Three days as the buffalo flies

Please, delve into your hearts and muster what little strength is left to forgive me for the brief yet taxing sojourn. I was in woods in New Hampshire, land of snowflakes and pine trees. Please refer to The Little House in the Big Woods for further description of the holidays, for it was rather similar. We had buffalo for supper and in the morning flapjacks with syrup from the local maples. Along with many cookies and delectable sauces and tartlets. On such family occasions the kitchen is humming approximately 16 hours a day and nothing, not even the applesauce for the latkes or the stock for the soup or the peppermint fudge comes from box or jar. The sunsets are pink and prolonged and at night the adventurous wander with flashlight or candle into the meadows for astronomical observation.

Thus it is weary I return, after many hours by car and rail, southward as the snow melted and the strip malls suddenly blossomed as copious as the pine bowers of the land I left behind me. The days are wan and fleeting and darkness descends swiftly. The apartment lies deserted by its inhabitants, those who fled toward kinder vistas of hibiscus and iguana. A crumpled napkin is discarded on the floor in their hurry. The last hours of the year are upon us, and I fear its leaden days suck the very life out of these, the strong, our comrades. It is time to call Yummy Taco, and beckon them hither.

In my thankless quest for enlightenment, I was reading GQ at the office today, and was rather dismayed to see an article on how the popularity of chick lit in America reflected the sad state of the minds of American women.

Besides snottily retorting that most media in America reflects the sad state of the minds of American men (particularly the preceding article in GQ about how to approach the topic of anal sex with your girlfriend) I half wished that the article was in Cosmo instead, where maybe some women would actually read it. I don't have a problem with someone preferring Confessions of a Shopaholic over... ??? Portnoy's Complaint?

That's where the problem is. It's not chick lit. It's the absence of another example with which to define chick lit against, besides boy books. Maybe I just don't know enough, and if I read Nell Freudenbuger I'll feel better about the world.

I've read so many fucking books about boys coming of age, exploring their sexuality, trotting off into the world on some adventure or another, and for girls it's like The Bell Jar, or Anne Frank, choose one. And don't give me any Anne of Green Gables shit because I hated that book.

I've never actually read Bridget Jones's Diary, or the Nanny Diaries, or The Devil Wears Prada. Two years ago The Economist ran an article called "The Bridget Jones Economy" that frightened the shit out of me because it was the first time I saw my future as a well-defined target market. It seems if you combine dating stories, yoga, a love/hate relationship with chocolate, a gay best friend, a dildo, a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes and psychotherapy you basically have a winning piece of media. Bonus points if it is set in Manhattan and one of the protaganists works in the Conde Nast building.

And GQ sucks but they're not the first people to point out how pathetic that is.

Snobercrombie & Bitch + Slavoj Zizek = Theoretically Inflected White People

So much has been made of the fact that Slavoj Zizek wrote "theoretically inflected catalog copy" for the "Back to School 2003" issue of the Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly.
I would cite where I first saw this, but I haven't gotten permission to link to that particular jumble of nonsensical boyish quips (you know who you are, consider yourself cited) so I'll go straight to the NY Times article.

But before you start complaining that "theory is finished", (and who the fuck cares anyway?) look at this.:

"The creative freedom the staff is afforded is startling. Since I began work on the Quarterly, I've worked on features on such atypically "Abercrombiesque" celebrities as Clive Barker, Space Ghost, Crocodile Huntress Terri Irwin, the Dandy Warhols, Chuck Palahniuk, Art Spiegelman, Princess Superstar, Frank Miller, Will Eisner, MC Paul Barman and Bettie Page. (I've also done features on cult movies like Cemetery Man and Velvet Goldmine and books like The Story of O, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Disinformation's own You Are Being Lied To.) Three Pulitzer Prize-winners have been profiled in our last two issues (Spiegelman, Michael Cunningham and Michael Chabon). Bleeding-edge scholars Slavoj Zizek and Jodi Dean have put in appearances, as well as writers like Bret Easton Ellis, Caleb Carr, Tom Perrotta, Camille Paglia, Bruce Jay Friedman, J.T. Leroy and Rick Moody. If we can expose just one member of the baseball-caps-and-lacrosse-sticks set (judging from the warmth of the reception the Quarterly has received from this quarter, they may be a more open-minded bunch than anyone's giving them credit for) to any of these individuals, well, 'tis a consummation to be devoutly wished."

This article is from over two years ago, so Zizek's 2003 appearance may not have even been his first. We all have skeletons in our closet, and such close association to Bret Easton Ellis would be an honor for us all.

Because Ridley Scott Started With Feminine Hygiene Commercials

"This whole house of cards is going to come down, and somebody is going to be posting their résumé on monster.com when the bill comes for that $3 million video shoot with Naomi Campbell and the catamarans. You know, the video you watch in a little 2-by-2 pop-up screen on your computer while you IM your friends with jobs."

The Slate Music Club's Year in Music has been keeping me company at work since Monday, and when I read this quote I cringed. Then my computer froze from all the fucking pop up screens.

The recently released DVD compilations of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham provide almost a funerary eulogy to the genre of the music video. Imagine the ruckus it would cause to see Sofia Coppola performing gymnastics on MTV these days. But since I work in advertising, I watch a lot of directors' reels, and since most directors who do ads also do music videos I've gotten to see some ridiculously good work that outside of the Internet one could only see as the graphic animation in a Nike ad. I've come to the conclusion that aside from a few feather-wearing botox vials, Nike is actually single-handedly supporting video art in America.

My Favorites:

Hammer and Tongs The best part about these people is they are going to direct the movie version of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Yet another childhood classic.

Shynola did the art for Kid A and are experts at devising small hopping Princess Mononoke-esque animals of various sorts.

MK12 Hot Hot Heat animated video.

Lobo Brasileiros! Did videos for Gabriel o Pensador and Cidade Negra.

Notorious produced Capturing the Friedmans. I'm annoyed because the video I liked best from this production company doesn't seem to be online. But look anyway.

Nakd Look at Nike ad. Then look at all the other cool shit.

AV Club It seems you can only access their work through The Directors Bureau, which is the Coppola owned advertising company that has quite a few other notable directors on it's roster. But AV Club did videos for The Strokes and Pete Yorn and more.

I'm Very Sleepy

I joined every 14 year-old boy in Park Slope to watch The Return of the King at the stroke of midnight on the 17th. Embarassingly enough it was my second movie that day, after Master and Commander no less, and 11:45 found me sitting in front of a blank television doubting my ability to make it through the night. "It will be sold out," I thought, but it wasn't, so I had no choice.

I love the movie theater across the street from my house. The audience clapped when the movie started, clapped whenever the good guys won anything, clapped when the movie ended, jeered when they found out it would end three more times before the actual ending and then clapped during the credits. The no smoking/be quiet animation is the best I've ever seen anywhere, a gregorian chant of "Thou shall not smoketh" interspersed with gospel improvisation all in a ye olde english font.

The movie was definitely worth getting only four hours of sleep for. Within the first half hour of I was already weeping just out of the beauty of it. I think I cried at least six times in all during the movie, most of the time not because anything sad had happened, but just because visually it was so breathtaking. I cried a couple of times in Lost in Translation for the same reasons (when Charlotte goes to Kyoto and when Bill Murray was golfing) but this was ridiculous. Every time there were horses sweeping down a hill (and that's a lot) or the camera would linger on a little butterfly or (this is embarassing) someone started to sing I would choke up. Oh to make such pretty things.

"Snowball salesman Gilberto Triplett shows off $1 wares in Times Square Monday.
'I've always wanted a snowball,' said English tourist and happy buyer Christine Rowlatt. "

Read more.

I am ready

My rise to the top as a drug kingpin began, as all good things do, through a literary and filmic exploration. I believe I have now completed nearly all the prequisites. From two books I read in the past couple weeks, combined with a reservoir of easily-accessible pop culture references, I developed a literary curriculum that spans the three teirs you will need to familiarize yourself with before organizing your vertical monopoly:

Colombia: Where it all begins.
Killing Pablo, by Mark Bowden: Let's start at the roots of production. Pablo Escobar has much to teach us on tactics of intimidation, coercion, and establishing an illegal business that can make even you a billionaire. It took millions of dollars, the best in technology and any number of of scary CIA Latin American death squads to kill a fat stoner with an uncomfortable sexual fetish for teenage girls and very strict regulations on the bathroom furnishings in even the most remote fincas. There is hope for all of us.

[Supplemental Materials: Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Traffic (the BBC one), Miami Vice]

The Bronx: A course in middle management.
Random Family, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Most of my reaction to this book was comprised of the following thought process: "I hope she doesn't get pregnant, I hope she doesn't get pregnant, please use a condom you're only 12 -- Fuck." It's stressful. But there's a really detailed chapter on running a heroin business in the inner city that will give you all the knowledge you may need, and also a lot of what not to do since they all get caught.

[Supplemental Materials: Don Diva Magazine, Scarface, Blow (...me. What a shitty movie.)]

The Nostrils of the Wealthy: Where the magic meets the mucus.
Three words: Bret. Easton. Ellis.

Alexandre and Alexandra?

"Ms. Brooks, née Cutter, was born in Palm Beach (her parents were introduced by legendary WASP designer Lilly Pulitzer, whose splashy prints she credits as a major style inspiration) and raised in Bronxville. She attended Horace Mann, Deerfield and then Brown, where she roomed with designer Carolina Herrera’s daughter Patricia, double-majoring in art history and the visual arts. Young Amanda was ostracized by the collegiate upper-crust after a freshman fling with fellow undergrad Alexandre von Furstenberg; he was dating future ex-wife Alexandra Miller at the time. Ms. Brooks refused to comment on l’affaire Alexandra to The Observer, but last year told W magazine (where her sister Kimberly is West Coast editor): "It’s taken me 10 years to be able to stand in the same room with those girls.""

Those catty bitches. Why don't you ever hear about this sort of social happening at say... Harvard?

I spent quite a while today with the New York Observer's "Power Punks of New York: 50 Baby Bigshots 35 and Under" (arrived at via Gawker.)

Normally this sort of article fills me with venemous hatred, but this particular list was well done. And by that I mean that there are people on it that had insular childhoods in middle class middle America who read A Wrinkle in Time many many times. The above quote is only indicative of about 20% of the people listed.

May they find what they seek

People have made their way here from Google with the following searches:

mel lisboa photos
Pictures of ahmet zappa selma blair
tronic post production
bret easton ellis articles
matthew barney underwear ads

In a weird way this kind of summarizes everything.

Non-Believer. Atheist in fact.

I worked all weekend and felt dull, so I went with a friend to see The Believer's "Nighttime Event" thinking that although it wouldn't be a Gatsby cocktail at least I could sit uncomfortably amongst the litterati.

I'm not sure if I was in a bit of a hostile state because the girls behind me kept talking about summer in the Hamptons or because I hadn't eaten dinner, but something was stretched a little thin inside. I haven't been wholly convinced by the magazine -- I wasn't sure in what way exactly until tonight's baby-faced audience persuaded me that I am resentful of any body of writing heralded as the trumpet call of an invading "new generation of writers." One man behind me, noting the youthful appearance of the audience, remarked with glee and hopefulness how wonderful it was to see so many eager children at a literary event. Perhaps it assuaged his fear that the youth today are spending all their book-consuming hours on the Internet. I don't have anything to say about that.

It was a poignant evening. The first guest was music journalist Toure interviewing Q-Tip. I like Toure a lot (once again, his name has an accent, I don't know what to do about it). I liked that he would write articles in the NY Times on hip hop, and I was led blindly when he claimed Cody Chestnut was the dawn of a new musical era. Tonight he was much more pessimistic. I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and I may have to digress quite a bit, but it's about how very sad it is that hip hop died. Three death knells rang loudly in the past month:

First James Murdoch was named CEO of BSkyB in London. Since his poppy is Rupert, and Rupert owns BSkyB, there were cries of foul play and nepotism that dissipated in the wind like the whisper of dwarves in a clover patch. Why does this matter? As you may have noticed in some newspaper articles, James Murdoch's previous engagement was trying to start a hip-hop label. Does anybody remember what label? That's right, Rawkus Records. It just feels symbolic -- a wealthy white man's rebellion to start an independent label is abandoned, he accepts his post at his father's side, his wand poised to consolidate.

Second, Jay-Z retires. When the only good rapper in the game says he's bored because there's no one to battle with you can only hang your head in shame.

Third, and back to this evening, Q-Tip said something that really almost made me cry. He said the spirit of hip hop was that it was pertinent and that, as a co-opted genre, it's simply not pertinent anymore. In high school, where I was, that was exactly what it was, hip hop was the music that said something relevant. And last year, when I quit my radio show, it was because it just didn't feel relevant anymore. I thought that it was just from spending four years in the rather antithetical environment of an Ivy League bastion of whiteness. I started, with a great deal of self-loathing, to like indy rock. I felt like a sell out, but if Q-Tip says it, if Jay-Z says it, I believe it. And it isn't like there still isn't really good hip hop being made, it's just that the context has changed. And my friends making hip hop know they shouldn't stop.

Q-Tip finished up and a literary panel came on. Heidi Julavits, Jennifer Egan, Susan Choi, Stephen Elliot. They sucked.

But then, but then, Milton Glaser: graphic designer, semiotician, genius. He made everything right again. I love him.

In unpeeling the onion of voyeurism provided to us by the internet, I recently found out that you can track how many hits you get and where they are coming from (this was probably obvious to everyone but me, famed as I am for my technical stupidity.) Yesterday the most interesting referrer was a google search for "vending contact solution."

First snow of the year in New York... Judging from the number of e-mails I have gotten regarding this topic, the general public opinion seems to be that if you're from MN this is the holiest of holy days.

They were shooting the Alfie remake outside my building today. Jude Law was sitting on half a motorcycle attached to a truck with the camera on it. It drove down the street over and over followed by a bevy of fake taxi cabs. Jude looked very small and dapper with ample hair gel. As a rule, I hate remakes. Having now seen one shot of Alfie II I can say quite confidently that they've used too much bleach on golden boy's tresses.

Also, in a fit of generosity and goodwill, they are handing out bags of Terra chips at 59th and Lex. Go now!

Demand Equality

"They will come together not as a master-slave relationship, with the human telling the robot what to do," said computer science professor Manuela Veloso. "The human and robot will be part of the same task."
Pentagon Explores Using Segways in Battle


When I first read the headline I mistakenly pictured soldiers riding around the Iraqi desert on Segways and was instantly transported to Fahrenheit 451, where the book burners fly around with little rockets attached to their arms and where Julie Christie has a fabulous kilt.



John Rhys-Davies said in The Lord of The Rings special features disc that Julie Christie was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Not that I spent an entire weekend watching Lord of the Rings special features or anything.

The bleak and unforgiving food chain, as illustrated by Marcel Dzama:

It's a battle out there.