So New Here

Young women getting Elvis haircuts, 1957. By Grey Villet / Life...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 23:45:44 -0400

Young women getting Elvis haircuts, 1957.

By Grey Villet / Life archives via Retronaut.

If I could look half as handsome as the person in the first photo, I think I would consider this haircut.

Tomorrow, I go back to a real grown-up office job after 6 years...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:10:28 -0400

Swimmin' Hole

Swimming "not recommended"

"hiking" in

Seriously, lovely.

And, relaxing afterward.

Tomorrow, I go back to a real grown-up office job after 6 years of graduate school. I don’t feel ready. Today, I was completely irresponsible. I began by picking up a sandwich at this bastion of bougie gourmandness. Well, actually, I began by staying in bed until 11. Then proceeding to a local state park to find this swimming hole in which swimming is “not recommended.” Not much like the gentle grassy lawns and paths surrounding Minneapolis’s lakes, for sure. It’s a former quarry, so it’s super deep and cold. There were a bunch of college kids there who planned ahead and brought rafts, noodles, coolers, towels, the whole shebang (I actually forgot a towel - I wasn’t sure if I would even find it, or want to go in. Who was I fooling?). Anyway, it was pretty perfect. The river runs just north of the quarry and I waded into it and finished the Tale of Despereaux while hanging out with some frogs. Then I went to this super adorable cafe with a tripartite patio and read Mrs. Dalloway for awhile. Adieu, lazy weekday, adieu.

You have to have a car to live here. No one believed my dearest...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:02:58 -0400

You have to have a car to live here. No one believed my dearest darling 1998 chevy cavalier, held together by rust and bumper stickers, would make it out here, and even if it did, it’s lacking air conditioning which I understand is a survival necessity. So I got a new (to me) car! Anyone know how to get the smell of five years of smoker out of it?

theatlantic: Archivist Recovers a Picture of a Young...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:28:52 -0400

theatlantic:

Archivist Recovers a Picture of a Young FDR

Michael Horsley was in the middle of a long day scanning glass plate negatives at the National Archives’ Digital Imaging Lab in College Park, Maryland, when a single caption leapt out from among the hundreds whizzing across his monitor: “Laying the Keel of U.S.S Battleship No. 39 Arrival of Asst. Scty [sic] F.D. Roosevelt, & Others.” In that instant, Horsley’s brain fired that there was something there, and he asked his colleague to go back through the images that had passed by to find it again.

Horsley got a closer look at the image. A man in the foreground on scaffolding, watching a group of dignitaries pass below. “Striding confidently in the front of the group,” Horsley writes on the Archives’ blog, NARAtions, ”was a smiling figure wearing a stylish derby hat with his head cocked staring straight at the camera.” Could it be the future president? Horsley knew that at some point Roosevelt had contracted polio and used a wheelchair thereafter, but he wasn’t sure when that had occurred. Could this photo show Roosevelt walking? […]

When Horsley googled “FDR” and the “Brooklyn Navy Yard, he was able to confirm the then-assistant secretary’s Navy Yard visit during the keel-laying ceremony on the day the photograph was taken, March 16, 1914. The figure was FDR. […]

The stories of this man and this ship would intersect again, less than three decades later, when Roosevelt took to the airwaves to announce to the nation the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the ships that sunk that day was the Battleship Arizona, or “Battleship No. 39,” as it is labeled in the picture.
Read more. [Images: National Archives]

How did I miss this? Joe Zee has several of his All on the Line...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:03:43 -0500

How did I miss this?

Joe Zee has several of his All on the Line designers recut/embellish some LB workwear basics, and they’re pretty awesome, even though they are dressing SIZE FOURTEENS (!). More of this!

(That show is pretty decent - some of the practicalities of merchandising and vision you wish they would talk about more on ProjRun, and a loving/hilarious guiding light in the form of Joe himself.)

Sometimes around Christmastime the subject of “White...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:03:24 -0500

Sometimes around Christmastime the subject of “White Christmas” comes up (okay, sometimes I forcibly raise this question). There’s always some David Bordwell acolyte who’s all, well, that song originally appeared in Holiday Inn, which is objectively the superior film. It seems to me that Holiday Inn (with Fred Astaire as Bing Crosby’s sidekick rather than Danny Kaye), is in fact a better movie, though it suffers from a lack of Mary Wickes. Aside from that, I think at least one reason Holiday Inn never became as much of a Christmas classic as White Christmas is a) that it’s in black and white, and b) that it has a straight-up blackface scene that just kinda smacks you in the face. At least partially because it’s TO CELEBRATE LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY. You can’t make this shit up (TW for blackface minstrelsy and a “Thank you, white savior” interlude from the only speaking characters of color in the movie - it can be hard to watch). And the movie was made in 1942.

And yet White Christmas (1954) has its own problems here - in lieu of a minstrel number, there is a number about how AWESOME minstrelsy was, and how much it sucks that “we” can’t do it anymore. So that seems like it might be better, although it’s definitely part of the excessive whitewashing and erasure of people of color in public life that characterized this decade. Since White Christmas is all about integrating soldiers into civilian life post-WWII, it has an investment in presenting that life as as uncomplicated and homogenous as possible, I suppose. But once you’ve really thought about “Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army,” you can’t think about Stop-Loss the same way.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, Merry Christmas?

It really weirds me out to watch Peter Krause play another...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 12:53:51 -0500

It really weirds me out to watch Peter Krause play another character going into business with his brother - and the other brother is the fuckup. I do love Parenthood, though.

"She is either very pretty or downright beautiful, depending on your point of view, but most of all..."

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:50:32 -0500

“

She is either very pretty or downright beautiful, depending on your point of view, but most of all she is good-looking in an unethnic American way, like the girl from the long-ago Breck shampoo ad.

She has clear, intelligent hazel eyes and picks at her food in the manner of small-boned women who have trained themselves to eat sparingly without calling attention to it. ‘

Then again, Burch is, by her own admission, “a total perfectionist. I can see,” she adds, “if a picture’s off by a 16th of an inch.” The details, animate as well as inanimate, appear to fall in place for her, as if in deference to her force field, her cleareyed, determined idea of how things should be.

There is nothing overtly tough-seeming about her, for instance, yet her friend Gigi Mortimer tells me that Burch hits the ball so hard in tennis her nickname is “Mighty Mouse.”

”

- From Daphne Merkin’s profile of Tory Burch in last week’s NYT T Style magazine, which I’ve just now gotten around to reading (it’s the one with the bizarrely photoshopped picture of Viggo on the front where he looks like a 13 year old sk8r boy). So there are a lot of problems with this “I don’t know how she does it” piece, but these quotes really stood out to me as the types of things my high school should consider putting in its recruitment materials - Burch is probably our most famous alumna. These descriptions totally embody the Irwin’s girl. You can imagine I was very happy there.

Has anyone else seen this? I haven’t seen much discussion...

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 03:52:03 -0500

Has anyone else seen this? I haven’t seen much discussion of this ad - I found it fucking terrifying. It’s like that xkcd “nice guy” comic but without an element of critique. KEEP HIM IN THE CREEPER CIRCLE, LISA.

superseventies: Writers Angela Davis and Toni Morrison. Oh my...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:12:20 -0500

superseventies:

Writers Angela Davis and Toni Morrison.

Oh my god what do you think they’re talking about?!

The English Patient is on. I am such a sucker for this movie...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:01:08 -0400

The English Patient is on. I am such a sucker for this movie it’s unreal. Sometimes I feel like the only person under 30 who will admit to liking it more than Fargo.

"What we see in many places is that while you can bring crime down by occupying the neighborhood and..."

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:32:30 -0400

“What we see in many places is that while you can bring crime down by occupying the neighborhood and stopping everybody, what you do in the process is lose that neighborhood. … You fuel the idea that the police are an occupying, inimical force in the neighborhood. You play into these real and toxic racial memories about what came before civil rights. And you can make it work in many places, but you can’t stop. You can’t ever say, ‘We’ve won. Things are good. Things are stable,’ because you have driven them into hiding.”

- David M. Kennedy, on programs that target specific geographic areas through car and pedestrian stops in order to stop crime. (via nprfreshair)

Listening to this ep of Fresh Air, seems interesting for people who have never seen The Wire. J/K! It’s actually an interesting alternative to that show’s nihilism.

mike: also I've reached a conclusion that season 5 of the wire is really good if you view it as absurdist comedy

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:35:30 -0400

mike: also I've reached a conclusion that season 5 of the wire is really good if you view it as absurdist comedy

me: tell me more about the wire, i like that theory

mike: basically i realized how absolutely hilarious the whole bit is with the fake serial killer

especially the mcnulty/templeton interactions

buñuel would be proud

champagnecandy: petuniafist: Reason #44 I love Halloween:...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:15:27 -0400

champagnecandy:

petuniafist:

Reason #44 I love Halloween: Robyn dressed as Robin

is this the best thing ever? MAYBE.

yessssssssss

rookiemag: Birthday Tribute: Winona Ryder WINO FOREVER.

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:42:19 -0400

rookiemag:

Birthday Tribute: Winona Ryder

WINO FOREVER.

This is a Ryan Adams appreciation blog, apparently. Come to...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:10:26 -0400

This is a Ryan Adams appreciation blog, apparently. Come to think of it, my undergraduate thesis was written on a steady diet of Heartbreaker. This version of “Firecracker” is approx. 500 times better than the one on Gold. Seriously.

Or, is this my favorite Ryan Adams song? This was from the...

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:19:07 -0400

Or, is this my favorite Ryan Adams song? This was from the period when his website was truly out of control and had like 70 albums by like 8 different alter ego acts up on it. I never really got into those, either, but this is a pretty nice jam to write a dissertation to. Any other “jams to write a dissertation to” suggestions?

Oh, itunes. Since so many of my faves are m4as, and I’m...

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:16:49 -0400

Oh, itunes. Since so many of my faves are m4as, and I’m lazy, I wind up posting videos instead of uploading songs. This is my all-time favorite Ryan Adams song, I think. It’s sort of from the peak of my RA fandom (college, of course). I thought Jacksonville City Nights was really boring, and resented the amount of money I spent on it and Cold Roses, so I didn’t buy 29, or Cardinology. I did like Easy Tiger, though. How’s Ashes and Fire?

Since I’ve started watching more Jeffersons to make...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:00:05 -0400

Since I’ve started watching more Jeffersons to make arguments about Reaganism, this has replaced “The Streetbeater” (Sanford and Son) theme song as the thing I walk around humming to myself on the regular.

thiswasmyjam: Back Here | BBMak This was definitely not my...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:11:00 -0400

thiswasmyjam:

Back Here | BBMak

This was definitely not my jam, but despite not having thought about this song for more than ten years, its chorus sprung immediately to mind upon reading the four words above. Pop music can be disturbing like that.

Is this what the Gayngs of 10 years from now is gonna sound like?