Barn Owl, Night Killer

Maybe I should stick to stills.
(Sufjan Stevens video, on Vimeo.)

Still Embarrassed To Have Been Employed By You.

Dear Village Voice,

A billboard: bold move. But the cliched and yet appropriate phrase is actually "Bowery bums." Your use of "junkies" is just misguided enough that it renders your attempt at edge and insider status more sad than anything else. Your promo team is based in Denver, I suppose?

Love,
Jen Snow

That's What He Said

Some people used some sort of digital processing to reveal what is said at the end of Lost In Translation. You can now watch an annotated video.

20 Things You Didn't Know About Snow

Notes on "watermelon snow," motes of outerspace dust, photographs of snow crystals, and "thundersnow."

Exchange

I liked it better at the beginning of the ride when no one was under the impression that we had holiday pleasantries to exchange.

"A Prune Is Listening"

Maybe this beautiful calendar will help me keep track of time?

Response

Take my number.
Take my number.
Take my number. (You implored.)

If I take your number, I'm going to put it on the internet.

Because I Am Classy

I can't find my keys.
I left my wallet on the couch.
I'll let you pay for my coffee.
I guess I'll come back.

I'm Not Scared

If you listened, then you've already subscribed to The New-York Ghost, but even if you didn't listen, you must check out Ed Park in Sunday's NYT. The excerpt they reprinted might be my favorite poem of the year!

The best part —

Midtown musing: If
you stand across 57th so
that you’re looking at the
front of Carnegie Hall,
you’ll notice that the
frieze says: “MVSIC
HALL.” ¶ We like the
old-school V, but we
especially like the quotation
marks. ¶ What was their
purpose? ¶ What did the
builders or the letters
hope to indicate? That
perhaps this was not a
music hall? ¶ That it
might instead be a stable,
or a stocking factory? ¶
That all is uncertainty,
and in years to come, the
structure might be
converted into a parking
garage? ¶ Or do the
quote marks suggest that
the performances to be
held inside were not what
some meddling fuddyduddy
considered
‘music’? ¶ That is not
music, that is the sound of
HOOFBEATS ON
TARPAULIN! ¶ That
was supposed to be our
impression of a
mustachioed aristocrat,
decrying some new fad in
music. ¶ Imagine him
expounding while in a
smoking-jacket. ¶ Okay. ¶
It’s not working. ¶ We
really wish we had a
picture of those
quotation marks.

Another best part —

Best thing that
happened the other day: We
were walking by a school
playground, during recess. Kids
were running around,
screaming, laughing. In one
corner, a teacher gave a
command to a group of girls:
“Robots!” Then they all started
acting like robots, arms moving
rigidly, etc. One-word review:
Hilarious. Seriously, this made
our day — our week — our year.
¶ Our life. ¶ That’s going too
far.

That's a large bit of the piece, but now you will read it and you will subscribe and you will print it out each week at work, right? Note: when The N-YG started, I had neither a real job nor a real printer, but I figured it out. You should too!

Sigh

I'm just as tired of it as you.

Faux Sugars, Real Suspicion

"Sweetener skeptics, on the other hand, say that safety studies are often funded with industry dollars..."

(L.A. Times)

Backseat Shooter: Unnecessary Parade

aka Stop in the Name of Love

'I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dmitri'

Was it asking for a low-level amount of trouble by putting Chistopher Hitchens just after Robert Hass at the National Book Awards Finalist Reading? Since this seems to be shaping up as "superficial worry about the war week" here, I mention this incident too. Hass's poem — "I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dmitri" — was amusing, and Hitchens wasn't entirely wrong in his tiny tirade. Some of the crowd hissed, which seemed stupid, but then so is making sweeping statements about what you wish and don't wish a room full of writers might join you in believing. Both men tried to rally some sentiment in an audience not otherwise interested in seeing the podium as a platform of any sort.

Another NBA note: after today's proceedings, I now really want to read Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret. This morning, the finalists in Young People's Literature had an entire auditorium of students entranced. There was actual hooting and hollering, which was certainly more inspired than the ninny hissing that happened when the adults were gathered later in the night. (Photos, of all of this, the above fake fracas too, soon.)

What Did You Do During The War?

Choire Sicha is smart. He was helpful to me during my art writing days, when he worked at Debs & Co. and I was researching Nina Katchadourian, and now I'm really glad to see his sometime series — What Did You Do During The War? — on an otherwise nonessential of late Gawker. Photos and captions, simple juxtapositions, and that's it. It's like a good poor man's Martha Rosler and it's by far the best thing I've seen on Gawker in a long time. I'd read a whole blog of it, if he posted them every day.

In The Hermitage You Would See This Bow On This Woman

"Knowing that, how could anyone want a war? Or plastic surgery?"

(Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty is very good.)

The BQE (Sans Arrests)

The BQE can be pretty, and civic pride is possible, and I'll have more photos and more to say soon. For now, just a few, of Sufjan and co. And this, which is brief, and shaky, and sort of my first video try:

Backseat Shooter: What's The Word For That?

Who Knew + Since U Been Gone = BFF

I admit, I like this song in almost exactly the same way I liked this song. Wholeheartedly and on repeat at the gym and even those times I hear them and they (inexplicably) make my eyes tear-up a bit. I know nothing about music but I think they might share something in their structure too.

Hit "play" on both of those at the same time. The videos even have a similar number of seconds of "just doing stuff to set the scene before my song starts" noise before they begin. Both have the same type of build-up of the verses and then crescendo-ing choruses, they both repeat a phrase a few times at the end of each song. They are the same song. And so, I do not feel as bad that I'm so taken with both.

G9

I bought a new camera.
I forgot to tell you.

Blind Item

Almost literally. Who impulse bought a pair of glasses today? And whose new glasses happen to be branded by an Aaron Spelling tv show? A bit of Googling revealed that no character on the show actually wore glasses, although this pair is named after "Jake."

Holder

Here is where I admit that I had trouble following the directions on the back of the pack of ponytail holders. Do I have more respect for the medium now? No. Now I hate them even more.

Font

An astute friend pointed out this post on Curbed, or, more precisely, he pointed out the handwriting on the sign taped to a stolen bike in a photo in a post of Curbed; with only tiny exceptions (the "a," the "y"), that sign could have been written by me.

He was not spot on, however, in asking whether the bike and sign were actually mine. My lack of street-crossing skills, my poor paying-attention skills, and the fact that I'm not very coordinated all indicate the obvious: I could never ride a bike on city streets.

Some Things

• Something about sitting through an entire movie.
  
• Something about being traumatized by uninvited advice from the clerk at the glasses store. (Has anyone else ever heard this nonsense that your eyes "must" be in the center of each lens?)
• Something about propagating plants and picking the last cherry tomato.
  
• Something about marveling at how long my hair has grown. (Past my shoulders.)
  
• Something about doing a bit of work for Brooklyn Vegan.
  
• Something about riding the subway and reading.
  

Odds

5A92 is outside my door.
3J92 sits just around the corner.