The lyrics to David Bowie’s Space Oddity imagined as a children’s book by illustrator, Andrew Kolb. So clever. So cute. I’d love to see a whole series of these. I’m certain my nephews would be big fans of an AC/CD Big Balls inspired book.
(via @kissane)
Stanley Kubrick was known to have rooms of his estate literary filled with project research. The topic which took up the most space was Napoleon. After studio support for the project was pulled, Kubrick was never able to secure the financing necessary to film his screen play. For decades, the wealth of amassed groundwork sat filed away until recently. The art publisher Taschen have put many of these materials together in a book set, Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made. Here is a short film on the book’s backstory.
(via In Secret Agreement)
I’ve just finished reading Michael Lewis’ The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine. He manages to craft a story involving credit default swaps into an absolute page turner. The narrative is a pulverizing piece of literary work that will stand as a clear record of how the American people were cheated by a morally bankrupt system that by design had to fail. The story reads like a curious piece of fiction. Only it’s not. It’s all real. Lewis tells the story of Wall Street’s recent meltdown better than the bankers and investors themselves seem to understand what happened. Overlapping stories and characters are woven together in a style that consistently made me think of HBO’s The Wire. Here are a few select words from one hedge fund trader who made tens of millions of dollars by betting against the system.
I think there is something fundamentally scary about our democracy… because I think people have a sense that the system is rigged, and it’s hard to argue that it isn’t.
Every year since 1949, a mysterious visitor has paid tribute to Edgar Allen Poe by leaving a bottle of cognac and roses at his tomb on his birthday. This week marks the first time in 61 years that nobody came,
Letters of Note is a site that archives intriguing correspondences of the written and printed variety. In this letter, J.D. Salinger explains why he has no intentions of letting anyone have the film rights to The Catcher in the Rye. And here, Edgar Allan Poe apologizes for drunken behavior and asks his publisher to purchase an article, as he is in desperate need for cash.
Check out this great writing house that author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) persnally built in the back yard of his Vermont home.
A friend of mine who I haven’t seen in sometime just shared this with me. He provided the soundtrack which accompanies Conor Oberst Sex, a short ebook which is also available online for free. Whether or not this story is based on any truth involving Mr. Bright Eyes himself is kind of irrelevant. The story imagines a quick intimate relationship with Connor Oberst or any object of desire for that matter. I found it to be a nice little read and really like the idea of including a soundtrack with a story.
Running out of room for your books? You could can always store them under the steps.
Book Worship is an appropriately named blog that is dedicated to one person’s growing collection of books whose designs he finds graphically interesting. The designer/author happens to have fantastic taste.
Here is a wonderful interview with book designer, David Pearson of Penguin Publishing UK fame. He discusses his new venture - White Books is a small publishing project dedicated to releasing beautiful editions of classic literature.
Particularly because I was born in The City of Brotherly Love, I am with all of my heart absolutely ashamed with Philadelphia today. It is an atrocity and an insult to Ben Franklin’s legacy of founding the first American library in Philly that the cities politicians would allow their public libraries to close. Perhaps I don’t know the political climate in the state of Pennsylvania well enough, but I do know that it is simply unacceptable to allow the greatest record of our culture and past to be treated as though it were so disposable.
As a New Yorker, I’ve become very comfortable with the idea of living in a small space. Adapting to this kind of environmental restraint leads to creative thinking, and a sort of practical living in which one must consider what and how much they consume. The notion of building a home 1,000 square feet or less, like those in the coffee table book, Tiny Houses is quite intriguing. I’ll gladly take the house in image #2.
I hate to admit it but I have a short attention span when it comes to reading. While I am surrounded by people who ravage their way through one large volume after another, I tend to do much better with short stories and articles. I wanted to recommend a fast read which is also one of the most profound books I’ve had the pleasure to take in - Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee (2003 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature). The story is devastatingly powerful.
It seems that there is an Orwellian eBook problem going on. Big Brother decided to wipe the slate clean on some people’s Kindle ebook readers. Between this and the ordeal this past Spring when Amazon delisted gay themed books, one has to ask “what on good earth is going on over there”.
(via kottke)
Documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris has been contributing to the NY Times Opinion section for some time now. Working within the same tradition, another documentarian - Alex Gibney is now maintaining a blog for The Atlantic.
Stephen Colbert will be guest editing the June 8th issue of Newsweek. This kind of reminds me of the time that Jon Stewart went onto Crossfire to tell the “journalists” that they were hurting our country (this event spelled the end of the program) or the fact that ex-SNL funny man Al Franken is still embattled over a Senatorial seat in Minnesota. Perhaps comedians have some of the best perspectives on news and politics because they also have a sense of humor.
My heart is heavy. My friend Craig climbed a mountain for inspiration, knowledge and experience. He didn’t come back. I want to share his voice and words. Here he reads one of his poems, Hymn to Persephone.
I’ve posted before about the problems with maintaining a manicured front lawn as so many people do in the US. Last week, Michelle Obama took a big symbolic step forward for the sustainable food movement by planting the first vegetable garden at The White House in decades. Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan writes why the Obama’s should rip out the front lawn of their new home next.
The freedom to work at home with everything at your fingertips sounds pretty liberating. Writer-designer David Barringer explains why it is symptomatic of a generation squeezed.
With the devastation our interconnected global economy here, it may be time to start considering salvagepunk and use cinema as a guide of what to be wary of.
The promise beneath this? Keep the technology, keep consumption, but make it “thoughtful”, make it conscious, make it responsible. Gild your laptop, hammer some bronze, and think of the slow dance of the new wind-turbines on the horizon.
Michael Winterbottom is one of the most unique and prolific filmmakers in cinema today. With each project he ventures into new territory sliding in and out of genres with ease. What I have found to be so particularly alluring about his work, is that there is a clear voice that is always looking for new ways to use the medium of film. In the last few years, he has experimented with blurring documentary into more traditional forms of story telling, resulting in a seemingly new language. Now, he has taken on Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine as a point of departure. The pairing of Winterbottom and Klein is sure to make for an intense film.
It’s the beginning of a new year and a new cycle of sorts. So I figure either yesterday or today are opportune moments to post a secret and start anew.
Adjoining the introverted and eccentric life of Franz Kafka with the illustrative work of Robert Crumb makes for a rather peculiar read. The Fantagraphics release Kafka by Zane Mairowitz and Crumb is definitely worth picking up.
Here is an interesting piece on the state of the music video.
This posting is to congratulate a friend and one of the brightest minds I know. Craig Arnold is a poet and a professor at the University of Wyoming in the MFA program. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including: a Yale Younger Poets Selection, the Rome Prize, a Fulbright and most recently a US-Japan Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship. He has just released his second book, Made Flesh with Ausable Press. Best of luck in Columbia; next stop Japan. I wish I could be with you guys for the book release party, but am so glad I got to see you this weekend. We are truly fortunate to have friends like you and Rebecca. Damn Robin is getting tall; I wonder if he and I might one day join forces and start a very loud garage band.
Kafka expert James Hawes will be publishing the findings of his research on the author later this month. In addition to debunking many a myth surrounding the writers life, Excavating Kafka will reveal - to the dismay of many a scholar - Kafka’s interest in pornography.
(via Big Contrarian)
Miranda July is a charming offbeat writer, filmmaker and artist. She truly has such a unique voice and way that she sees the world. Last year she released a collection of short stories called No One Belongs Here More Than You. Coinciding with the release of the book, July launched a pretty clever website in which she transforms her stove top into a dry erase board. The site is a great place to start. If you love it; buy the book.
Doug Aitken is a renowned multimedia artist who has worked with video installation, sculpture, and photography. In 2006, he published Broken Screen: 26 Conversations. The book compiles conversations with artists in which they discuss their desires to work outside of conventional linear narrative forms. Aitken engages his fellow artists—including Werner Herzog, Ed Ruscha, Robert Altman, Kenneth Anger, Claire Denis, Amos Vogel, and Alejandro Jodorowsky—in discussion, as opposed to critical interviews. Below are some choice quotes:
“I almost feel like the process of filmmaking is a performance itself. The act of filmmaking becomes an extension of the performance on-screen.—Matthew Barney
“…I got fired again and again because people like Jack Warner, the cofounder of Warner Brothers, would say, ‘who has actors all talking at the same time?’ Well I haven’t had many experiences in real life where people don’t talk all at the same time. People don’t wait around for each other to shut up before they speak.”—Robert Altman
“…the notion of a beginning and an end is a rational formulation that I don’t use anymore. For me, life is not continuous. If I have a beginning and end in one of my films, its not a real beginning or end. These things don’t exist.”—Alejandro Jodorowsky
Just how well do you know where your food comes from? Before your meal made its way to your plate, how did the ingredients start out? Everyday, it is highly likely that you are ingesting food that can be traced back to a very large and unfriendly corporation called Monsanto.
The company controls a large majority of the seeds that are used in this country for farming. Through the influence of money and intimidation techniques, this company has re-written our laws and claims patents on some of the most fundamental parts of our food chain. Like the use of seeds for planting. Monsanto historically has been a chemical company. In the 60’s they were makers of agent orange, a dangerous cancer causing pesticide. Gradually, the company shifted into the agriculture business consolidating competition under their roof. Now Monsanto is moving in on our dairy supply.
Who is paying the price? American farmers are absolutely suffering and being bullied about. These genetically modified unnatural seeds are ending up in the greater portion of what we eat. What are we to do? First, get to know Monsanto. And secondly, eat less packaged food and purchase more local food from local green markets.
Stefan Sagmeister and Hillman Curtis both are highly influential designers. Both are based out of New York City and both were given names that made them destined for success. In Curtis’ most recent episode of his video series on artists, he points his camera at Sagmeister who has just released a book of his work entitled Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far.
What would the earth be like without humans? Journalist Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us explores how traces of civilization would crumble and nature would take over. There is quite a bit of interesting stuff on the book’s website including a time line of the decay of NYC.
A NY Times Op-Ed discussing the ugly politics involved in farming local organic agriculture. Of course the big guy fears the little guy.
