I’m excited! SIFFBlog has a scoop, regarding the launch of a new annual Noir City: Seattle festival at midsummer!
Last year, E. Steven Fried published what I think remains the most extensive interview with Seattle’s own James Longley regarding his Oscar-nommed Iraq in Fragments. This year, we’re just getting warmed up!
Hot Tipper Starfleet Ensign Sharman notes that a banner flogging the URL anhaltcondos.com just appeared, floating above the hedgery of our old, lamented, home. Ensign Sharman! I have some data discs for you!
UPDATE: Damn, that site is NOT ready for prime time.
At Poets&Writers, Inc, Stephen Elliott writes about going cold turkey from the hot wire:
I started reading a lot more books, which is good for me since I’m a person who writes books. And I read more challenging books. I would read and write all morning, take a lunch break, and then write until evening. I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out.
When I ask people why they need to be online, they inevitably focus on the stream coming toward them – the information they receive passively from e-mail lists and messages from friends and associates that contain crucial information. But it turns out that you don’t miss much being offline. If something important and newsworthy occurs, you can find out from the newspaper or The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.
Self-portrait in paper. Neat. Spooky.
“The Codex Seraphinianus was written and illustrated by Italian graphic designer and architect, Luigi Serafini during the late 1970’s. The Codex is a lavishly produced book that purports to be an encyclopedia for an imaginary world in a parallel universe, with copious comments in an incomprehensible language. It is written in a florid script, entirely invented and completely illegible, and illustrated with watercolor paintings.”
Apparently a full version of this hallucinatory work may be unearthed at the above link.
WaPo recasts Josh as busker. He’s game. DC commuters? um. Point: JOSH!
I really, really liked this. I sent this note to the WaPo team responsible for the piece.
Thank you all for making my day.
I knew Josh, distantly, as a kid when we were growing up in Bloomington. I haven’t seen him except to be aware of his career in years and years. However, I have heard about his openness and groundedness through the hometown grapevine from others of that cohort. I have no doubt that he is as open to and welcoming of the brilliant and crazy stunt you crafted with his kind cooperation and as sanguine and full of humor as you capture in the story.
In the years since I left Bloomington, I have become friends with more than one busker, but only one who might be characterized as a profoundly gifted professional musician. If I read him correctly, he has come to hate the busking portion of his work, primarily because in order to gather that money-generating crowd, you must rely on set pieces, little two minute magic tricks that confound, excite, and inspire, and which can be executed over and over, once every thirty minutes, to capture the crowd and engage them into the one-or-two dollar donation, or even better, the CD purchase.
Despite what I read as his frustration, his pursuit of the technique has resulted in a spellbinding performer who is unafraid to use his magic tricks to capture the audience’s attention before he proceeds with a piece he may regard as a more subtle and challenging expression of his talents as a songwriter and performer.
I flatter myself I would have had the time and openness on that morning to recognize the preciousness and hilarity of the gift Josh and your team offered the DC commuters at that, incredibly busy, station. I don’t mistake my desire for self-regard with a probable account of my notional interaction.
I can, however report this: your sensitive reportage and careful attention to craft in the prose of your final piece successfully echoed the tragic colors of Josh’s ‘Chaconne’ on the printed page, or more accurately on the internet, and moved me to tears. Kudos to all of you, and my tears are for the tragedy of our national culture of isolation and overscheduling. Thanks for a kickass reading experience, and great work with the multimedia documentation. Simply outstanding, entirely worthy of every participant, from the DC commuter though to Josh and his violin.
UPDATE:
Two days later, Wiengarten notes that this is his largest-response-generating piece, and that at least 10 percent of the thousand or so correspondents note, as I do, that we wept.
Over the past week, I have heard a radio spot for the Washington State Lottery in which an insecure male attempts to impress a female with his collection of medals, one of which she spots as a phoney.
The male voice actor is amusing and disconcertingly familiar-sounding. I’m certain it’s either Jorge Garcia or a voice-actor deliberately emulating the rotund comedian’s inflection and delivery.
Who is Jorge Garcia, you say? Why, he plays the cheerful sad sack Hurley on ABC’s Lost! What the hell is blogworthy about this?
Well, Garcia’s character is a lottery winner believes that life was totally and completely ruined through his encounter with ‘the numbers,’ which he played to win the lottery.
So, somewhere out there in adland, someone made the bright decision to feature as the spokesperson for the Washington State Lottery an actor who defines a character with a view of his lottery experience as a profound and fatal blight.
It’s sorta like hiring Travis Bickle to produce comedic spots for the NRA!
adventurelounge.com – Early Aircraft Design:
The drawings featured here were found in original U.S. Patent applications.
Old pal gets the treatment, learns internet is love, when it’s not hate.