June 2008
15 posts
Feed the Animals by DJ Girltalk
It’s good! I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the first Girltalk album (summertime St. A’s roof), it blew me away. This one is pretty much more of the same, which isn’t a bad thing.
I paid $3 on the official name-your-own-price download site. I can’t remember the last time I paid for music, but the novelty of name-your-own-price is hard to resist.
Notes on a Scandal
Good movie.
Young L (of the Pack) - Stacks in My...
A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 by Annie...
I’m house sitting an apartment with some nice coffee table books, this one is amazing. Here are some random Annie Liebovitz photos, about half of these appear in the book.
Aside from the celebrity shots, she has a lot of personal family photos, deaths, births, serious stuff.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
I only got a third of the way through this book. Here’s how I would describe it: take the feeling of countrified stillness you get in No Country for Old Men, replace the themes of violence and justice with race and sexuality. Put all that in the confusing multigenerational narrative structure of 100 Years of Solitude (another book I never finished). That’s Beloved. I have no idea...
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by...
This book is really fantastic. It starts with a brief history of infographics, i.e. this stuff:
He gets into some interesting theoretical stuff on the visual display of data, even referencing Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas. Then he gets down to brass tacks, showing you how to convey the most information as efficiently as possible. If you work in Excel or Powerpoint,...
Sloop by Daniel Robb
If you want to know how amazingly difficult it is to restore a wooden boat, or if you’re curious what its like to live a modest life as a carpenter in a seaside town, this book is for you. The author Daniel Robb restores a Herreschoff 12 1/2, a slow handsome boat. Here are some pictures of the boat, check out how happy this guy is his murda’d out all black Herreschoff.
In...
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Best movie I’ve seen in a while. I can’t resist putting in a few extra pictures showing what a baller director/artist Julian Schnabel is.
The building he designed in the West Village:
The outdoor studio in Montauk:
Jamie Lidell at the Bowery Ballroom
Went last week, he was absolutely fantastic.
Learning From Las Vegas by Venturi, Brown, &...
This was a pretty good book. Venturi, an important figure in postmodern architecture, celebrates Las Vegas as an example of an organic American architectural vernacular. Venturi spends a lot of time talking about symbols and signifiers, and while I really don’t have much patience for contrived pomo literary criticism, that kind of analytic framework is pretty appropriate when you’re dealing with...
Buffet by Roger Lowenstein
Roger Lowenstein, author of the very good book When Genius Failed and the pretty bad book Origins of the Crash, writes a fascinating bio of Warren Buffet. Buffett’s integrity, intellect, frugality, discipline is fairly inspiring.
I’ve read about Buffett before, but I was surprised to see how early he was became focused on accumulating wealth, joking at one point as a teenager about...
Manhattanhenge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →
Manhattanhenge is when the sunset lines up perfectly with the east-west path of Manhattan streets. Usually happens on May 28th & July 12th. This Monday I saw the sunrise over Shelter Island while I was on the 5:30 ferry. That night I saw the sun set over the Hudson when I left work, in what was pretty close to a perfect Manhattanhenge. A great day for me and the sun.
