“Would You Rather See Woody Allen’s Manhattan Adapted by NYU Students or Muppets?” (thanks Flavorwire) The Rumpus talks with Beg, Borrow, Steal author, Michael Greenberg. Conversational Reading posted “99 Essential African Books“ Here is an article that combines Steampunk and Lolcats Jacket Copy on the “masterful 33 1/3 series“. (Okay, we think it’s good too) Gene Simmons, Stephen King, 2 presidents and eleven more famous people were teachers (Mental Floss) Black Moth Super Rainbow played the ICA in Boston. (Thanks […]
Bites: Edward Lear poetry, rare Obama interview, Tim Burton cares not, San Fran’s strategic real estate changes, fighting for the “link economy”
By Willa A. Cmiel The Book Bench on Edward Lear: “This week the British Library is publishing two beautiful facsimiles (which will be distributed by the University of Chicago Press), of the 1888 and 1889 editions of books by the multi-talented Edward Lear, an English artist and writer best known for the children’s classic ‘The Owl and the Pussycat.‘” More personally he reminds me of family car trips reciting limericks. My personal favorite: There once was a Young Person of […]
Bites: Decent thoughts on today’s fiction (I know!), Bruni is replaced, Gladwell’s Mockingbird, Kubrick’s unmade work, middle-class “slave labor”
By Willa A. Cmiel Lee Seigel for the Washington Post on the End of the Episode. It’s a greatly informed, well-put essay on changes in American fiction. (Finally a good essay on contemporary fiction. Seigel is critical but not raging, constructive but unassuming): “Are you a Narrative or Episodic personality?… Or do you think that you live, like Huck Finn and every other picaresque hero, from isolated minute to isolated minute – episode to episode – and that far from adding […]
Bites: Dangerous babysitters, jailhouse rock, literary lovin’, Hemingway the Musical
An intellectual’s look at the American tradition of babysitting and why young babysitters are often perceived as dangerous figures. “The babysitter has conveniently served as a lightning rod for adults’ uncertainties about what the limits of girls’ autonomy and empowerment should be.” Whoa. There is babydaddy drama for Jude Law. Fittingly, he once sexed up the babysitter. Charles Manson and Phil Spector are now in the same prison. (via The Rumpus) And blatant literary lovin’ at The Rumpus. (This kind […]
Bites: Beer with ‘Bama, blue M&Ms, Gawker is Gold(man Sachs), Muumuu House is noted, fake local Starbucks protests, etc.
DRINKS AT OBAMA’S THIS THURSDAY. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is in charge of the beer run, taking orders. (Is anything else important today? Not really, but in case of boredom read on.) There are two kinds of people in the world: those who separate M&Ms based on color and those who don’t. Always firmly in the latter group, I was forced briefly to question my firm stance upon learning that the food dye used in blue M&M’s can mend spinal […]
Weekend Bites: The Rumpus vs. Amazon, David Sedaris, Wu-Tang legos, and more
Wu-Tang Legos! The Rumpus seriously doesn’t like Amazon. The title “The Rumpus Continues it’s War Against Amazon“, should be the first thing to tip you off. David Sedaris likes Friday Night Lights. Slate asks Jon Stewart to change his last name back to Jon Leibowitz Starbucks, you will never be cool again.
Bites: “Essential” postmodernism, Bruni was bulimic, Daniel Radcliffe’s heartbeat, and more
The LA Times’ book blog Jacket Copy has brazenly compiled the dorkiest list ever of “essential postmodern reading.” Levi Asher received three copies of the New York Times Magazine this weekend. I, sadly, received none. It’s all well and good though, because I have very little interest in Frank Bruni’s binge-eating, possibly bulimic early years. Shudder. On the same topic, here’s what Gawker had to say about the famed food writer’s “romanticized glorification of a disturbed kiddie psychosis.” EmDashes links […]
The Sedaris Pizza Delivery Company
(Thanks The Rumpus)