November 2, 2013
The sad, melodic, and sometimes beat-driven music of Dexter Tortoriello
Dexter Tortoriello makes various forms of sad music. The most prolific persona is Houses, which is a duo with his girlfriend Megan Messina, which Tortoriello thinks of in terms of "old Elephant 6 recordings," though it's been classified with the chillwave craze of the recent years, escapist songs are understated in mood and minimalist in structure. Then there's his solo project, Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross, named for the centuries-old secret occult sect Golden Dawn and the symbol of Rosicrucianism, built with intensely sculpted collection of skittering electronics and delicate acoustic textures, ... marked by heavy beats and synthesizer pads. You can hear tracks from both projects on Soundcloud (Houses; Dawn Golden) and YouTube (Houses official channel, and a playlist for A Quiet Darkness, the newest Houses album).
Instagram Experiments
Automation turns us from actors into observers
Nicholas Carr's latest article for The Atlantic posits that automation presents risks, specifically of losing skill and talent. "The lack of awareness and the degradation of know-how raise the odds that when something goes wrong, the operator will react ineptly. The assumption that the human will be the weakest link in the system becomes self-fulfilling."
Obama was faltering in a way his closest advisers had never witnessed.
Excerpts from the upcoming book "Double Down", Obama's tension-filled debate preparation following his poor performance in Denver [more inside]
Voices and Visions, documentary series on American poets
“The way the poem sits on the page does not necessarily tell you anything about how to read it.” Explains Hugh Kenner of radical modernist poet and New Jersey general practitioner Williams Carlos Williams. The series features archival footage, animation, and interviews with critics, poets and and neighbors, among them Helen Vendler, Marjorie Porloff, James Merrill, and Anthony Hecht. Also, Elizabeth Bishop, Hart Crane, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman. Produced by the New York Center for Visual History, 1988. Previously [more inside]
In the basement by the Gift Shop
Boldly sitting next to the gift shop in the basement of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum one finds NCC one seven O one. No bloody A, B, C, or D. WAMU's Metro Connection provides a story about curating the the original model of the iconic star ship, Enterprise. [more inside]
Thanks to Paul F. Tompkins, for no particular reason.
The Dead Authors Podcast: Legendary time-traveling writer H.G. Wells (Paul F. Tompkins) welcomes literary giants to The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles for a lively discussion in front of a live audience. Unscripted, barely researched, all fun! [more inside]
Not exactly master criminals
"At the trial, the DA told the jury that Joseph was a criminal type who had never been able to hold a steady job because he was simply too lazy to work. Joseph lost his head. The sheriff took him back to his cell. Joseph told the sheriff that the DA had made him mad when he called him lazy. He wasn’t lazy. He had robbed Wilbert German. That proved that the DA was wrong, as no one who was as lazy as the DA said he was would have gone through with the job.
The sheriff took the confession to the DA. Joseph was sentenced to two to four years in the Alleghenny workhouse." -- The story of Joseph Copple is but one of the real life crime stories found at Small Town Noir, a blog about the criminal history of New Castle, PA, from the 1930s to the 1950s.
The sheriff took the confession to the DA. Joseph was sentenced to two to four years in the Alleghenny workhouse." -- The story of Joseph Copple is but one of the real life crime stories found at Small Town Noir, a blog about the criminal history of New Castle, PA, from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Don’t tell anyone how to grieve, specially children.
These days, selfies are how we make ourselves real, to ourselves and to the outside world. So, it’s no wonder that some of us turn to our iPhones in these moments of loss. It’s a way of saying, “I still exist.”
Lorde On David Guetta: "He's so gross."
A journalist gets fantastic access to Lorde before she tops the charts around the world. The long article gives the backstory to the precocious 16 year old and explains how she was instrumental in creating her well-received debut album Pure Heroine.
It's a what now?
Kitten meets hedgehog. That is all. [slyt]
Thinking beyond "The Seven"
George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine debuted in 1972 and led to a landmark obscenity case at the Supreme Court. What many people don't know is that ten years later, he decided to expand the list (written list here). There was even a viewer-contributed list on his website that was 2,443 words long. Sadly, this list has evaporated on the site, but the Wayback Machine provides an alternate (which is helpfully categorized). Finally, Stephen Colbert and Hugh Laurie recently kept the recitation-of-dirty-words tradition alive by reading some verboten language that the four networks are currently lobbying the FCC permission to use. (NSFW, natch)
The State of Health Care on the Rosebud Indian Reservation
Native Americans were promised health care by the government, but what are they really getting? Stanford Medicine on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where health services are underfunded, suicide rates are high, and the life expectancy is just 46 years:
America's New Masters
This shift in how companies are governed and raise money is bringing with it a structural change in American capitalism. That should be a matter of great debate. Are these new businesses, with their ability to circumvent rules that apply to conventional public companies, merely adroit exploiters of loopholes for the benefit of a plutocratic few? Or do they reflect the adaptability on which America’s vitality has always been based? - Rise of the distorporation - how changes in the way companies are financed and managed is changing the wealth distribution of America.
Unsteady As She Goes, Mate
Containership’s Structure Visually Flexing in Heavy Seas — Underdeck time lapse video (16x normal speed) of the 294 meter MOL Excellence as she rolls, pitches, and yaws during a voyage from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Large ships are designed to flex while underway, but when seas get rough they can break like the MOL Comfort on June 17, 2013.
Spring Break Forever
"The film is like trance music in movie form. It is liquid. Scenes flow in and out of each other. A scene will start and then the imagery will jump to another, sometimes from the past, other times from the future, while the audio from the initial scene continues to play through. Other times repetition is used as a narrative device, most prominently Alien’s southern, sizzurp-inflected drawl, rolling out in languid syllables, so that each is enjoyed to the fullest, reminiscent, although with his own depraved contemporary hip-hop spin, of Humbert Humbert’s delectation over the individuation of his young love’s name: Lo-li-ta,as it trips along the tongue, but for Alien, his long relaxed exhale of Sppprrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnngggggg Brrrreeeeeeeeaaaaaak again and again, emanates more from the back of the throat, you might say the deep throat, and just to the side, to give it it’s arch southern twang. " James Franco (previously) reviews Spring Breakers (previously) starring James Franco.
A Very Metal Urban Beautification Project
"If you ever make it to the Bulgarian Black Sea coastal town of Kavarna, you’ll likely find yourself staring at this two-and-a-half story high mural of heavy metal journeyman Glenn Hughes which graces a building just up the block from city hall near one of the city’s main squares. Further up the block you’ll find yourself standing between a giant shirtless Billy Idol and a crooning John Lawton of Uriah Heep fame." One mayor's quest to make his town into an artistic tribute to metal. [more inside]
'It's not that I want to believe – it's impossible not to'
« Previous day | Next day »