If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t hesitate to check out Sarah Silverman’s PSA about the Voter ID requirements that have been cooked up this year by nefarious anti-democratic forces. That Sarah Silverman has a mouth on her, but she’s really smart, really informed, and hilarious every step of the way.
Archive for the 'good stuff online' Category
Good stuff online: Sarah Silverman’s election-year public service announcement
September 23, 2012Good stuff online
August 1, 2012
I’ve been loving New York magazine’s new “In Conversation” feature, which exudes ambitions to become the new version of Playboy magazine’s in-depth interviews. On the heels of rambling, riveting chats with Barney Frank and Spike Lee, last week there was Martin Amis — not one of my favorite writers ever, but someone I’m totally content to read a lengthy Q&A with. You can read the whole thing here. David Wallace-Wells conducted the interview. Some notable excerpts:
“In America, the policeman is a working-class hero. In England, the policeman is a working-class traitor. That’s why there’s such violent names for the police in criminal England—they call them not only the filth, the filth, but also the puss. They’re the lowest of the low. When policemen go to prison in England, they have as bad a time as a pedophile. The police in America are quite, to my senses, fascistic—you know, an immediate end to all humor, end of all human contact. It’s a real assertion of authority in a way that’s very rare in England. In England, police are, softly, softly, Now sir, come on sir. It’s a humoring voice, not an authoritarian one. But when a riot starts, it’s all off—the law suspended. It’s just the sort of thing that happens every now and then. Very hard to see any kind of social protest in it.”
“It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters—which you do, without even thinking about it, just as you love your children. But also to love the reader, and that’s what I mean by the pleasure principle. The difference between a Nabokov, who in almost all his novels, nineteen novels, gives you his best chair and his best wine and his best conversation. Compare that to Joyce, who, when you arrive at his house, is nowhere to be found, and then you stumble upon him, making some disgusting drink of peat and dandelion in the kitchen. He doesn’t really care about you. Henry James ended up that way. They fall out of love with the reader. And the writing becomes a little distant.”
Good stuff online: Benj Zeitlin, director of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, and Postville, Iowa
July 18, 2012When I got home from seeing Beasts of the Southern Wild, of course I immediately wanted to go online and find out how this film was made. Happily, I found this excellent interview by Maris James with director Benh Zeitlin that answered a lot of my questions. Among other things, he says that they originally had cast a Julliard-trained actor to play the father, but it wasn’t feeling intuitively right, and they ended up hiring the guy who ran the bakery where they bought their doughnuts every day. And when he picked the then-six-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis to play the lead, he sat down with her at the computer and went through Lucy Alibar’s script line by line, taking out anything that didn’t sound like something she would say.
And then there’s Maggie Jones’s fascinating story in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about Postville, Iowa, which represents its own peculiar microcosm of the American economy and job market today. In the midst of the heartland, meatpacking plants depend on workers who will tolerate pretty horrible conditions for rock-bottom wages, which means a succession of legal, illegal and semi-legal immigrants and refugees from Russia, the Ukraine, Mexico, Guatemala, Somalia, and Palau. This is not Mayberry, RFD.
Good stuff online: new Poe Ballantine story
June 9, 2012I am always excited when an issue of The Sun arrives in the mail containing a Poe Ballantine story. His fiction reads like someone’s supernaturally eloquent diary entry, self-revealing and self-effacing at the same time, always honest about the small and large failures of a man’s emotional and artistic life. His new story, “Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel,” doesn’t depart one bit from its predecessors — a satisfying read. You can read a condensed version of it online here.
Good stuff online: LOUIE
April 10, 2012I virtually never watch TV shows. I’m one of those snobs who looks down on it, except for the occasional class act, like The Sopranos or Six Feet Under. But thanks to my new Panasonic BluRay DVD player whose remote comes with its own dedicated Netflix button, I’ve joined the streaming revolution. Aside from Downton Abbey Season 1, what’s most delighted me is the half-hour HBO series written and directed by Louis C.K., the unlikely comedy success — balding middle-aged red-haired (can you say hot?) straight guy. He does some of the most amazingly wide open comic raps on straight men’s curiosity about gay sex, not mention race, parenting, and awkward dating.
I thought more of his episodes would be available on YouTube for free viewing, but the only one of my favorites currently at hand is the infamous “Poker”, in which a bunch of middle-aged straight guys interrogate their gay buddy about what goes on at sex clubs — not to be missed.
another eye opens 