Ugh: this record is so good. R.I.P. Levon Helm and everything (poor poor Richard Manuel too, whose death I unconsciously mourned at age 5 months), but Garth Hudson is an unsurpassed genius. Like, 75% of the sonic space in this song (not to mention the Band’s entire discography) is devoted to his multi-instrumental fucking smoothness. Fuck.
Werner Herzog's Note to His Cleaning Lady →
David Horowitz: I have to go to universities with bodyguards because of the fascist left in this country.
Julian Assange: I have assassination threats all over.
Slavoj Žižek: I’m the only guy in this room who was physically assaulted by right-wingers to be a communist and by communists to be a traitor to nationalists.This is the greatest sitcom that will never be.
The Killing : Twin Peaks
This past weekend I watched the first five or so episodes of AMC’s The Killing. So far, I’ve enjoyed it immensely, and mostly because it is completely impossible to ignore the similarities it shares with Twin Peaks, one of the absolute best shows of all time.
On a narrative level, alone, the two programs share much in common: they both center around the investigation of the murder of a locally beloved teenage girl, whom—as political/sexual conspiracy after conspiracy is revealed—the viewer comes to realize has a sort of murky, sordid past; they are both set in Washington state (The Killing in Seattle, Twin Peaks in the fictional town of Twin Peaks); etc., etc., etc.
I’ve compiled a list of character analogs between the two shows which I plan to return to once I’ve delved deeper into the series. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
The Killing : Twin Peaks
Rosie Larsen : Laura Palmer
Sarah Linden : Special Agent Dale Cooper
Darren Richmond : Ben Horne
Stephen Holder : Sheriff Harry S. Truman/Deputy Andy Brennan
Mitch Larsen : Sarah Palmer
Stanley Larsen : Leland Palmer
Terry Marek : Norma Jennings
Bennet Ahmed : Dr. Lawrence Jacoby/Leo Johnson
Lesley Adams : Mayor Dwayne Milford
Tom & Denny Larsen : Johnny Horne (only seen/referenced in the Pilot)
Jamie Wright : Jerry Horne
Belko Royce : Big Ed Hurley
Sterling Fitch : Donna Hayward
Amber Ahmed : Shelly Johnson
Jasper Ames : James Hurley
Gwen Eaton : Josie Packard
Ruth Yitanes : Catherine Martell
Lt. Michael Oakes : Gordon Cole
More on this later. Feel free to contest!
Written Exam, Day 7: In which our hero—having spent the last week wrestling with hubris and self-doubt, bear claws and bourbon—releases his essay to its destiny in the world (or, at least, into the mailboxes of the Examining Committee).
Written Exam, Day 6
I waited for the bus for 40 minutes, in the rain, just to go to the grocery store. I need a fucking car.
Laura and I were just serenaded in front of our apartment building by a young gentleman who—shirtless and shoeless, tripping balls—serenaded us with this gem. Happy anniversary, indeed.
Written Exam, Day 5: 4 years of Laura putting up with my shit/Hitler’s birthday/4:20, bro
Written Exam, Day 4: Completion of First Draft
Written Exam, Day 3
Written Exam, Day 2
Written Exam, Day 1: Let’s Meme this Shit, Robb!
I’m not exactly sure that I should feel this way, but I’m pretty proud of this.
(Shelby, of course, is my mother.)
“Mailer thought the new political parties of the Left ought to have names like motorcycle gangs and block athletic clubs had on their jackets: George Street Jumpers, and Green Dolphins, Orange Sparrows, Gasoline Ghosts, Paragon A.C., Purple Raiders, Silver Dragons, Bughouse Beasts—he had known immediately that neither Stokely Carmichael nor Black Power were insignificant phenomena on the day he heard that in Lowndes County, Alabama, Negroes were organizing into the Black Panther Party. Mailer, while a dilettante in Left Wing politics, was nonetheless free with his surgery; left to him, he would have cut out all middle-class protest movements like SANE and Women Strike for Peace because they derived, not genealogically he was certain, but spiritually, from the worst aspects of the American Communist Party, that old dull calculation that the apathetic middle-class organizations with middle-class leaders and abstract Everyman names like Women, Students, Artists, Professionals, Mothers, Veterans, Grandmothers, yea why not Babes? Yes, had reasoned the Communists, large bloc names could bring large even gross increases in recruitment among the middle class. Vulgar gross increases were the result. It is one thing to call a factory hand a worker—that is good for his sense of reality—he is married to his machine more than to anything else, the name helps to remind him. But for a middle-class married woman to think of herself politically as a Mother, or worse, a Woman, could only indulge a sense of self-pity. Mediocrities flock to any movement which will indulge their self-pity and their self-righteousness, for without a Movement the mediocrity is on the slide into terminal melancholia. Most such political movements served as piping systens for the brain, and flushing systems for the heart, bringing in subsistence rations of ego and do-it-yourself compassion, all very well as social plumbing to keep mass man alive, but the Participant wasn’t so certain that there weren’t too many people alive already, certainly in America, that hog’s trough of Paradise. The horror of mediocrities in a Left Wing movement was that cadres of the best young people used too much breath trying to illuminate one glint of the ideal in material mediocre hearts. The Ruminant was by now convinced that technology land was the real capitalist bastion, and the mediocre middle-class middle-aged masses of the Left were—we have visited this station already—the first real champions of technology land: they could not conceive of a revolution without hospitals, lawyers, mass meetings, and leaflets to pass out at polls.”
Note that Bob Dylan sent to Katharine Hepburn
Minimalist Reader Comments Attached to a Rejection Letter from an Academic Journal (This is Real, Guys)
Accept for Publication:
No. While I am not familiar enough with either of the films this essay discuss [the essay only discusses one film, btw] to be commenting on the article—so take my comments with a grain of salt—the essay itself is written in too digressive a style to be published, in my opinion.
Does this article provide solid research? Does the article show awareness of previous, established scholarship on the topic?
Some, yes.
Is this article well-written?
No: it is too digressive in style.
Does the article provide strong support and concrete examples for its discussion?
I don’t think the article makes its point effectively, so no.
Does the article contain accurate quotations from sources and accurate documentation in terms of page numbers?
I assume it does.
Does the article advance the study of or findings in [the field] in a significant way?
No.
“[O]ne of its first written appearances came in 1883, in the American magazine, which referred to “the social ‘dude’ who affects English dress and the English drawl”. The teenage American republic was already a growing power, with the economy booming and the conquest of the West well under way. But Americans in cities often aped the dress and ways of Europe, especially Britain. Hence dude as a dismissive term: a dandy, someone so insecure in his Americanness that he felt the need to act British.”
Airplane game: take a covert close-up of the bearded, small stringed instrument-playing man whom Mike covertly photographed in the airport, and who happens to be sitting right next to you, in 25E.