $.99
Lamenting the lack of “satirical clarity”…
Notes of a Screenwriter, Mad as Hell
United Artists
The screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky(1923-1981) won an Academy Award for his jeremiad “Network” (1976), starring Faye Dunaway.
By DAVE ITZKOFF
LAMENTING the lack of “satirical clarity” in the screenplay he was laboring on in the early 1970s, Paddy Chayefsky was mad at himself and American television viewers at large. He was seeing the venomous spirit of the era of Watergate and the Vietnam War infiltrate every program the broadcast networks offered, from their news shows to their sitcoms, and he concluded in a typewritten note to himself that the American people “don’t want jolly, happy family type shows like Eye Witness News”; no, he wrote, “the American people are angry and want angry shows.” He had set out to write a comedy, but if his film script was funny at all, he said, “the only joke we have going for us is the idea of ANGER.”
In the following months, Chayefsky channeled that fury and his intense frustration with television — the medium he described in another note as “an indestructible and terrifying giant that is stronger than the government” — into the screenplay for “Network,” his dark satire about an unstable news anchor and a broadcasting company and a viewing public all too happy to follow him over the brink of sanity.
“Network,” directed by Sidney Lumet and released in 1976, won four Academy Awards, including Oscars for Chayefsky’s script, Faye Dunaway’s performance as a cynical programming executive and Peter Finch’s frenetic portrayal of Howard Beale, the troubled “mad prophet of the airwaves.”
Thirty-five years later, “Network” remains an incendiary if influential film, and its screenplay is still admired as much for its predictive accuracy as for its vehemence: a relentless sense of purpose that is even more palpable in the files Chayefsky left behind upon his death in 1981.
Raw Video Of Osama bin Laden’s Burial At Sea
With Thanks Be To Oprah
from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Oprah the Book Fairy: The Astounding Success of the Oprah Book Club
You can bet publisher’s are going to miss Oprah as much as her viewers when her long-running show wraps up next week. Nielsen has just released an accounting of the impact of Oprah’s Book Club on the sales of the books chosen.
In the last ten years she has sold over 22 million copies of books bearing her Book Club branding.
Her full impact on book sales is hard to quantify but there are some amazing concrete numbers regarding how many books bearing the Oprah Book Club selection imprint have sold. For example, the Oprah trade paperback edition of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey sold 2.7 million copies and her edition of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road sold 1.4 million copies.
57 Years Of Luscious Airbrushed Flesh Online
Playboy puts all 57 years of mags online
CHICAGO (AP) — Good news for those who thought their copies of Playboy were gone forever when their moms found them and threw them away.
Playboy launched a Web-based subscription service Thursday called i.Playboy.com that allows viewers to see every single page of every single magazine – from the first issue nearly 60 years ago that featured Marilyn Monroe to the ones hitting the newsstands today.
“They no longer have to store 57 years – 682 issues – of Playboy under their mattress,” said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy’s chief content officer.
Chicago-based Playboy has seen its circulation plummet from 3.15 million in 2006 to 1.5 million today and has been trying all sorts of gimmicks to attract readers in recent years. One issue, for example, included a set of 3-D glasses to better see a centerfold shot in 3-D; another turned over the cover to a cartoon character, Marge Simpson.
Macho Man Randy Savage Gone
Pro Wrestler Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage Dies in Car Accident, Report Says
The accident happened in Tampa Bay, Fla. according to Savage’s brother, Lanny Poffo.
He told TMZ the accident happened Friday morning when Savage lost control of his vehicle.
Florida Highway Patrol said Savage leapt a concrete median, veered into oncoming traffic and smashed into a tree head on.
FLAVORWIRE: 10 Novels That Will Disturb Even the Coldest of Hearts
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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
If you take away the epilogue, this novel tells an unbelievably miserable story of confinement and misogynistic rule. In the near future, the United States is overthrown by the pernicious Sons of Jacob, who then establish the Republic of Gilead. The bank accounts of women and other undesirables are frozen, and a group known as Handmaids become the hosts for the future children of the ruling class. Atwood’s prose is beautiful and chilling, as always.
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MAY EVENTS AT INDIGO BOOKS AND MUSIC
MAY EVENTS AT INDIGO BOOKS AND MUSIC
IN CONVERSATION: INDIGO CEO HEATHER REISMAN AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR JAMES FREY Indigo CEO and Chief Booklover, Heather Reisman sits down with controversial novelist James Frey to discuss his newest book, The Final Testament of The Holy Bible. Sure to inspire conversation, Frey’s newest book is his reimagining of the Messiah as a figure living in present day. Book signing to follow. Indigo Bay & Bloor 55 Bloor Street West (at Bay Street), Toronto, ON Wednesday, May 18th, 7:00 pm.
Christo And The Sheep
Christo: Arkansas River Artwork Won’t Hurt Sheep
Christo (credit: CBS)
SALIDA, Colo. (AP) – An artist known for his large-scale projects says his proposal to put silvery, luminous fabric panels over the Arkansas River won’t hurt bighorn sheep.
The panels in Christo’s project would span eight sections along a 40-mile stretch of the river between Salida and Canon City and require drilling anchors. The project is expected to take two years.
Colorado wildlife commissioners voted to send a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management expressing concerns over how the project would affect the sheep, according to the Pueblo Chieftain.
Christo says protecting wildlife and the environment is important and he will address the concerns that were raised.
BIG THINK: “The Million Little Pieces” controversy with Oprah “really freed me to be as radical as I want, to break every rule I want, and to not have to care what other people thought.”
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES REVISITED: CAN THE TRUTH EVER SET JAMES FREY FREE?
James Frey tells Big Think that “The Million Little Pieces” controversy with Oprah “really freed me to be as radical as I want, to break every rule I want, and to not have to care what other people thought.”
The first time I started writing A Million Little Pieces I’d been searching for a voice for years and years and years, and one day I sat down and I started writing that book, and I wrote the first sentence. And it felt right. It felt more right than anything I had ever written. And so I kept going, and over the course of a couple days I wrote probably the first fifteen or twenty pages of it. And I had never worked that fast before. I was kind of stunned by it. At the end of it I looked at those pages and I was, like, I did it. This is what I’ve always, this is how I’ve always been trying to write. This is the voice I’ve always been trying to find.
That book coming out and the controversies related to it were obviously a big moment for me probably not in the ways people might think. You know, I didn’t write that book as a memoir. I’ve never thought of it as a memoir. We didn’t submit it to publishers as memoirs, even though it was published as one. When the controversy blew up and I was sort of written off by the publishing business and by the literary community, instead of being upset about it I was kind of excited. I was, like, I had to work within your system. I wrote a book that wasn’t what it was published as. I always knew I wasn’t born to work in that system, and I won’t ever do it again. You know, from that point forward I was free. I got kicked out of a club I didn’t want to be a part of, and it was awesome.
WSJ: Arthur Phillips on Shakespeare, James Frey and Literary Legacy
Arthur Phillips on Shakespeare, James Frey and Literary Legacy
By Julie Steinberg
Adding to the meta layers, the Bard play unearthed in the novel was actually written by Mr. Phillips, with the help of Shakespeare scholars. The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project will read the play aloud tonight at the Public Theater.
Speakeasy sat down with Phillips at a Brooklyn café to chat about his novel and the play he wrote to go with it.
The book confronts issues of authenticity in the form of a debate on whether Shakespeare wrote all the plays himself. Does it matter for you who wrote them?
I’m an aesthetic empiricist. If you like something, it doesn’t matter who made it. There really is no objective standard other than your own taste. You develop your own tastes, you find things that do or do not fit your tastes, and therefore are or are not “good.” Whether they have been labeled as produced by the right person is another matter. I had a poster of a painting that I thought was made by Rembrandt and was later revealed probably to have been done by someone else. The fact that he didn’t paint it, or only painted part of it, or oversaw someone else painting it, doesn’t change the experience I had with. It shouldn’t have any bearing on my appreciation.
I’m pretty well convinced that Shakespeare collaborated with other playwrights in four or five cases, probably more. I like to think how he would have collaborated with someone else. I may not like a play any more or any less, but I’m interested in that re-labeling.
In theory, forgery should be the same. For financial reasons, the forger should be punished. But in terms of aesthetic value, you should resist the urge to say “I don’t like it anymore” simply because it wasn’t whom you thought.
Would you extend that analysis to James Frey’s writing factory?
Yes. I doubt the process in Frey’s case would result in sort of things I would value, but if I did, I don’t think it has any bearing on the aesthetic appreciation whether it was him or whether it was him and three 18-year-olds.
THE FINAL TESTAMENT OF THE HOLY BIBLE available now at GAGOSIAN
“I think of it as a personal car crash for me. And I just don’t want to watch it.”
5 YEARS LATER: FREY AND OPRAH MEET!
by Kristin Watson
Five years after James Frey set off one of the biggest controversies in The Oprah Winfrey Show history, the author of A Million Little Pieces has returned to talk with Oprah in a no-holds-barred interview. What did he have to say five years later? Read on to find out.
Five years later, in an interview set against the backdrop of New York, James Frey has returned to The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Frey revealed to Winfrey that he hasn’t seen much of his 2006 appearance on the show. “I think of it as a personal car crash for me. And I just don’t want to watch it.” He added, “It definitely wasn’t my finest day.”
When asked about what he was feeling after he was confronted by Winfrey on the 2006 show, Frey said, “I was feeling shock and definitely stunned. I just wanted to get home.”
James Frey said that when he decided to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006, he didn’t know it was going to happen like that. He thought he was going to have a chance to tell his side, but he realized, “I created that mess. I created that situation.”