sentencelessness

2010-05-07T14:11:00.002+07:00

i'm not doing a good job of housekeeping... so. sentencelessness is hereby retired. thanks for watching.

2010 tournament of books [books]

2010-03-12T14:29:00.009+07:00

the morning news' 2010 tournament of books is underway and full up with things i want to read - the anthologist vs. everything ravaged, everything burned in a first round matchup!?! - and buffered with a few compulsory hype titles and big names (wolf hall, the help, the lacuna). this year kottke and andrew w.k. are among the judges. the tournament progresses with one duel per day, and each pairing has a good discussion of the titles. the whole thing is sponsored by powell's, who are offering 30% off books in the tournament.

2010-03-12T12:11:00.003+07:00

unrest in bangkok. hope they stay away from the airports at least until tuesday.

dark dark dark [music]

2010-03-10T17:40:00.007+07:00

dark dark dark are a hybird of musicians from new york, new orleans and minneapolis, including the magnificent lead vocalist and piano and accordion artist nona marie invie, supported by the vocals and multi-instrumentist marshall lacount (banjo, piano, clarinet), two choir singers, jonathan kaiser on cello, and multi-instrumentalist water mcclements (piano, trumpet and accordion), plus the talents of drummer brett bullion and bassist todd chandler. (irc)

LINK: listen to the new dark dark dark ep bright bright bright

morgan blair [paint]

2010-03-09T17:29:00.008+07:00

morgan blair paints neon geometry spliced with memories. the colors alone could be future (or past) american apparel prints, but don't quote me on that - i don't live in america.

fang island [video]

2010-03-08T23:43:00.005+07:00

mondays don't do it for me. never have. today fang island earned a smile or two. these dudes do a whole lot of stuff, and i'm still trying to sort it out without listing a half dozen half-accurate band comparisons. mostly they have fun without spending money on their music videos. i'll admit that this video might be easier to like after having taught some wacky kids. just in case this one doesn't explode your dirigible, here are a number of other, thoroughly enjoyable fang island videos. try 'em.

ride, rise, roar [movie]

2010-03-05T17:41:00.005+07:00

david byrne is out to prove that seniors can do great things when they stay active. but seriously, if you aren't sick of byrne from this or that, then you should look into this documentary of his rather elaborate most recent tour.

gorillaz [music]

2010-03-03T21:21:00.006+07:00

snoop dogg says 'crackalackin' early on in the new gorillaz album. crackalackin gets you every time, but you don't have to admit it, and i know you think damen albarn can shake and bake. so get crackalackin and listen to the album over at npr already. [see what i did there? crackalackin 3 - 4 times.]

planet war [photography]

2010-03-03T01:27:00.003+07:00

2010-03-01T02:48:00.002+07:00

2010-02-22T21:46:00.005+07:00

'what's your object?'
'to destroy everything. no more nations, no more governments, no more property, no more god or religion.'
'yes, i gather that. only where is that going to lead you?'
'to the primitive and formless community, to a new world, a fresh start.'
'and how are you going to carry it out? how do you propose to set about it?'
'by fire, poison and the dagger. the real hero is the murderer, for he is the avenger of the people, the revolutionary in action, not someone just trotting out phrases out of books. we must have a series of appalling cataclysms to horrify the rulers and awaken the people.'

U900 [video // music]

2010-02-15T11:18:00.001+07:00

avatar [movie]

2010-01-27T18:20:00.002+07:00

we saw avatar last night.
the future fought the past and nature won.
i hope that's how it always is.

camilo jose vergara [photography]

2010-01-22T17:07:00.005+07:00

i photograph the ruins of urban america. ruins are open, vulnerable, and evocative. as building fragments, they invite us to imagine how they were before their demise. - camilo jose vergara

invincible cities is an interactive database of urban decay photography by camilo jose vergara. it is astounding.

real good experiment [video]

2010-01-22T16:50:00.003+07:00

in line with trying to sort through my [eventual?] career ideas, i've been doing a lot of media delving of late. i found 'the real good experiment'. kick it to hell as snooty designer kitsch and high-priced niche bombing if you must, but hell, it's a really interesting media fragment, and really well made. p.s. no, you probably can't afford anything made by blu dot (something to do with that niche i mentioned).

(via kitsunenoir)

listening party [music // milwaukee // friends]

2010-01-21T17:46:00.006+07:00

milwaukee's brimming over with these uppity do-it-yourselfers. you know the ones. with the one speed bikes, lop-sided haircuts and secretly expensive jeans. don't get me started on the girls, what with their knitting needles and pin-up tattoos. i'm halfway to a tizzy already. i love those fucking kids and i miss them like mad.

milwaukee kids have always got something cooking. this time it's listening party, nick and andy's new record label. if the phrase "limited edition, numbered, high quality vinyl pressings" gives you a boner - or even a halfer - then get out your $9 art pen and your moleskine and take note. if you're unsure about what the hell you just read, head over to the listening party's homepage to listen to a track from the new decibully record world travels fast. and read up on a forthcoming release from minneapolis' lookbook. then do the right thing and buy a record.

[photo cred]

yesterday was dramatic, today is ok [photography]

2010-01-21T16:32:00.006+07:00

mauriah, pack a bag, we're going to mumbai.

goddamn. yesterday was dramatic, today is ok was named one of the best photoblogs out for good reason. click; drool on your boots.

p.s. sentencelessness now has 200 posts. thanks for watching.

2010-01-19T15:15:00.003+07:00

don't call it a cooking rut, but it'd been a while since we wowed ourselves in the kitchen until m riffed on this recipe and put together an excellent zucchini/squash hash(?) last night. highly recommended. m says use basil and oregano in place of parsley. and i say if you don't live in a scanty, mostly vegan kitchen like ours, use a bit of butter if you've got it laying around. we ate it with a hearty rice, but it would be good tossed with pasta as well.

patti smith [books // music]

2010-01-18T17:09:00.008+07:00

patti smith's new memoir of legendary village friendships (especially her and mapplethorpe), just kids, is out now, and i almost can't remember winter. so here's "february snow" by patti.

It is the immutable hour. The still, somnolent hour of God. The snow is falling and aroused by dream I slip into my coat and enter the last breath of night. Not a bit of wind, not a bird upon the branch to greet me. Only the mute thrum of flakes upon my face covering everything- shoulders, sky, the path before me with the color of snow. And I am reminded of the hair of certain men - of the silky strands of de Kooning; of Sandburg, Frost, and the beard of Whitman.

The moon arrays the field - a wide pallium of white velvet-I do not wish to cross and mar with my step. So I stand for a long time looking down at my faithful boots and my long, dove-colored coat. I have always loved a good coat, and my preoccupation with a sleeve or the detail of a vent can carry me away.

I remember wearing this same coat the night Andy Warhol died. It was February. Snow was falling and I was walking very fast. As I passed a small churchyard surrounded by an iron gate I realized I was chanting a prayer to the beat of my feet. I hurried on. I was due at the recording studio and I was late, for I had been talking to Robert. He called, in great distress, to tell me Andy was dead.
"He wasn't supposed to die," he cried out, somewhat desperately, somewhat petulant, like a spoiled child. I could hear other thoughts racing between us.
"neither are you"
"neither am I"
I could hear him hearing me. We didn't say anything. We hung up reluctantly.
"I am with you."
"I am with you."

Walking. I suddenly felt very happy. It was a beautiful evening. Cold and clean. The snow, which had been falling lightly, now fell with great force. I wrapped my coat about me. I was in my fifth month and the baby moved inside me.

"It's snow, little baby, snow."

It was warm and glowing in the studio. Richard, beloved pianist, left his post to make me coffee. The musicians assembled. It was our last night recording till the baby came. My husband said a few words about Andy. Then we made ready and performed the song - a structured, improvised spirited argument-talking communion. In the center of it I held the image of a swan - pale and sounding - a trumpeter swan.

We were pleased with our work. Everyone said good-bye and a few remained. Hearn, our percussionist, sat crosslegged on the floor with some rare uncommon instruments resembling Moroccan pie plates. Richard sat at the keyboards. My husband played guitar. I left them there, in desert twilight, and slipped outside into the New York night. The snow had ceased falling and it seemed like the whole of the city, in remembrance, had been covered in an undisturbed layer of snow - white and fleeting as Warhol's hair.

Some months later Robert was commissioned to photograph Andy's house. He disliked interiors but agreed, saying, "If I'm going to do one it might just as well be his - at least he was a genius."

Robert, entering a dressing closet, found to his surprise rows of white wigs, some of human hair, some doll's hair, and all evoking the shy radiance of their master. So much so that Robert imagined if he were to photograph one against his black drop, in his meticulous light, that he would have a true portrait of the artist with all his soft black humor entwined in that wonderful hair - like the wild threads of a fairy godmother.

Everything dissipates, commingles with dawn. First Andy died. Then Robert. And then, quite suddenly without a word, Richard followed. It is time, I think, to walk across the field. The snow falling very fast fills my steps. No one will know I passed over. For there is none but a shroud of snow stained in memory, graced with mourning light.
[from interview magazine, 1992]

DOWNLOAD: patti smith - my generation (live cover) [mp3]

2009: my year in books [books]

2010-01-12T11:34:00.009+07:00

i'm not really big on year-end lists, but i had a pretty decent reading year in 2009 and a good portion of this blog has been devoted to books. so here's a cursory rundown of my year in books.

total books read: 30 [18 novels, 9 non-fiction, 5 re-reads]

best book: red dust by ma jian

worst book: the judgment by chart korbjitti
* read this for our new book club. it's a thai novel, and, to be fair, the translation is likely not great, but neither is the story.

longest: don quixote (928 pp), 2666 (891 pp)
* both are noteworthy, doorstop-like books. both very good, too.

shortest: here is new york (58 pp)
* excellent treatise on new york. stands up today. highly recommended.

thirty books is a pretty good run for me, i'm not a fast reader. best book was pretty clearly red dust simply because of how much of a sucker i've become for travel lit, but others that deserve honorable mention include 2666, chronic city (j. lethem) and fictions (borges). befriend me on goodreads if you're over there.

nabiis + ftc alchemy [bikes]

2010-01-06T21:51:00.006+07:00

this is pretty. my favorite taipei roaddogs, the nabiis crew, have partnered with for the city - sf via taipei - and have got new double-butted chro-maly frames coming out very soon. more specifics when i get them, but they should be reasonably priced and sturdy. hawk was doing his best to crush the prototype frame, but it did nothing but take those beatings day in and day out. i know i want one. you might remember nabiis from earlier friderday and bin lan hustle posts.

LINKS: nabiis' flickr // more frame shots on fhai's flickr

365 [photography]

2010-01-02T16:48:00.005+07:00

i've been a little light on the material here in recent months. two jobs and distraction and wah wah wah. m and i got to talking, and it feels like we haven't been doing a good job of making note of our lives in bangkok, and want to get better at it. therefore, we're going to engage in one of these eponymous 365 day photo efforts. ideally each photo will have a little backstory. follow it here. and don't you quit on sentencelessness just yet, cause she ain't quittin' on you.

merry christmas

2009-12-24T19:46:00.005+07:00

dec 24: i just got off the elevator with a japanese neighbor who said to me, "so. how are you this today?" this today. since that moment i've been recounting my day. cursed the alarm clock but smiled that m - who always has to get up first - got to stay in bed. wore the same polo shirt as eighty other people. drank lukewarm cocoa on an eighty-five degree day. got sprayed with silly string. wore two party hats at one time to the tremendous amusement of one hundred some nine year olds. ate a new mysterious food - white coconut jelly shaped like a duck. ate altogether too much food. remembered that i don't hate my day job, and, in fact, that i think that nine year olds can be pretty great. christmas shopped. rode two different trains. fell asleep reading don quixote. daydreamed about wisconsin. rode the bus two times. got takeaway and busted the guy's balls about adding a service charge. bought candy to fill a stocking. trudged home. began finding notes stashed all around, recounting the magic in the shared moments of the past year. smiled. (i'm not yet done with those last two.)

hm. this today has been a far cry from bad or normal. but i have been caught off guard. christmas sneaks up with no snow. holidays reveal the charming, graceful parts of people that are too often covered over with the verdigris of this and that. i've had moments of clarity that cut through the incessant bossa nova christmas songs, and i wonder if maybe i'm believing in things. my dad sent me a christmassy book that arrived last night out of the blue and it lingered in my thoughts this today as one of my favorite gestures by anybody in a long time. m is sneakliy reminding me of moments as i fumble about the place.

if i had to say, i guess i'd go with sneaky; this today has been sneaky. and this today is christmas eve. so merry sneaky christmas. i miss all of your far away faces.

(pic by m)

2009-12-22T16:53:00.007+07:00

"It’s mostly younger men stealing the books...They think it’s an existential rite of passage to steal their homeboy."

do easy - gus van sant // william burroughs [video]

2009-12-19T21:37:00.003+07:00

jeff mangum [music]

2009-12-15T22:07:00.007+07:00

this was on kottke somewhat recently. it's been queuing up in my brain at intervals for more than a week. now it's here. and it's really great. [knitting factory, march 7, 1998.]

bad book covers [books]

2009-12-10T23:48:00.007+07:00

having just written a post about being coerced by an attractive book cover (see below), it's timely that there's an essay in the times about the potentially negative effect that bad cover art might have on a book's readability. joe queenan, having struggled to reread his gaudy copy of the adventures of huckleberry finn, has new ideas about judging books by their covers. queenan claims to have "recently scrutinized (his) library to see how many unread books had disgusting covers. the results were staggering." queenan doesn't do much to qualify or quantify his theory, other than stating that unappealing cover art appears to have a direct correlation, negatively affecting the reader's perception of the book. it makes me wonder which unread books i've got sitting on bookshelves back in wisconsin that i might like to chalk up to this theory. in a somewhat related cover art story, the guardian's book blog gives lip to some grumbling about newly rebranded editions of wuthering heights clearly aimed at suckling at twilight's teat.

diane arbus [photography]

2009-12-10T21:21:00.008+07:00

diane arbus was a pretty big deal. i just learned about her from fur, a soap-opera-like 'what if?' about arbus (played by goddamn nicole kidman) and a neighbor who suffers from hypertrichosis - werewolf syndrome! - (robert downey, jr., charming, as ever).

chronic city [books]

2009-12-06T17:06:00.004+07:00

here we have a case of sold by the cover. after wandering the bookstore, marveling again at the superior inventiveness and style of asian (taiwanese and thai, at least) paperback cover art, i came to the new release tower in the english section. i managed to frugally pass over hardcover editions of nicholson baker's the anthologist and everything ravaged, everything burned by wells tower, but i couldn't resist the cover of faber and faber's first paperback edition of jonathan lethem's latest, chronic city. there aren't any revolutionary elements here: a bit-mapped tiger image with fangs of new york skyscrapers. enter my bibliophilia and the fact that this has been on my list, and the deed was done. i'll try to remember to take my camera to the bookstore in the future and do a post about these enviable asian book covers.

LINK: chronic city made the nytimes 10 best of 2009

letters of note // hunter s. thompson [real mail]

2009-11-29T23:54:00.006+07:00

** disclaimer **: hunter was a verbal scrapbooker, expletives were his glitter. as such, the post below is quite...sparkly. dig? if you're not into it, please just skip it.

who gets to send a fax that has a cc list of depp, pitt, nolte, benicio del toro?

Transcript

HOLLY SORENSON / Shooting Gallery / Hollywood / Jan 22 '01

Dear Holly,

Okay, you lazy bitch, I'm getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround that you're doing with The Rum Diary.

We are not even spinning our wheels aggresivly. It's like the whole Project got turned over to Zombies who live in cardboard boxes under the Hollywood Freeway... I seem to be the only person who's doing anything about getting this movie Made. I have rounded up Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Nick Nolte & a fine screenwriter from England, named Michael Thomas, who is a very smart boy & has so far been a pleasure to talk to & conspire with...

So there's yr. fucking Script & all you have to do now is act like a Professional & Pay him. What the hell do you think Making a Movie is all about? Nobody needs to hear any more of that Gibberish about yr. New Mercedes & yr. Ski Trips & how Hopelessly Broke the Shooting Gallery is.... If you're that fucking Poor you should get out of the Movie Business. It is no place for Amateurs & Dilletants who don't want to do anything but "take lunch" & Waste serious people's Time.

Fuck this. We have a good writer, we have the main parts casted & we have a very marketable movie that will not even be hard to make....

And all you are is a goddamn Bystander, making stupid suggestions & jabbering now & then like some half-bright Kid with No Money & No Energy & no focus except on yr. own tits.... I'm sick of hearing about Cuba & Japs & yr. Yo-yo partners who want to change the story because the violence makes them Queasy.

Shit on them. I'd much rather deal with a Live asshole than a Dead worm with No Light in his Eyes.... If you people don't want to Do Anything with this movie, just cough up the Option & I'll talk to someone else. The only thing You're going to get by quitting and curling up in a Fetal position is relentless Grief and Embarrassment. And the one thing you won't have is Fun...

Okay, That's my Outburst for today. Let's hope that it gets Somebody off the dime. And if you don't Do Something QUICK you're going to Destroy a very good idea. I'm in the mood to chop yr. fucking hands off.

R.S.V.P

(Signed)

HUNTER

cc:
Depp
Benecio
M. Thomas
Nolte
Shapiro

via letters of note, a super great site that is collecting, translating and transcribing found correspondence of all kinds of profundity, humor and grace. example #2: the history behind the naming of slaughterhouse v.

yours ever [books // real mail]

2009-11-29T15:36:00.011+07:00

a few years ago i sat down in a cramped, teal-green riverwest bedroom intending to continue a myspace 'conversation' i'd been having with my not-yet girlfriend, mauriah. having typed a few lines, i stopped short, not feeling invested in it. i realized that i'd shot my mouth off about enjoying writing letters but had yet to follow through (nevermind that we lived three blocks apart). so i drew a mock-up of the myspace message creation page and wrote a letter instead. there was no way of knowing then the trials and miles and travails and mails we'd survive in the coming months and years - largely buoyed by writing letters.

our pen pal partnership transcended daily email and occasional video phone calls as a series of tactile, genuine articles. daily ruminations, found items, coffee rings and the hopes of early mornings mingled with doodles, cut out pictures, work frustrations, and full-color descriptions of the minutia of moments. often the envelopes were handmade. occasionally letters were lost, always to much cursing and despair (on my end, at least). during one stretch, 3 of m's letters in a row were eaten by the mail, leaving me to wonder why 7,500 miles away she'd not been writing. after a time i asked about it and she told me she'd been writing. a few days later, two of the road-weary letters showed up postmarked weeks apart. i almost cried.

i am fortunate to be happily enveloped[!] in a relationship that owes much to real letters. i believe in them. no surprise then, that i'm very keen to get a copy of thomas mallon's latest, yours ever: people and their letters. excerpts from the nytimes review below.

think of a letter, ralph waldo emerson urged his daughter, as “a kind of picture of a voice.” (thomas) mallon recognizes letters as well to be monuments, marathons, performance art. he neglects neither ann landers nor the unabomber. by way of unexpected detours...he delivers up epistolary swooning, stroking, wincing, mulling, composting...

...it is next to impossible to read these pages without mourning the whole apparatus of distance, without experiencing a deep and plangent longing for the airmail envelope, the sweetest shade of blue this side of a tiffany box. is it possible to sound crusty or confessional electronically? it is as if text and e-mail messages are of this world, a letter an attempt, however illusory, to transcend it. all of which adds tension and resonance to mallon’s pages, already crackling with hesitations and vulnerabilities, obsessions and aspirations, with reminders of the lost art of literary telepathy, of the aching, attenuated rhythm of a written correspondence. (full article)

(yes, those pictures are some of our actual collected correspondence.)

thanksgiving

2009-11-28T20:32:00.002+07:00

lu guang [photography // china]

2009-11-20T23:36:00.004+07:00

lu guang, a former factory worker in china, was recently awarded the w. eugene smith grant in humanistic photography by the asia society for his documentary project “pollution in china.” sorry for the logos on the photos, i trust that you'll be able to look past them...

LINK: translated interview with lu guang

tim burton [illustration // film]

2009-11-20T22:38:00.003+07:00

LINK: Tim Burton at the Museum of Modern Art through April 26

kim sin hye [paint]

2009-11-20T21:24:00.003+07:00

japón [film]

2009-11-18T20:53:00.014+07:00

on a recent trip to kuala lumpur, i attended a showing of japón at annexe gallery's semi-regular monday night movie series and in doing so had the rare good fortune of making a frugal decision that was worth every ringgit. carlos reygadas' curiously uneponymous first film is peopled phenomenally by non-actors and peppered by shots that create the too-rare burden of the camera as a medium for carrying narrative. watching japón begins to feel like a responsibility, an experience that has nothing in common with the bald voyeurism or off-the-cuff omniscience playing at the local cineplex. the on-screen palette is all shades of heather, it's run through with heavy mexican roman catholic allegory, and various dead animals punctuate and are punctured. don't judge it by the hackneyed preview, do try to see it.

LINK: recent wall street journal feature on the malaysian art scene

andy warhol [photography]

2009-11-12T00:15:00.004+07:00

great set of athlete polaroids by warhol on the moment. thanks to bear for the tip.

the counterfeiters [books]

2009-11-12T00:02:00.004+07:00

here's a character map of the counterfeiters by andre gide who is my french author. the thing that strikes me most so far is how easily he engages the reader; seemingly without breaking a sweat he's knotted a half dozen characters' fates and i buy it. read up on it here. i don't know if it's accurate, though. i haven't read it because those wikineanderthals care nothing for the sanctity of the spoiler. click the pic if you want a bigger view.

kuala lumpur weekend [photography]

2009-11-11T22:57:00.004+07:00

2009-11-01T23:07:00.001+07:00

electric literature [literature]

2009-10-29T15:20:00.005+07:00

wielding fragmented stories and utilizing digital and print outlets, electric literature is a quarterly multi-media counter-insurgency, playing david to shortened attention spans and digital media's goliaths. they have big name authors and great artwork on their side, and they aren't above having fun (see the video above). i can't say it better than the times, so read up on them here. then see their page and their blog.

emiliano ponzi [illustration]

2009-10-28T20:14:00.003+07:00

tatsuro kiuchi [illustration]

2009-10-28T19:12:00.004+07:00

his flickr // via

gabi campanario [illustration]

2009-10-28T19:00:00.006+07:00

in my recent dawdling - this lull - i've been hanging up on illustrators. here are a few consecutive posts on illustrators and their work without many words.

first up is gabi campanario. i particularly like her blend of journal/comic/technical drawing. i'm struck by the way it feels like she's doodled them. appropriate then, that she has stuff up on doodlers anonymous (which is a treasure trove of this stuff).

blueberry molasses cake [food]

2009-10-19T16:40:00.004+07:00

you know how to tell if someone loves you? like deep down in their bones, fingernail indentations in palms, quaking in their boots kinda love? baked goods. homemade ones. dead giveaway.

i had a sneaking suspicion as moseyed into the kitchen this morning that this was the case. turns out miss m had gone to the trouble of assembling the parts to concoct the old-fashioned blueberry cake i been drooling over at 101 cookbooks for a couple weeks now. i have to get going. there's going to be a candle later and i haven't thought about my wish. (thanks, lady.)

here's the recipe:

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar
5 tablespoons milk (divided)
1/2 cup unsulphered molasses
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, barely melted

1 1/2 cups blueberries, frozen (I freeze fresh berries)
1 teaspoon flour

Preheat to 350F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan (or equivalent).

In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a small bowl whisk together the cider vinegar with 3 tablespoons of the milk. In another bowl whisk the molasses with the remaining 2 tablespoons of milk. Whisk the cider vinegar mixture into the molasses mixture, then whisk in the eggs.

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and stir until just barely combined. Stir in the butter. Toss the blueberries with 1 teaspoon of flour and fold them into the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about thirty minutes or until a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.

what is stephen harper reading? [books]

2009-10-15T00:41:00.004+07:00

...I know you’re very busy, Mr. Harper. We’re all busy. Meditating monks in their cells are busy. That’s adult life, filled to the ceiling with things that need doing. (It seems only children and the elderly aren’t plagued by lack of time—and notice how they enjoy their books, how their lives fill their eyes.) But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep. And there are other possibilities, too. Sherwood Anderson, the American writer best known for his collection of stories Winesburg, Ohio, wrote his first stories while commuting by train to work. Stephen King apparently never goes to his beloved baseball games without a book that he reads during breaks. So it’s a question of choice...

- - -
“The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts.But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness.
For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.”

Yann Martel

the book show [books // illustration]

2009-10-11T21:42:00.006+07:00

here's another short notice bit, also put on by the school of visual arts, conveniently enough. since i won't be making the 7500 mile trip to see the exhibit, i've made up my own story about that deer in tighty whities - christopher darling’s 111th street is a story about a day in the life of a deer living in new york city - but that's beside the point. 111th street and nineteen other such works of pictorial genius are on display at the sva gallery [209 e. 23rd st.] through 14 october as part of 'the book show', an exhibit of mfa students in the school of visual art's illustration and visual essay departments.

quoc pham fixed shoe [bikes // fashion]

2009-10-11T21:30:00.005+07:00

quoc pham makes dashing throwback cycle shoes and has a romantic ad to boot [pun intended!].

(via and via)

naked lunch [books]

2009-10-09T00:11:00.008+07:00

this is short notice for the new york contingency. this very weekend - as in, already begun - totally free of charge and open to the public, the school of visual arts, columbia and nyu are hosting three days of talks, readings, and screenings to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the writing of william burroughs' seminal wig out novel, naked lunch. highlights include a reading by michael mcclure, a panel discussion entitled 'firsthand encounters with william s. burroughs & naked lunch', and the first east coast screening of words of advice: william burroughs on the road.

diow [bangkok]

2009-10-06T22:48:00.005+07:00

griping the rain and photographing lavender clouds isn't a sufficient idea of bangkok as i've seen it to this point. i happen to be reading borges - who i doubt ever visited bangkok - and he says (of something entirely different and, in fact, wholly made up):

there is a nightingale and a night; there is a secret duel on the terrace. (though almost entirely imperceptible, there are occasional curious contradictions, and there are sordid details.) the characters of the first act reappear in the second - under different names.

wacky aphorism for bangkok? yes. amorphous, amok with vice and indulgence, labyrinthine, impatient, insomniac, these savages tout sweetened-condensed milk laced nescafe as real coffee! fumes assail nostrils every third step. gleaming, ancient temples appear from nowhere. you meet people, unbelievable people. proof: last saturday we'd no sooner plopped down in a dime a dozen storefront chosen solely because it advertised cheap beer, when bjorn ferm, 1968 modern pentathlon olympic gold medalist, began to regale us with stories of his famous-to-him acquaintances and sing the praises of unicorn - the best all-female rock band in thailand.

what i'm coming the long way around the bend to is the reminder that the people you meet in a place are often more important than the things you do or see in that place. i would be remiss if i were to yap any further without mentioning kosin jeenpradit - diow to you and me. a bang-up pen and ink artist, m and i met diow when we bought one of his drawings and asked him about the city. later he took us to a fabled hovel for pad thai and we three were all grins. since, he's helped us figure out a few bus routes and neighborhoods, but most importantly, he's taken us into some shadows that we'd have otherwise overlooked. as genuinely anachronistic as demure bell-bottom buddhist long-hairs come, diow undertook one of the great fool pilgrimages of our generation a few months ago when he forsook his office job to pursue things he deems real and worthy of his passions. so, this boy's gone and got it in his rose-colored glasses to up and learn guitar-making. in tennessee. he leaves tomorrow.

as a send-off, we all went out for that same pad thai, wandered a most ramshackle night market and then diow led us through a literal patchwork of corrugated scrap and pressed board to a tiny private dock directly across the chao phraya river from wat arun (temple of the dawn). yet another of the innumerable faces of bangkok revealed itself as tugs yanked trains of barges against the current in the otherwise silent night. diow wasted no words in telling us how he'd found the place ten years ago when, in a fit of insomnia over a girl, he'd gone wandering. women.

good luck, diow.

DOWNLOAD: carl perkins - tennessee [mp3]

robert bergman [photography]

2009-10-06T11:54:00.002+07:00

robert bergman is a career photographer. at 65 he's about to open his first two well deserved shows. i've been slogging around trying to scare up more pictures, but if you're in d.c. or new york and that one doesn't spook you enough, don't go(, dick). click the photo to see a slideshow.

robert bergman: portraits, 1986-1995

national gallery of art, washington d.c.

oct. 11 to jan. 10

robert bergman: portraits, 1986-1995

moma p.s.1, new york

oct. 25 to jan. 14

typhoon ketsana // heartbreak city [photography]

2009-10-01T21:02:00.002+07:00

click the pictures for pictures, click the words for words.

tv on the radio [video]

2009-09-29T21:16:00.004+07:00

did you know that tv on the radio had such a sense of humor? because i didn't.

sleeper train to malaysia [photography]

2009-09-29T15:17:00.009+07:00

on the subway i realized i'd forgotten my toothbrush. by the time i was gaping at the ochre stained glass panels in cavernous hua lumphang station, i'd forgotten what i'd forgotten.
reading on the train, murakami said, "...metaphors eliminate what separates you and me." can we believe that?
later, a monk shared my compartment. he had a cell phone, smoked, and farted discreetly but not silently; 3 surprises. thais consider it disrespectful to drink in front of monks, which was really ok with me because i needed to get up and walk around anyways.
first thought on being woken by rough and tumble coupling at the border crossing: it is strange when a thing - even a thing as typecast as a sleeper car - turns out to be just exactly as you imagined it would be.
every stop for the last 3 hours was interchangeable: a dozen or so mossy colonial buildings, a pile of impatient scooters waiting at the nearest crossing, a few cacti, red clay.

DOWNLOAD: train to chicago (live) - mike doughty [mp3]

michael jordan, 1983 [photography]

2009-09-29T14:25:00.005+07:00

click for a great set of candid photos of michael jordan as a college student in 1983.

(via)

red dust [books]

2009-09-29T12:02:00.013+07:00

from the new york times, 09.28.09:

BEIJING — Domesticated pigeons of this city, take note: Until Oct. 1, you are prohibited by government edict from flying over the center of China’s capital.

Do not take it personally, however. The government is preparing to observe the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China with a parade that will make 76 trombones look like a child’s plastic kazoo. And nothing — not unauthorized window-peeping, nor marchers’ mental health, nor even the chance that pigeons might muck up displays of aerial might — is being left to chance.

China’s government at times resembles an exasperated parent trying to rein in a pack of rebellious children. Its edicts are persistently flouted by censor-dodging Internet users, wayward local officials and rioting Uighurs.

But when it comes to the impending National Day celebration in Beijing, the government appears fully in control. When swarms of soldiers, throngs of tanks and flocks of floats roll past Tiananmen Square on Thursday, 10,000 police officers and security guards will monitor Beijing street corners and checkpoints for evidence of potential party-spoilers. As many as 800,000 volunteers have also been enlisted to help maintain security.

Knife sales have been banned in at least some stores. Beijing’s international airport will be closed Thursday for three hours. Along the parade route, the authorities have forbidden parade-watchers from opening windows or standing on balconies.

Three journalists from the Japanese Kyodo news agency said that when they stood on a hotel balcony to cover a Sept. 18 parade rehearsal, the authorities stormed into the room and assaulted them. (continue reading)

ma jian, from the guardian, 06.02.09:

Two thousand years ago, contemplating the relentless flow of time, Confucius gazed down at a river and sighed, "What passes is just like this, never ceasing day or night ..." In China, time can feel both frozen and unstoppable at the same time. The Tiananmen massacre that 20 years ago ravaged Beijing, killed thousands of unarmed citizens, and altered the lives of millions, seems now to be locked in the 20th century, forgotten or ignored, as China continues to hurtle blindly towards its future. (continue reading)

this makes me wonder about change. and fear. and control. reading ma jian's red dust: a path through china this past week i couldn't help feeling vicariously stifled by the impositions of the chinese government upon its citizens in the 1980s (in addition to what we hear about today). ma writes in such a way that i felt as if my own inherent-feeling freedoms were being manacled, and yet i exalted with the freedom and transience that ma created for himself as he wandered through cities, villages and wilderness, alternating between such diametrics as honored guest, fugitive and foreigner in his homeland. red dust is blue highways with lunatic stubbornness. having cast off not only his job and home, but also refusing to turn back when he is utterly without money, food, or contacts, ma becomes a modern nomad. despite often lamenting that he must keep going because he (his life) doesn't have a destination, ma attains freedom by thinking and choosing for himself - acts that single him out as a threat to the perceived harmony of new communism. by simply wandering across his home country, ma was revolting against the strongholds of tradition, conservativism, and leadership-imposed fear. it's unfortunate, though not surprising, that ma's books are banned in china today.

from red dust:

i leave the asphalt road and turn left down a dusty track that takes me through rolling sand dunes. a few hours later, the sun starts to sink and i realize that i might not make it to anxi before dark. i see a water tower near the horizon, and a ragged line of roofs. trucks move like boats across the heat haze behind. as the sun sinks lower, everything glows with a golden light. i drop my bag and lie down on my back in the sand. no wonder horses roll to the ground when they are tired. i feel better with my hooves in the air. i kick off my shoes and let my steaming toes suck the wind. then i open my bottle, drink some water and splash some onto my face. my mind turns yellow. i hear a ringing in my ears - perhaps it is the noise of the sunlight, or the desert wind blowing through the telegraph wire. the water i swallowed charges through my veins. eighty percent of my body is water. my cells float in a sea. i am floating, too, but my ocean is larger than theirs. i have the sky. i have freedom.
i jump to my feet, check my compass and continue west, chanting a verse from leaves of grass.

allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
to undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
to merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
again to merge them in the start of superior journeys...

allons, ma jian, allons.
(photo)

BLAST [literature]

2009-09-22T22:27:00.007+07:00

// vorticism.

london fgss [bikes]

2009-09-20T14:24:00.004+07:00

the other day i got an email from londonfgss.com, about 2 accidents in london involving cyclists. in short, the email was to inform riders that 1) the accidents had occurred, and 2) that the site was organizing some action groups to make a respectful and responsible showing (ghost bikes, etc.) by involved cyclists who care about bicycle safety. since i live in bangkok, it would be easy to write this off as being far off and not my concern. but what got me about this email was the reminder of how great it is that this cycling community is actually involved and responsible. as an online hub, of course the messageboards are full of banter and cajoling and one-up-manship, but the activity of so many members and the willingness to lend a helping hand - whether offering a first time rider mechanical tips or extending a public show of solidarity in support of the families and friends of victims of accidents - are inviting. but the fact that these people get off the internet and organize rides and races and really look out for one another is what makes this a great community of cyclists. anyways, this is a shout to the great people over at londonfgss.com. they're doing it right and any city would be lucky to have such a knowledgeable, tight-knit community.

(photo)

no impact man [film]

2009-09-20T13:59:00.005+07:00

a couple of years ago i ran across the beginnings of author colin beavan's then-new project/blog 'no impact man.' as i followed the blog and learned about the mostly insane concept - an attempt by one family of 3 to exist for one year in new york city without making a carbon footprint - i became more and more intrigued. over time, my following of the blog flagged, and now the release of beavan's documentary has snuck up on me. jeremy saw the thing and said his feelings about it match pretty closely with the review from the av club below.

Being a conscientious consumer in the modern world means being made acutely aware, time and again, of your own hypocrisy. You can use paper instead of plastic, dutifully maintain your recycling bin, buy organic and locally produced foods when possible, replace all the bulbs in your house with energy-efficient fluorescents, and still leave a massive carbon footprint from food packaging, new clothes, diapers, electricity, paper, transportation, and the hundreds of pounds of trash every person generates annually. The value of No Impact Man, a compelling and suitably exasperating documentary about one family’s attempt to not harm the environment for a year, is that it forces viewers to reflect on their own casual consumption and waste. The experiment is inevitably compromised—and as a self-promotional venture, it just spreads more waste—but that only makes the film more engaging and provocative.

Like a literary Morgan Spurlock, author Colin Beavan devised his “No Impact Man” persona as a high-concept hook for a blog and a book about his family’s attempt at spartan living in the middle of New York City. (full article)

link: the book
link: "the year without toilet paper" (nytimes, 2007)

siggi eggertson [illustration]

2009-09-19T15:56:00.005+07:00

400 pieces layered together. a little hard to watch, but at the same time it's fun.

link: from before

lumpini monitor [monsters // bangkok]

2009-09-16T18:37:00.002+07:00

it was a sunday in bangkok like any other sunday bangkok. and then. when we were walking in the park. a monster came out of one of the ponds (see borrowed photo above, i was without camera). we were, like, totally enthralled. and then. it ate a snake. a red snake. and the snake was biting the monitor's face but he totally didn't even care. it's true.

turns out the old lumpini monitor is harmless to humans and the name in thai used to be a word that is (still) a shocking insult but the current name means "silver and gold". the one we saw was probably 7 feet long, nose to tail. they really look like dinosaurs. i'm failing at this post.

LINK: learn more

9/11

2009-09-11T22:41:00.002+07:00

click it. thanks to eric for the link. and for being my brother.

2666 [books]

2009-09-11T20:17:00.007+07:00

you can't believe the rain we're having. lightning like the sun shorting out and our soi (lane) a shin-deep canal of guttural [sic] backwash for days. what better reason for two people to stay in and share the three volume edition of roberto bolano's 2666? excerpt and links below.

It was raining in the quadrangle, and the quadrangular sky looked like the grimace of a robot or a god made in our own likeness. The oblique drops of rain slid down the blades of grass in the park, but it would have made no difference if they had slid up. Then the oblique (drops) turned round (drops), swallowed up by the earth underpinning the grass, and the grass and the earth seemed to talk, no, not talk, argue, their incomprehensible words like crystallized spiderwebs or the briefest crystallized vomitings, a barely audible rustling, as if instead of drinking tea that afternoon, Norton had drunk a steaming cup of peyote.

But the truth is that she had only had tea to drink and she felt overwhelmed, as if a voice were repeating a terrible prayer in her ear, the words of which blurred as she walked away from the college, and the rain wetted her gray skirt and bony knees and pretty ankles and little else, because before Liz Norton went running through the park, she hadn’t forgotten to pick up her umbrella.

nytimes review of 2666 // first chapter
nytimes review of the latest bolano novel to be translated // +pics

waltz with bashir [film // animation]

2009-09-08T21:47:00.004+07:00

maybe you've seen this because it came out last year. half way around the world it's hard to keep up. if you need persuading, it was nominated for best foreign film. click here if the streaming video above doesn't work. i need to learn more about beirut.

dumpling week 2009 [food // taiwan]

2009-09-07T23:41:00.007+07:00

in an effort to commemorate and, in some sense, memorialize my time in taiwan coming to an end, i decided to stage dumpling week 2009 both as a sendoff to myself and as a gastronomic homage to my favorite taiwanese food: the dumpling. the festivities (meals, to the layperson) took place between the end of july and the first few days of august 2009 in various cities and locations in taiwan, and included dumplings of varied fillings and preparations. despite that i was negligent in photographing most of my meals, i have to consider this years dumpling week a resounding success, and i look forward to future fests. full report after the jump.

saturday, july 25
as a kickoff to the week, i ate a meal of boiled pork and cabbage dumplings (shway jiao), dredged sweet potato leaves, and spicy cucumber salad with mauriah at a restaurant with pictures of the beatles on the walls. this move could be considered risky, since this is my favorite dumpling shop and i've chosen to eat here first. i'm thinking high-risk, high-reward. as usual, the dumplings were perfectly cooked and delectable; bonus points for sweet potato leaves (hua yeh tsai), also a favorite.

sunday, july 26
off day due to previously arranged thai dinner with friends.

monday, july 27
boiled pork dumplings and dry tofu at 88. 88 is an excellent cold-weather eatery for spicy soups and can be counted on for consistently good dumplings, but i think their dumplings would be better with a thinner noodle.

tuesday, july 28
pork and chive dumplings in spicy beef broth (neo-roh tang jiao) and spicy cucumber salad at hope noodle, a small local chain. dumplings in soup is a top 5 rainy day comfort food. ignoring that fact, i stepped into a location of hope noodle that i've never been to before on a sweltering july evening. with a sweat-pocked brow, i slurped this classic and it was well worth it. great remedy for evening grumpiness between tutoring appointments.

wednesday, july 29
hump day double-up! my first dumplings of the day were boiled vegetarian dumplings at a family-owned vegetarian shop, name unknown, with mauriah. these guys were joined on the table by various steamed vegetables and some fried noodles. i actually love these dumplings for their inconsistencies. sometimes they blast you with fresh ginger, but today they were earthy. bonus points for being pocketbook friendly.

second dumpling pitstop: previously unknown shop, with mauriah. i ate one bamboo steamer tray of steamed pork soup dumplings (xiao long bao) and drank water, mauriah had a taiwan beer. this style of dumpling - with a bit of soup inside the noodle - is traditionally eaten with fresh ginger soaked in rice wine vinegar, and the shop-owner's spread was spot-on. these slightly oily, hardier dumplings were a surprise treat on a long late night walk.

thursday, july 30
boiled pork dumplings and tofu at a nondescript place near my former night job. always good, but rarely cooked perfectly, these were true to form; nostalgia helped buoy this unremarkable meal.

friday, july 31
denied! a favorite spot which makes very rare pan-fried pork dumplings would not sell them to me to go. *note: said dumplings would have joined us for a burner between the uni/7-11 lions and the la new bears in which the reigning champion lions held off a late bears rally for a 6-4 win.

saturday, august 1
pork soup dumplings at my favorite breakfast shop. i rarely eat breakfast, but this was my farewell meal, eaten on the hsinchu train platform with spicy soy sauce. a-mazing. i almost had to choke out the cleaning lady when she tried to "clean up" my unfinished dumplings.

sunday, august 2
in hualien, having just spent a great day at taroko gorge, we made a short pilgrimage to a dumpling shop we noticed the night before with a ridiculously long line. after some mumbo-jumbo from this impatient guy behind us, a former co-worker randomly came out of the crowd. after catching up, i was able to order a few steamed, especially bready pork dumplings [bao-dz']. believe the hype. these bao-dz' (pictured above) were so delicious that after eating i spilled my lemonade in rejoice. mauriah and some old taiwanese guy laughed about it at length. i wasn't even mad.

thus closed dumpling week. it was epic. i think i gained weight. i haven't eaten that much meat in one stretch since i was a regular for tailgating at miller park. i hope for more chances of this unnecessarily idiotic nature in the future.

sentencelessness + bangkok

2009-09-07T16:07:00.005+07:00

the lights are back on at sentencelessness, and homebase has moved to bangkok. above are photos mauriah and i took while adrift [more here]. there are new things, and it might take some shaking to get the dust off 'em, but i'll work on it. for now, what's important is that this is happening again. and mauriah takes a boat to work, which is its own thing.

friderday 8 [bikes]

2009-07-07T11:39:00.004+07:00

It's been 3 months....the next FRiDERDAY will be held July 11th.
This FRiDERDAY marks our one year anniversary since it all started.
This will be the first time that Nabiis is throwing an alleycat.
Because of safety reasons, FRiDERDAY will start in the afternoon.
We will be riding around Neihu District.
Nabiis suggests that all participants ride around Neihu District before the alleycat.
Get a feel of the area and remember some of the street names.
Riders that are familiar with the area will come out on top

This FRiDERDAY, G-Shock will be sponsoring the event for the first time.
World G-SHOCK.com presented Nabiis with an opportunity to custom make their own watch.
We are giving away two of these watches for our top finishers.
Representing Taiwan, Nabiis will write a blog for World.G-SHOCK.com.
Long time supporter of FRiDERDAY, Vans will also be sponsoring this event.
CyclePal, known for their urban cycling style, will also be sponsoring.
Cog Magazine's Yohei Morita, will be flying in from Japan to cover the next FRiDERDAY.

Happy birthday FRiDERDAY!

INFO

Time : 7/11 PM2:30
Meet Up : CyclePal at Neihu District
Competition : Alley Cat and Trick Battle
Note to all riders: don't forget to wear your helmet, bring your Health Insurance card, messenger bag & light

i may or may not be wearing a cape right now. hint: i am.

2009-06-26T12:42:00.005+07:00

unspoken friday tradition: hunch overtired in front of the computer and laugh too hard. this week i'm revisiting that old guilty pleasure www.textsfromlastnight.com.

bin lan hustle evidence [photography // bikes]

2009-06-22T13:31:00.003+07:00

it happened. if it weren't for a looming typhoon the turnout may have been better, but a good time was had by all nonetheless. i have extra t-shirts, mail me (johnmurn at gmail.com) if you would like to buy one (or ten). check out all the photo sets: jeff // ken // mauriah // fhai

my bike [bikes]

2009-06-19T11:12:00.005+07:00

this, friends, is bike porn. i might be out of the office for a while.

russian punks [photography]

2009-06-19T09:56:00.005+07:00

brandon bird [art]

2009-06-19T09:50:00.001+07:00

the photographic dictionary [photography]

2009-06-16T10:41:00.002+07:00

the photographic dictionary is dedicated to defining words through the literal, figurative and personal meanings found in each photograph.

repost bin lan hustle [bikes] repost

2009-06-12T09:12:00.004+07:00

yes, i'm whoring out my race. yes, i'm too busy to actually post other content. click the picture.

nytimes blogs [BABL]

2009-06-05T08:51:00.011+07:00

this is really obvious, but if you're still reading after seeing the title and graphics, then perhaps not. this post exists because i've had a bunch of conversations recently where i've been shocked/judgmental/half-offended guy regarding the blogs at nytimes.com ["you don't (insert verb of knowledge or participation here) (insert cultural niche/cool signifier here)?"]. what i'm saying is, you may be wasting your time reading this blog right now. i do far too much unrewarding trolling and wandering on the internet and when the times blogs flash back into my consciousness i'm always absorbed. for instance, right now you can win free old books, get belated tips on how to survive pitching to one of the greatest hitters ever, and find out how to extend your vacation from a week to months. of course there are also loads of things on politics, health, tech, business, whatever, whatever. [sidebar: is it humorous that the graphic for lens got out of focus when i stretched it to fit?]

blind prom // sarah wilson [photography]

2009-06-02T14:19:00.003+07:00

I remember last year overhearing a conversation a couple was having as they were reuniting before prom. She grabbed his hand and ran his fingers along the sequins of her dress, to the curls in her hair, and to the strand of pearls around her neck. His response was an exuberant, “Wow, you look so beautiful!” I know that she felt beautiful.

john hall wheelock [writing]

2009-06-02T13:45:00.003+07:00

Aphrodite

Dark-eyed, out of the snow-cold sea you came,
The young blood under the cheek like dawn-light showing,
Stray tendrils of dark hair in the sea-wind blowing,
Comely and grave, out of the sea you came.

Slim covered thigh and slender stockinged foot
In swift strides over the burnished shingle swinging,
Sweet silence of your smile, soft sea-weed clinging,
Here and there, to the wet bathing-suit.

O fierce and shy, your glance so piercing-true
Shot fire to the struck heart that was as tinder—
The fire of your still loveliness, the tender
High fortitude of the spirit shining through.

And the world was young. O love and song and fame
Were part of youth’s still ever believed-in story,
And hope crowned all, when in dear and in queenly glory,
Out of the snow-cold sea to me you came.

democracy for the cartoons [BABL]

2009-05-27T11:29:00.005+07:00

democracy for the cartoons is where artist drew christie stashes his amazing linocuts and sketches. christie takes an interest in the intricacies of certain histories, and, accordingly, most of the linographs come with a somewhat ambiguous historical blurb. makes for fun goose chases.

jack kerouac + fantasy baseball [books // baseball]

2009-05-22T12:23:00.006+07:00

when i was 8, the very nice volunteer librarians at the dodgeville public library had to break the devastating news that my months-long relationship with one particular hank aaron biography (title long since forgotten) was coming to a forced end - i could no longer continue to renew the book repetitively. this was jarring. i did the only thing a burgeoning 8-year-old baseball fanatic could do: i went home and threw myself into becoming annoyingly well-versed in the minutiae of every single one of the 792 cards in topps' 1988 set.

when i was 18 i read on the road. every small roadtrip with friends became more vibrant, mischievous and hairbrained; my college choices were affected; i broke up with my long time girlfriend for two whole days. i read the thing three times consecutively and i've read it a half dozen times since.

i knew that kerouac liked baseball, but i had no idea. apparently old jack was a regular fanatic on the down-low, and there's a new book about the fantasy baseball world he created over varying stretches of his youth and adulthood. read the times article linked below; reminds me a whole lot of the universal baseball association, inc.

LINK: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut (nyt)

eric and jeremy murn [family]

2009-05-20T10:59:00.004+07:00

if these guys look angry, it's only because when one brother is hung over and the other isn't and you have to answer to somebody else's goddamn plan and wear a tie and be there on time and you can't find parking and... well, you can probably see that much. anyways, these two bottlerockets graduated from wisconsin this past weekend. and the less angry looking one (on the right) just landed an internship at the daily show. look out new york city/world. congrats boys, i love you and miss you.

this is home. i miss it. jeremy's in my spot, though.

garry trinh's giant bonsais [photography]

2009-05-13T13:10:00.003+07:00

DOWNLOAD: the sads - you turned me into morrissey [mp3]

pedal ID [bikes]

2009-05-07T13:28:00.002+07:00

the big thinkers over at pedalmafia have come up with one more amazing way to waste a whole afternoon - pedal ID. a simple drag and drop template program, pedal ID let's you "build" your dream ride. above is a mock-up of my forthcoming whip(!).

david meskhi [photography]

2009-05-07T11:19:00.009+07:00

honesty and curiosity are rarely employed in such naturally seamless juxtaposition - in any medium of storytelling - as in david meskhi's photographs. accordingly, i am taken aback by the bio on meskhi's page. can't help but feel a bit goaded by the dichotomy his words create between his impression of his own work and the individual perception of anyone who might see it - at times he borders on being brashly arrogant - he delineates and pontificates almost as if he is discarding the need for the viewer to experience and react to his own emotions and process them. and yet, at other times, meskhi says perfectly rational, not-really-revolutionary, nice things in broken english, like:

i want to make other people co-participants in these emotions through pictures. for me, if that happens, photo is a success and if photo is a success, then process of taking pictures is a process of seeking and finding oneself.

alexander lobanov [art]

2009-05-06T11:51:00.009+07:00

the self-portraiture of russian outsider artist alexander lobanov is singular in its ornamentation and its weaponry, or, perhaps, its weaponry as ornamentation. lobanov's repetition, attention to quirky detail, and use of color are immediately evocative of the likes of henry darger and adolf wolfli. like darger and wolfli, lobanov spent a considerable portion of his life institutionalized, and, as with the others, his artistic output was prolific. deaf and mute from a very young age, lobanov was reputed for violent outbursts in his youth and it is believed that a form of art therapy may have helped him find a certain level of peace. much of lobanov's work shows the heavy influence of russian propaganda during his lifetime, and he often presents himself as the pundits of the time. little seems known of lobanov, though a short documentary was made about him. anybody seen it?

debauchery, my old friend [hijinks]

2009-05-01T13:37:00.005+07:00

this chat transcript was sent to me in an email at 11:15 AM yesterday from one of the participants. hope you can appreciate the drunk-centricities (bazaar crew, etc.).

10:44 AM (A): om gosh lover
om gosh
where do i begin???
10:45 AM i'm sooooooo drunk right now
l slept for an hour
was really late to work
partied like a fucking rock star last night
with a bazaar crew
10:46 AM or townie pool players
hooked up with this random hottie from west virginia that lives in williamsburg
(B): weird!
oh man
me: drank from like 9 to 9am
10:47 AM saw the sun come up on a billyburg roof top
smoked a bit more than cigarettes
made friends with a guy that did 5 years in sing sing
that
wants to cook for me
haha
10:48 AM om gosh you would have LOVED it
(B): um what??
(A): dude is jamaican
has like a million dollars stored in bags around the city
has recovered most of it
like a fuckin pirate's burried treasure!!!!! no kidding
10:49 AM like the count of monte cristo!
10:50 AM has a scar on his jaw from where he was stabbed with a tooth brush in his first gang fight in prison
that went through his jaw
(B): oh god
okay
you're insane
10:51 AM (A): and cut out one of his back molars
then in his second gang fight he had his chest slashed
nice scar
10:52 AM and then his third and final fight his left lung was pierced
after that they respected him and left him alone ;)
he has his only clothing line
and used to provide drugs for like
every fucking music group you can think of that was popular in the 90's
10:53 AM (B): color me badd?
(A): his gf waited for him to get out of
hahaha
(B): please say new kids on the block
(A): prison and it's insane
haha
i didn't ask him that
dude was waaaaaaay too legit for my own good
10:54 AM (B): so how did you meet these people?
10:55 AM (A): um...
went to moonshine
the WV hottie was sitting at the bar alone
hit it off with her
it'
was her bff's bday
so she invited me to tag along
10:56 AM ended up going to like...4 or 5 dif bars
good convo
etc
we ened up making out in a bed with the bday girl passed out next to us!!!!
haha
effing classic
10:57 AM she's a singer and a nanny and had to be up by 8 and at nanny stuff by 9
we woke up at 930
and were like FUCK!
staying at some strange apt in the burg
roof top was insane
great view of midtown
with like 20 peeps
10:58 AM and weed
and smokes
and a dog running around
and my god i wish you could have seen some of the outfits on these people
(B): did you smoke crack right now? you're going a mile a minute?
!
(A): valuer jump suits with ed harvey hats and sun glasses
um
i don't think so???
10:59 AM (B): awesome
(A): just adrenaline and an americano :0
and no sleep
ok
i'm done now
haha
(B): no
tell me more
I don't mind
11:00 AM (A): i'm just hoping no one comes close enough to me to realize i'
m
effing wasted as all hell
like
holy shit
wasted
like i was drinking two hours ago
wasted
11:01 AM (B): that's insane!
(A): i feel like i should go throw up in the bathroom
sooo ghetto
11:02 AM so i'm supposed to see the chick again tonight
her bro plays in a band that is main stage at joes pub tonight
11:03 AM and apparently she's got an agent and is a really good singer
backup or something
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
that makes it even more perfect, right?
soo deceiving
i mean
looks like a cross between
11:09 AM kelly rippa
11:10 AM (B): and who?
11:12 AM (A): and evangelline lilly from lost
11:13 AM (B): oh hot
(A): right?

micachu and the shapes [music]

2009-04-29T12:56:00.007+07:00

micachu and the shapes are picking up pieces. call it recycled fun. so much work lately has been going into making ambivalent feedback surfer noise and folk to make the trees cry that some bits have been getting overlooked. in said wake, micachu has made this simple-sounding uncacophony, a sort of pop catch-all. they jangle, they sample, they bop low-fi frenetic. and it moves. i can't stop listening.

DOWNLOAD: micachu and the shapes - vulture [mp3]
VIDEO: micachu and the shapes - lips
(photos)

BUFFdiss [street art]

2009-04-24T12:50:00.003+07:00

buff diss is a street artist from melbourne who works with masking tape. only. i think. and that's all i know.

justin vernon + mhs jazz ensamble [music]

2009-04-24T12:32:00.004+07:00

this is one of a few good sound/poor video snippets of justin vernon of bon iver playing a sort of homecoming concert with the eau claire (wisconsin) memorial high school jazz ensemble last week. in this video he covers mahalia jackson's satisfied mind, and it appears that the show also included a few bon iver tracks. thanks to bear for the heads up.

LINK: more info

japanese postcards [real mail]

2009-04-24T10:49:00.009+07:00

make up mogul leonard lauder was an avid, lifelong collector of postcards of all kinds. above are selections from some of the 20,000 japanese postcards that lauder donated to the collection at the museum of fine art, boston. the eminently bountiful and reliable new york public library has a few thousand digitals from other parts of lauder's collection. send me a postcard and i promise to send one back:

john murn
no. 39 lane 582
xida rd. 5th floor
hsinchu city 30044
taiwan r.o.c.

lost tribes of new york [video]

2009-04-23T13:28:00.005+07:00

i wrote this off at first, thinking kitsch. but being away from the city, who am i kidding? this blog is soggy with new york kitsch.

new math [art]

2009-04-22T13:05:00.003+07:00

bicycle contrails [bikes]

2009-04-17T13:35:00.003+07:00

in theory:

Contrail is a tool for developing bicycle communities. As you ride, contrail leaves a faint chalk line behind your bike. The goal is to encourage a new cycle of biking participation by allowing the biking community to leave a unique mark on the road and to reclaim this crucial shared space.

The old cycle: More cars on the road --> more percieved danger for bikers --> fewer bikers on road --> even more cars on the road.

The new cycle: A few bicyclists ride with contrail a couple times per week --> faint lines on the road inspire curiosity and remind bikers where it's safe to ride --> new bikers are encouraged to ride and use contrail --> contrail lines get brighter as community grows.

via the super awesome poverty jetset.

super 'ciccio' [fashion]

2009-04-17T13:14:00.006+07:00

i need to get me into a pair of these.

paul ford // f train [writing // BABL]

2009-03-27T11:34:00.008+07:00

i first ran across paul ford last spring when i read his 'six-word reviews of 763 SXSW mp3s.' when he came back with 'six-word reviews of 1,302 SXSW mp3s' (click for loads of downloadables) this year, i backtracked to his blog, f train, to see what he's about. ford, a harper's editor and npr contributor, muses sporadically on laughs, literature, and life in new york, and there's really something to it. read steering wheel below.

I've been walking home--my bike is in the shop forever and the weather is nice. I listen to episodes of the Jack Benny program on my phone, waiting for Mary Livingstone to laugh. I'm up through 1946.
The traffic where I live is so bad that sometimes I am stuck in my minivan for forty minutes before I get to work. So I use the steering wheel as a kind of prayer wheel. Each notch reminds me of a prayer. I go from notch to notch saying prayers for my husband, for each of my children, my parents, my friends, and the students in my class.

I read something like that 19 years ago in Guideposts. I was sitting in my grandparents' living room on their black sofa. I think of it whenever my computer gives me the pinwheel, or when I am on the phone at work helping an old lady onto the website, explaining that email doesn't need stamps. At the top right of the screen, I asked, do you see a little box? And to the left of the box is the word “Username?” You put a special name into that box. We have to make that special name.

“I'm old,” she said.

Down through Soho. People walk into traffic while text-messaging. I also have on headphones. It's warm, crowded, and progress is slow. I see a girl in canary leggings and short bangs, backlit by a storefront. She is laughing at a joke made by a boy in a vest. No wonder people want to live here. Right then Mary Livingstone laughs in 1946. A man with his tongue out is trying to shake hands with everyone. On Bowery I pass the New Museum, which has a sign reading “HELL YES!” in great rainbow letters. Faces lit from below or on the side by cell-phone screens and media players. I am moving slow but light is absolutely everywhere.

changing new york, 1935-1938 [photography]

2009-03-23T16:14:00.004+07:00

i wish i had time to run off at the mouth about this. alas. per the great vaults of the new york public library's digital gallery:

Photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) proposed Changing New York, her grand project to document New York City, to the Federal Art Project (FAP) in 1935. The FAP was a Depression-era government program for unemployed artists and workers...(more)

click the photos above to see a slideshow of some of this collection, and follow the slideshow through to loads of other collections that the nypl has made available via flickr.

LINK: related

will oldham [music]

2009-03-20T13:56:00.006+07:00

will oldham is about as indie-huge as you can get. as it happens, the latest bonnie 'prince' billy album, beware, just dropped, and, accordingly, there is a glut of oldham lore in the news. loads of links below, all from the past week give or take. all are worth a look, but if you've only got a moment or just want to cut to the counter-intuitive chase, i recommend the independent article. i usually stay away from 'what's on your ipod' junk, but as you might expect, oldham's ipod is not quite like yours or mine, nor is his annotation. a sampling:

The Pipil Indians of El Salvador

"This next song is called 'El Barrenar'. The Smithsonian library has a website and you can order anything from the archives. Someone will then burn you a CD. I was going to El Salvador a year ago and I wanted to hear some music in the months leading up to my trip there. This is vocal, rustic and is in Spanish, when I was hoping it would be in an American-Indian dialect. It's probably from some time in the 1960s. The truth is I'm not all that happy with this purchase."

...

Timbaland

"We now come to 'Boardmeeting', one word, by Timbaland featuring Magoo from his 2007 record Shock Value. I have never listened to this song. I was on tour and I watched a Timbaland video with Nelly Furtado late one night on the hotel TV. I liked it and thought, OK, I must listen to the rest of the record. But I don't like the rest of the record, though I should at this point confess a weakness for Nelly Furtado records in general."

LINK: npr reviews beware
LINK: bonnie 'prince' billy live on soundcheck on wnyc (audio)
LINK: "the brilliant disguises of will oldham" - village voice
LINK: beware review on nytimes popcast (audio)
LINK: "will oldham lets his ipod do the talking" - the independent
DOWNLOAD // VIDEO: bonnie 'prince' billy - i am goodbye (via)

lmfao [music // video]

2009-03-20T13:39:00.005+07:00

you can call this a guilty pleasure, but i see no reason to feel guilty about it.

LINK: if you've somehow not had enough...

madden mondays, season 3 [video // friends]

2009-03-16T21:23:00.006+07:00

apologies for the million reasons keeping me from posting, but my dad's coming to taiwan, and i'm just real busy. might continue to be slow for a while.

madden mondays was a fixture back in the heyday of the riverhorse, when pabst was more cheap than cool. the above clip is the first in a 5 part docu by renato umali, my old film TA (and later roommate). you can follow the whole 30 some minutes through the links below. it'll take you right back when you see babyfaced menchal smoking and squinting while mauro puts angelo in a headlock hug. and if you don't know those guys, well, have a laugh at a ramshackle cast of too-old brats screaming unholies at one another over playstation wizardry. to be fair, there's some good commentary from the whole sick crew in various states of disrepair. watch out for my shitty nimbus of hair. from mke, with love.

2 // 3 // 4 // 5

chad moore [photography]

2009-03-12T21:51:00.008+07:00

i know it's not that close to summer and none of us are 16 going on 19 anymore, but think balmy, sea salty thoughts, alright? i've been waiting to find something that merits a wavves link, and chad moore's (socal? scottsdale? florida?) neverending 19-year-old summer shots are it. shit, man, you were there. live the dream.

LINK: wavves - so bored [mp3]

tunde adebimpe // brandon kim [music // friends]

2009-03-06T09:17:00.009+07:00

daniel's already got this over at btbn because he and brandon go way back, which is the essence of inside information, really. second-hand, third-hand, whatever, fact is brandon caught up with tunde adebimpe about the music and his role in rachel getting married and they let the discussion run to include the roles of music and other media in the current american(?)/societal rhetoric. read between the lines of me sounding like an asshole: they talk about race and politics. anyways, tunde handles it brilliantly:

Regarding race or gender or sexuality, one of the great things about art and music is that they can provide people with very little else in common with a similar entry point for discussion, but the discussions still need to happen for life to get more interesting. I'm all for awkward, frank, sometimes painful conversations about things that give everyone a better perspective on who they are in the here and now, and how they want to proceed from there.

daniel also got the whisper on an mp3 of tunde's neil young cover from the film, so be sure to hit that btbn link.
LINK: taking a break with tunde adebimpe - b. kim for ifc
LINK // PHOTO CRED: gorilla vs. bear polaroids