Monday, February 25, 2002 ::: So I've started going over to adams-morgan to rent videos from the better-stocked video store, and so the movie-watching has been good of late: The first movie I rented was la dolce vita, which I found to be simply excellent - amazing imagery, particularly the miracle-seekers ripping apart the tree where the virgin mary was said to have appeared, as well the flooded apartment that marcello visits at the beginning. And I have to say that I really really liked Marcello in this movie, even though he was a rather despicable character. It's the hair, the swanky suits, the casual indifference towards everything, the way everyone smiles and calls out his name whenever they see him. It's irrestistible.
Sunday, February 24, 2002 ::: The Post business section has another exotic marketing safari today, about marketing types looking into how people shower.
The Library Of Congress has put up another amazing collection of photographs - this one from Ansel Adams, who in addition to taking shots of national parks and such, also took a large number of documentary photographs of the Manzanar internment camp where Japanese-Americans were forced to live during the second world war. Adams donated his photographs to the libarary in 1965, saying: "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment. . . . All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."
Thursday, February 21, 2002 ::: So I was watching skeleton on the olympics last night, and I have decided that the best hair award goes to austrian martin rettl. The red and black stripes don't quite come out as well in this picture as they did on tv. I should also point out that he was wearing some sort of bizarre shimmery cape thing during the medal ceremony, why, I don't know.
Tuesday, February 19, 2002 ::: so things seem to have cleared up in some mysterious fashion which I do not understand. I would be happier if I knew how, but maybe that is just asking too much.
Monday, February 18, 2002 ::: On Saturday I went to see Rufus Wainwright, which was an excellent concert. My great fear about seeing an act live is that performance will not live up to my expectations from hearing the cd - the songs will simply be rather shoddy live versions of the tracks on the album, the band will have no personality, etc. Thankfully, this was not the case in this instance, as Rufus Wainwright and his entourage sang and played beautifully, with some additional live flourishes, chatted constantly with the audience in the most natural-seeming fashion and also seemed to be having a good time themselves. There were also some unexpected covers, as well as an impromptu audience request. Martha Wainwright was very amazing and I am thinking of buying her cd.
Saturday, February 16, 2002 ::: So things are looking ugly at the moment as I was tinkering with the template. Things should look better once I figure out where I went wrong.
Inconspicuous Consumption is a site devoted to consumer product stories and the like, which is more interesting than it sounds. In particular, I recommend this column on "classic" brands which discusses their recent ubiquitousness and the like. This link from the guestbar weblog on boing boing; I have a tendency to ignore the sidebar completely, even though there are often worthwhile links there.
Thursday, February 14, 2002 ::: UT has put up some central american maps and drawings from the late 1500s. Intriguing designs and perspectives, to say the least. When I took historical linguistics, all our textbooks had rather psychedelic mayan hieroglyphs on the covers, and I find these images very reminiscent.
Wednesday, February 13, 2002 ::: The was an amazing picture in the post today accompanying their story about the westminster dog show. Unfortunately this photo is not available online, but apparently at a party thrown by some dachshund handlers, where they dressed their dogs up as thomas jefferson and dolley madison. Sounds even more excessive than anything out of best in show. The photographer was Helayne Seidman, but searching for her work on the post site proved fruitless.
Monday, February 11, 2002 ::: Not too much new to link, but I realized I forgot to put this up from a while ago - The creator of blogdex has a weblog of his own, and a lot of interesting things to say, including most recently a post on the origin of memes and which weblogs produced the most, etc.
Sunday, February 10, 2002 ::: Today I went down to do laundry and discovered that the laundry room is covered with an inch of water; recently there have been numerous problems with the washer and dryer alternately ceasing to function but I was by no means expecting such a dramatic turn of events. I also have a new neighbor moving in, and I met her dog, which a dachsund whose rear legs are paralyzed but is nonetheless a charming and friendly little creature.
Friday, February 08, 2002 ::: Your name in cookies!. no q or z, though, as the swedes who made this I guess deemed it unnecessary. Of course, there are those lovely scandinavian letters, such as å and ø. Via netbib, which is in german.
Montgomery County, MD is a hotbed of bizarre crimes. Like the bizarre murder/kidnapping plot that sounds like it came out of a bad straight-to-video thriller. I've been posting things late this week, but the article is truly worthwhile.
recaplet (76) x nifty (4,860,000) = 355,680,000. I looked over for some choice words to search for and discovered a spelling error or two. So, just for the record: there is no reubenesque, only rubenesque.
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 ::: Archives are working! Feel free to browse through the past year or so that exist. I particularly recommend the Dave Eggers reading I went to a while ago (April 24, 2001 entry), which I believe is my longest single entry from one single day.
I recently bought some more records, as there was a sale at the used book store down the street. I bought La Traviata and the Mikado for two bucks each, plus another free record of my choosing.
Tuesday, February 05, 2002 ::: So I saw Moulin Rouge this weekend, which was a campy overspectacle. I enjoyed it immensely, gaudy covers of pop tunes and all. John Leguizamo I liked in particular. I wasn't expecting much of a movie since the reviews I remember as being somewhat middling, which kind of lowered my expectations and meant that I was pleasantly surprised.
Friday, February 01, 2002 ::: so I have been fiddling with the archives and it seems not to have been so smart an idea. I did seem to create some, but getting them to show up as I want them, or to bring up the main index page at all, is proving to be somewhat of a challenge. here are the january archives, though.
Mooselessness has a good link to an article (written by, of all people, alan alda) about how fads come into popular culture. Moreover, this article gives a nod to malcolm gladwell's recent book, the tipping point, which I enjoyed reading immensely. Gladwell has written numerous articles in the new yorker, mostly pertaining to business. Normally, I avoid reading articles on business, but Gladwell is an excellent writer and manages to turn subjects that would normally be unreadably dull and make them absolutely fascinating. He has a website with excerpts from his book and other articles which I recommend most highly.
