Weekend Window

"I felt Laura’s fingers caress my shoulder. In a little while, I realized that Laura was playing,..."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:47:08 -0700

“I felt Laura’s fingers caress my shoulder. In a little while, I realized that Laura was playing, very gently, but it was a game: her pinkie was sunbathing on my shoulder, then her ring finger would pass and they’d greet each other with a kiss, then the thumb would appear and both pinkie and ring finger would flee down the arm. The thumb was then king of the shoulder and would lie down to sleep; it seemed to me that he even ate some vegetable that was growing there, for the fingernail dug into my flesh, until the pinkie and the ring finger returned, accompanied by the middle and index fingers, and all together they would frighten the thumb, who hid behind an ear and spied on the other fingers from there, without understanding why they’d thrown him out, while the others danced on the shoulder and drank and made love and, out of sheer drunkenness, lost their balance and fell off the cliff and down the back, an accident Laura would take advantage of in order to hug me and lightly touch her lips to mine; in the meantime, the four fingers, terribly bruised, would climb up again, clinging to my vertebrae, and the thumb would observe them without ever thinking to leave his ear.”

- Roberto Bolaño: “Mexican Manifesto” : The New Yorker

"I wrote these songs in San Francisco, in my bay-windowed room overlooking the corner of Page and..."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:52:08 -0800

“I wrote these songs in San Francisco, in my bay-windowed room overlooking the corner of Page and Laguna. We had tried to have a seance there once when I first moved in, but all that happened was we all got incredibly cold. And then remembered that we lived in San Francisco. Even August is cold. My corner overlooked the many crack and prostitution deals going down, as well as the orderly lines of zen monks from the zen center, proceeding serenely towards the health food store.”

- Lida Husik on writing the songs for her second LP Your Bag from 1991. I now live at this very corner.

"We drove to the end of a block and Saunders pointed out a run-down house with a basement apartment..."

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 11:15:38 -0800

“We drove to the end of a block and Saunders pointed out a run-down house with a basement apartment that had a couple of small, dark windows and a broken concrete patio. It was a grim-looking spot. “That’s where Dave wrote ‘Infinite Jest,’ ” he said. “There should be a plaque there.””

- George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year - NYTimes.com

Beautifully creepy. patakk: for ivaplays

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:42:21 -0800

Beautifully creepy.

patakk:

for ivaplays

"I think I hadn’t really understood poverty until I witnessed families with third generation..."

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:34:05 -0800

“I think I hadn’t really understood poverty until I witnessed families with third generation unemployment and poor literacy buying the shiniest gadgets and shoes with the help of catalogue accounts, bingo winnings and cash in hand ‘odd jobs’. I hadn’t understood the marginalised until I sat beside children who were on so much medication they couldn’t sit still, let alone listen or look you in the eye. Who had witnessed so much cursing and negative criticism in their relationships that they couldn’t take a compliment or praise without insulting one of their peers at the same time, who couldn’t watch a football game without punching a door or a table, who never knew what time it was and just kept knocking at the door because no-one was dropping them off or picking them up, let alone knew where they were. […] I came to understand poverty as not such a money based issue, but perhaps a poverty of conversation, positivity, compliments, esteem, routine, stability and time.”

- Under My Skin: some of my ‘Me & the Lower Newtownards Road’ story… | harrietlong Thoughts on the central role poverty plays in the continuing and recent troubles in Belfast. But could these observations not be applied to any community suffering from as much?

"I want to be more expansive. If there are 10 readers out there, let’s assume I’m never going to..."

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:51:06 -0800

“I want to be more expansive. If there are 10 readers out there, let’s assume I’m never going to reach two of them. They’ll never be interested. And let’s say I’ve already got three of them, maybe four. If there’s something in my work that’s making numbers five, six and seven turn off to it, I’d like to figure out what that is. I can’t change who I am and what I do, but maybe there’s a way to reach those good and dedicated readers that the first few books might not have appealed to. I’d like to make a basket big enough that it included them.”

- George Saunders on reaching readers as quoted in George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year in NY Times Magazine. Oh, and that photo of Saunders playing guitar in 1981. Wow.

"The writer Julian Barnes, considering mourning, once said, “It hurts just as much as it is worth.” ..."

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:51:40 -0800

“The writer Julian Barnes, considering mourning, once said, “It hurts just as much as it is worth.” It hurts just as much as it is worth. What an arrangement. Why would anyone accept such a crazy deal? Surely if we were sane and reasonable we would every time choose a pleasure over a joy, as animals themselves sensibly do”

- Joy by Zadie Smith | The New York Review of Books Smith on the difference in worlds between pleasure and joy, a distinction I’ve not before pondered.

"Somewhere in Portland, there’s a very old building, and that very old building has a very, very old..."

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 21:41:12 -0800

“Somewhere in Portland, there’s a very old building, and that very old building has a very, very old basement. An incredible basement, a video-game-level basement, a set-decorator’s dream basement.”

- The Basement by Cabel. A wonderful photographic trip into the matrix of historic printing machines, contemporary data flow and pinup girls.

"the dominant building blocks of Sichuan cuisine—Sichuan peppercorn, with the numbing property known..."

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:08:25 -0800

“the dominant building blocks of Sichuan cuisine—Sichuan peppercorn, with the numbing property known as ma, and red chile, with fiery heat known as la, the yin and yang of a venerable centuries-old cuisine—are essentially drugs. They leave you coughing like a bong hit; buzzing like a line of coke; blasted skyward like a volleyball, and then spiked down into the dust, a speedball of spice.”

- SF’s Mission Chinese Food hits NYC.

Danny Bowien Interview - GQ December 2012: Restaurants Bars: GQ

From a father/daughter brilliant scene in Holy Motors, this...

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:50:56 -0800

From a father/daughter brilliant scene in Holy Motors, this Sparks song has been running through my head since last night’s screening.

Casey Neistat, whose bike videos have impressed in the past,...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 12:08:22 -0700

Casey Neistat, whose bike videos have impressed in the past, continues to do so with this latest missive from an underwater NYC.

gizmodocom:

Casey Neistat Rode His Bike Though Hurricane Sandy and Made Us This Video

Following Twitter like it was a verbal TV, I saw that Casey Neistat was out in Sandy. I tell ya, that guy has a pair of waterproof brass balls. Hollered at him to ask if he’d shoot a little video for us, and here’s what went down:

Read More

One of JK Keller’s iPhone oil...

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:32:44 -0700

One of JK Keller’s iPhone oil paintings…

iphoneoilpaintings:

iPhone Oil Painting #6

"If you turn away now—if you turn away now, if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought..."

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:33:29 -0700

“If you turn away now—if you turn away now, if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible, well, change will not happen. If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void, the lobbyists and special interests, the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are trying to make it harder for you to vote, Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry or control health care choices that women should be making for themselves. Only you can make sure that doesn’t happen. Only you have the power to move us forward.”

- The President of The United States of America accepts the nomination.

"As a consequence of the slavish “categoryitis” the scientifically illogical, and as we shall see,..."

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:36:16 -0700

“As a consequence of the slavish “categoryitis” the scientifically illogical, and as we shall see, often meaningless questions “Where do you live?” “What are you?” “What religion?” “What race?” “What nationality?” are all thought of today as logical questions. By the twenty-first century it either will have become evident to humanity that these questions are absurd and anti-evolutionary or men will no longer be living on Earth. If you don’t comprehend why that is so, listen to me closely.”

- Buckminster Fuller from the introduction to his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

"I’ve had people come to my house and say, ‘They don’t build them like they used to,’” Mr. Archer..."

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:01:33 -0700

“I’ve had people come to my house and say, ‘They don’t build them like they used to,’” Mr. Archer says. “I say, ‘This room is five years old.’ We live in this throwaway society. To me, it’s very logical to save your history.”

- John Archer on his Danvers Scrap Mansion, originally a 3000 square foot two-story box when purchased 30 years ago for $135,000.

"The first story Maya wrote was about a world in which people split themselves in two instead of..."

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:39:12 -0700

“The first story Maya wrote was about a world in which people split themselves in two instead of reproducing. In that world, every person could, at any given moment, turn into two beings, each one half his/her age… The heroine of Maya’s story was splitless. She had reached the age of eighty and, despite constant social pressure, insisted on not splitting. At the end of the story, she died.”

- From Keret’s story “Creative Writing” in his new collection of short stories reviewed in The Millions : The Maturation of Etgar Keret

"J R is a chaos of disconnections, a blizzard of noise. All the passages of narrative and description..."

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 18:15:18 -0700

“J R is a chaos of disconnections, a blizzard of noise. All the passages of narrative and description together would not add up to fifty of the book’s over seven hundred pages. The rest is talk: conversation, monologue, harangue; voices on telephones, intercoms, radios, TV, sound tracks; the slang of schoolchildren and hipsters; the doublequackduckspeak of commissars, of law, science, business, PR, and education; the broken poetry of drunkenness and nervous breakdown–all interrupting each other.”

- Lee Konstantinou on William Gaddis’s JR in the LA Review of Books. Its time to #OccupyGaddis

"opinions are no longer a useful or appropriate organising principle, that reckoning is no longer a..."

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:39:48 -0700

“opinions are no longer a useful or appropriate organising principle, that reckoning is no longer a scarcity, that the network now so obviously and explicitly extends beyond the bounds of any individual being able to say anything useful or conclusive on or about it in isolation, that telling someone your opinion is like telling them about your dreams.”

- James Bridle writing about the current state of expressing one’s opinions Opinions are non-contemporary | booktwo.org

"Deep Listening is less of a thing you do than a way to do all kinds of things— perform, meditate,..."

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:15:00 -0700

“Deep Listening is less of a thing you do than a way to do all kinds of things— perform, meditate, communicate, compose, or just be in the world. It’s hard to summarize but easy to grasp: a set of broadly accessible philosophies and practices for heightening your awareness of total sound. It’s useful for anyone who wants to develop a musical practice or unlearn conventional sonic hierarchies.”

- Pauline Oliveros: Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970 | Album Reviews | Pitchfork

Roli lets us know the WHYs and HOWs of living with...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 15:48:12 -0700

Roli lets us know the WHYs and HOWs of living with sneakers.

elrolio:

Kicks are made for rockin™

There is a reason this image grabbed me by the heartstrings — a few reasons actually — and I’ve been asked to ramble about it a bit. So here we go, this first in what will hopefully be a long series of “How much do I love this? Let me count the ways”

No boxes in sight
I firmly believe that you should rock your kicks, always. None of this if they get stepped on their ruined and never to be worn again. Clearly he gets em and wears em. For the most part, the cleanest kicks in these pics are the most recent releases

Its not always about Jordans
Comme des Garcon Chuckies, both Yeezy 1’s, and the 2 best Galaxy releases (KD IV + Foams)

All the classic headturners are represented
BRED 11’s, Lighting 1’s, Olympic 6’s, Grape 5’s, etc

This sneakerhead is the obi-won to my luke skywalker
I am a very picky person. Unabashedly so. Though I would never wear the Jordan 2’s for instance, I have a specific set of Jordans I love best and within that set I would only want to own specific colorways. What this collection here shows is all of my preferences represented, even the ones I would own if I didn’t continually prioritize. The rest of this list will speak to those specifically.

Bottom left corner: Jordan 1
I own all of those except the yellow and grey pairs. I wear the celtics pair at least once a week. I think these are the classic sneaker to wear with anything at anytime. They are the sneaker I believe inspired creative recreation.

Bottom right corner: Blue White Jordan 13
This is my around the house and around the block shoe. I wear it exclusively within a 1/4 mile radius of my bedroom with shorts.

Above the 1’s: Jordan 3
The black cements which I did my first release day store lineup for. Luckily the line was 3 deep. The white cements beside them which I’ve come to believe is the pinnacle of a white sneaker to go with any jeans. I don’t own these.

Top left corner: 5’s and 4’s!
I patiently await the arrival of the Fire Reds, with the white upper and red/black outsole. I want to play basketball in them. I imagine myself with them occasionally. 2013 re-up. Not pictured here are the 5 & 4 I do own: the wolf greys and militarys respectively. hmmm.

So that’s that! A truly respectable collection, that are clearly rocked with pride and humility (notice the dirty outsoles but thats all). Funny story: my 4’s, I keep trying ot break them in by walking around the hood with them until they get worn in and slightly scuffed enough to become my go to white kicks. Cuz now they are just too bright.

You get me?