communicatrix

I’m not much for the Big Game, but I enjoy reviewing the plays.

[Cubby-Blue]

I ducked into my friend Dave’s blog to find a post about books, since I’m all “BOOKS! BOOOOOOOOOOOOKS!!!!!” these days.

As always when I go there, though, I got completely sidetracked by this most awesome of all nerd fan photos. Because, COME ON. Look at that! Is it not perfect in every way? Can’t you just sense the story in the snapshot, and given Ira’s stock-in-trade, isn’t this the finest kind of meta-homage there is?

The essay is great, too. Dave is one of those writers you read once and fall in love with. I’m actually in love with him, his wife and their kid—that’s how much I love Dave and his big, fat principles.

You should read the blog in its entirety. But you should definitely read the post this photo links to.

[Dave Greten’s Blog: Ira and Me]

Now there’s a left-to-right punchline I can get behind. [Charlie Parker]

(crackskull bob)

curvedwhite:

“Hammock” designed by http://www.futatsumata.com/“>Koichi Futatsumata for E&Y

This makes me want to get a sofa and a cat.

putthison:

“Jesse, this isn’t men’s style related.  This is just a picture of a deep sea diver fighting an octopus.”

“Despite what you seem to think, I’m not some lion in a cage.  Quite the contrary.  I’m a wild lion, fucking up antelopes and posting what he pleases.”

Please. You totally have jumpsuits on the brain, you and Adam both.

lonelysandwich:

2010: The Year I Stopped Knowing

Rather abruptly, it seems I’ve stopped knowing who all of the people are on the covers of magazines. I used to know. And if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t feel bad. I’d simply assume the person’s fame would grow to the point I’d recognize it.

But recently I’ve noticed that if I don’t know who someone is on the cover of a magazine, I feel a little bit out-of-touch. Take, for example, the Vanity Fair cover above. Time was, I would recognize by name and face every single nymph to grace such a trifurcated cover. Now I’m 6 for 9. And it upsets me because I feel it’s my deficiency, not theirs.

The big question: Is this a function of my age? Have I crammed every last celebrity, character and title into my brain over the years, leaving room for no more? Or is the relative value of celebrity diminishing to the point where we’re not expected to recognize them all, even as they’re marketed as though we are?

Is the culture changing? Or am I?

Wait ‘til you’re 1 for 9. It’s coming.

Seriously, I think this is a good function of age. Not that it’s a bad thing to be able to name a clutch of rising stars; it’s just that as I’ve become subtly aware—okay, ACUTELY aware of my time counting down, I’ve found my attention turning to other things. Only so many hours in a day, so many days left.

I consume far, far less current news, information and entertainment than I used to. That’s an across-the-board thing, not just a popular culture thing. I sometimes wish I were better informed about all kinds of things; music and film and TV are the least of it.

I also realize that this makes me rather more ordinary than I once fancied myself.

I remember being crestfallen when my beloved gramps—who, you have to understand, was always ahead of the curve, culturally speaking, and introduced me to more important shit that you can imagine when I was a kid, R. Crumb and ’60s/’70s-era Playboy inclusive—thanked me politely, but would I please stop putting really depressing films on their “to watch” list (I’d bought them passes at the local video store so they could keep up)? When you get to a certain age, he told me, you just don’t elect to see certain things anymore: you know well enough how strange and difficult life can be.

I fully expect to glance at a cover one of these years and not know a single lovely soul. I’m relieved that the wanting to keep up has moved from the worrying whether I’m being left behind to feeling grateful that I can choose so consciously (and mostly, so happily) where to spend my time and attention.

And yeah, I still do feel just a wisp of a hint of a twinge over not caring so much anymore. But just that wisp.

wreckandsalvage:

The Dude Abides. (via iri5)

The dude in VHS. Click through and see the whole set. Damn.

curvedwhite:

TV Posters designed by Albert Exergian