The General Point.

via unburyingthelead:littlepotato: q: what do you want to do most in the next two years? a: hunt...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:27:05 -0800

q: what do you want to do most in the next two years?

a: hunt butterflies, especially certain whites, in the mountains of iran and in the middle atlas. quietly take up tennis again. have three new suits made in london. revisit landscapes and libraries in america. find a harder and darker pencil.

an interview with v. nabokov from here.

This is really hilarious.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:37:35 -0700

This is really hilarious.

Owls So Cute, Who Cares If They're Wise? - The Picture Show Blog : NPR

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:10:34 -0700

Owls So Cute, Who Cares If They're Wise? - The Picture Show Blog : NPR:

Ashoke is trying to kill me. Check out slide 2.

"Betty, the show establishes, was in a sorority. So far, okay. Pretty, with a little-girl voice and a..."

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:27:59 -0700

“Betty, the show establishes, was in a sorority. So far, okay. Pretty, with a little-girl voice and a childlike, almost lobotomized affect; humorless; bland but at times creepily calculating (as when she seeks solace by manipulating her vulnerable friend into an affair); obsessed with appearances and therefore lacking in inner resources; a consistently cold and frequently vindictive mother; a daddy’s girl—Betty is written, and clumsily performed by model-turned-actress January Jones, as a clichéd shallow sorority sister. (Just as Don’s self-invented identity is Gatsby-like, so Betty, his wife, is a jejune ornament like Daisy, though without the voice full of money.) But she’s also a character deeply wronged by her serial-philanderer husband, and she’s hazily presented as a stultified victim of soulless postwar suburban ennui (now there’s a cliché). So, perhaps to bestow gravitas on her, or at least some upper-classiness, the show establishes that she went to Bryn Mawr. But of course Bryn Mawr has never had sororities. By far the brainiest of the Seven Sisters—cussed, straight-backed, high-minded, and feminist (its students, so the wags said, preferred the Ph.D. to the Mrs.)—Bryn Mawr was probably the least likely college that Betty Draper, given to such non-U genteelisms as “passed away,” would have attended. So much for satiric exactitude.”

- Mad About Mad Men - The Atlantic (November 2009)

Food for thought.

"You may have noticed that we spell “theatre” the British way, reversing the “er” to “re,” and double..."

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:21:30 -0700

“You may have noticed that we spell “theatre” the British way, reversing the “er” to “re,” and double consonants before suffixes (“travelled,” rather than “traveled”); we use the diaeresis in words like “coöperate” and “reëlect”; we prefer the serial comma; we spell out round numbers, even big ones. The copy editor does not make any interpretive changes.”

- Copy Editing at The New Yorker Magazine. An Interview With Mary Norris | Red Room

Copy editor porn. Or perhaps “erotica” is more accurate considering it’s all in text. Whatever.

Owl in a box

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:40:23 -0700

Owl in a box:

needless to say, I find this awesome.

<3 I was talking about London yesterday and got nostalgic.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:51:40 -0700

I was talking about London yesterday and got nostalgic.

"The word on the table that morning was “cloud computing.” To translate the English..."

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:39:40 -0700

“

The word on the table that morning was “cloud computing.”

To translate the English term for computing resources that can be accessed on demand on the Internet, a group of French experts had spent 18 months coming up with “informatique en nuage,” which literally means “computing in cloud.” France’s General Commission of Terminology and Neology — a 17-member group of professors, linguists, scientists and a former ambassador — was gathered in a building overlooking the Louvre to approve the term.

“What? This means nothing to me. I put a ‘cloud’ of milk in my tea!” exclaimed Jean Saint-Geours, a French writer and member of the Terminology Commission.

“Send it back and start again,” ordered Etienne Guyon, a physics professor on the commission.

”

- The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age - WSJ.com

Hilarious.

Photo

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:39:53 -0700

And you people say San Francisco doesn’t have...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:06:56 -0700

And you people say San Francisco doesn’t have weather.

(via PT)

One of many photos from Sunday. This one looks like a wedding...

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:39:26 -0700

One of many photos from Sunday. This one looks like a wedding prep-photo. I love it. (Thanks to kowitz)

Video

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:09:36 -0700

In Which I'm Peggy Olson And I Want To Smoke Some Marijuana

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:58:51 -0700

In Which I'm Peggy Olson And I Want To Smoke Some Marijuana:

Pls to click through and scroll down to the Pete & Trudy gif, or, as PT put it, “the most likable Pete Campbell will ever be.”

Recommended.

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:49:02 -0700

Chicken in milk - Jamie Oliver, complete with charming directions, like “baste when you remember.”

Salsa verde - Not what you think, and deeelicious tossed with roasted potatoes.

I know I have been a delinquent blogger lately, but these are a step towards making it up to you. Really. They are that good.

toscana: stood up dan documented the disco and the...

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:31:13 -0700

toscana:

stood up

dan documented the disco and the neighbor’s refrigerator (no longer) in front of our house

"if you like high modernism, narrow lapels, bullet bras, smoking, heavy drinking at lunch, good hotel..."

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:28:44 -0700

“if you like high modernism, narrow lapels, bullet bras, smoking, heavy drinking at lunch, good hotel sex, and bad office sex, this is the series for you”

- Vanity Fair on Mad Men

Good to know.

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:31:35 -0700

1) Thank God for Meryl Streep. Not really a lesson learned, but a reminder that Meryl is absolutely amazing. Saw Julie + Julia and spent nearly all of the Julia portions grinning at the screen like an idiot.

2) Related, Julia Child was sassy. Of course I feel like a doofus for realizing this now. I was telling someone recently that I remember seeing JC on TV as a kid and thinking she was such a dork — pretty sure me and my sister made endless fun of her. And then I never revisited my childish prejudice until it was trendy to do so. Resisting the urge to buy her memoir and/or Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which is up to #1 on Amazon right now thanks to the movie, I believe). Also, obviously buying the cookbook would be foolish as I have no urge to bone a duck anytime soon.

3) “You are the butter to my bread, the breath to my life.” In other words, Julia Child and Paul Child = amazing. Never expected Meryl and Stanley Tucci to have such chemistry.

4) Only because it’s on the same note (food that will fatten you): It is possible to take a dinner roll and inject it with blue cheese, bacon and peach jam. It is also TOTALLY A GREAT IDEA.

5) Siberia used to export something like 16% of the world’s butter. Did you hear that, Julia?

Video

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:41:54 -0700

This morning we realized that Jason Segel was the watermelon...

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:06:05 -0700

This morning we realized that Jason Segel was the watermelon dude in Can’t Hardly Wait.

Jay-Z ft. Beyonce- Bonnie and Clyde 03 DID ANYONE REALIZE LT....

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:40:22 -0700

Jay-Z ft. Beyonce- Bonnie and Clyde 03

DID ANYONE REALIZE LT. DANIELS (from the Wire) WAS IN THIS VIDEO?

(I admit the reason I realized this was because I wanted to listen to the song, and not because of a higher cultural cause.)