==pla|\|ing lakes==

Saturday, April 16, 2005

A lovely quote from Irene Dunne:

"[Comedy] demands more timing, pace, shading and subtlety of emphasis. It is difficult to learn but once it is acquired it can be easily slowed down and becomes an excellent foundation for dramatic acting." [Bombshells.com]

Comedy is very difficult, and underappreciated by Oscar (don't get me started) as well as critics in general.

If you don't know her work, check out The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife, both with Cary Grant. David Thomson recommends Ann Vickers with Walter Huston, and of course Love Affair with Charles Boyer is the template for countless romantic dramas.

Apparently she too had a higher regard for drama than comedy, but her quote hits the truth of the matter regardless.

Richard Schickel: "She always knew how to put a man in her place, but at the same time leave him room to maneuver out of it."

8:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, April 15, 2005

FYI: I'm having trouble with our PC, probably a soon-to-expire hard drive -- just in case posting becomes suddenly sporadic

10:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Thought I'd posted this but I guess I didn't: the indispensable Internet Archive has thousands of recordings from Naropa, featuring Burroughs and Ginsberg and the recently deceased Robert Creeley

Also the Other Minds archive there has interviews with composers like Brian Eno & Steve Reich, as well as live pieces from the likes of Fred Frith and La Monte Young.

6:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Onkyo hits the BigTime

The New York Times discovers the music I've been listening to for well years

6:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mold-eating beetles named after shrub cheney & rumsfeld

I was sure this was a joke at first; the fact that it isn't is weird on so many levels I'm speechless

6:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Steve Kurtz's case -- an important test of First Amendment rights -- has 2 new develpments: new threats of bioterrorism charges and a big benefit auction at the Paula Cooper Gallery in NYC

Donate now to contribute to this landmark case of FBI harassment of artists (button at left).

7:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, April 10, 2005

How the US government rigs all financial markets in the US [Sensibly Eclectic]

5:17 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"The largest and best-supplied gardener's resource in the country" [Sensibly Eclectic]

5:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Got Gilead?

Introducing The Constitution Restoration Act [Sensibly Eclectic]

In the worshipful words of the Conservative Caucus, this historic legislation will "RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTION!", mainly by barring ANY federal court or judge from ever again reviewing "any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."

In other words, the bill ensures that God's divine word (and our infallible leaders' interpretation thereof) will hereafter trump all our pathetic democratic notions about freedom, law and rights -- and our courts can't say a thing. This, of course, will take "In God We Trust" to an entirely new level, because soon He (and His personally anointed political elite) will be all the legal recourse we have left.

This is not a joke, a test, or a fit of libertarian paranoia. The CRA already has 28 sponsors in the House and Senate, and a March 20 call to lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby's office assures us that "we have the votes for passage." This is a highly credible projection as Bill Moyers observes in his 3/24/05 "Welcome to Doomsday" piece in the New York Review of Books: "The corporate, political, and religious right's hammerlock... extends to the US Congress. Nearly half of its members before the election-231 legislators in all (more since the election)-are backed by the religious right... Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups."

4:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Richard Kadrey's new book Blind Shrike is available for free download at Infinite Matrix [gatsu gatsu, again via Giornale Nuovo]

Not for the faint of heart.


9:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

William Blaze of Abstract Dynamics on the end of the album and DJs as curators [also via Giornale Nuovo]

A proper single soon becomes broadcast across enough networks, airwaves and channels that it enters the mass unconscious. It exists not as discreet occurrence, but as a rhythm, and repetition, a virus even, a sonic that can only be avoid through active effort. It exists in a completely different social space from the average song. A song stays discreet, it generally takes action on the listener's part to here the average song. They need to hunt it on Soulseek or buy it off iTunes, then manually insert it into their sonic rotational medium of choice. The song is more or less a deliberate consumption, although there is a complex micropolitics and microeconomy of songs in which they can take on certain elements of a single within localized contexts. For instance a song played everyday in your local coffee shop or in on endless repeat by your next door neighbor is as potentially infectious or noxious as the latest Ashlee Simpson single. For the purposes of the single versus song distinction then its important to note that a single must achieve a degree of broadcast over a relatively broad space with a decent amount of speed. In other words it needs to propagate over networks.

8:58 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wooster Collective : A Celebration of Street Art [Giornale Nuovo]

8:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Hahnemann put the patient as an individual at the centre of healthcare and believed that factors in a person's life, such as emotional influences, had a fundamental impact on their well-being"

The founder of homeopathy -- which I use often myself, along with millions of others -- was born 250 years ago

German doctor Samuel Hahnemann proved that quinine was useful against malaria because it produced the same symptoms ("like treats like" is the basis for homeopathic remedies).

8:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()