Dang, Nitsuh Abebe can write the shit out of a pop-culture essay. Every time.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. DNF, technically. About what I expected, only louder. I wouldn’t have screened it if it were my choice, but this was part of Atlanta’s Screen on the Green, which, this year’s mostly crappy movie selection aside (bring back TCM!), is usually nice when there are no real-life fisticuffs. Come on, Atlanta. Let’s do this right.
The Obscure, the Forgotten, and the Unloved: 40 Critically Acclaimed But Little Seen Should-be Classics
A 2010 poll of committed cinephiles who hope to find, highlight, and promote films that have received a considerable amount of critical acclaim but have yet to find the audience that their evident quality deserves.
I’ve only seen Il Posto, but based on that alone, I’m inclined to trust these suggestions. With most things cultural, finding good filters is half the battle.
The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.
Alain de Botton, “On Distraction” (via austinkleon)
How To Make Cold Brew Coffee
It’s June in Texas, which means my wife just made me my first mason jar full of cold brew coffee.
Cold-brewed coffee is actually dirt simple to make at home….But you can also bang it out with a Mason jar and a sieve. You just add water to coffee, stir, cover it and leave it out on the counter overnight. A quick two-step filtering the next day (strain the grounds through a sieve, and use a coffee filter to pick up silt), a dilution of the brew one-to-one with water, and you’re done. Except for the time it sits on the kitchen counter, the whole process takes about five minutes.
Bonus: recipe for New Orleans Cold Drip coffee.
This is also the season for cold-brew iced tea. Same method, folks. Just sayin’.
Salt & Fat: Burgers
Here’s a trick that will make you the star of the grill — put a dimple in the middle of your patty. Just press your thumb about a quarter of the way into the top of your burgers and reshape as necessary. This will keep your burgers from ending up like little UFOs as they cook.
Jane Fonda, 1967 by Dennis Hopper. This whole post is really, really great: Dennis Hopper, 1936 – 2010 « Chasing Light. (via funkaoshi again)
Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied, … That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good.
The Best Opening Tracks Ever? : NPR
The Journeymen – Stackolee. Great song, I love their version.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
I actually dance pretty awkwardly so I would love to be in a sexy dance band that made other people dance in sexy ways – that would be awesome.
Familiar music is a convenient crutch, but, in the end, it covers emotions in a plastic sheen. Unfamiliar music gives the sense that something new is happening before our eyes and ears.
Law school was a word I kept lodged at the back of my mouth, like a cyanide tablet, just in case.
Jonathan Rosen, Eve’s Apple. (via Fresher Hells)
The Bechdel Test » Sociological Images. The criteria:
1. It has to have at least two women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man
See also the Bechdel Test Movie List and the origin of the rule.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
The better the singer’s voice the harder it is to believe what they are singing.
David Byrne (via ). I heartily disagree, although it is good food for thought and I don’t necessarily think the opposite is more accurate. What’s more interesting is how/why these kinds of aesthetic details become/remain valuable to us.
corolla talk: Bill Hicks’ Principles of Comedy
1. If you can be yourself on stage nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered.
Mark Larson 