Tim Riley's Blog, page 15
October 3, 2012
October 1, 2012
UNDERWATER CROP CIRCLES
Underwater crop circle mystery solved | Earth | EarthSky. “Japanese photographer Yoji Ookata captured the photos below while on a dive near Amami Oshima at the southern tip of Japan. He said the rippling geometric sand patterns are nearly six feet in diameter and almost 80 feet below sea level…” #
Related articles
Deep Sea Sand Sculptures – Yoji Ookata Discovers Giant Underwater Crop Circles (TrendHunter.com)
Underwater Crop Circles Discovered in the Coastal Waters of Japan
Mystery surrounding underwater ‘crop circles’ solved off Japan
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September 17, 2012
DETEROIRATA XII:2
Nicholson Baker – headshot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
QUOTE OF THE MONTH: Nicholson Baker in the New York Times Book Review: “We’re in the middle of a presidential administration in which one man in an office with velvet couches goes down a kill list. Our president has become an assassin. This sickens me and makes me want to stop writing altogether.” # #
See also: Human Smoke, an alternative history of World War II.
30 minutes of MC5, a band out of time:
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September 12, 2012
GROWIN’ UP
Bruce Springsteen (Photo credit: Lord_Henry)
Shame about David Brooks’s out-of-touch Op-Ed column, but double-shame on David Remnick for his unctuous, interminable New Yorker profile. Together they spawned a cottage industry of dissent: Robert Christgau hailed the Scandinavian show he caught as “transcendent”: “One problem with that Madison Square Garden audience was that it felt smug — aware of Springsteen’s complications, but certain that he’d sweep all troubling thoughts away. The Roskilde fans weren’t born in the U.S.A. But they never forgot how contradictory it is, and they loved Bruce Springsteen more for remembering that too. So do I…” (His up conclusion couldn’t redeem the sting of his Weinberg potshot, calling him a “funkless show drummer.”) # #
In the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier labeled Remnick’s gloss softcore “porn,” declaring: “I was twice at The Bottom Line in August 1975 and I have never been in a happier room. But there is nothing daft or insouciant, nothing crazy free, about Springsteen’s exuberance anymore. The joy is programmatic; it is mere uplift, another expression of social responsibility, a further statement of an idealism that borders on illusion. The rising? Not quite yet. We take care of our own? No, we do not. Nothing has damaged Springsteen’s once-magnificent music more than his decision to become a spokesman for America. He is Howard Zinn with a guitar…” I’ve seen shows from 1999, 2003 and 2006 that veered between inspired and rote, but never without completely in-the-moment commitment to the words, and essential professionalism that emphasized music over spectacle in ways that often seemed anachronistic. #
Related articles
On Bruce Springsteen and Silver-Plated Assholes
Howard Zinn With A Guitar?
The information superhighway’s jammed with broken heroes…
Why Bruce Springsteen’s Boomer Liberal Media Fans Are Ridiculous
Beyonce And Jay-Z Compared To A ‘Black’ Bruce Springsteen?!
Springsteen: 30 years in therapy
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August 10, 2012
CROP CIRCLE TURNTABLE: JEREMY JUSTICE
From the New Orleans Times-Picayne: #
Justice is a long-time fan of old school vinyl records. As a sideline, he built a couple of custom turntables, with handsome rectangular wood bodies. Aesthetically that wasn’t enough. Scanning the Internet, he came across photos of crop circles, the presumed landing sites of extraterrestrial vehicles. #
It was a surrealistic eureka moment. Justice cut crop circle shapes from plywood, allowing the wood grain to represent the wheat crop. He assembled them into an oddly shaped turntable, augmented with over-sized industrial-chic bolts and brass fittings, plus a drumstick tone arm and a vaguely disco ball-style faceted, chrome record retaining weight. Connected to old-fashion vacuum-tube amps, Justice’s crop circle phonograph soared sweetly when he gently placed a 1970s record by jazz great Rahsaan Roland Kirk under the needle. #
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New Swirled Order (Full Version)
Crop circles appear in wheat field near Wilbur
Crop Circles Appear in Wilbur, Washington Wheat Field
Paranormal – ACADEMICIAN VALIDATES NON-HUMAN CROP CIRCLES
Washington Crop Circle Surprising, But Typical
Picture: Amazing Mario Balotelli crop circle appears in Verona
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August 8, 2012
LIBERAL PORN SMACKDOWN
English: Aaron Sorkin speaking at the Oxford Union (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So far, very sturdy voices have chimed in against Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom (HBO), including John Powers in Vogue, Jake Tapper in the New Republic, and Tom Carson in GQ. As a journalism teacher, I’m developing pedagogical angles, but his trope of revisiting recent news events quickly wears thin. Sorkin uses it mainly to preach about how much better journalists should behave on deadline, how often everyone bursts into applause, etc. The clincher for me came with his use of Coldplay’s lame “Fix You” in episode four, with that maudlin Rudy ending. # #
The further we get, the more Sorkin scans like a hack thoroughbred schoolmarm. Nevermind how all his female characters squirm in their relationships to men. He really ventures outlandishly lavish and entertaining frames around soggy ideas. And too much fails the smell test: Does Sorkin’s anchor really not know what a “takedown” piece is? Would a gossip columnist (Hope Davis) really proclaim “We’re all journalists” as that anchor writes out his dirty check to keep her mum? David Thomson nails it for my money: #
Will keeps proclaiming he’s on “a mission to civilize,” like that is not an extremely loaded, paternalistic, colonialist life goal barely more sympathetic than the white man and his burden. Each time Will declares he is on a “mission to civilize,” I expect Sorkin to follow this thought to its semi-logical conclusion and stage a defense of colonialism as another form of wrongfully maligned elitism we should seriously consider bringing back. #
David Thomson in the New Republic:
Will McAvoy isn’t going to exhibit the struggle of such family genes. He may compromise along the way, he has to regain his ex-girlfriend, but he will stand up for TV news just as surely as Bartlet embodied the hope for a functioning democracy. Such sentimental hokum sits uneasily in the wild head of Sorkin (I suspect he fights a daily bipolar contest between Charlie and Martin), beside his high skill with dialogue and narrative. But he is way behind the insights of a modest but pretentious movie like The Ides of March, which shows innate corruption dissolving every iron anchor in sight, or the passing insight of his own The Social Network, that Mark Zuckerberg is a brilliant black hole while the president of Harvard may be a high-minded scoundrel. That is the most challenging work Sorkin has done because it coincided with director David Fincher’s misanthropy, to show that the world was adrift on a sea that no longer honored or insured anchors… #
Finally, don’t miss SORKINISMS, making the rounds: #
Related articles
A Taxonomy of Sorkinisms
Aaron Sorkin versus reality
Obama Showers Sorkin, Hathaway With Praise at Fund-raiser
What Constitutes a ‘Takedown Piece’ at the The New York Post?
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June 27, 2012
June 22, 2012
HOMERIC NODS
Dostoevsky
Ongoing list of admirable critics with inexplicable opinions: # #
Garry Wills thinks Oliver Stone ranks with Dostoevsky, even recommends half of his first novel… #
Greil Marcus has a pavlovian negative reaction to Lucinda Williams (“As great an emotional fraud as Destiny’s Child — wins the prize over them as the most mannered singer in pop music because she’s been fooling people with it longer”)… #
Ellen Willis loved that lame excuse for feminist payback, Thelma and Louise… #
And in her forthcoming Glittering Images, Camille Paglia pronounces George Lucas God-On-A-Stick… #
