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Letters from Norman Mailer

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:35 GMT

17:11 10.10.2008
Letters from Norman Mailer

This collection of letters written by Norman Mailer over the course of the last 60 years is a revealing portrait of the author and an interesting look at the history of the last half of the 20th century.

I'm rather depressed these days. It's been years since anything I've done has turned out successfully -- with a few rare exceptions -- and I'm falling into the thing which afflicted you a couple of years ago -- a failure of the will, shall we say. My ambitions seem far beyond my talents, and light-years beyond the vicissitudes of my character, and I think of this enormous novel I'm now starting, which could well take ten years, and if done properly, it must be unpublishable except in green-backed French "dirty" editions, and I'll be middle-aged when it's done, and somehow I just don't believe in myself the way I used to, and indeed, worst of all, it doesn't even seem terribly important. I'm beginning to have the tolerance of the defeated -- people I would have despised a few years ago now seem bearable -- after all, I say to myself, I haven't done very well with all the luck I had, and perhaps I do wrong to judge them.

I particularly like the letters written to William F. Buckley, Jr., a man whom Mailer called a friend but with whom he disagreed vehemently on political issues. Don't see much of that today, publicly at least.

(link)

● Death by kisses, an unusual tombstone

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:34 GMT

15:45 10.10.2008
● Death by kisses, an unusual tombstone

After posting about the Metropolitan Life Tower the other day, I was looking through some recent email and discovered one from a week ago that by chance contained a very unusual story about the building. Filmmaker Pes was researching for a film in Woodlawn Cemetery when he came across the odd tombstone of a 15-year-old boy who had died on his birthday:

LOST LIFE BY STAB IN FALLING ON
INK ERASER, EVADING SIX YOUNG
WOMEN TRYING TO GIVE HIM
BIRTHDAY KISSES IN OFFICE
METROPOLITAN LIFE BUILDING

A NY Times story from February 16, 1909, Stabbed to Death in Office Frolic, reveals how George Millitt died.

Yesterday he came down and remarked that it was the anniversary of the wreck of the Maine. He explained that he knew it because the ship had been blown up on his birthday and that he was 15 yesterday.
At once the girls began to tease him. They told him that on such an occasion he desereved a kiss, and every one of them vowed that as soon as office hours were over she would kiss him once for every year that he had lived. He laughingly declared that not a girl should get near him, and was teased about it all day.
As 4:30 o'clock came, and the boy's work was over, the girls made a rush for him. They tried to hem him in, and he tried to break their line. Suddenly he reeled and fell, crying as he did so.
"I'm stabbed!"

A blade used for scraping ink was in Millitt's breast pocket and caused the mortal wound. (thx, amid)

The Shopsin's philosophy

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:33 GMT

15:06 10.10.2008
The Shopsin's philosophy

This NY Times article about Shopsin's is full of wisdom and bullshit (sometimes both at the same time) from owner Kenny Shopsin.

"I dedicate myself to consuming all sorts of ideas," says Shopsin, an avid reader and Internet crawler. "Eventually something inside me, probably skewed by my erotic feelings about breasts and things like that, assembles a product and just shoots it up." For example, a recent item on the food blog Serious Eats about foods on a stick led to the State Fair combo plate: corn-dog sausage, s'mores pancakes and chicken-fried eggs. New dishes are printed on the menu the same day: "I spent almost $3,000 on toner in the last three months," Shopsin says.

Love it. Check out the video of Shopsin cooking his mac 'n' cheese pancakes.

(link)

The Dark Knight, Wall-E, and complete The Wire out on DVD/Blu-ray

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:32 GMT

22:39 09.10.2008
The Dark Knight, Wall-E, and complete The Wire out on DVD/Blu-ray

If kottke.org had a movies and TV store, here's what I'd be selling today:

- The Dark Knight on Blu-ray or DVD. Out Dec 9.
- Wall-E on Blu-ray or DVD. Out Nov 18.
- The Wire: The Complete Series on DVD. Out Dec 9.

(link)

● Megamovies, TV shows as days-long movies

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:31 GMT

21:13 09.10.2008
● Megamovies, TV shows as days-long movies

In a 1999 essay about The Sopranos written after its first season, Vincent Canby suggested that the show was an example of a relatively new form of television, the megamovie.

"Berlin Alexanderplatz," "The Singing Detective" and "The Sopranos" are something more than mini-series. Packed with characters and events of Dickensian dimension and color, their time and place observed with satiric exactitude, each has the kind of cohesive dramatic arc that defines a work complete unto itself. No matter what they are labeled or what they become, they are not open-ended series, or even mini-series.
They are megamovies.
That is, they are films on a scale imagined by the big-thinking, obsessive, fatally unrealistic Erich von Stroheim when, in 1924, he shot "Greed," virtually a page-by-page adaptation of Frank Norris's Zola-esque novel, "McTeague." Stroheim intended it to be an exemplar of cinematic realism.

Megamovies take television seriously as a medium. They have dramatic arcs that last longer than single episodes or seasons. Megamovies often explore themes and ideas relevant to contemporary society -- there's more going on than just the plot -- without resorting to very special episodes. Repeat viewing and close scrutiny is rewarded with a deeper understanding of the material and its themes. They're shot cinematically and utilize good actors. Plot details sprawl out over multiple episodes, with viewers sometimes having to wait weeks to fit what might have seemed a throwaway line into the larger narrative puzzle.

Episodes of these megamovies, Canby argued presciently, are best watched in bunches, so that the parts more easily make the whole in the viewer's mind. For many, bingeing on entire seasons on DVD or downloaded via iTunes has become the preferred way to watch these shows. If stamina and non-televisual responsibilities weren't an issue, it would be preferable to watch these shows in one sitting, as one does with a movie.

Since The Sopranos kick-started things in 1999, the megamovie has become a far more common occurrence on TV. Virginia Heffernan recently stated that the creators of nearly all hour-long dramatic series are aiming to make megamovies. I've collected a few examples of megamovies accompanied by their total running times below. The list is incomplete but represents several of the best-known and -appreciated megamovies out there.

The Sopranos, 81 hours 46 minutes
Lost*, 61 hours 59 minutes
Mad Men*, 18 hours 6 minutes
Six Feet Under 57 hours 45 minutes
Deadwood*, 36 hours
The Wire, 60 hours 45 minutes
The West Wing, 111 hours 56 minutes

For The West Wing, that's 4 days and 16 hours of continous watching. An asterisk marks megamovies that are as-yet incomplete. In the case of Deadwood, it's as if the film projector broke about halfway through the movie, only no one got their money back and eveyone left the theater pissed.

Update: In his review of the third episode of Mad Men this season, Andrew Johnston talks about the two dominant forms of TV drama and how The Sopranos and Mad Men fits in. (thx, stephen)

The Ambition of the Independent Video Game

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:29 GMT

19:58 09.10.2008
The Ambition of the Independent Video Game

By substituting "independent video game" for "short story" in The Ambition of the Short Story, (mashedmarket) turned the essay into a manifesto of sorts for indie game developers.

The Triple-A game is exhaustive by nature; but the world is inexhaustible; therefore the Triple-A game, that Faustian striver, can never attain its desire. The independent video game by contrast is inherently selective. By excluding almost everything, it can give perfect shape to what remains. And the independent video game can even lay claim to a kind of completeness that eludes the Triple-A game -- after the initial act of radical exclusion, it can include all of the little that's left.

(link)

Kate Moss art

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:28 GMT

18:40 09.10.2008
Kate Moss art

A collection of artworks featuring Kate Moss, including a self-portrait drawn with lipstick.

(link)

Manny being Manny

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:28 GMT

17:25 09.10.2008
Manny being Manny

Conventional wisdom and prevailing opinion among hardcore Boston Red Sox fans is that LA Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez finally sulked his way out of a Boston Red Sox uniform by basically phoning it in and causing trouble for his team for a couple of months earlier in the season, which phoning and trouble resulted in a trade of Ramirez to LA for very little in return. Two rebuttals have surfaced recently that seem more plausible to me. The first is Facts About Manny Ramirez by Joe Sheehan. Sheehan uses some of those pesky facts to illustrate that on the field, Manny played as well or better during the supposed phoning-it-in period than he has in the past.

When he played, Ramirez killed the league. He hit .347/.473/.587 in July. His OBP led the team, and his SLG led all Red Sox with at least 25 AB. The Sox, somewhat famously, went 11-13 in July. Lots of people want you to believe that was because Manny Ramirez is a bad guy. I'll throw out the wildly implausible idea that the Sox went 11-13 because Ortiz played in six games and because veterans Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek has sub-600 OPSs for the month.
Four days before he was traded, Manny Ramirez just about single-handedly saved the Red Sox from getting swept by the Yankees, with doubles in the first and third innings that helped the Sox get out to a 5-0 lead in a game they had to win to stay ahead of the Yankees in the wild-card race.

In Manny Being Manipulated, Bill Simmons attempts to answer the question, Ok, so why did Manny suddenly want to be traded and, more importantly, why did the Red Sox actually oblige? Simmons' answer: Scott Boras, Ramirez's agent and "one of the worst human beings in America who hasn't actually committed a crime". According to Simmons, it all boiled down to mismatched incentives and following the money.

Manny's contract was set to expire after the 2008 season, with Boston holding $20 million options for 2009 and 2010. Boras couldn't earn a commission on the option years because those fees belonged to Manny's previous agents. He could only get paid when he negotiated Manny's next contract. And Scott Boras always gets paid.

Boras could only get paid for representing Ramirez if Manny signed a new contract. Which he will next year because as part of the trade, the Dodgers agreed to waive his 2009 option and allow him to become a free agent. And the Red Sox went along because they decided they'd rather have a good relationship with Scott Boras going forward instead of a weird relationship with Ramirez. As for Manny, he gets paid either way, rarely appreciated the weird pressure/adulation put on him and every other Red Sox player by Boston fans, and, I get the feeling, likes swinging a bat, no matter what team he plays for.

(link)

Tongans invade Texas town

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:27 GMT

16:42 09.10.2008
Tongans invade Texas town

The NY Times picks up the story of the high school football team with a number of Tongan players covered a couple of days ago on kottke.org.

City officials have patiently assisted Tongan residents acclimate to a new culture, Faiva-Siale said. Compromises have been reached to accommodate large family gatherings at funeral rituals that last for days. And the city has promoted alternatives to the slaughtering of pigs at home for open-pit cooking. A mobile health unit helps to provide free flu shots and medical checkups.

(link)

Theft with help from craigslist

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:26 GMT

14:36 09.10.2008
Theft with help from craigslist

A man dressed as a road maintenance worker robbed an armored car in Washington State. As part of his getaway plan, he hired some people via Seattle craigslist to also dress up as road maintenance workers and mill around where the armored car was located.

"I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys, named Mike, said to the NBC station. As it turns out, they were simply placed there to confuse cops who were looking for a guy wearing a virtually identical outfit.

The thief then escaped down a river on an inner tube. (thx, greg)

(link)

$1 food in NYC

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:25 GMT

02:20 09.10.2008
$1 food in NYC

You can still get food for $1 at some eating establishments in NYC, even outside of the McDonald's Dollar Menu.

(link)

● The Metropolitan Life Tower

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:24 GMT

22:04 08.10.2008
● The Metropolitan Life Tower

The Metropolitan Life Tower is located on the east side of Madison Square Park at 1 Madison Avenue. It has quietly become one of my favorite buildings in the city; I find myself peering up at it whenever I'm in the area. (I took a photo of the building while in line at the Shake Shack last spring...it's a lovely color in the late afternoon light.) Inspired by a photo posted recently to Shorpy that shows the tower under construction -- and before the addition of the building's iconic clock -- I did some research and discovered three things.

One. Modeled after the bell tower of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, the Metropolitan Life Tower was completed in 1909 and at 700 feet, it was the tallest building in the world until the Woolworth Building was completed four years later.

Two. The NY Times ran a story in December 1907 about the eventual completion of the structure and how it would take over as the world's tallest building, surpassing another then-unfinished building, the Singer Tower. In the era before widely available air travel, the building's vantage point was remarkable.

The view from the top was of a new New York. No other skyscrapers obstructed the vista in either direction. Passing the green roof of the Flatiron Building, the gaze literally spanned the Jersey City Heights and rested on Newark and towns on the Orange Mountains, fifteen miles away.
To the southward the skyscrapers bulked like a range of hills in steel and mortar, the Singer tower rising in the midst, a solitary watch tower on a peak. This hid the harbor, but to the left beyond the bridges, reduced at this height to gray cobwebs, the eye caught the sunlight on the sea -- a long strip of shimmering silver beyond Coney Island and the Rockaways.

Three. Star architect Daniel Libeskind is allegedly working on an addition to the Metropolitan Life Building, an addition that by some accounts would reach 70 stories. You can guess how I feel about the prospect of one of those residential glass monstrosities literally and emotionally dwarfing the existing 50-story clock tower, Libeskind or no. Of course, the Metropolitan Life Tower may never have become so iconic had Metropolitan Life's plans for a 100-story tower one block north not been scrapped because of the Great Depression. They only finished 32 floors of that building, which today houses the celebrated restaurant, Eleven Madison Park.

The financial crisis, a Pokemon parable

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:23 GMT

20:53 08.10.2008
The financial crisis, a Pokemon parable

This is perhaps the most succinct explanation of the current financial crisis I had read: The Financial Crisis, as Explained to My Fourteen-Year-Old Sister.

Kevin: Imagine that I let you borrow $50, but in exchange for my generosity, you promise to pay me back the $50 with an extra $10 in interest. To make sure you pay me back, I take your Charizard Pokémon card as collateral.
Olivia: Kevin, I don't play Pokémon anymore.
Kevin: I'm getting to that. Let's say that the Charizard is worth $50, so in case you decide to not return my money, at least I'll have something that's worth what I loaned out.
Olivia: Okay.
Kevin: But one day, people realize that Pokémon is stupid and everyone decides that the cards are overvalued. That's right -- everybody turned twelve on the same day! Now your Charizard is only worth, say, $25.

The only thing that's missing is the part of the explanation where the parents swoop in and pay Kevin full value for that Pokémon card, which allows him to keep lending money in exchange for cardboard rectangles.

(link)

Starship Troopers

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:22 GMT

19:27 08.10.2008
Starship Troopers

Hulu has added Starship Troopers to the lineup. (Not available outside the US, sorry.)

Update: Perhaps those outside of the US would like to use something like this to watch movies and TV on Hulu? (thx, stewart)

(link)

Can helium balloons carry off a child?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:21 GMT

17:57 08.10.2008
Can helium balloons carry off a child?

In the opening credits of the 80s TV show Webster, the title character is shown lifted into the sky by a dozen helium balloons. Mena Trott recently enlisted her young daughter in an attempt to prove, a la Mythbusters, that a few balloons won't actually lift anyone anywhere.

Update: Mythbusters actually tackled this question in 2004. (thx, javier)

(link)

Suburban mom's duet with Sting

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:21 GMT

16:49 08.10.2008
Suburban mom's duet with Sting

Seattle mom Jessica Ketola recently got to go up on stage for a soundcheck with Sting and The Police. Sting was so impressed with her voice that he invited her to sing with him during the concert.

The stage manager didn't help. "Sting never shares a microphone," he muttered to Ketola as she waited in the wings before the concert. "So don't [expletive] up." But in true fairy-tale tradition, a white knight swept in with a bottle of water and a few reassuring words. "He says that to me every night, too," Sting confided.

Here's a video of the soundcheck and one of Ketola killing it on Don't Stand So Close to Me. (via girlhacker)

(link)

Mad Men typography

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:20 GMT

15:20 08.10.2008
Mad Men typography

Mark Simonson takes an extensive look at the typography of Mad Men and concludes that a surprising amount of the type is set in fonts that either weren't around in the early 60s or weren't yet popular in the US.

Then there is the Gill Sans (c. 1930) problem. Gill is used quite a lot in the series, mainly for Sterling Cooper Advertising's logo and signage. Technically, this is not anachronistic. And the way the type is used -- metal dimensional letters, generously spaced -- looks right. The problem is that Gill was a British typeface not widely available or popular in the U.S. until the 1970s. It's a decade ahead of its time in American type fashions.

There's also the Arial problem in the ending credits.

(link)

How to embalm a dead body

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:19 GMT

14:18 08.10.2008
How to embalm a dead body

An editor from The Morning News goes to a mortuary and learns how to embalm a dead body.

"Once I worked on an old man with a really bad moustache, like the kind a teenager would grow. It was really crooked and misshapen, so I shaved it off. At the funeral his family kept coming up saying, 'Oh, where's his moustache?' Apparently, it was supposed to look that way."
The closer to its living self a body looked, the happier a family would be. And keeping families happy, I'd learn as the night went on, was the main objective of Carla's work, and a task she took very seriously.

Apparently watching every episode of Six Feet Under does not prepare you to be a funeral director.

(link)

An ode to the short story.

Short story ambitions

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:17 GMT

03:25 08.10.2008
Short story ambitions

The novel is insatiable -- it wants to devour the world. What's left for the poor short story to do? It can cultivate its garden, practice meditation, water the geraniums in the window box. It can take a course in creative nonfiction. It can do whatever it likes, so long as it doesn't forget its place -- so long as it keeps quiet and stays out of the way. "Hoo ha!" cries the novel. "Here ah come!" The short story is always ducking for cover. The novel buys up the land, cuts down the trees, puts up the condos. The short story scampers across a lawn, squeezes under a fence.

(link)

Paho Mann photographs other people's ~~souls~~ junk drawers and medicine cabinets.

Junk drawer photos

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:21:16 GMT

01:19 08.10.2008
Junk drawer photos

My work explores the persistent mark of individuality in a culture that brands, packages, and relentlessly promotes conformity. Even among those who attempt to fit into society, there is an amazing wealth of information each individual reveals in near-privacy, spaces such as junk-drawers and medicine cabinets. The near-private nature of these spaces force the viewer to contend with the natural desire of humans to collect, categorize, and by doing so, manage to give clues about their personality and identity.

(via the moment)

(link)

Antisocial: 3D in Canvas with Sound

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:01:47 GMT

22:42 08.10.2008
Antisocial: 3D in Canvas with Sound

Gasman has created Antisocial, a very enjoyable demo of Canvas doing fake 3d and 2d along with that ZX Spectrum sound that you loved as a kid.

Check out the tool to see where the magic happens, and make some music, Spectrum style!

I feel like we have been light on showcases recently, so please email us if you have seen a cool use of Ajax that we haven’t picked up on!

Pimp My Site with CSS and Prototype

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:01:47 GMT

17:19 08.10.2008
Pimp My Site with CSS and Prototype

Do you like some code pimpage? We saw a couple of interesting posts on this recently in fact.

First, our own Christian Heilmann took a table based layout, and in short order turned it over to the light via YUI Grids and CSS.

He took this:

And it quickly became this:

He has made the code available, and is asking if people want more information. I would love to see more of this content myself… people that know their stuff explaining the how and the why.

This leads us from CSS to JavaScript. The Prototype team put out a call for pimping. Send them some code, and they will show you how they would write it, inevitably in that Prototype “kinda like Ruby JavaScript” style. I look forward to the first showing!

The myths and reality of XHTML

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:01:46 GMT

11:07 08.10.2008
The myths and reality of XHTML

Lack of support for XHTML is a fact of life on the web in 2008. Prior to the 3.0 series of Firefox the XHTML processor in Gecko was so poor that Mozilla’s own engineers recommended against it[27]; no version of Internet Explorer up to, and including, IE 8 support XHTML at all, and a number of other browsers such as Lynx were never written to handle XML in the first place.

The above quote comes from XHTML?—?myths and reality by Tina Holmboe, a member of the XHTML Working Group.

It is a nice piece that delves into:

Aptana Jaxer 1.0 RC

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:01:45 GMT

10:12 08.10.2008
Aptana Jaxer 1.0 RC

The Jaxer team has released a release candidate for Jaxer 1.0.

Here a synopsis of all the new features and improvements that have gone into this latest release candidate:

Jaxer.Sandbox: HTTP-level control; support readyState, toHTML, waitForCompletion

Built-in, extensible dispatching for RESTful and RPC service requests

Fast, native JSON support

Improved APIs for HTTP Request and Response

More flexible handling of application configuration

Many bug fixes, smaller improvements, and cleanups

They are moving pretty fast, so are looking for feedback before they wrap up a final 1.0 release.