Boys – Beware.
Celebrating Chrome
Yvonne in Reverb
Artistic Antichrist Offensive
Antichrist Is the Most Beautiful Piece of Muddled Art You Might Never See
A divisive, offensive, artistic film — but no one knows what it’s about.
It’s rare that I find myself truly indifferent to a film — especially a film that is so clearly and openly divisive. But that’s exactly how I feel about Antichrist: completely indecisive. I see both sides, understanding the people who love it, voraciously devouring every lyrical moment, while simultaneously getting why people hate the living crap out of it. A deliberately offensive opus of shock, this film will at some moment find something disagreeable for everybody. But unlike most films that rely upon shock, director Lars von Trier has no intention of making you laugh. Quite the contrary. He wants to make you recoil. He wants to challenge your sense of morality and taste. And he wants to make you feel, one way or another.
But that’s not necessarily a good thing.
By now you’ve most likely heard about it. Widely panned at Cannes by some, praised by others, and completely spoiled in the press, especially on the Drudge Report in which its final scenes were spoiled in headlines splashed across the front page. It is not a nice film. It is dark, brooding, melancholy, and more than a little mean-spirited. Loaded from top to bottom with nudity, sexuality, and even a slow-motion shot that will itself ensure that this gets the dreaded NC-17 rating (as well it should for the level of adult content in this), it is at times a bit distracting. There’s so much nudity in this thing that I almost feel as if it should be renamed Lars Von Trier’s I Hate Pants!There are even a few scenes in which the characters lack pants for no good reason. But then again, there’s a lot of things in this that some would argue are here for no good reason. It is violent, bloody, and disturbingly sexual for a goodly portion of the film. Not in small doses. The majority of the film aims to offend you in one manner or another.
Ruscha Feted
Ed Ruscha Honored at National Arts Awards
By Andrew Russeth
NEW YORK—Balls of fire fell on a dark, deserted lake in a video by Kelly Richardson projected on a screen at Cipriani 42nd Street last night. It was an eerie sight, though few seemed to mind: Jeff Koons and Nancy Pelosi were chatting and posing for photographs together, just one of the unexpected friendships that seemed to blossom at theNational Arts Awards, which included an unusual mixture of representatives from the nation’s art, business, and political intelligentsia.
The ceremony, organized by Americans for the Arts, honored individuals for their contributions to the nation’s artistic life: Robert Redford, Salman Rushdie, philanthropist Sidney Harman, Bank of America (accepted by Chief Marketing Officer Anne Finucane), and Ed Ruscha, who seemed like an ideal — and definitively American — representative from the visual arts world.
Ruscha has wielded the American automobile as an artistic tool, making art from gas stations photographed on trips across the West and images snapped while cruising the Sunset Strip on a Sunday morning. His contributions to the 2005 Venice Biennale showed the exteriors of corporate office buildings and factories, the anonymous workshops of American capitalism.
Author James Frey, who commissioned from Ruscha a work that reads “Public Stoning” after being dragged through the media for his stretching of the truth in his memoir A Million Little Pieces, was similarly affectionate in a video tribute to the artist. “Ed Ruscha is the king of California!” he exclaimed. “Ed Ruscha is the coolest guy in the world.”
For his part, Ruscha seemed pleasantly bemused about the plaudits he was receiving. Handed his award, he pretended to struggle with its weight. “I think it’s a little ironic to pick someone who makes images using colored goo swabbed on with animal fur connected to a piece of wooden stick,” he told the crowd. “It boggles the mind.”
The Harlem Stride
Invisible Man
The pianist James P. Johnson was born in 1894. He played his first gig when he was 8 years old at a bordello in his Jersey City neighborhood. The patroness sat him down at the keyboard and told him to keep his eyes to himself. She paid him 25 cents.
So begins the tale the jazz faithful tell about the birth of jazz piano playing: That it began with Johnson’s reinterpretation of the rollicking two-handed style of his elders, which became known as Harlem stride, the earliest form of jazz piano.
You don’t hear Johnson’s music much anymore, but there is a group of stride pianists in New York who gather regularly to play in the style of that era. One of them is Spike Wilner, who is also one of the owners of Small’s, the basement jazz club on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village. He is an intense guy with dark curly hair who traces his ancestry back to a prominent 19th-century European rabbinical dynasty.
Edgar Allan Poe Gone
Allan Poe gets proper funeral
October 6, 2009
BALTIMORE—- It’s been a good 200th anniversary year for Edgar Allan Poe. The master of gothic horror has been celebrated at events in several cities to mark the bicentennial of his birth.
And on Sunday in Baltimore, he’ll get the funeral he never had.
Fewer than 10 people attended Poe’s funeral when he died in October 1849 at age 40. His cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced the great writer’s death publicly.
The Poe House and Museum will also host a viewing of a replica of Poe’s body on Wednesday.
Societal Heaven And Hell
A Catchily Disturbing Refrain
Making Your Own Sausage
The case for homemade sausage
Making links or patties from scratch takes some patience, but your reward is sausage that suits your tastes.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a sausage lover’s world out there, right? Especially at this time of year, nothing goes better with a great [amber tea]. The crisp crunch of that first juicy bite, the perfect blend of fresh ground meat redolent with toasted spices and pungent herbs.
Granted, you can increasingly find some pretty good packaged sausages. But for the true fan, nothing compares to the texture and flavors to be found in great homemade sausage.
Sausage making is an art that spans almost every regional and ethnic cuisine, a craft carefully honed and perfected over thousands of years. For the first-time sausage-maker, the process can seem a bit mysterious. Not to mention daunting.
But make your own sausage, and you might never go back to commercial again. Make your own, and you’re limited only by your imagination. Choose what kinds of meat you want to use, and flavor the sausage to suit your tastes. Best of all? Made from scratch, the sausage is your creation and you know exactly what’s gone into it — no mystery ingredients here.
“It’s not a manhunt or a missing person or anything like that.”
Distraught Reverend Lops Off Deputy’s Hand With Ax
Deputy’s hand, severed in attack, reattached
ASHLAND, Ala. – A deputy whose hand was chopped off by a suspect wielding a bush ax had it reattached in two operations, while the background of his attacker – a minister who was fatally shot in the confrontation – left those who knew him perplexed.
Sgt. Jason Freeman, whose hand was severed Friday, underwent surgery in Birmingham and had a pulse in all five digits of the reattached hand, Sheriff’s Capt. Steve Cotney said.
The Rev. Curtis Watts, who was shot and killed by a law officer after Freeman was attacked, was described in an obituary released by a funeral home as a longtime minister who started a church and sang gospel music with his family.
But authorities also knew him as potentially violent. His fatal confrontation with officers came just 10 days after his arrest on a charge involving domestic violence, according to sheriff’s officials in rural Clay County, located in east Alabama.
Authorities said they were attempting to arrest Watts on a new warrant signed by a relative when he began swinging the ax and cut off Freeman’s hand. The deputy has been with the department about three years and was leading a team of deputies sent to arrest Watts.
Watts was a logger and sawmill operator and worked for a cabinet company for years, according to an obituary from Benefield Funeral Home, and he became an ordained Baptist minister in 1988.
Watts, 48, helped establish and build Shining Light Baptist Church. With his family, he performed as part of the Watts Family Singers.
“He was a good Christian man. Something happened to him, but I don’t know what,” said James Crawford, 76, of Ashland.
Nosaj Thing
The Farmer’s Daughter & The AK-47
Farmer’s daughter disarms terrorist and shoots him dead with AK47
An Indian farmer’s daughter disarmed a terrorist leader who broke into her home, attacked him with an axe and shot him dead with his own gun.
Kausar, 21, was with her parents and brother in Jammu and Kashmir when three gunmen, believed to be Pakistani militants, forced their way in and demanded food and beds for the night.
Their house in Shahdra Sharief, Rajouri district, is about 20 miles from the ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistani forces.
It is close to dense forests known as hiding places for fighters from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which carried out the Mumbai terrorist attack last November.
Militants often demand food and lodging in nearby villages.
When they forced their way into Miss Kausar’s home, her father Noor Mohammad refused their demands and was attacked.
His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead.
She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.
Walk On Water
Gehry Rising
A Gehry Tower Rises
Eliot Brown
Beekman: The Ratner/Gehry Project That Wasn’t Dropped
To anyone who treks west over the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges each morning, a quick glance to the area just south of the Municipal Building will reveal a new addition to the Lower Manhattan skyline: a skinny, tiered concrete skeleton that’s rapidly climbing upward.
The apartment tower-to-be—67 stories as of Wednesday—is a high-end rental building developed by Forest City Ratner, the firm that is desperately trying to build a new Nets basketball arena and accompanying 16-tower development near Downtown Brooklyn. And it is also—as the distinct, undulating aluminum façade now rising on the building’s lower half might suggest—designed by Frank Gehry, his first residential high-rise.
Desert Lab Bobbles Ted Williams’ Frozen Head
Ted Williams’ Frozen Head Mistreated in Alcor Cryonics Facility, Says Book
Posted by Ryan Smith
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Ted Williams was trying to get ahead of the game. But his efforts to have his frozen head thawed out by some future generation may have come to naught if the allegations of abuse in a new book are true.
Upon his death, the Red Sox Hall of famer had his head severed and frozen for storage in the hope that technology would one day be developed to revive him.
But now, the New York Daily News is reporting that his frozen head was mistreated at an Arizona cryonics facility he entrusted with his chilled cranium, according to details from a new book.
In “Frozen,” Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that Williams’ head was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williams’ frozen head with a monkey wrench.
NEW BOOK on sale!- Silent Scream by James Frey with Josh Cannon! horrifyingly true story!
Shooting The Viral Wad
Back In The Day With Gay Talese and The Times
The Collections of Kathmandu
Hard to get
HARSHA MAN MAHARJAN
– The rare book business is expanding in Kathmandu. But the sellers do not want to divulge much information, because they don’t want their competitors to know their trade secrets. So it’s a difficult task finding out what really goes on in this sector. It is difficult to find out who is engaged in the business. If we google the rare book market in Nepal, chances are only Pilgrims Book House will come up. But there are quite a few other traders, who prefer to keep a low profile.
Rare book sellers are quite rare in Kathmandu. And they don’t only deal in hard-to-find books. They keep all the popular titles in stock, as rare books account for only a small portion of their business. Many booksellers believe that Pilgrims started the rare book business some time in the mid-1980s. Nagendra Singh and Kiran Ghimire once worked as managers at Pilgrims. They were there for about 10 years. After learning the techniques of the book trade, they started out on their own and set up Vision Books and Sagun Books respectively. Both offer second-hand and rare books. Vajra Books also sells rare books on mountaineering. Its owner Vidur Dongol used to work for Mandala Book Point.According to Pilgrims, it holds about 3,000 rare titles on subjects like religion, philosophy, Asian studies, Sikkim, Tibet, social science and Nepal.
Butt Of Shotgun Selected As Discipline of Choice For Statutory Rape Among Friends
Father won’t be charged for striking man having sex with daughter
MILLARD K. IVES, Staff Writer
WILDWOOD — A father who attacked his 37-year-old best friend and roommate with the butt of a shotgun after finding him having sex with his 16-year-old daughter will not be charged in the attack.
Officials with the State Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against the Wildwood father in the attack that sent the 37-year-old man and roommate to Leesburg Regional Medical Center with head injuries.
Bill Gladson, a supervisor with the State Attorney’s Office, said the father had the right to use reasonable force to prevent his daughter from becoming the victim of a sex crime.
The 37-year-old also had signed a waiver at the hospital, stating he didn’t want the father charged, according to Wildwood police.
“He didn’t want to cooperate as far as filing charges against his best friend,” said Wildwood police Sgt. Russell Poitevent.
The 37-year-old was arrested on seven counts of unlawful activity and sex with a minor after leaving the hospital on Aug. 24.
Wildwood police said when the father came into the home, he grabbed the first thing he saw — the shotgun. Poitevent said the father knew the gun was unloaded and didn’t try to shoot his friend, but did strike the man hard enough to send him to the hospital.
Police said after striking the man with the gun, the father pinned him down until police arrived.
The father was taken into custody, questioned and released.
Mo’ Fixie Fixie
Look Ma, No Brakes!
Stripped-Down Fixies Have Long Been The Bike of Choice Among Couriers. Now, Hip Urbanites Have Gotten the Message.
By David Montgomery
What a profile they cut, slicing through the city: gorgeous, exotic, dangerous. You see them parked like emaciated steeds outside the coolest clubs.
They don’t make much sense, yet for one more fleeting season at least, they are the rage in certain circles. Sort of dumb and super hip: the twin characteristics of many things in life.
We are talking about a bicycle. A very special kind of road bicycle, called a fixed-gear bike, or fixie for short.
A fixie has one speed, which makes it difficult to pedal uphill. A classic fixie has no brakes, which makes it difficult to slow on the downhill. A fixie has no freewheel, the part that makes coasting possible. Instead, the chain directly drives the rotation of the rear wheel, which means the pedals always turn while the bike moves.
What else do they have going for them?
Well, fixies are impractical, perverse throwbacks to a time more than a century ago, before the invention of the derailleur and the Tour de France, when the bicycle chain and the pneumatic tube were novelties, and the high-wheel penny-farthing “ordinary” bicycle had just been eclipsed by the chain-driven “safety” bike.
And yet despite all that — or is it because of all that? — a fixie manages the neat trick of simultaneously communicating taste and rebellion.
To each his own bicycle, in a town where bicycling is an ever-expanding religion, with many rival sects. But a fixie? Speak to us, pilgrims.
Jason Stevenson was one of Washington’s earliest fixie converts. He remembers the first time he saw one. It was the leanest machine he had ever seen, a contraption almost completely unknown in Washington. He was spellbound.
“So clean, so fluid. I just had to have one,” he says. “I was like, whatever bike that is, I want to ride something like that.”
The year was 1993, and Stevenson was a bike messenger, as he is now.
He knew of only three messengers riding fixies then. Washington was a little behind the curve. Some date the dawn of fixie chic to the 1986 movie “Quicksilver,” starring Kevin Bacon, which glorified fixie-riding messengers in New York.
A Red Stripe In The Coolibah Tree
Tossing Beer Up Trees in Dolores Park
Something I am amazed worked out: this guy climbed nearly to the top of a tree in Dolores Park, had his friend toss him up a glass bottle of Red Stripe, caught it, and proceeded to drink it. Bad ass.
Auto-Tune on iPhone
I am T-Pain iPhone App Is Auto-Tuning Genius
By Jason Chen
Smule, the guys who made Leaf Trombone and Ocarina, just ported Auto-Tune—the software T-Pain and Auto-Tune the news uses to make music gold—onto the iPhone. Holy crap is it awesome.
Pot Of Bulbous Bile Found At End Of Reading Rainbow
My Living Nightmare Of Encouraging Kids To Read Is Over
BY LEVAR BURTON
Thank god.
After 26 long years, I can finally rest easy. Twenty-six years I spent standing in front of a camera, gritting my teeth, and shilling the latest works of every hack children’s book author imaginable. For 26 years, I’ve told kids they could open a magical door to another world just by reading a book, when the only door it ever opened for me led to a soul-sucking career in the horrifying abyss of public television.
But now, at last, it is over. I don’t have to lie anymore. I don’t have to live that nightmare.
When the news came that Reading Rainbow would be canceled due to a lack of funding, I felt—well, to use a cliché like you’d find in one of the hundreds of books I pimped endlessly—like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Every day I went to work hoping that maybe the studio had burned down, that maybe the program had been cut, that maybe PBS would finally stop squeezing the life from me drop by drop. Now that it’s over, I feel the relief a bruised and broken soldier must feel when he is rescued after rotting away for decades in some dank, forgotten POW camp.
May that godforsaken show burn in hell.
“Incest, bestiality and physical violence is still shocking readers more than 80 years after it was banned in the United States”
Subject line from the Abilene Reporter News, Story from TEXAS READS
TEXAS READS: SOMETHING OF A SOLUTION TO TEXAS TO LITERARY MYSTERY
By Glenn Dromgoole
The Texas literary mystery “Whatever Happened to Gertrude Beasley?” has been solved. Sort of.
Edna Gertrude Beasley — who graduated from Simmons College in Abilene in 1914, taught school in West Texas and Chicago, and traveled the world as a journalist — wrote a provocative autobiography published in Paris in 1925, “My First Thirty Years.”
The graphic language and content of the book resulted in it being banned in England despite a positive review by one of America’s best-known critics, H. L. Mencken, who called it “the first genuinely realistic picture of the Southern poor white trash.”
“Thirty years ago,” the book began, “I lay in the womb of a woman, conceived in a sexual act of rape, being carried during the prenatal period by an unwilling and rebellious mother, finally bursting from the womb only to be tormented in a family whose members I despised or pitied ”
She went on to tell how one of her first memories was her 16-year-old brother pressing down on top of her trying to rape her when she was 4, among other gruesome, explicit and lurid details.
In early 1928, at age 35, Gertrude Beasley vanished, as far as anyone knew. No one had been able to trace her whereabouts since.
Many have tried, including novelist Larry McMurtry, Texas literature authority Don Graham and author Bert Almon, all of whom have written about Beasley over the years. Actress Veronica Russell performed a 90-minute one-woman off-Broadway show in New York four years ago based on Beasley’s book.
Surrealist biomorphism: “Capricious Forms”
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Surrealist biomorphism: “Capricious Forms” (1937), a work from Kandinsky’s Paris period, is part of a retrospective at the Guggenheim.
More 4
Local man’s novel hits the big time
By: Lisa Hlavinka
The movie rights were sold before a Spencer Township native’s novel even hit store shelves.
Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay picked up the rights to Black River High School graduate Jobie Hughes’ young adult novel, “I Am Number Four,” on June 26. The novel does not come out until September 2010.
Spielberg and Bay were not the only ones interested in the novel. Represented by Beverly Hills-based Endeavor Talent Agency, Hughes said there was a bidding war between Spielberg and Bay and producer J.J. Abrams for rights to the story.“They bought the rights to an unpublished book … before we had interest in the book, the movie rights were done and sold,” said Hughes, 29, who grew up in the township and now resides in New York City. “Usually it’s always done the other way around.”
Now, DreamWorks LLC, a film studio co-founded by Spielberg, anticipates the film to be out in July 2011.
“It’s pretty surreal,” Hughes said via phone Sunday.
Before the Hollywood glamour, however, came the task of writing “I Am Number Four.”
Hughes has a co-author, James Frey, who wrote the memoir, “A Million Little Pieces.”
Hughes Hughes did not name Frey specifically, he said, because the partnership was originally supposed to be secret. However, other media have named Frey as the co-author of the book.