new york

The Wednesdayness of it all

I didn’t know this until today, and I wish I hadn’t found it out under such terrible circumstances, but the Haitian Consul of New York is directly next to the building where I work. There were local news vans parked all down our stretch of Madison Avenue this evening, setting up shop, conducting interviews. My heart (and, if I could, more money) goes out to the survivors of yesterday’s terrible earthquake.

In other news…well, there isn’t much other news. I had alphabet soup for lunch this afternoon, which isn’t especially exciting or noteworthy, but I enjoyed it, and it was a coworker’s birthday, so we had cookies and cake later in the day. I’m attending a conference at the Waldorf Astoria tomorrow, which should at least break up some of the monotony. And that’s about it. It’s been a decent but very uneventful week for me.

Right now, I’m just watching an episode of Monty Python. I own the boxed set, so I’ve decided to go through and watch them all again. For somebody who calls himself a Python fan, I think there’s a significant handful I’ve actually never seen. (Truth be told, it was the records and then the movies where I first fell in love with the show, back in junior high. I never saw a single episode until college.) It seemed high time I remedied that.

Monday various

  • I watched George Romero’s The Crazies this weekend. While it was interesting, I think I like the movie that John Seavey describes more than the one I actually saw:

    It’s not a particularly cheerful movie; this is Romero at his most nihilistic, during the Vietnam era, suggesting that maybe insanity is endemic to the human condition and if we really were being driven mad, we might not notice the difference. But it’s also clever, tense, and filled with some haunting and evocative imagery, and it has some good acting from the principals. I recommend it.

    Still, I can’t in all honesty not recommend the film. It’s maybe not Romero at his very best or most polished, but it’s never uninteresting.

    I wish I could say the same about the trailer for the remake, which looks a lot more like just a generic zombie movie.

  • You stay classy, Gore Vidal. [via]
  • “Beaten stiff competition”? Oh, I see what you did there, you naughty thing. Who’s the best Bad Sex writer now?
  • “Come to New York: your chances of getting killed here have gone down significantly!” [via
  • And finally, speaking of New York… [via]

Thursday cornucopia

  • Mark Evanier on the origin of the phrase “top banana.” I’m not entirely sure if this is true, but it’s a lot more convincing than some of the other origin stories I’ve seen.
  • The most environmentally friendly city in the United States? Surprisingly, it might be New York City. [via]
  • I wonder if that means we’ll be able to avoid post-apocalyptic scenes like these [via]
  • Maybe we can at least stop getting letters like these. Although I do particularly like the 1911 letter to Mayor Jay Gaynor about “the disgraceful acts that take place daily in Bryant Park.” Imagine if the letter writer had ever seen it during Fashion Week!
  • Speaking of letters, and more particularly, Letters of Note, I particularly liked Kurt Vonnegut’s letter home after surviving being a POW and the bombing of Dresden. Makes me want to re-read Slaughterhouse-Five.
  • Continuing a theme: Navy was ordered to listen for Martians in 1924.
  • Sure, an “iTunes for magazines” sounds like an intriguing idea — maybe — but what does it even mean? [via]
  • Often find yourself bemoaning the lack of originality in Hollywood and endless parade of remakes, sequels and prequels? It’s much worse than you think. [via]
  • Speaking, sort of, of such, should Stephen King write a sequel to The Shining? Well, if it’s a good sequel, why not? [via]
  • Meanwhile, King is delaying the e-book release of his new novel, Under the Dome. (I’ve heard some good things, but I am waiting for the e-book.) Allegedly, it’s “in hopes of helping independent bookstores and the national bookstore chains sell the hardcover edition.” Which actually, on King’s part I don’t really doubt, although I’m sure his publisher is eyeing its own bottom line more closely. The exercise will probably have no effect at all, given the price war being waged between Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Target (among others), except to annoy those of us who want a copy but don’t want to cart around a 1,000+-page hardcover.

    It makes me wonder, though, what things would be like if one could purchase e-books from independent bookstores. Maybe it’s time to start looking into IndieBound more closely…

  • For now, I guess I’ll just have to settle for reading King’s new poem in the November issue of Playboy. (That link, to The Guardian, is SFW. The link to the poem itself? Not so much. Then again, it doesn’t seem to be working anymore, so if you want to read “The Bone Church,” you may have purchase the issue or wait until it’s reprinted elsewhere. [via]
  • Also potentially a little NSFW: this Graffiti Control on the Death Star cartoon. I found it amusing, though. [via]
  • Of course, if I wanted to avoid the price war altogether, I could go with free books only. Like Gregory Maguire’s new novel. He and his publisher are giving away 2,500 copies of the book, provided you agree to make a small donation “to a local charity, someone who needs it, or a stranger on the street.” I don’t have any particular interest in the book itself — I liked but didn’t love Wicked, the only Maguire book I’ve ever read — but it’s an interesting idea. Although that seems like a big print run for a small publisher to just be giving away. [via]
  • I’ve heard reasonably good things about the book that started this Jane Austen mashup craze, and my sister and her husband even recently bought me a copy. But now there’s a third? Mansfield Park and Mummies? I don’t think I’ve ever been more glad that Jane Austen only wrote six novels.

    Though, there’s already a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sequel planned. [via]

  • And finally, speaking of Jane Austen… Mitchell & Webb’s “Posh Dancing” [via]

Tuesday various

  • I actually don’t have a problem with new Winnie the Pooh stories by a different author, even if that means the introduction of a new character. I’m not in love with the idea, and would prefer to see something new — if Lottie the Otter is a worthy character, give her her own damn book? — but I’m more concerned with this being done to extend copyright, to prevent other new stories from being told.

  • So if God didn’t create heaven and earth, that begs the question: who did? (From a Biblical standpoint, that is. If you take the there-is-no-God, the-universe-was-not-created route, obviously it’s sort of a moot point altogether.) This seems more like a case of semantics, but interesting semantics nonetheless. [via]

  • “A van carrying beehives crashed into a truck on Monday, and huge swarms of bees broke free and stung the injured and rescue workers at the scene.” Yikes! As if the car crash wasn’t bad enough. [via]

  • Next week, my mom and I are going to see Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! at Carnegie Hall. Tickets are sold out, but you still have time to bid on a pair (for charity) if you’d also like to be there.

  • And finally, I really loved these Superhero Status Updates. [via]

Friday various

  • Mark Evanier on skepticism:

    I just like skepticism and wish we had more of it in the media. In fact, I wish we had more skepticism of the skeptics since despite what some skeptics seem to think, going against the Conventional Wisdom doesn’t automatically mean your wisdom is correct.

    I was very briefly a member of the (I think now defunct) Penn State Skeptics Society. I attended a meeting or two, and later went to hear James Randi speak when they brought him to campus. But the fervor with which some people embrace skepticism — or maybe more accurately angry cynicism — has never sat well with me. I think agnosticism and atheism are defensible positions, but some people approach them like True Believers and dismiss all other arguments out of hand. Which, it seems to me, is usually what they accuse the other side of doing.

  • Tomorrow morning, beginning at at 9 AM EST (and for the next 24 hours), Netflix will be streaming The Wizard of Oz for free to anyone (with or without a subscription), in honor of the film’s 70th anniversary. I’m not sure why 70 years is a particularly significant milestone, but the film holds up remarkably well, I think. [via]

  • Barack Obama has one amazingly consistent smile.

  • What do you buy for the Elder God who has everything? Why not Cthulhu Cologne, “Scents inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos”? [via]

  • A finally, thinking about printing the internet? Um, don’t. [via]