29 Notes

17 Notes

Vinegar and Oil, Jane Hirschfield

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul,
right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Coming and going unfinished,
puzzled by fate,

like the half-carved relief
of a fallen donkey, above a church door in Finland.

95 Notes

The Great Gatsby (2013)

brightwalldarkroom:

image

AMONG THE WHISPERINGS AND THE CHAMPAGNE AND THE STARS.

by Chad Perman

I can’t handle how quickly modern culture moves. Mostly, I’m simply ill-equipped—needing time to think and reflect and sort out one’s thoughts feels dangerously close to being a handicap in the digital age. But at the…

My Gatsby thoughts, yo.

23 Notes

Yahoo in Talks to Acquire Tumblr - Adweek

No no no no. Me no like. No no.

16 Notes

What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.
Greil Marcus2013 commencement address at New York’s School of Visual Arts

8 Notes

Yes, the girl who played Jordan Baker was amazing. There were times when all the other lead actors in Gatsby looked like they were in costume, performing the 1920s. But she seemed, at all times, as if she had somehow time-travelled directly from that era.

Yes, the girl who played Jordan Baker was amazing. There were times when all the other lead actors in Gatsby looked like they were in costume, performing the 1920s. But she seemed, at all times, as if she had somehow time-travelled directly from that era.

2 Notes

Marlon Brando, laying down some beats.

Marlon Brando, laying down some beats.

2376 Notes

thedailywhat:

Coming Soon of the Day: Neil Degrasse Tyson Will Host the Sequel of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
Though it’s been quietly in the works since 2011, Fox has officially confirmed that Carl Sagan’s monumental 1970 sci-ed miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage will be getting an updated sequel next year, which will consist of 13 episodes produced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane and hosted by one of the Internet’s most celebrated astrophysicists, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Fox is hoping the show will have as much as of cultural impact as Carl Sagan’s original series, which still remains one of the most watched PBS series in the world to this day.
(Image by Richard Davies)

BEST NEWS OF THE YEAR.

thedailywhat:

Coming Soon of the Day: Neil Degrasse Tyson Will Host the Sequel of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

Though it’s been quietly in the works since 2011, Fox has officially confirmed that Carl Sagan’s monumental 1970 sci-ed miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage will be getting an updated sequel next year, which will consist of 13 episodes produced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane and hosted by one of the Internet’s most celebrated astrophysicists, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Fox is hoping the show will have as much as of cultural impact as Carl Sagan’s original series, which still remains one of the most watched PBS series in the world to this day.

(Image by Richard Davies)

BEST NEWS OF THE YEAR.

18 Notes

A Great Gatsby Book Report by a Kid Who Only Saw the Movie

By Jordan Asher Major Brogan III, age 16

The Great Gatsby is a very important and famous book which tells its story through many pages, all of which I enjoyed reading very much. It was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived from 1896 to 1940 and truly wrote many books. Through its use of characters, garbage falling from the sky all the time, and black people constantly playing the trumpet on a fire escape, The Great Gatsby is truly a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald about how you shouldn’t just buy a castle near your ex-girlfriend in the 1920s and then wait for her to fall back in love with you, because eventually you might get murdered by a poor person.

The main guy in the book is Nick Carraway, who seems like he probably has brown hair and blue eyes, not that I would know, as I only read about him in a book and haven’t seen what he looks like. Nick Carraway went to college and then moved to a dirty shack on Long Island, where he tries to make money using finance and mainly just follows his neighbors around staring like a weirdo. He is currently in a mental institution because he used to drink too much because of the ’20s, so he spends his time typing his recollections of Long Island on a magic typewriter that makes his words float up into the air like cheap visual effects in a movie. (Not that I watch movies. I prefer books.)

Nick Carraway has a cousin named Daisy. She’s married to Tom Buchanan, who is a really good actor. I mean character. He has a small mustache, probably. Daisy hates shirts, Tom Buchanan, and having a personality, but everyone seems to think she is a lot of fun to be around anyway. She’s pretty cute, I guess.

Next door to Nick Carraway is a big castle where a mysterious man named Gatsby lives. Gatsby is the most important man in town (and in the book—hence the title!!!), except that none of his friends or acquaintances has ever met or seen him, even though he is literally on the cover of the newspaper every day. Any time someone says “Gatsby,” everyone else is like, “Gatsby? Gatsby? What Gatsby? Where Gatsby? Show me the Gatsby!” but no one knows who he is. Gatsby is so mysterious, in fact, that even the drunk guy who lives in his library has never seen him! Until that stops being a convenient plot point, after which everyone is just like, “Oh, hey Gatsby, could you move, you’re blocking the polo game or whatever.”

So, Gatsby and Daisy used to date, before Gatsby had to go be in World War I and then hide so nobody would find out he was a secret poor. Now that he’s not poor anymore (because of alcohol crime) Gatsby throws a lot of parties hoping that Daisy will come over. The main thing you need to understand about life in the “roaring 1920s” is that it mainly consisted of a bunch of people standing in a fountain while a drunk guy played the pipe organ and servants dumped garbage all over the place and everyone is just screaming and screaming. The 1920s people loved it. As history shows, there were nine main people in New York at that time: Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, a black guy playing the trumpet on a fire escape, Daisy’s friend, a dirty mechanic, his wife who is amorous, and her sister who is also amorous. After some events, life would never be the same.

Gatsby is obsessed with this green light across the water from his house. The green light represents Daisy, because Gatsby is “green” with envy that Tom Buchanan gets to hang out with her all the time, and also because green is the color of “go” and Gatsby would like to “go” over there.

Eventually Daisy comes over and says she would like to break up with Tom Buchanan and marry Gatsby instead, because of shirts. Everyone has a fight and eventually Gatsby dies, which represents death. The most important metaphor in The Great Gatsby is the shooting stars, which happen in the sky at least twice in every scene. The shooting stars represent the fact that Gatsby is the “star” of the book and somebody “shoots” him at the end. Aren’t we all a little bit like Gatsby in this modern world?

The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines “conclusion” as “the last part of something.” In conclusion, this is the last part of my report on The Great Gatsby, which is a very expensive book about confetti. It is truly the best book I have ever read all the way through.

11 Notes

BACK THEN? I couldn’t get anybody to watch it, for the life of me. I think livejournal was like the only place I could even find anybody to talk about it with!
It just seems like this weird foregone conclusion nowadays that the show was always this thing everybody loved. But it wasn’t. A few of us loved it, hard. But it was a hard show to love if you jumped in mid-way through, because so much of its genius and hilarity came from the way it built on previous episodes, jokes, and throughlines, rewarding those of us who showed up each and every week a thousands times over.
Anyway, yeah, I’m being the TV equivalent of the I Liked that Band Before They Were Famous guy, and I don’t like that guy either, so I’ll stop. But still! (And also, long live Netflix, seriously. They had already changed my life in so many ways, and now they’ve actually managed to resurrect one of my very favorite shows of all time, and in a whole new, intricate and intriguing all-episodes-at-once way that could be a game-changer all over again. I officially forgive you for Quikster, dudes.)

BACK THEN? I couldn’t get anybody to watch it, for the life of me. I think livejournal was like the only place I could even find anybody to talk about it with!

It just seems like this weird foregone conclusion nowadays that the show was always this thing everybody loved. But it wasn’t. A few of us loved it, hard. But it was a hard show to love if you jumped in mid-way through, because so much of its genius and hilarity came from the way it built on previous episodes, jokes, and throughlines, rewarding those of us who showed up each and every week a thousands times over.

Anyway, yeah, I’m being the TV equivalent of the I Liked that Band Before They Were Famous guy, and I don’t like that guy either, so I’ll stop. But still! (And also, long live Netflix, seriously. They had already changed my life in so many ways, and now they’ve actually managed to resurrect one of my very favorite shows of all time, and in a whole new, intricate and intriguing all-episodes-at-once way that could be a game-changer all over again. I officially forgive you for Quikster, dudes.)