Crazed Teacups

For No Particular Reason...

Other than that it's still funny.

Guess!

Guess what former 80s music star this is!  From this article, it sounds like he's living a pretty nice life now, too.

Quote of the Day

Below are some excerpts from The Nation's review (via the Powell's blog) of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, who was a Brazilian writer who died in 1977.  They make her work sound difficult, but after reading some of this, I'm eager to try her.

Lispector was fascinated by the possibility of extinguishing self-consciousness; she idealized animals and idiots because they were free of the desire to translate their experiences into words.

Lispector is most "mystical" when she describes her longing for silence and her belief that she could never express in words what she called her "truest life." She was obsessed by the inaccuracy and dullness of language: it dooms us to become common, to repeat what others have already said.

She said the word "literature" made her "bristle like a cat," and she wasn't concerned about whether she was following or abandoning a literary tradition. Still, she shared with contemporaries like Woolf a suspicion of language, a sense of deep alienation and a fear of madness that led to heightened self-consciousness.

Wasafiri Up?

Wasafiri, a literary magazine I've never heard of, asked 25 "acclaimed international writers", most of whom I've never heard of, to name which book they thought most shaped world literature over the last 25 years.  My ignorance of these writers probably speaks to the insularity of American writers/readers that Nobel Prize official Horace Engdahl was referring to in his comments last year, but I look at this list and think it could just as easily be titled, "Authors I Only Read Because I Feel I Have To." 

Toni Morrison?  I couldn't wait for Beloved to end. Roberto Bolano?  I just gave up on reading The Savage Detectives after it took me about three weeks to get through the first 165pp and deciding I hated every single character and couldn't take it anymore.  100 Years of Solitude?  Interesting and occasionally beautiful, but I just never felt like I could relate to it at all.  You get the idea.

I'm not saying these books aren't brilliant, but must so many 'important' books be so... unpleasurable?  Maybe it's just me, but I was very happy to see fellow nominees Lolita and The English Patient, two books that also have pretty weighty subject matter, but still manage to be engaging and compelling.  

Christmas in July

In some ways, it's easy to love Miranda July's work.  Her portraits of lonely people speak to the outsider in all of us.  Some of her characters in No One Belongs Here More Than You, for example, broke my heart.  But there's also something uncomfortable about her work, something creepy and alarming that comes as a shock.  (In her book, you start off thinking that her characters are the Jane Adams character in the movie Little Children, but sometimes they end up feeling a little closer to the Jackie Earle Haley character instead.)  July's series of photos for Vice magazine, in which she calls out the extras in old movie scenes, conjure up the same intriguing, unsettling feelings.

The older I get, the more I appreciate this kind of unpredictability.  It's the same thing I love about the TBA Festival.  I have an idea of what the terrain is going to be, but I have no idea where I'm going to end up.  The journey will hold the kind of intellectual surprise that seems like a real rarity for me these days.

I was thinking something along these lines while listening to Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome" recently.  Where have the Public Enemies of the world gone?  When is the last time a band stood up for something in such a direct and formidable way and demanded to be heard?  When is the last time a band felt really, truly threatening to the status quo... and made great songs, too? 

Leonard Pitts, who's probably my favorite op-ed columnist, wrote an interesting piece about the lack of authentic rebellion in music recently.  He wrote:  "Popular culture is increasingly home to artificial outlaws and fake rebels, revolution on the cheap that looks like the real thing unless you look too close." 

I know there are plenty of bands out there now who are making political music, but why haven't any of them acquired as large a following as Public Enemy?  Is it because they're not being picked up or promoted by increasingly conservative record companies?  Or is it because there are so many bands one can choose to listen to now (via web and filesharing) that their impact is diluted?  Is it because we, the audience, don't want to be challenged or made uncomfortable?  Or is it because record companies don't think we do?  Or something else?

Climbingprices

 Fans of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater can now have the experience of a lifetime.  Up to eight people can stay at housing in Bear Run Nature Reserve, which Fallingwater is a part of, to engage in a three-day seminar in which guests enjoy:

A silent walk to Fallingwater and time to explore the house on one’s own

Discussion and inquiry exercises designed to deepen participants’ understanding of and appreciation for the house and its setting

Dinner with Fallingwater’s director and curator in Fallingwater’s living room or on one of Fallingwater’s terraces (weather permitting)

Conversations about art, architecture and other topics with special guests

An in-depth tour of Fallingwater

I can't quite figure out how much it costs. The website says this:  "$1195 per person for double occupancy and $1595 for single occupancy."  But what if the maximum eight people stay?  Does that mean $1195 per couple?  Is there such a thing as octuple occupancy?

Six Degrees of Separation

 If I'm doing really well on the Sunday Times crossword, I can do 2/3 - 3/4 of it on my own before I need to start opening the dictionary for help.  And that's if I'm really on fire.  For last week's puzzle, I completed all but six spaces on the entire puzzle with no external help of any kind.  It's taken me 16 years of working on the Sunday puzzle, but I'm almost there....

#PhilosophyPop

I have learned two things on Twitter.  One is that professional athletes need constant stimulation.  If they're not playing their sport or a video game, they have no idea what to do with themselves.  The second is that there are some incredibly witty people out there.  To prove my point, check out some of this hilarious Twitter thread going on right now combining philosophy and music.

My contributions:  The Smiths' "William James, It Was Really Nothing"; Mill's "On Libertines", Lady Miss Kierkegaard, ColdPlato, Led Zepicurus

Some of the other totally genius contributions (skipping over all the very funny but a little-too-easy Kant and Locke jokes):

This Town Ain't Big Enough For Boethius

Naughty by Nietzsche

Socratic Method Man

Bend it like Bentham

Sir Isaac Newton John- Let's Get Metaphysical

You Spinoza me right round, baby, right round.

Total Eclipse of the Sartre

The Disposable Heroes of Hippocrates

Cornerschopenauer

The Logical Positivist Song - Supertramp

Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hegel

The Sextus Empiricus Pistols

The Communards' Manifesto

Love Will Voltaire Us Apart

The Rights Of Manfred Mann

The Tractatus Logico-philosophicus Of My Tears

Engels by Robbie Williams

(Incidentally, I bumped into an interesting Twitter etiquette question while doing this.  I was going to cite each suggestion's author, but is that proper?  If someone puts it on Twitter, and their account isn't locked, should I assume they're okay with their text not just being retweeted, but being put on the web?  Is there a difference?)

Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

This is old news, but I'm only just now getting around to posting it.  Didier Drogba, striker from my favorite soccer team (Chelsea), swapping jerseys with LaMarcus Aldridge, from my favorite bball team, when Chelsea was in the US earlier this summer.

US Open Wrap-Up

Ah, Roger.  He had his chances.  As always, SI's Jon Wertheim provides the most spot-on commentary (he pointed out the title of Serena's autobiography, On the Line, tonight on his twitter feed).  Here are some highlights:

• Just as Federer revealed plenty about himself when that idiot accosted him during the French Open final, how telling was Nadal's playful reaction to the fan who tried to kiss him? We hear that after the match the USTA apologized profusely to Nadal. He waved them off, saying it was no big deal and hoped no charges would be pressed. Also, how do you not love a guy who loses (badly) in a Grand Slam semifinal and still signs autographs before leaving the court?

•  I finally devoured the excellent A Terrible Splendor, which examines the 1937 Davis Cup match between Germany's Gottfried von Cramm and Don Budge of the United States. I couldn't help but chuckle at the observation that, when called for foot faults, von Cramm would thank the line judge for his vigilance and diligence.

• With Serena's meltdown, Safina's implosion, the double faults and the tears, the WTA could get a group rate on a stress-management seminar. (That, or a couch that seats about 80!)

He also linked to this great article about Novak Djokovic, who invited the children of 9/11 victims to his box one night.  It's nice to have you back, Novak.