Tuesday June 29, 2004
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Accent
Ever since I saw Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle 10 years ago, I — like you — have suspected that Dorothy Parker could not have possibly sounded as pouty and mannered as Jennifer Jason Leigh’s bizarre portrayal, which feels like a leftover from the same year’s Hudsucker Proxy. Terry Teachout digs ups some RealAudio to confirm the same suspicion, but I’m surprised how much Parker actually does sound like Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, albeit without the boo-boopie-doo Jason Leigh brought to the role in place of, oh say, emotion. Campbell Scott’s rendition of Robert Benchley’s “Treasurer’s Report,” on the other hand, is without flaw.
(via Maud Newton.)
Posted by jim at 09:57 PM || Comments
Thursday June 24, 2004
Shameless Self-Promotion
I will be reading with Land-Grant College Review editors Josh Melrod and Tara Wray and fellow One Story contributor Scott Snyder on Thursday, July 8th at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. $5 suggested donation. The details are here.
Posted by jim at 11:33 AM || Comments
Wednesday June 23, 2004
Karaoke: Recoding the Corporate?
I have long believed that karaoke videos — those little passion plays that appear behind the lyrics when you’re trying to get your rock star on — are a by-product of — or perhaps a sort of on-deck circle for — the San Fernando Valley porn industry. Hey, you’re already kissing and wearing bad clothing. We’re running video. Why not?
BoingBoing, however, is advertising an opportunity for video artists to get serious about the medium by contributing fresh karaoke clips for use at the ISEA2004 conference in Scandinavia. I am a little worried that the organizers might be taking karaoke a bit too seriously, though.
“From Tokyo to Tallinn, the ubiquitous, democratic form of entertainment activates national identity, nostalgia, sentimentality, and glimmers of rock-stardom,” the call for entries proclaims. “Individual performances transform this generic format into ironic, campy, critical and individualized meanings. Erupting within the entertainment-industrial complex, these do-it-yourself appropriations recode the corporate into the personal.”
Um, yeah. Personally, I just want to watch something other than a guy stalking a nice newscaster lady every time I need to belt out a rendition of The Grassroots’ “Midnight Confession.”
Posted by jim at 10:58 AM || Comments
Tuesday June 22, 2004
A Bad Day for Photo Editors
As an Olsen twin unexpectedly makes news on her own, you can almost hear editors across the city screaming: “I know we’ve got to crop one of them out, you fucking idiot, but which one?”
Posted by jim at 05:00 PM || Comments
Mousetrap!
Thinking of building a better mousetrap? Well, you better check out all the ones that have come before, like the Kitty Gotcha and the Catch as Cats Can. And there are so many more. Makes you wonder how we arrived at our current stage of mousetrap minimalism. I blame Modernism.
(via Sharpeworld.)
Posted by jim at 07:00 AM || Comments
Roller Girls Don’t Worry
Francis brings us an extensive report, complete with photojournalism, from a recent Gotham Girls Roller Derby event down under the BQE. I love New York. Or Brooklyn or Queens or whatever that is over there.
(via Heaneyland!, but of course.)
Posted by jim at 06:43 AM || Comments
Monday June 21, 2004
The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
I’m happy to report that things have taken an extra meta turn over at Shiny, Pointy & Tall, my month-old photoblog of people taking pictures of the Chrysler Building. Teflon, a moblogger from Glasgow, recently made a surprise visit to the corner where I take all my pictures — to plant some flyers for moblogUK and, of course, to document the scene, which he dubs the “Shiny, Pointy and Tall Corner.” I will be approaching the Mayor’s Office soon to see about making that designation official.
Posted by jim at 07:58 AM || Comments
Thursday June 17, 2004
The Wonderful World of Welding
I firmly believe that if you dig into any professional subculture — whether it’s mathematics or accounting or carnival management — you will discover wonderful things: poetic slang, unexpected mores, strange artifacts. Along these lines, Francis hips me to the awesome selection of welding helmets available at Hoodlum Welding Gear. Options include the Burning Skull, the White Skull, the Black Skull, the Hollywood Hog, the Gorilla and — of course — the Patriotic Gorilla (shown).
(via Heaneyland!)
Posted by jim at 11:28 AM || Comments
Tuesday June 15, 2004
The Atrocity Exhibition
Here is an aspiring writer who has posted all of her rejection slips online. We do not pretend to know why. We burn ours, just as the aboriginal peoples of the Americas once did.
(via Maud Newton via Moorish Girl)
Posted by jim at 04:33 PM || Comments
Monday June 14, 2004
Search, the World Over
Dan Gillmor has posted a dazzling — if not very useful — video clip that geographically represents the volume of Google searches around the world. And, yes, that big spike over Manhattan is me Googling myself.
(via Engadget)
Posted by jim at 12:19 PM || Comments
Friday June 11, 2004
Gotta Support the Scene
Well, actually, you don’t. Scenes that straddle fans with guilt and obligation should probably die. However, if you’re a fan of literary magazines, you can pick up all you can handle for $2 a crack at the The Council of Literary Magazines & Presses’ Lit Mag Fair this Sunday from 12 to 5 at Housing Works’ Used Book Cafe in SoHo. If available, we recommend — for completely ego-feeding reasons — picking up the current issue of the Land-Grant College Review.
Posted by jim at 10:51 AM || Comments
Wednesday June 09, 2004
Finally, A Fitting Tribute
It’s about time someone paid fitting tribute to Ronald Reagan. I mean, it’s like no one even wants to talk about him now that he’s gone — or a least undead. Visit the homepage of the Bush/Zombie Reagan ticket.
(via BoingBoing)
Posted by jim at 08:22 PM || Comments
VisitorVille, Pop. 13
This SimCity-style traffic monitor from VisitorVille makes the stats junky in me want to head to the seedy side of town and score some of that CPM. I may have to try this eventually, so I can spend hours spying on my tens of visitors as they stumble around aimlessly in search of pornography and links to their own websites.
(via Wired)
Posted by jim at 08:06 PM || Comments
Air Kissing Made Easy
When I first moved to Manhattan, I found the strict regime of casual cheek kissing to be awkward and — frankly — privacy-invading. But thanks to Matthew Vescovo’s Instructoart, I think I have a handle on it. Matt is the art director and illustrator behind MTV’s “Watch & Learn” campaign, but the diagrams on his site are even better.
Posted by jim at 09:56 AM || Comments
British Science Marches Onward
British researchers have scrutinized U.S. birth records and discovered that girls are more likely than boys to be given laughable humiliating unconventional names. For every every 10,000 daughters born, 2.3 ridiculous new names crop up. For boys, the figure is 1.2. In a completely unrelated — but likewise British — study, Penguin found that 85 percent of women say they’re more likely to fall for a man who talks about books. So take heed, gentlemen, if you want to get anywhere with Jaz or Bailey or Paris. (Well, maybe not Paris.)
Posted by jim at 09:23 AM || Comments
Tuesday June 08, 2004
What a Deck
Designer Marc Jacobs — who I hold personally responsible for The Maritime Hotel, which got underway shortly after his 2002 Fashion Week shindig, at what was then still just a big ugly building — makes it up to me by issuing a deck of cards featuring the malevolent knuckleheads of the Bush administration. Based on the deck of top Iraqis distributed last year by the Pentagon — and, of course, The New York Post — this one casts Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft as the Aces. According to Reuters, Bush also appears as both Jokers — striking out in T-ball on one and standing around in that ridiculous “end of major combat” flight suit on the other. Reuters doesn’t have pictures, but photoblogger Thomas Locke Hobbes does. (Thanks, Thomas, for sparing me the invigorating 10 block walk.)
Posted by jim at 07:21 AM || Comments
Monday June 07, 2004
Self-Portrait with Chrysler Building
Just a quick update about my moblog, Shiny, Pointy & Tall, where I document tourists taking pictures of the Chrysler Building. Today, I stumbled upon something truly innovative and rare — a woman with a tripod attempting to take a self-portrait of herself with the Chrysler Building in the background. Guess it beats trusting your camera to some jackalish New Yorker, even for a few seconds.
Posted by jim at 11:05 AM || Comments
Friday June 04, 2004
Understanding Terror
After reading my post about The Nielsen TV Research Activity Book, a Seattle-based software developer and artist who goes by the name of Ozten alerted me to his new coloring and activity book, Understanding Terror, which handily lampoons the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies. You can buy a copy here — they just came back from the printer today — or download a printable PDF here.
Posted by jim at 09:11 PM || Comments
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
Dear Cabbies En Route to the Maritime,
It’s Friday, and I know you are excited. I am excited, too. You are no doubt looking forward to picking up fares late into the evening — addled fares with substance abuse problems and some remaining stitch of discretionary income — some of whom might ask you to take them to the Maritime Hotel, the enormous three-sided pleasure palace on 9th Avenue, right next to my home. That is all great. Everybody wins.
However, I am afraid you might also be looking forward to your other favorite weekend activity, which is why I am writing to you today. True, the traffic sometimes gets a little congested on 17th Street as your taxi-driving brethren wait for loud-talking account executives to coax orange, nasally bobbleheads off their cellphones and into the backseat, or as they stop to eject vomiting schoolchildren, in from Bayside and Bayonne, from their cabs. But this is no reason to lay on your horn for hours at a time, creating the impression inside my first floor studio apartment that my head is stuck up somewhere under the hood of your Crown Victoria, wedged between the carburetor and the horn. So, starting tonight, I would like to invite you to please shut the fuck up.
Before the Maritime Hotel opened, life over here on West 17th Street was idyllic. It was like Walden or Big Sur or Park Slope — a blissful setting for quiet contemplation and, yes, even sleep. I know you are not entirely to blame — believe me, if one more bond-trading Notre Dame alum pisses on my air conditioner, the management at the Maritime will be receiving a strongly worded letter — but I know you can help with the honking. Because that is you honking, right? With the heel of your hand and your elbow — honking as though you have fainted across the steering wheel? Honking like this should be reserved for alerting people to mudslides or to sheets of fireballs falling from the sky.
If you do not accept my invitation to shut the fuck up, I guess I have a couple of options:
- I might join the neighborhood movement that is already underway to call 311 testily and incessantly, registering complaints about your behavior.
- I could stay up one night and record each and every one of your medallion numbers, then share these with Mayor Bloomberg the next time I see him at my monthly book group. (We’re just now getting around to The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, if you can believe that.) The man killed smoking. Honking should be easy.
- Or I might build a device that will emit a powerful electromagnetic pulse — like that associated with nuclear winter — that will disable your Crown Vic’s electrical system, its horn and hopefully that cellphone you are talking on all the time to God knows who.
Naturally, I hope these measures will not be necessary.
Sincerely,
Jim Hanas
Posted by jim at 08:15 AM || Comments
Thursday June 03, 2004
Meter the Little Children
The Nielsen TV Research Activity Book seems innocuous enough at first — just a fun coloring book put together by Nielsen Media Research for the edification of children who live in the company’s 5,000 metered homes, and perhaps a remedial tool for explaining the television ratings system to drunken media buyers. But with debate heating up over the effects of advertising on children, some may cast a dim eye on this playful, Joe Camelish effort to indoctrinate manipulate enslave body-snatch teach the nation’s children how to be good consumers and give up the demographic goods. Click to the next page to see some of the fun activities Nielsen has cooked up for the kiddies. Then think about how much you would have liked to have been in that meeting.
Posted by jim at 12:03 AM || Comments
Wednesday June 02, 2004
Ich Bin Werbe-Analyst
“Quizno’s hat eben nicht den Etat von Subway,” meint Jim Hanas, Werbe-Analyst bei einem Branchenblatt, in Anspielung auf die eher langweiligen aber omnipr senten Spots des Konkurrenten.
— excerpt from a German article about advertising after “Nipplegate,” quoting, I think, from an article at CNNMoney. I don’t speak German, but I believe “Branchenblatt” roughly translates as “industry rag.”
Posted by jim at 11:55 AM || Comments
Three Days in Plague Country
I just got back from a weekend in my hometown in Kentucky. It was good to see friends and family, despite the fact that they are living amidst a pestilence of Left Behind proportions. I had a run in with the cicadas 17 years ago — one got inside my car and inspired me to drive my Oldsmobile Starfire (the ‘s’ had fallen off the nameplate) into a pole — but this time they seem even worse. In the afternoons, the air is thick with a din that sounds like a pit of rattlesnakes, and the roach-sized bugs are swarming everywhere, like the monkeys in the The Wizard of Oz. (It’s impossible to really capture this swarming effect in photos — I tried — but if you imagine moths hovering around a flame, then imagine that the whole world is on fire, you’ll get the idea.) It might be tolerable if they were competent at what they do, but they weave around randomly, like disappointing robotic experiments.
Then, on Saturday night, a sub-tornadic anomaly sheered through and snapped our 60-foot-tall pine tree, which has stood in front of my ancestral home for longer than I’ve been alive, like a dry twig. If this is God’s Country, God must be a little upset.
