cant-blog-well
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The Dinosaur is Still Alive
SI’s Jeff Pearlman was kind enough to have me write something on his blog. Figuring it would be appropriate to do something sports-related, I wrote about Frenchie, the remarkable man who runs Frenchie’s Gym in Williamsburg.
Big thanks to Jeff for sharing some of his digital real estate. And a shout-out to Frenchie, too, for being a generally excellent human.
Check out the article here.
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How I Got My First Job: Or, Repeated Failures Interrupted By Moments Of Levity And Hideous Embarrassment
Eight months after college, I was earning sixteen bucks an hour as a temp in the compliance department of a very large and well-known bank, taking the bus into New York City every day from my parents’ home in suburban New Jersey and entertaining the thought that, at 22 years old, all hope for a rich, full life had already evaporated. Like most embittered people staring into the chasm between hope and reality, I could point to a specific moment where it all “went wrong.” It occurred in an executive boardroom at NBC’s headquarters in Rockefeller Center.
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Made in Hell: Duane Reade Hi-Tech Dental Floss
The age-old consumer dilemma: brand-name vs. generic. What’s at stake?
If the generic product’s good, you feel like you’ve won a small victory against larger commercial forces. If not, old prejudices and insecurities are reinforced: that you really do get what you pay for; that the flashy, better-packaged object usually is superior; that you can judge a book by its cover.
I find this debate seems most pressing during periods of mild financial distress. It is irrelevant during the flush times, because who can be bothered trifling over a dollar when the wallet’s thick. You’re on top of the world. Live like the king or queen you are! And if you’re in a truly bad financial state, the decision doesn’t matter much either. You do what you must to get on.
But mild financial distress provokes a special mindset. Things were recently good, or are only tenuously good. You are teetering away from a better place, and eager to maintain whatever footing remains. Yet, things aren’t bad enough to warrant a total lifestyle change. And so you resort to the fiduciary equivalent of ordering diet soda with your cheese fries: selective cheapness.
Last month I found myself experiencing mild financial distress. I’d just moved into my own place, and spent a kind of staggering sum on movers, security deposits, new furnishings, etc. The dwindling figures in my bank account were of concern. I knew there was a simple solution to my problem: stop spending so much money. But that would not happen. I still needed a coffee table. Thus: selective cheapness, the squishy embrace of which would soon be felt in the dental hygiene section of the Duane Reade on Bedford Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
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nice interview from julia cooke, gets some well-deserved cred from the word-crazy folks at longreads:
An interview with Cuban director Fernando Pérez on life, art and making movies in Cuba:
Fernando Pérez: I have one place in the world that I live in, where I was born, and that’s Havana. If you ask me why, I wouldn’t know, but then, that’s why I make films. In Cuba and specifically in Havana there’s a sort of energy that turns every situation into something unexpected. We lived through the Special Period in the 1990s in which the economic crisis that happened as a result of the fall of the USSR became, for many people of my generation and for a slightly younger generation like that of my children, a material and social crisis, it’s true, but for me, also a spiritual crisis. I went to visit my parents every Sunday, in Guanabacoa, a nearby village. I remember that had go through the tunnel under the bay of Havana to get there, and since there was no transportation I would do it by bike. And in 1993, when things got much worse—there was no food, they would cut the electricity for long periods of time—as I left the tunnel, I thought, this image that I’m living, it’s like a metaphor for the Cuban reality. It’s like one is crossing the tunnel, and we don’t see the end, but it has to be there; it struck me as very impressionistic, and that’s when the idea for the movie came.
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Little, Brown and Company Spring/Summer '12: The Sugar Frosted Nutsack: A Novel
mark leyner, logophile, new jerseyan, neurotic, john cusack collaborator, and author of one of funniest/weirdest books ever, is dropping a new “joint” this month.
read it!
or don’t!
see if i care!
(i do.)
MARCH 2012 HARDCOVER
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack: A Novel
Mark Leyner
978-0-316-60845-9, $24.99From the bestselling novelist and quirk collector, a romp through the excesses and exploits of gods and mortals.
High above the bustling streets of Dubai in the world’s tallest and most luxurious…
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Otto Baumberger’s extraordinary poster for the PKZ department store in Zurich, 1923.
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happy valentines day
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PASS
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