When Lynch Met Lucas from Sascha Ciezata on Vimeo.
King of weirdness, David Lynch, is outweirded by George Lucas. Sascha Ciezeta made this clever animated short using audio of Lynch telling the story and an iPhone app.
via the Rumpus
George Lucas gives David Lynch a migraine
March 4th, 2010 · Cartoons, maps & miscellany, Multi-media
→ No CommentsTags:David Lynch·directors·George Lucas·Hollywood·Star Wars
Charmed restaurateur Keith McNally’s next move
March 4th, 2010 · Profiles
Keith McNally. Photo credit: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos
East End boy done good, Londoner Keith McNally has been at the top of New York’s restaurant scene for the last 30 years. New York Magazine surveys his career from the early days with Odeon, to his latest venture Pulino’s Bar and Pizzeria, which opens next week. In the years in between, Balthazar, Pastis, Pravda and the rest have all managed to retain their glamour, even as McNally himself moves on to the next project and the next up and coming spot within the city.
Benjamin Wallace joins McNally during the final phase of preparations for Pulino’s and goes behind the scenes at his general managers’ meeting. Misbehaving celebrities are discussed – and named here – and their punishments decided, as are minor redecorations and all manner of minutiae.
→ No CommentsTags:Alan Bennett·Benjamin Wallace·Bianchi's·celebrities·East London·John Gielgud·Keith McNally·London Hilton·Martha's Vineyard·New York City·Pastis·Pravda·Pulino's Balthazar·restaurants·restaurateur
Tailor to eight presidents used to live on the street
March 4th, 2010 · First person pieces
George de Paris. Photo credit: KK Ottesen
In his own words: French-born George de Paris, tailor to Barack Obama and seven previous presidents, on making it in America.
I was homeless for nine months. I sleep in the Franklin Park, 14th and K. I look very hard for find somebody to employ me. I was immigrant. No shower, sleep in the street. I was 79 pounds. One big company, Bonds Co., look for tailors. When I go, the manager say, “Take out the bum from here.” But a lady said, “Wait, wait, wait.” She take me out in the street; she called her husband in the State Department and take me to her house, let me clean up.
→ No CommentsTags:Barack Obama·Franklin Park·French·George de Paris·homelessness·immigration·President Ronald Reagan·tailors·Washington
Safran Foer still scarred by school explosion
March 4th, 2010 · First person pieces
In this powerful essay, Jonathan Safran Foer tells the story of how, aged nine, and at summer camp for the first time, he was in an explosion in the science lab. He was badly injured and his best friend Stuart was nearly killed. The psychological scars remain.
Eventually I went back into the room. My table was closest to the door, but I didn’t go to it. I lingered, reading the list of chemicals on the chalkboard. It was a sunny day. I imagined myself on the other side of the window, at the end of camp, holding a lit sparkler.
I remember a flash of light becoming many flashes of light, quickly and powerfully. When I try to put myself there, I remember it as being similar to the feeling of being jolted from half-sleep by the sensation of falling. (Or maybe I have it backwards. Maybe I am awoken from half-sleep by my memory of the explosion.) I don’t remember colours or sounds so much as force. I remember screaming. I don’t remember the door, but I must have opened it to get out of the room. Did I open it with my hands? Did the sparks shower the room? Somehow I know that they did. I was the first one out. Did I push the door open, or pull it?
→ No CommentsTags:childhood·friendship·illness·injury·Jonathan Safran Foer·school·science·summer camp
On discovering Barry Hannah, and saying goodbye
March 3rd, 2010 · Obituaries
Barry Hannah. Photo credit: Nancy R. Schiff/Getty Images
Two writers describe their first encounter with the terrifying, gun-shooting, much-loved author Barry Hannah, who has died of cancer aged 67.
Tom Junod met Hannah for the first time a few months ago in Oxford, Mississippi. But he first discovered the writer through a savage little story, Coming Close to Donna. For Junod, an English major at the time, Hannah was “the Velvet Underground of writers — the writer who convinced me to pick up the guitar, learn some chords, and give it a try”.
→ No CommentsTags:Airships·Barry Hannah·cancer·Coming Close to Donna·first encounters·guns·Iowa·Mississippi·Oxford·short stories·Steve Almond·Tom Junod·University of Alabama·Velvet Underground·writers
Hangover star Galifianakis: hiding from fame
March 3rd, 2010 · Profiles
Zach Galifianakis. Photo credit: Martin Schoeller
Hangover star Zach Galifianakis takes GQ on an entertaining excursion through the woods of North Carolina.
After years of false starts, the comic actor’s had his big break. But being a star stalked by teenagers in airports jars with his self image as the entertainment industry outsider, “the fat guy in the sweater”.
“Fucking Hollywood stuff ,” he says. “I don’t know. I’ve kind of made a career of shitting on it and making fun of it. And now I’m in it. So it’s a weird position to be in.”
That’s when he tells the story about the kids watching him pee in the bathroom. It’s a parable about fame. You can live like a hillbilly and cut off your phone service, but you cannot escape pimply-faced teenagers pointing at you as you fake a phone conversation while urinating.
→ No CommentsTags:actors·comedy·Devin Friedman·hillbillies·Hollywood·North Carolina·stand-up comedians·The Hangover·Zach Galifianakis
Essayist John McPhee mines his memories
March 3rd, 2010 · Books, Vignettes
John McPhee. Photo credit: Jennifer S. Altman/LA Times
In his latest collection of essays, John McPhee, about to turn 79, has begun exploring his own memories. A staff writer at the New Yorker since 1965 and prolific essayist, McPhee won the Pulitzer Prize for his geological portrait of America.
The LA Times visits the shy Mr McPhee in his fake medieval turret in Princeton to talk about the origins of this move towards memoir, the power of words and a memorable medical diagnosis.
McPhee is slender, dressed in a deep blue button-down shirt, a fleece vest and running/hiking shoes. He can’t explain the memories. “Ideas go by by the zillions,” he reflects. “What makes us fasten on one?” Many of his interests were formed at a summer camp called Keewaydin, where his father went each summer as camp doctor; McPhee would spend his time canoeing and swimming. He has written about Keewaydin in the past, and returns there in this new collection, in an essay titled “Swimming With Canoes.” Here, he remembers capsizing in fast water in a Vermont gorge, getting his foot stuck in the stern and riding safely in the air pocket created by the overturned canoe.
→ No CommentsTags:essayists·geology·John McPhee·Keewaydin·Princeton·Pullitzer Prize winners·Silk Parachute
Unlikely assassin: The woman who shot Mussolini
March 2nd, 2010 · Books
Why did a frail middle-aged Anglo-Irish aristocrat shoot Mussolini? When Violet Gibson tried to kill Il Duce, it was only 1926 and he was still the darling of Europe’s ruling classes. So was she driven by politics or madness?
→ No CommentsTags:1926·aristocrats·assassination·assassination attempt·Benito Mussolini·fascism·Frances Stonor Saunders·Ireland·Italy·The Woman Who Shot Mussolini·Violet Gibson·World War 2
Legendary amnesiac HM lived outside of time
March 1st, 2010 · Events and exhibitions
H.M., 2009, double projection of a single 16mm film, 18:30 minutes. By Kerry Tribe in the Whitney Biennial
What would it be like, a voice asks during Kerry Tribe’s film in the Whitney Biennial, not to know the fourth dimension time, but just to exist within the three dimensions of space? At once terrifying and tantilising, it’s not quite the impossible question it seems.
Until his death in 2008, one man’s experience of the world was just that. “HM”, a legendary figure in neuroscience, was a severe amnesiac who revolutionised our understanding of how human beings remember.
Henry Gustav Molaison, referred to as HM by scientists, developed epilepsy at the age of nine. By his late 20s, the seizures had become so violent and so frequent, that in 1953, in an effort to save his life, a surgeon called William Scoville performed a “frankly experimental operation” on HM’s brain. On one level the surgery was a fantastic success – it radically reduced HM’s fits. But it also destroyed his ability to form memories.
Scoville had removed a large part of HM’s medial temporal lobes, and with them most of the hippocampus, which, as we now know from the effect this had on HM, is where the brain turns short term memory into long term memory. So that while HM could recall his life before the operation, with a few exceptions, he would never remember anything again. From 1953 onwards, HM’s experience of the world was constrained within the limits of his short term memory. Time for him spanned just 20 seconds.
→ No CommentsTags:Connecticut·epilepsy·Hartford·Henry Gustav Molaison·HM·identity·Jefferson A Singer·Kerry Tribe·memory loss·neuroscience·San Diego·science·Suzanne Corkin·The Brain Observatory·time·Whitney Biennial·William Scoville
The crazed dictator and the missing dissident
February 26th, 2010 · First person pieces, Stories, Vignettes
Colonel Gadaffi
On the day that Colonel Gaddafi declared a jihad against Switzerland and called for all muslims to boycott the country, the New Statesman has compiled a list of the Libyan dictator’s five most deranged moments.
But lest we forget, in poking fun, the evils of this regime, here too is another portrait of an altogether different man. It’s by British novelist Hisham Matar – a raw, lyrical, beautiful piece about his father, a dissident missing in Libya. Twenty years ago, Jaballa Matar, a vocal opponent of Gadaffi’s regime, was seized from his home and thrown in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. In 1996, 1,200 political prisoners were massacred at the prison and it seemed likely that Jaballa Matar, if not already dead, also lost his life that day.
But after years of silence, last month Hisham Matar received news that his father had been seen as recently as 2002, frail but alive. “This is tremendous news,” Matar writes here for the Guardian. “Tremendous in the way a storm or a flood can be tremendous.”
In 1992 my father managed to smuggle out a letter. A few months later my mother held it in her hand. His careful handwriting curled tightly on to itself to fit as many words as possible on the single A4 sheet of paper. Words with hardly a space between, above or beneath them. No margins, they run to the brink.
“Give me your hand: you are now within a foot / Of the extreme verge,” Edgar says to his blind father in King Lear. How many words do you need to say everything? How many words before the verge?
Read an open letter to the British government from 270 writers published last month in the Times
→ No CommentsTags:Abu Salim prison·Colonel Gadaffi·dictators·dictatorships·Hisham Matar·holy war·Jaballa Matar·jihad·King Lear·letters·massacre·missing·muslims·oppressive regimes·political prisoners·Switzerland·Tripoli
Scott Brown: Senator, pin-up, moving target
February 26th, 2010 · Profiles
Scott Brown in his new Senate office which formerly belonged to Edward Kennedy. Photo credit: Michele Asselin
Following Scott Brown’s shock Senate win last month, New York Times Magazine gets to know the man now stepping into Edward Kennedy’s shoes.
As a child, he sought refuge from his unsettled homelife in high school basketball, later becoming a Cosmo pin-up and modelling his way through law school before beginning his political career in 1992. His apparently contradictory positions on abortion, taxation and the environment have been praised as “nuanced” by Republican supporters and condemned as “inconsistent and opportunistic” by Democrats. He’s known to make gaffs, and even now refuses to be drawn on the really controversial issues.
→ No CommentsTags:Arianna Brown·basketball·Cosmopolitan·Edward Kennedy·elections·fathers and daughters·Frank Bruni·Gail Huff·lawyers·Massachussetes·models·mothers and sons·pin-ups·politicians·Republicans·Scott Brown·Senators·The Senate·Washington
Model turned drugs baron is part of a new breed
February 26th, 2010 · Stories
Angie Sanselmente Valencia
Beauty can open all sorts of doors, but as Angie Sanselmente Valencia has just discovered, it doesn’t put you above the suspicion of drug enforcement officers. Sanselmente, a Columbian lingerie model turned head of a drugs cartel, is now on the run after one of the lovelies in her gang was caught smuggling cocaine to Europe.
For all the attention her case is getting, however, Columbian born Sanselmente is no one off but part of a new breed of narcas. As the Daily Beast reports, the break up of the major cartels has meant smaller outfits getting in on the game and given women like Sanselmente the chance to break out of their traditional roles as mules and rise to the top.
The splintering of the old cartels has also made it possible for anyone with enough ambition to get to the top. Women, who were once limited to being trophy wives or drug mules, now have the opportunity to climb the power ladder. Many, such as Blanca Cázares Salazar, aka “La Emperatriz” (“the Empress”), are now said to be lieutenants in the larger operations, running the finances of multimillion-dollar businesses. Some have even become the stuff of legend. Take the case of Sandra Ávila Beltrán, the “Queen of the Pacific.” She was captured in 2007 in Mexico City, but by then her name had become synonymous with machine guns and bloodbaths. She has even had popular songs written about her exploits.
→ No CommentsTags:Angie Sanselmente Valencia·Argentina·beauty·Blanca Cazares Salazar·Buenos Aires·Columbia·Constantino Diaz-Duran·drugs·drugs baron·drugs cartels·La Emperatriz·lingerie·Mexico·models·Sandra Avila Beltran·smuggling·South America·The Monster·the Queen of the Pacific
A magical miniature day in the life of NYC
February 26th, 2010 · Cartoons, maps & miscellany, Multi-media
The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.
Sam O’Hare’s film The Sandpit is just so delightful I couldn’t not link to it, even though strictly speaking it isn’t the story of one person, but rather of eight million people and one fantastic city.
Apparently it’s made up of 35,000 photographs using time-lapse and tilt-shift but however he’s done it, he’s managed to turn New York City into a magical miniature playground. Snowed in and getting cabin fever, watching it made me want to rush back out again and conquer this city.
Watch it in full screen and keep an eye out for some special details like the couple practicing tai chi under the expressway and the man having a sneaky smoke out on the balcony.
Via The Spectator
→ No CommentsTags:A day in the life·New York City·Sam O'Hare·The Sandpit
The Korean cult leader and his loyal disciple
February 25th, 2010 · Profiles, Stories
Illustration by Sean McCabe
There are two key protagonists is this Rolling Stone story about the arrival of the Dahn Yoga cult on US campuses: Its charismatic leader, the middle aged Korean Ilchi Lee and Amy Shipley, a young American woman brainwashed by the cult.
As Amy soon discovered, the yoga in the organisation’s title was there purely for marketing purposes. Instead of yoga poses she was directed to perform bizarre exercises, endurance tests and money making schemes.
→ No CommentsTags:Amy Shipley·charismatic leaders·cults·Dahn Yoga cult·disciples·Ilchi Lee·religion·Sabrina Rubin Erdely·South Korea·students
The bereaved parents fighting for Arab-Israeli unity
February 25th, 2010 · Vignettes
John Pilger salutes two brave heroes battling the hatred in the Middle East. After Rami and Nurit Elhanan’s daughter was killed aged 14 by a suicide bomb in Jerusalem, they helped found the Parents Circle, to bring together Israelis and Palestinians who’ve lost loved ones through the conflict.
Every “Jerusalem Day” – the day Israel celebrates its military conquest of the city – Rami has stood in the street with a photograph of Smadar and crossed Israeli and Palestinian flags, and people have spat at him and told him it is a pity he was not blown up, too. And yet he and Nurit and their comrades have made extraordinary gains. Rami goes to Israeli schools with a Palestinian member of the group, and they show maps of what ought to be Palestine, and they hug each other. “This is like an earthquake to children who have been socialised and manipulated into hating,” he said. “They say to us, ‘You have opened my eyes.’”
→ No CommentsTags:Arabs·Bereaved Families Forum·bereavement·heroes·Isreal·Jews·John Pilger·Middle East·Nurit Elhanan·Palestine·Rami Elhanan·Smadar Elhanan·suicide bomb·The Parents Circle
That old classic, the Venus technology scam
February 25th, 2010 · Stories
Venus
The Fortean Times has an amusing story about a con man, a trip to Venus and advanced alien technology.
During the 1950s, a growing number of American citizens claimed to have met aliens. Since the extraterrestrial societies they described sounded alarmingly communistic, the FBI began to take a keen interest.
In the course of its investigations, the bureau came across Harold Jesse Berney.
→ No CommentsTags:1950s·aliens·Communists·criminals·cult of the contactee·embezzlement·FBI·fraud·Harold Jesse Berney·Pauline Eva Bock·Prince Uccelles·scammers·secretaries·Venus
The Cuban boy who changed the course of history
February 25th, 2010 · Stories
Elian Gonzalez, held by one of the fishermen who rescued him is seized by US federal agents. Photo: Reuters
It’s ten years since the world watched in horror as Cubans on opposite sides of the Florida Straits fought a bitter custody battle over a bereaved six year old. Elián González was found floating on a tyre out at sea off the US coast, his mother and future stepfather having drowned while trying to flee Cuba. Elián’s real father wanted his son back, but the Miami relatives weren’t about to hand the boy over for repatriation.
The saga ended with an armed raid and that awful photo of a terrified child who’d become the focus of a battle that had as much to do with decades of hostility between the diaspora and the homeland as it did with Elián’s welfare.
→ No CommentsTags:Cuba·Cuban diaspora·custody battle·Ed Vulliamy·Elian Gonzalez·fathers and sons·Fidel Castro·Miami·Straits of Florida·uncles
Right-wing radio host snarking her way to the top
February 24th, 2010 · Profiles
Dana Loesch. Photo by Jennifer Silverberg
Dana Loesch, 31, is a rising star of snarky right-wing talk radio. She has her own slot on KFTK The Dana Show and has just become the first woman ever to fill in for Michael Savage on his national show The Savage Nation. She was also instrumental in starting the anti-government Tea Party, last February encouraging other conservatives in St Louis to protest by throwing teabags in the Mississippi.
Loesch hasn’t always been on the right. She was once a fervent Democrat – and even back then enjoyed a good row. But when the Trade Towers fell she switched allegiance, becoming a Republican like her husband, though she prefers to call herself a Conservatarian.
→ No CommentsTags:9/11·Andrew Breitbart·Ann Coulter·bloggers·Conservatarian·Dana Loesch·KFTK·Michael Savage·Missouri·mothers·Republicans·right wing·St Louis·Steve Truesdell·talk show hosts·The Dana Show·The Mamalogues·the Mississippi·The Savage Nation
Two tales of horror and survival: The PoW
February 24th, 2010 · Books, Vignettes
Highlander Alistair Urquhart, former Japanese prisoner of war. Photo: The Sunday Times
It’s extraordinary that Alistair Urquhart survived his ordeal as a Japanese prisoner of war. Each fresh twist of his tale takes him deeper into hell.
→ No CommentsTags:Alistair Urquhart·ballroom dancers·Burma·concentration camps·Gillian Bowditch·Japan·military·Nagasaki·prisoners of war·Singapore·soldiers·survivors·The Death Railway·The Forgotten Highlander·World War 2
Two tales of horror and survival: The stolen baby
February 24th, 2010 · Books, Vignettes
Victoria Donda
The cruelty of the Argentinian junta didn’t stop at murder and torture. The military in charge of the country during the ’70s, also seized their enemies’ orphaned children to raise as their own.
→ No CommentsTags:adoption·Argentina·fathers and daughters·Hilda Donda·military·mothers and daughters·oppressive regimes·survivors·Victoria Donda