Feb
22
Favorite things: Jeff Bridges
February 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment
• Iron Man
• Seabiscuit
• The Contender
• The Big Lebowski
• White Squall
• Fearless
• The Fisher King
• The Last Picture Show
These are the eight Jeff Bridges movies I’ve seen that are really, really great. Fearless, though, is my very favorite movie from my whole lifetime. It’s startling, creative, and unforgettable. Someone on Netflix gave it the following description:
A truly remarkable film that will open your eyes and has the potential to change your life, if you are open-minded and not afraid of exploring your most basic fear.
YES. And the reason for this is Jeff Bridges, who lives in this part without emotional shenanigans or overacting, who makes the potentially clichéd topic of survivor’s guilt into a riveting piece of character work. He goes ice cold and turns inward after a terrible plane crash, and somehow, this intense selfishness frees him to reconnect with life’s exquisite joys. The movie is peppered with characters who are worse people, but Bridges shows us the temporary emotional death of his character and its impact on his bewildered family.
Combine this with the Fisher King and the Big Lebowski and, really, if I could only watch those three movies for the rest of my life I’d be pretty set. Then consider the other four listed at the top of the post, and the numerous other good movies he’s made: Starman, Nadine, Tucker, Arlington Road . . .
And finally, his beautiful, impressive website.
Feb
21
February 21 Miscellany
February 21, 2009 | 5 Comments
• After last week’s successful cupcakes, this week I’m making chocolate whoopie pies with cream cheese filling. The first round is in the oven now, results TBA.
• Relatedly, Online Alarm Clock is a great egg timer for those who have none (me).
• Since Nathan’s new roommate has a microwave, Nathan agreed to let me borrow his microwave on a long-term loan, which means — yes, it’s true — I’ve finally caught up with the 1970s.
• After downloading the files a number of months ago, I finally upgraded my copy of WordPress, and the new interface is super foxy. Highly recommended.
Feb
19
I can absolutely 100% no longer drink coffee. The doctor advised me against it before, and this afternoon I had a cup and have been so, so sick ever since. Bad decision.
Feb
19
Tungsten update, 2/19/09
February 19, 2009 | 3 Comments
Since we already discussed my favorite tiny island nation, it’s time to get the latest on my favorite element. Tungsten (née wolfram) is an important component of lightbulb filaments and also of certain masculine wedding bands.
Tungsten may cause leukemia, according to a study inspired by cancer clusters in Arizona. Oh, yikes:
“This is the first time it’s been shown that an element in nature, in this case tungsten, can possibly cause cancer,” he said. “It intrigues me as a scientist that we may be close to identifying the culprit in Fallon, Sierra Vista and other places that have cancer clusters and high levels of tungsten in their environments.”
Dirty pool, tungsten. This popular heavy metal also features in a recent debate over mining subsidies in Nevada:
Crowley cited tungsten, a mineral heavily mined in the past. He said although the state has significant tungsten reserves, they’re no longer economical to mine.
“Tungsten didn’t go away,” he said. “The economics dried up, and the mining stopped.”
Last year my best ladyfriend lived in the Chinese province of Henan, which, together with Guangxi, accounts for almost 80% of China’s tungsten. Chinese production was up more than 5% year over year but down more than 10% month over month for December. I wonder why that is, besides that December sucked for every business in the whole world.
Feb
19
Nauru update, 2/19/09
February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Nauru, my favorite tiny island nation, is long plagued by insane international corruption and has a terrible economy.
First in today’s Nauru update, a “freedom of information conference”:
Nauru is trying to eradicate the corruption that has long plagued the country.
[Nauru's president] Mr Stephen says if Nauru introduces freedom of information legislation, the island will have an additional tool in its quest to wipe out corruption.
Nauru also has a new National Olympic Committee chair, the very same President Stephen:
Mr Stephen is the president of the Republic of Nauru, having taken office in December 2007, he is also a former top-class weightlifter, winner of seven gold medals and five silver at the Commonwealth Games.
Nauru’s president is both a proponent of government transparency AND a world-class weightlifter? Um, awesome. On the other hand, here is a legitimately interesting piece of political information involving fellow tiny island nation Kiribati:
Kiribati is one of the few nations that recognizes Taipei as the true capital of China. [Economic problems] lead Nauru to switch its allegiance with Taipei to Beijing in exchange for millions of dollars in aid in 2002. In 2005, Nauru reversed its decision and has since received additional aid for this renewed recognition of Taipei.
Nauru, shrewdly playing both sides. I expect no less from my favorite tiny island nation.
Feb
18
These changed me.
1. Jimmy Buffett, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973) — If you haven’t heard it, give it an open-minded chance, and I promise you won’t be disappointed. At the very least, it won’t be what you expect. This album takes me straight to the Florida Keys: it sounds like a calm summer day fishing off a dock, or peeling shrimp on the patio.
2. Soul Asylum, Grave Dancers Union (1992) — Oh man, when we moved to Oregon and I got to about junior high, I found this cassette somewhere and played it until it quit working. This, I think, was the officially beginning of how I never fit into the music my generation actually liked, because it was already five or six years behind.
3. Grand Funk Railroad, Closer to Home (1970) — Really great storytelling rock music, played by awesome longhairs, including the startlingly attractive young Mark Farner. I liked this album forever and then, one summer when I commuted from Oregon to Beloit every day for work, I wore it out.
4. The Who, Who’s Next (1971) — The first album I really loved that contained a lot of dissonance and really raw but expertly played songs. The Who manage to both be virtuosic in songcraft and totally surprising with the visceral gutpunch. Listen to Baba O’Riley from beginning to end and it’s like a preview of the whole album, starting out almost mechanically musical and ending with balls-out bellows.
5. Counting Crows, This Desert Life (1999) — When this came out I bought it promptly and listened to it two hundred times and learned every song by heart. I loved Counting Crows anyway but this album has something more, something complex and repeatable, and yes, it’s quieter than their previous albums, but offers a totally different experience because of that. (After this they suck, unexceptionally.)
6. The Beatles, Revolver (1966) — My bad friend in high school loved the Beatles, LOVED them almost scarily, and we listened to them nonstop. I’d heard Hard Day’s Night and other early albums and just not felt the love that much, but Revolver changed the Beatles for me. Later, one of my most epic, traumatic, meaningful friendships was with someone who loved the Beatles too, and I remember riding with the windows open listening to Revolver.
7. Beck, Sea Change (2002) — I never even liked Beck until this album came out, and my eyes opened to slow, thoughtful country music, and this album arrived at a very good point in my life, when I needed something slow I could sink my teeth into. Thanks to Sea Change I had a suitable temperament for Bonnie Prince Billy, Julie Doiron, Songs:Ohia, and other elegiac folk-country.
8. Dredg, El Cielo (2002) — Sometime in high school I developed some avenue to find music no one I knew or read about was listening to, and I honestly have no idea how that happened. Somehow I heard Dredg’s single “Same Ol’ Road” and bought this album sight unseen, and it blew my fucking mind and still does. This is mathy, noisy, beautiful music. None of their other albums comes close at all, but my love spills over onto them too.
9. Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed (1969) — What can you say about Let It Bleed? It fucking rules and holds up like it came out yesterday. At some point, this album stopped being my dad’s music and started connecting with me. He is still smug about that.
10. Johnny Cash, at Folsom Prison (1968) — Once, I broke up with someone and he compared the feeling to one of my favorite Johnny Cash lines: “I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.” Johnny Cash is a spiritual and flawed genius with a lot on his mind. I consider that high praise and can think of few people to whom I’d apply the same label.
11. Saves the Day, Through Being Cool (1998) — Saves the Day is music I never thought I’d like, and it made inroads with sharp, smart, brutal lyrics about love and the way love can sour into hate so quickly. When I finally had the love and then the hate, I was grateful to have something to blare in my car. You really don’t even need total fluency on your instrument to make great music, because that isn’t always the point.
12. Pink Floyd, Meddle (1971) — This album barely has lyrics, contains my favorite song of all time (“Fearless”), and also has a lot less of the wonderful-but-showy musical showmanship of other Pink Floyd albums. Don’t get me wrong. These guys know what they’re fucking doing, and these are excellent songs, they just aren’t part of a classic Pink Floyd Cohesive Whole. And I like that.
13. Blackalicious, Blazing Arrow (2002) — Succinctly, this is the first hip hop album I loved. Much like Saves the Day, I never expected to like hip hop and had never heard any really good stuff anyway. It helped that I started listening to a lot of Motown, soul, and jazz, and started recognizing some of the samples from their original sources. Listening closely to a really good hip hop record is almost studious, with layers and layers to work through. It’s the crossword puzzle of the musical world, and you should know how I feel about crossword puzzles.
14. Neil Young, Unplugged (1993) — On the one hand you have rocking Neil Young (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere), eclectic Neil Young (After the Gold Rush), and thoughtful/sometimes asinine Neil Young (Harvest). Then you have Unplugged, where he trots out a bunch of stuff people don’t really listen to anymore and slows it way down. In the early 90s he released these two enormous albums: Harvest Moon, which directly addressed Harvest, and Unplugged, where, as Anne Lamott would say, his butt showed.
15. Crosby Stills Nash and Young, 4 Way Street (1971) — I know, I just went on and on about Neil Young. This, though, is my favorite live album of all time. About half a dozen times I’ve played “Find the Cost of Freedom” as loud as I can handle, shut everything else off, and listened to it with my eyes closed. I am not religious even a little bit, but I do feel the great magnanimity of it all under the right circumstances.
Feb
17
Shelf-stable and salmonella-free
February 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Talking with friends last night I realized that the vegan cupcakes I made the other day are made of all shelf-stable ingredients that, especially once baked, will take a long time to go bad or stale if kept in an airtight container.
Feb
17
HSBC’s in-flight magazine experiment
February 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment
My brother works for the enormous, uber-international bank HSBC, so when I learned about a recent stunt of theirs from Trendwatching I got excited: HSBC’s in-flight magazine puts customers in charge.
Passengers can choose from five writers, including celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and tennis legend Björn Borg.
It will also feature four key sectors – home and abroad, commerce and politics, health and sport, and media and culture – with content sourced from countries such as Mexico, Malaysia, and China.
The magazine is then bound into a hardback cover for the passengers to take on their flight in an “exclusive” HBSC enclosure. The scheme is open to all passengers using the terminal.
Trendwatching reports that over 2,000 people created magazines and 7,000 visited the magazine stand during its two-week trial run.
Feb
16
Posthumous style
February 16, 2009 | 2 Comments
For some reason I’ve spent a good portion of time reading about popes, because really, papacy is a fascinating concept. For instance, this graphic of popes over time is awesome, and it also gives some insight into the difference in life expectancy over the years.
Almost all of the first 50 popes are saints, but only one of the most recent 25. (Seven others are engaged in the saint process.) I wonder why some are and some aren’t?
Feb
16
Maybe they were childhood friends
February 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Stone Yamashita Partners is an insanely important strategy firm with a beautiful, but mazelike and preposterous, website.
It’s so navigation-unfriendly and design-heavy that it reminds me of intentional design maze Superbad (which, in case you were wondering, predates the movie by ten years). The trunk page I linked to is the only thing close to an index — if you type www.superbad.com into your browser it will take you to any number of random starting points.