For those inclined to spend "warm summer days indoors," Karen Cinecultist has a nice rundown of weekend movies here. For our part, we're most excited about The Saddest Music in the World, too, with the lovely Isabella, a Kids in the Hall alum, and the adorable Maria de Medeiros. We've not yet seen any of Guy Maddin's other films, but he's Canadian! How could a Canadian be bad, Alanis Morissette notwithstanding? (p.s. Ten of our favorite picks for the saddest music in the world are here.)...
There were many feelings that rushed forward after I saw an op-ed from my alma mater's daily newspaper featured on Drudge. All of them required me to take a deep breath as I read the piece, entitled "Pat Tillman is not a hero: He got what was coming to him" When the death of Pat Tillman occurred, I turned to my friend who was watching the news with me and said, "How much you want to bet they start talking about him as a 'hero' in about two hours?" Of course, my friend did not want to make that bet....
The Guardian Online has a great article today using Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as a jumping-off point for looking at both historical and current science of memory. Some recent studies have disputed the long-held assumption that memories can be "fixed" biochemically. Four years ago, Karim Nader and his colleagues in New York showed that if an animal was taught a particular task, and then days later was reminded of it by being put in the same context, the memory became labile once more - that means it could be disrupted by protein synthesis inhibitors. It was as if...
Cheney and a White House lawyer hold George's hand as W refuses to be a man The wonderful, horrible life of a Williamsburg hipster Escape the boxes How to turn a press release into an article First complaint filed under anti-Spam legislation...
Whose tooth is this in my head? George W. Bush and the human kleenex. Getting laid: it's almost like enlisting! Would Hemingway go low-carb? Wes Clark speaks up for John Kerry Reality TV, New Zealand style....
In case you missed free cone day yesterday at Ben and Jerry's (or honestly, even if you didn't), Baskin-Robbins has their own free scoop night tonight from 6-10pm. When will Laboratorio del Gelato have a free sample night? DG has happily fattened quite a few guests with our own easy ice cream recipe. It's for a semi-freddo, which is Italian for "stays soft as silk while in the freezer and melts perfectly on your taste buds." I usually make it with candied ginger bits in it, but you can exchange the ginger with anything really. The hardest part about this...
Should non-citizens be allowed to vote? Granting voting rights was seen as a way to get newcomers engaged in the civic process. In 1848, Wisconsin established a model that other states soon followed. It simply required residents to declare their intention of becoming citizens before being allowed to vote. Up until the 1920s, when a powerful, antiimmigrant backlash swept the country, 22 states and territories allowed legal immigrants to vote in local elections. "It was a proven pathway to civic education, political education, and citizenship by giving people a stake in their communities," says Ron Hayduk, a political scientist at...
Sick of politics as usual? Interested in candidates who actually believe in responsible government, and not just lower taxes and bigger debt? Believe in something again: Kerry-McCain 2004! Gusto contributor and official D.C. policy starlet Lisa just launched this site. Spread the word....
You know how libraries always seem to have war memorials? They always seem a bit slap-dash and cheesy; they're usually big stone eagles perched atop a tablet that lists the community's soldiers who gave their lives. For some reason it always seems to be World War 2 that gets top billing. Maybe most of these monuments were built before Vietnam. Maybe people just haven't found a way to properly honor their native sons and daughters who gave their lives for a morally ambiguous war. One of the best things about my old library in Sunderland, Massachusetts, was that it listed...
Not only will there be a nasty fight for president this year, the Senate's also up for grabs. And guess what? Democrats are poised to take it back. In recent years, money has been a problem for Democrats in battles for the Senate and House of Representatives. But less so this time, according to Russell Hemenway of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, which raises funds for liberal Senate and House candidates. "They all appear to have enough," he said. " Maybe not enough to match Republicans but enough to wage a real campaign." Go to the DCCC to...
Remember the media brouhaha when Brooklyn's Grocery restaurant received a Zagat score of 28, putting it in league with Manhattan's culinary elite? Grocery's co-owner said "I don't think we're doing earth-shattering food. We're just a really good restaurant." I haven't been to Grocery, but this sounds like a pretty good description of Roberto's Restaurant in the Bronx, too. In a world apart from the stroller-pushing yuppie cool of Smith Street, Roberto's is a ten-minute walk from the Bronx Zoo through Boogie-Down's Little Italy. Manhattan's Little Italy is a safe and tourist-supported stage set of what was once an exciting and...
Today's New York Times has an op-ed piece from Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. While we would love to think that the Paper of Record's running a piece like this signals a change in perceptions about the incoherent U.S. drug laws, well, we're doubtful. Somebody obviously needs to up Schlosser's dosage of whiskey, Prozac, and cigarettes.......
Why not be a Librarian For A Day? The Woman's Day magazine contest could be the start to a wonderful life of constantly-changing jobs and exciting new challenges with each new day. Unfortunately, the deadline has passed to be Missouri's Agricultural Minister for a Day, as well as for the Healthy Kids Chef for a Day contest. But do mark your calendars for January, 2005, to become Widener University's President for a Day. Haven't you ever dreamed of being "All My Children" star and teen singing sensation Jesse McCartney's Princess for a Day? One lucky fan will win: *Two tickets...
--> Yakuza Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) finds himself in an existentialist funk in Masahiro Shinoda's Pale Flower (1964). Fresh from serving a three year prison sentence for a gangland murder, he feels no connection with the people he sees on the Tokyo streets. He could kill any one and it would not make a difference. The mob he belongs to has joined up with its former rival, all the better to prevent a new faction from Osaka from moving in on their territory. Things have changed in the relatively short amount of time he was away, but Muraki can still...
Forget School of Rock. Enter L'il Gn'R, The First Ever Guns 'n' Roses Kids Tribute Band, complete with L'il Axl, L'il Izzy, L'il Duff, L'il Steven Adler, and everyone's favorite, L'il Slash. Yes, this is for real, but of course it was conceived by an NY comedian, Mark Malkoff. Read more about Mark's project in this Guardian article. An excerpt: "He finally realised what he had let himself in for when he took Li'l Gn'R to a hotel room for an afternoon. "They trashed it! There was silly string everywhere, chocolate and candy and soda all over the room. They...
Is there an expression DIT, for Did It Themselves?
The cherry blossoms are blooming, and it's time for all the yinzers to strip down and style up. Need a bag for the beach? Don't settle for that craptastic mass market stuff. It's easy and fun to make your own, or buy one from the many DIY fashionistas who have set up shop online. We're treading into dreaded hipster territory here, but let's remember that androgynous waifs from Williamsburg weren't the first to discover the love in handcrafted goods. Pictured at left is a bag from Bang!, which is the front for a young Argentinian designer who is fond of...
"And now I'm lying here, I've had too much booze I've been shat on and spat on and raped and abused I know that I am dying and I wish I could beg For some money to take me from the old main drag"...
Although we poor editors of DG are sadly without expanded cable, we have managed to catch some clips from Chappelle's Show on the Comedy Central site. Admittedly, I haven't seen more than a handful of clips from the show, but so far, I don't get why it's so popular. While there definitely are scattered funny moments (the "I Know Black People" sketch, the part on Newports, in particular), every sketch I've seen beats a single idea within an inch of its life, reminding me of the episode of The Simpsons with the comedian at the Improv: Comedian: Yo, check this...
I noticed today that Filmmaker magazine ("The magazine of independent film") has a blog -- and it's actually useful and good for all my fellow movie hounds out there. Their entry for today is about a reading of "Up" sponsored by the Sundance Institute. The screenplay was written by Elisabeth Subrin and Evan Carlson, and will be directed for the big screen by Subrin. For those who don't know her work, seek it out now. The Fancy is the only artist biopic that doesn't romanticize its subject or get bogged down in art mythology, and I recommend it as a...
Morphogenesis. What's it mean to me? In ten years, it might mean the ability to gnaw off my own arm and watch it grow back. There's nothing like fresh arm. (via Chica)...
I spent this first weekend of glorious spring weather very productively — I read Plum Sykes's novel Bergdorf Blondes. I couldn't put the idiotic thing down, it completely took over my life for about 36 hours. I have to say I'm glad to be rid of "Moi" the nameless fashion magazine writer and her department store heiress best friend, Julie Bergdorf, but I found our time together illuminating in a few ways. Things I need now to be a real New York girl, apparently: a Bellini at Chip's (that Cipriani's to you mere mortals), a ride in a private jet...
It’s 11:00 pm on April 15th and I haven’t mailed off my tax return. I’m not that much of slacker. Really. How did it come to this? First off, let me dispel a little myth about USPS. They don’t all stay open until midnight on April 15th. In the city of San Francisco, population 700,000+, just one post office remains open beyond normal business hours. Too bad I’m not in San Francisco. I’m in The People’s Republic of Berkeley, wandering the streets in the manner of a lazy fly, following around a guy who says he knows where to find...
Why write words when you can bask in the sun? I'm going to the park to spend my day off watching dogs, girls, and naughty nephews. In keeping with yesterday's post, I've got to plug Archive.org again. Not only do they keep public domain films online for all to see and use, but they also have old records and music for all to use as they see fit. This is how a culture remains vital, not through corporations and money-hungry relatives keeping perpetual copyrights, but through open source use and reuse. Download "White House Blues," an old bluegrass song about...
How do misfits and outsiders get into the history books? They assassinate the president, and live forever on the Broadway stage. I saw Stephen Sondheim's Assassins last night. Who would've thought that a musical based on the life stories of nine would-be presidential assassins could be so compelling? The difficulty for Sondheim is to balance his wit and humor without being flip or casual about the deaths of four presidents. The production accents the carnival funhouse of American history and of course that's where Sondheim's clever turn-of-phrases and surprising lyrical ideas really shine (and you can see why Magnetic Fields...
Cable news and the networks gave George W. Bush a primetime slot for a press conference last night. Watch it and read the transcript at whitehouse.gov. An interesting moment came when a reporter dared to veer off the script and ask a surprise question about what the President's biggest mistake to date has been. Well, he'll let us know when he thinks of something: Q Thank you, Mr. President. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa....
This past Friday the parents of Weird Al passed away due to carbon monoxide inhalation. Try not to make any jokes or write any parody songs. When I was a kid I loved Weird Al. His song "Fat" was the height of hilarious. And his parents were often part of the act. Read his message for yourself here...
Artist Danny Gregory is back from his vacation in the Dominican Republic and has the sketchbook to prove it. I first discovered Gregory's watercolor sketches on The Morning News, where he spent a day at the Martha Stewart trial and came back with great unexpected drawings. He's also collaborated online with TMN editor Rosencrans Baldwin to draw characters from Baldwin's Brooklyn neighborhood. In his latest book, Everyday Matters, Gregory documents his daily life by drawing the things around him and writing a observations on his life and community....
Nothing exceeds like excess. 21-year-old author Marty Beckerman already has two books under his belt. In an interview with Bookslut, the writer of "Generation S.L.U.T." says without irony that Most (young writers) kind of suck. There are certain authors who are getting contracts when they're 14 years old, for a quarter million dollars, to write their memoirs. A 14-year-old has no perspective on his or her life. I mean, I wrote a book in high school, and it's good for the bitter rantings of a 16-year-old virgin, but it has no real perspective. Clearly when MTV publishes fiction about teen...
When Condoleeza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission last week, she testified about a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) from August 6, 2001: It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States. [Full Transcript] After a public furor over this document, the White House declassified the PDB and The Smoking Gun was there: FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings...
In war-torn 16th century Japan, a middle aged woman and her young daughter-in-law (both unnamed) struggle for existence. Killing samurai who lose thier way in the tall susuki grass, the two women trade the armor and weapons for food and other supplies, dumping the corpses in a deep, dark hole nearby....
Ok. This is brilliant. Jay-Z's vocal hip-hop mixed with Pavement's "Slanted and Enchanted" lo-fi slackercore creates The Slack Album. (via stereogum)...
Chica has watched metaphor-gone-awry surgical makeover show The Swan and lived to write about it so we don't have to: In the end, The Swan has more sympathy towards its premise than it does for its contestants, and its audience is likely to dole out sympathy in the opposite proportions. We may find a woman's long list of physical insecurities disturbing, but far more disturbing is the person who, by eradicating the source of each insecurity, confirms each insecurity as justified....
There were a few good art shows on 57th Street yesterday; fortunately I got there on the last day of one the of the better ones. Kraushaar Gallery showed Leon Goldin's "Five Decades of Works on Paper" (which ended on April 10; work shown left). Goldin's abstract charcoal drawings seem drawn from life, but yet are completely abstract lines and shapes. The one exception is probably the most beautiful and haunting of the works on display. You can immediately understand the trees, horizon line, and pathways in his "Riverside Park" from 1964. Goldin will scratch and rub charcoal into the...
We've seen Larry David bribing a Maitre d' to get a table at restaurants on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and his surrogates on Seinfeld trying to do the same. Gourmet finds out if it works in real life. I've never bribed my way into a restaurant. I've never slipped a C-note or greased a palm. In truth, I've never even considered it. I've assumed, of course, that people do such things. I've seen my share of Cary Grant movies. I've heard — and wondered whether such old-fangled gestures would work in the high-stakes, high-hype world of New York City restaurants. For...
The Shins get the Q&A from Pitchfork (via Travelers Diagram): The real challenge of writing songs isn’t just writing a bunch of parts -- like a verse, chorus, verse, but making something that flows together, that brings you back. I mean, that’s the thing with progressive rock -- you come up with a million riffs, and you just plug ‘em in!...
Is American arts journalism "shackled by civic responsibility"? Brit Norman Lebrecht argues that our critics fail to challenge artistic institutions because we have so few of them, and no one wants to be responsible for shutting down the show. He says the fiercely competetive British papers produce criticism that is more vital and daring because not only are there more symphonies and museums in London, there are more papers competing with one another. The tone in US arts coverage is uniformly respectful, uninquiring, inherently supportive. When the boss of Covent Garden takes an early bath, British papers roll out weeks...
Just when I thought John Ashcroft was busy fighting terrorism, it seems like his mind is on naked adults doing things... with objects! In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in rooms of major hotel chains. Couple this with the Michael Powell's FCC fining Clear Channel $495,000 for indecent...
If you haven’t been watching “The Real World” this season, you honestly aren’t missing much. That is, much besides the biggest camera whore on basic cable. Meet Frankie. She started the show by saying that she has cystic fibrosis, while chain smoking. That didn’t get harped on too much though because she quickly showed signs of another disease. The one where you take a drink of alcohol, make out with people, and then can’t remember anything the next day. This brought a lot of tears because she is totally devoted to her long-term boyfriend at home. But there was one...
TMN has a great piece written by a Brooklynite whose building was invaded by The Apprentice. My reality collided with reality TV during episode seven of NBC’s The Apprentice. The premise was a hyped-up competition over real estate. The remaining participants were challenged to renovate and rent one of two ‘rundown’ Brooklyn apartments in 48 hours. One of those apartments was a third-floor, one-bedroom in a brownstone on Third Street, where my family and I live on the first two floors. On screen, the team leaders stood outside our stoop and negotiated for the apartment above us. Off screen, we...
My second home is no more. Yesterday MoMA's Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street bid adieu with a retrospective of Sofia Coppola's films. The ridiculous idea of cannonizing Ms. Coppola after two-and-a-half films fits my sadness, which is for the loss of something that was a temporary home while the museum fleshes out its expanded 53rd Street space. The Gramercy was close to both apartments I've had while living in New York. The screen was the perfect size, and every seat on the floor was fantastic. The experience at the Gramercy was second only to the Walter Reade for optimal viewing....
This week's New Yorker features a profile (not available online) of author Madeleine L'Engle. In the profile, the author Cynthia Zarin writes: "When I was in college, I remember a friend saying to me, 'There are really two kinds of girls. Those who read Madeleine L'Engle when they were small, and those who didn't.'" I was the kind of girl who read Madeleine L'Engle. Although I wasn't crazy about the Austin series, I read all of the Murray series -- A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet (perhaps an odd choice as my childhood...
If the chicken nuggets shaped like stars weren't enough of an indignity, now Burger King has created an internet chicken slave for the public to boss around. This is the worst thing to happen to poultry since Chixon....
While giving a speech in a Mississippi high school about the Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had Federal marshals destroy audio recordings made by reporters. It's unclear whether he was trying to teach the kids what the Constitution protects against....
Back in my day, there was a mini-craze among hipsters for semi-clueless musicians who couldn't hold a note but seemed compelled to perform music from the bottom of their hearts. There was the manic depression of Daniel Johnston and the schizophrenia of Wesley Willis. And now we have William Hung. The current craze for the American Idol reject baffles me. What Hung has in common with Johnston and Willis is a a certain naivite about creating songs coupled with a compulsion to create them. They're all bad singers who don't seem to know it, and that's part of their charm....
Two movies that have absolutely nothing in common.
In one weekend I saw both “Dawn of the Dead” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” For fun I decided to go to a midnight showing of "Dawn of the Dead” on Saturday night. Midnight shows make scary movies infinitely scarier. I was prepared to watch a good portion of the movie through closed eyes and held breath, or at the very least, to laugh a lot. The opening was really good. Super fast and scary and fun. But after that I can’t remember being scared again. I do remember fearing for the safety of others, as people continued...
I forgot to link to this article yesterday about tensions in the British-French relationship. It reminded me of my first French teacher, a young and suave Parisian, who said we shouldn't have any problem learning the language since English is really just a dialect of French....
1942, a small French village. The townspeople begin receiving poison pen letters signed "Le Corbeau" ("the Raven"). The letters shed unwanted light on the locals' secrets, from the underground abortion work of Dr. Remy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), to extramarital affairs, to the corruptness of the mayor. While the first letter seems to be written only to intimidate a potentially unfaithful wife, soon the entire town is in a paranoid uproar over the raven's apparent intention to expose all of the dirty little secrets possible. Henri_Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau was made during the German occupation of France under the aegis...
Robert Hughes reviews painter Lucian Freud's show currently on view in London, and appearing in New York at Acquavella from April 28 - May 27. The Guardian has a bunch of good stuff for the Freud obsessive -- a short profile, a piece on his horse's ass, and a sneak peak at his portrait of artist David Hockney. One of Freud's models describes what it's like to sit for Freud. Check out the catalog for Freud's first show at that gallery here. (via TMFTML)...
Sometime Gusto contributor and Cinecultist site owner Karen does the unthinkable -- she goes to see Jersey Girl and lives to blog about it. In particular, check out Karen's pull quote from Newsweek where Kevin Smith is [refreshingly or brutally, depending on your own take on Smith] honest about his own abilities and limitations as a filmmaker. Thanks, Karen, for going so the rest of us don't have to....
After sitting through a day and a half of jury selection, four and a half days of trial, and two full days of deliberations, my jury in the New York State Supreme Court found Simeon Tlaplanco-Reyes guilty of second-degree assault for stabbing Filiberto Galindo on West 36th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues on July 17, 2003. We found Jose Luiz de los Santos not guilty on all counts. We were given a mass of contradictory evidence and eyewitness accounts and asked to decide whether it was proven that the defendants got into a drunken fight with Galindo in the...
Sunday's Times has a great article (may require free login) about Conan O'Brien's uncertain future with NBC after the network's extension of Jay Leno's contract for the 11:30 slot until the end of the decade. Throughout, Conan's disappointment is palpable. The article points out that, should Conan choose to stay at NBC until the end of Jay's contract, he will have spent 17 years -- a "television eternity" -- in the less-appealling 12:30 slot. Conan's manager Gavin Polone notes Conan's many alternatives: Fox, which has seriously approached Conan in the past; CBS, in the unlikely event that Letterman decides to...
Thanks to The Other Page, we discovered this letter written by poet/songwriter David Berman to the Nashville Tennessean: Can't be easy defending Bush day after day To the Editor: How many gallons of Republican Kool-Aid does a Bush supporter have to choke down in order to keep defending the worst president in American history? Just as Alabamans happily say ''Thank God for Mississippi'' when annual ''quality of life'' rankings come out, I suspect Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Pierce are saying, ''Thank God for G. W. Bush'' somewhere in the afterlife. Anyone who even thinks about voting for...
Opening This Weekend It's a grim scene this weekend for new movies. Opening this weekend is the Sundance darling The United States of Leland, which has, at the very least, my Hartley darling Martin Donovan to recommend it. Also opening are Hellboy, The Prince & Me, Walking Tall (warning: click on this at your own peril!), and Home on the Range, Disney's last hand-drawn animation feature from its SoCal studios. Rep Houses and Around Town The American Museum of the Moving Image AMMI shows films by Raoul Peck as part of the Haiti on Screen festival. About Peck: When Raoul...
I'm So Loathsome I Could Cry, or Five of the Least Loathsome New Yorkers
Following the oft-bandied-about New York Press list of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers, we can't help but wonder why a small magazine few people actually read is always so, well, hateful. And while it's certainly easier (and ok, perhaps slightly more fun) to bitch your way into New York's blogland, we prefer to celebrate the best NY has to offer. Without further ado, we present five of dailygusto's Least Loathsome New Yorkers. 5) Ed Grant, host of Media Funhouse on MNN We've mentioned him before, and we'll doubtless mention him again. Although his timeslot is more elusive than Bin...
