Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Music Just One More Month, You Guys, Then We Can Go Back to Ignoring Hole
Posted by Mike Conklin on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Politics / Theater Bloomberg Joins Cast of Hair, Jersey Shore for Musical Parody "Mair"
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:03 PM
At this weekend's Inner Circle charity gala, NYC mayor for life at least one more term played a hippie version of himself named Berg, showing up in a VW van billowing with smoke(-like special effects) wearing patched-up bell-bottom jeans and a flowery purple shirt. Then Snooki and The Situation show up, Berg looks really awkward, and the cast of Hair does most of the heavy lifting. Nevertheless, it's a rather amazing confluence of mixed up cultural signifiers to bring together for a charity gala of all things. (Playblog)
Film Evening Dress: Hot for Teacher
Posted by Justin Stewart on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 1:31 PM
TV Lost via Saul Bass
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:54 PM
In preparation for tonight's Lost—sure to be a slog because it's a Sun and Jin episode that promises plenty of flashsidewayses—please enjoy this video by Hexagonall of what a Lost title sequence created by Saul Bass might be like. It's neat and funny (my thesaurus is broken), but it could use more exclamation points ("like most things in life," said my deeply depressed colleague Benjamin Sutton). After the jump.
Music Titus Andronicus Plays in the Snow, and It Is Good
Posted by Lauren Beck on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:26 PM
A More Perfect Union
Titus Andronicus | MySpace Music Videos
The video for Titus Andronicus' "A More Perfect Union" premiered on their MySpace page a few days ago. The pros: Playing in the snow dressed in vaguely 19th century clothing with American flags in the background offers a visual component that matches the epic feel of the song; Patrick Stickles' beard looks particularly awesome; the part where they're marching down the road, combined with the spoken-word outro reminds me of Winston Churchill's, "The world was made to be wooed and won by youth" speech, which gives me goosebumps. The cons: The video drops out at the 3:30 mark, cutting off the second half of the song. To see what you're missing, listen to the full thing here.
News Coney Island Development Continues, Locals Angry as Always
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 11:55 AM
- Coney Island, this could be your future
Music So Many Things in the New MGMT Video Look Like Vaginas
Posted by Mike Conklin on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 11:23 AM
Still two weeks out from the release of Congratulations, MGMT has dropped a video for the album's first single, "Flash Delirium," and it is super messed up: it starts out like your average, run-of-the-mill Wes Andersonian indie rock clip, then one of the MGMT dudes has a snake pulled out of a hole in his neck. Go ahead, watch.
Theater Curtain Falls on All About Me, Addams Family Thrives
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 10:52 AM
Talks and Readings Literary Upstart Is Fast Approaching, Like a Sales Force Into the Night
Posted by Mark Asch on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:59 AM
Here are the submissions guidelines, if you think you'd like to be one of the people reading said terrific short stories. If alternately you'd like to part of the respectfully raucous crowd, I think this announcement just about covers it.
Stay tuned for more announcements about drink specials and whatever else we've neglected to mention up to now.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Music Oh God, No... Jared Leto's Stupid Band Covers "Bad Romance"
Posted by Mike Conklin on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 4:58 PM
It happened. Sorry. It's even worse than you think.
[Vulture]
Art Biennialist Marianne Vitale Leads a Fishy Mutiny on the LES
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 4:24 PM
As the crowd at the door to the bar's back room grew steadily ahead of the 8pm showtime we were given regular updates on the delayed performance, The Clipper, for which Vitale invited writers, actors, musicians, artists and singers to join her on the deck of a makeshift ship-shaped stage. At 8:15pm, sailors/performance artists Michael Portnoy and Walter Gambini emerged from the doorway in half-Popeye, half-Jack the Sparrow costumes and shouted over the bar's low murmur: "The fucking show is starting!"
Music Erykah Badu is Very Pleased With Herself, Would Like You to Keep Dialoging
Posted by Mike Conklin on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 3:49 PM
so it is true.being honest CAN get u assassinated.your character,spirt,& sometimes physically.interesting. what drives this? keep dialoging.
I hate, hate, hate when people say things like, "keep dialoging," which is just another way to say, "See, look how awesome I am! I made you think all these scary, complicated thoughts because I am an artist, and that is my job!" It is even more infuriating in situations like this one, where the only dialogue you want to have is, "I thought this was sort of stupid and juvenile when Alanis Morisette did it in, like, 1997 or whenever, and she at least had the good taste to refrain from literally spelling out that she was trying to eradicate groupthink." Whatever. Really good song. though. (I mean "Window Seat," not "Thank You.") (Actually, "Thank You" is awesome too.)
Media The Internet, Circa 1969
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 3:21 PM
You may have seen this already, but honestly, I need a break from all the stupid, stressful news today. Here, then, is a fairly accurate vision of the Internet, circa 1969. Beware the "Communal Service Agency."
[via]
News New York Heightens Subway Security For No Apparent Reason Other Than To Make Us Feel Better
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:49 PM
Politics Nice, Liberal Park Slope Lady's Car Vandalized By Tea Bagger Jerks
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:26 PM
Ugh. Frances Lippette, 67, Park Slope resident, had her car vandalized by poorly educated anti-Obama tea bag dicks. After returning from a coffee, Lipette discovered her car (which features liberal bumper stickers) pimpled with crudely written epithets on cardboard, stuck there with tar. Some of the Thomas Paine-like eloquence included lines like this: “Fuck Obama, Librer [sic] a-hole, Fuck that socialist."
I blame the Hutaree.
News Man Arrested For Threatening Eric Cantor, Today To Be Renamed "Crazy White Guy Death Threat Day"
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 1:57 PM
Here's your latest crazy American white guy, Norman LeBoon, who was arrested today for threatening to kill House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. LeBoon seems to be a deranged anti-Semitic YouTube expert who basically just hates everything and everyone. He also kind of looks like a fat(ter) Tom Hanks. Enjoy! (This particular video seems like it was recorded while his Mom was asleep upstairs).
Art New Museum Architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) Take Top Architecture Prize
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 1:31 PM
Most of their work (which also includes interior, furniture and product design) is characterized by a play of crisp, reflective walls and panes of stainless steel (like their Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London) and glass (like their pavilion at the Toledo Museum) that give their buildings an ethereal consistency, as if they don't so much delimit space as frame views. They're the third duo to ever win the Pritzker, and Sejima is only the second woman to snag the typically masculine field's top spot. A New Museum retrospective of their work two years ago offered a concentrated survey of the architects' excellent, often self-effacing work. (ArtForum)
News MTA Posts Epic Subterranean Photos of Second Avenue Subway Construction on Facebook
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:59 PM
It's not quite so wild as the giant drill being piloted by Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Steven Tyler under Midtown West for the new 7 train extension, but the much-hyped, much-hated Second Avenue subway is cool enough to have its own Facebook photo album. On Friday the MTA posted seventeen surreal construction photographs of "the tunnel-boring machine launch box underneath Second Avenue between 91st and 95th Streets," which sounds confusing and looks like an amalgamation of your favorite sci-fi mining movies: Moon, Enemy Mine, Outland, Ghosts of Mars, etc. An illustrative sample of the otherworldly scene unfolding right under your feet:
(Curbed)
News Christian Militiamen Arrested in Michigan for Plot to Start Civil War II
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:36 PM
- "That'll teach the government to meddle with Mom's Medicare."
...a plan to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer, then plant improvised explosive devices of a type used by insurgents in Iraq to attack the funeral procession.
That is just fucking ugly. Also, totally Christian.
Music In Which Moby Makes Us Feel Bad for Liking Our Pancakes to be Fluffy
Posted by Mike Conklin on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:19 PM
The pancakes are whole-wheat flour and oat bran and almond milk and a little baking soda. I think I added some peaches — whatever I have lying around. In winter it’s only frozen fruit. People who are used to IHOP pancakes — big and fluffy — they would be disappointed. I had an ex-girlfriend; when we were breaking up — one of the few endings of a relationship that was a bit contentious — one of her parting shots was having her tell me she never liked my pancakes. I thought that was very cruel. Insult my sexual prowess, my intellect, but not my pancakes.
I will concede the whole-wheat flour and the almond milk and even the peaches, because, you know... he's Moby after all. But for him to then go ahead and imply that fluffiness is a quality only appreciated by IHOP-frequenting commoners? That's low, Moby. Real low.
