February 2012
39 posts
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WatchMyself and my college roommates (and still great friends) Kate and Bethany spent a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table laughing in our house in the middle of Virginia watching Ze Frank.
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Ze Frank to do The Show again →
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“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”
– Edith Wharton, The Touchstone
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“The most privileged, comfortable person in this auditorium, from the best...”
– Mary Karr, commenting (at around 11:00) on the James Frey exposé (via wesleyhill)
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“Being a broken man himself, Greene knew how to probe the pain and romance of...”
– My hero: Graham Greene | Books | The Guardian (via ayjay)
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New Andrew Bird music, for FREE →
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"Economics Made Easy -- Think Friction"
ALL these examples tell us that increased efficiency is good, and that removing friction increases efficiency. But the financial crisis, along with the activities of the Occupy movement and the criticism being leveled at Mr. Romney, suggests that maybe there can be too much of a good thing. If loans weren’t securitized, bankers might have taken the time to assess the creditworthiness of each...
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The “human element”. That thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like PEOPLE. Somewhere along the line those things became “bad” things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily “fixed”. The end result? In my humble opinion…..a lot of music that sounds perfect,...
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WatchTune-Yards: Tiny Desk Concert
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Teaching — for Ms. Edson at least — is a full-time occupation. She needs the summers, she said, to do nothing, because that makes you a more interesting person in the classroom, and writing on the side is too distracting. “The presence of fictional characters in your head, especially ones who talk, is extremely preoccupying,” she said. “And the nonfictional characters in my life are...
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“a physical, breath-based event, eye to eye […] a public event that leads...”
– Margaret Edson on teaching
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"Why Do People Hate Rap and Opera?"
Opera fanatics incessantly evaluate all aspects of singers, conductors, directors, composers, set designers and opera companies. True geeks know the intricacies of how the human voice works, and how it should work in any given operatic role vis-à-vis any given singer. Opera roles are like clothes, which singers “try on” to varying degrees of success. Certain voices fit certain...
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“David Mamet has a collection of essays called Writing in Cafés, or something...”
– Cormac McCarthy
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“I’m obsessed with why our heroes are not making it past 50. I already gave my...”
– Questlove
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on San Francisco vs. New York
There’s an interview with Bill Murray I just happened to see on Joy Behar’s CNN show (probably in a hotel room) a few years ago, and one of the things he said really stuck with me:
I’ll give you my whole wrap on fame, I think everyone becomes a jerk for about two years when they become famous. And you get to—I give you—so I give people two years to figure it out and pull it together.
This...
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Zappos is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes.
Nike, on the other hand, doesn’t care very much at all about the people who buy the shoes, or even the retailers. They care about the athletes (often famous) that wear the shoes, sometimes for money. They name buildings after these athletes, court them, erect statues…
Columbia Records...
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“Pop songs are deeply monological. That feature only asserts itself, however,...”
– Enrique Lima
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"One's a Crowd"
MORE people live alone than at any other time in history. In prosperous American cities — Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis — 40 percent or more of all households contain a single occupant. In Manhattan and in Washington, nearly one in two households are occupied by a single person. By international standards, these numbers are surprising — surprisingly low. In Paris, the...
“Browsing is the opposite of “search.” Search is precise, browsing is imprecise....”
– Leon Wieseltier (via wesleyhill)
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“I’m writing about Lagos now, but I don’t think of writing an explicitly...”
– Teju Cole
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Questlove on Don Cornelius
Soul Train had double duty, to not only produce a show, but they also had to provide ALL of the production for the Johnson beauty products commercials that was funding the show. often using the set and the soul train gang (they became soul train dancers in 1976) as lead actors.
the genius of it all was THIS was the first time that black people were proud to be called AFRICAN.
psssh before...
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“The most surprising and fascinating thing I learned is that there are...”
– Susan Cain
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