The toy is the child’s earliest initiation into art, or rather for him it is the first concrete example of art…
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Couldn’t talk my friend into a Western, so this was the Eastwood-directed compromise. As I expected, it’s a dud.
“Jaywalkers were involved in fewer collisions than their law-abiding counterparts who waited for the "walk” sign, though they were likelier to be killed or seriously hurt by the collision.“
New York Study of Pedestrian Victims Leads to Unexpected Conclusions – NYTimes.com
“Welcome to Chongqing, the biggest city you’ve never heard of.” (No relation.)
Chicago on the Yangtze – By Christina Larson | Foreign Policy
New toy. Now I can finally put those tabla lessons by Venkat to use. Which reminds me…
Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s awesome. One of the most satisfying stories you’ll come across, from the opening title sequence to the very end. Like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I’d seen and enjoyed most of this movie before, but this was the first time I’d set aside time for the whole thing in one focused sitting. It’s long, sure, but most definitely worth watching a few times.
Art really saved my life because art is how I proved that I wasn’t a malingerer.
1-Bit Symphony. “1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it literally "performs” its music live when turned on.“ This is brilliant. (via)
Everything’s the perfect back drop for a suit.
Restrepo — A Film by Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington. Good-looking documentary. I hadn’t heard of this one. Ebert says ★★★★.
Mulholland Drive. I liked this one. My second David Lynch film. Definitely worth repeat viewings if you’re into solving things and trying to piece together a definitive interpretation (oxymoron?). Lynch himself offers 10 clues to sort out this episodic, surreal, dreamy thing. But I doubt I’ll see it again. I was just glad to see Lynch redeem himself after the snoozer that was Blue Velvet.
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: All New Restoration. Coming to Atlanta October 1-7!
It’s signaling, folks. Really interesting stuff. Geoffrey Miller talks about this in Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, which I recommend highly. In my review I summarized Miller on the three basic ways we signal through our purchases: conspicuous waste (in this context, perhaps fine fabrics, oversized garments, layering, duplicated accessories), conspicuous precision (luxury watches, perfect cut & fit, subtle hand-stitched details), or conspicuous reputation (recognizable logos, patterns, etc.). Few books have affected my everyday thinking so much. (via putthison)
Newlyweds in Central Park, New York City, 1992 by Bruce Davidson. Featured in The Marrying Kind.
Anger is an attempt to coerce a person into surrendering their reality, so that there’s only one reality in the relationship instead of two. And when the anger triggered by the anxiety doesn’t work, people experience depression. Depression is the experience of the loss of power: “I can’t make my world happen.”
Once they go into depression, couples—if they stay together—will then enter a bargaining stage. The bargaining goes like this: “Well, OK, I’m different and you’re different, so let’s make a deal about whose reality is going to be in the forefront.”
The Wrong Stuff : Those Three Little Words (“Honey, You’re Right”): Harville Hendrix on Being Wrong
Dallas and Los Angeles represent two distinct models for successful American cities, which both reflect and reinforce different cultural and political attitudes. One model fosters a family-oriented, middle-class lifestyle—the proverbial home-centered “balanced life.” The other rewards highly productive, work-driven people with a yen for stimulating public activities, for arts venues, world-class universities, luxury shopping, restaurants that aren’t kid-friendly. One makes room for a wide range of incomes, offering most working people a comfortable life. The other, over time, becomes an enclave for the rich. Since day-to-day experience shapes people’s sense of what is typical and normal, these differences in turn lead to contrasting perceptions of economic and social reality. It’s easy to believe the middle class is vanishing when you live in Los Angeles, much harder in Dallas. These differences also reinforce different norms and values—different ideas of what it means to live a good life. Real estate may be as important as religion in explaining the infamous gap between red and blue states.
Psychoanalysis is about what two people can say to each other if they agree not to have sex.
https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/mlarson/932406630/tumblr_l6wyq7ypq01qzdvhi?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
http://mlarson.tumblr.com/post/932406630/audio_player_iframe/mlarson/tumblr_l6wyq7ypq01qzdvhi?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fmlarson%2F932406630%2Ftumblr_l6wyq7ypq01qzdvhi
Ennio Morricone – Once Upon a Time in the West (via Once Upon a Time in the West: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (vocals by Edda D’ell Orso)
“For me the music is fundamental, especially in a Western where the dialogue is purely aphoristic. The films could just as well be silent; one would understand all the same. The music serves to emphasize states of mind, facts and situations more than the dialogue itself does. In short, for me the music functions as dialogue.”
-Sergio Leone
Mark Larson 
