Rob Walker's Blog, page 48

Power Outage

If you couldn't access the Significant Objects website yesterday afternoon/evening, or at other times recently, you weren't alone. As of yesterday, our web-host had served up nearly 30,000 pages during November, which is more than the combined total of pages served up during the first five months of this project… and that number would surely have been higher if the traffic hadn't overwhelmed our web-host's servers. (Last month, we served over 131,000+ pages to nearly 18,000 unique visitors...

Blue Vase

Object No. 95 of 100

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Lauren Mechling, here.]

It was during Charlotte Sanger and Georgia Howard's punk period — which actually had nothing to do with music and everything to do with mustard nailpolish and slinking away from Pine Ridge High School 's mandatory double-period orchestra — that Charlotte spotted her mother in the front of the Pine View movie theater, waiting for the lights to dim and the 11:50 a.m. screening of Wayne's World to begin...

Weekly Project Update

Coming up this week: Objects No. 95 through 100 — 0ur final batch of stories! Including the winner of our Six-Word Contest with SmithMag.net, plus Jonathan Lethem, and more. Your last chance to acquire one of the Original 100 Significant Objects! Check the store now for current auctions if you can't wait.

And will S.O. live on in some new form after the first 100 Objects are gone? Well, maybe. Perhaps we'll have something to say (or to ask you) about that this week, too.

Recent reactions from...

Rooster Oven Mitt

Object No. 94 of 100

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Victor LaValle, here.]

Who the hell goes to Portugal? In my family?

The question arose as my sister and I were going through my grandmother's things—her effects. She'd died of old age at Queens General Hospital and she'd been longing for it. Some people never want to go, but not her. She'd lived long (96 years), seen her grandkids and great grandkids.

The old lady didn't own the apartment she'd lived in, alone, for 22 years...

Six-Word Contest: Time's Almost Up

Around 400 six-word stories about the lighter-that-looks-like-a-small-poolball so far. Pretty fun reading. Deadline is 8 pm Eastern tonight; we'll pick a winner and publish early next week. Read/enter/do both: here.

Pink Horse

Object No. 93 of 100

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Kate Bernheimer, here.]

A long time ago, I was very poor and often traded my body for cigarettes, Chelada, or food (in order of preference). I had two children — both daughters — and together we lived in a motel on the coast. It was a knotty-pine kitchenette cabin, and came furnished with a teapot, a few chipped flowered plates, some utensils, and bedding. The cabin overlooked a paved parking lot and beyond it, the beach. If a ...

Significant Objects on Brian Lehrer Show

Soon To Be A Significant Object

If it's before 11:40 a.m. Eastern, then consider this post a notice that at least one and maybe both of us will be on The Brian Lehrer show on WNYC at that time.

If it's 11:40 or after, and you're a Brian Lehrer Show listener, here's a link to participate in our Six Words contest collaboration with SmithMag. (Obviously everybody is welcome, not just Lehrer listeners.) Create Significance for the lighter that looks like a small pool ball, pictured at right. Give i...

Amoco Yo-Yo

Object No. 92 of 100

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Mark Sarvas, here.]

When I was seventeen, I was expelled from high school. My father, reasonably enough, gave me a choice: Get a job or get out. The only job for a 30-mile radius was the night shift behind the counter at an Amoco station on a deserted back road off the interstate. Scott, the owner, told me I probably wouldn't see a customer most nights. He was chubby, hairy and, at 26, overly proud of himself for owning a gas...

Felt Mouse

Object No. 91 of 100

[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Meghan O'Rourke, here. ]

After my mother died, a stranger emailed me. He told me that my mother had been the most important person in his life. They went to Catholic school together. He was unpopular, she was popular; he was a bad student, she was a good student; he was a football player; she was a cheerleader. Though he wasn't in her clique, one night at a dance, she came up to him while "Hey Jude" was playing and asked him...

Watching watchers

The auction for the BBQ Sauce Jar + (Slate Contest Winner) Matthew J. Wells Story ends today. Right at the moment the bidding is at $54, which is impressive.

Interestingly, the S.O. shop account tells me that 26 eBayers are "watching" this auction. That's an unusually high number — in general our auctions have only a handful of "watchers." has 8, also higher than normal.

Never having been a very active eBay person prior to this project, it's not clear ...