February 2010
awritersruminations asked: You might have already been asked this but I was wondering who some of your favorite modern and classic writers are and why.
This is what weekends are like at our house (or:...
Starfish - Eleanor Lerman
This is what life does. It lets you walk up to the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman down beside you at the counter who say, Last night, the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder, is this a message, finally, or just another day?
Life lets you take the dog...
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 1 (Flaming...
fifteen minutes and counting...
Okay, I picked “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 1” by the Flaming Lips (thanks for the great idea, Anais!). Off to learn/play/record.
I’ll try to post it no later than 15 minutes from now…
friday night recordings #4
Okay, I’m really feeling like learning and recording another spontaneous cover tonight and, as usual, I want YOU to help me pick a song to tackle. You know the rules: leave a suggestion, I’ll choose one of the songs, and then learn and record it all in ten minutes.
I’ll leave this up for a bit to get as many choices as possible…
…so, what song do YOU think I should...
O Me! O Life! - Walt Whitman
O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; ...
“This radical idea — the scientists were suggesting that depressive disorder came...”
– Jonah Lehrer, Depression’s Upside (New York Times Magazine, 2/28/10)
Woody Allen Week: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) →
LOVE IN THE TIME OF BARCELONA
by Erica U.
There’s something to admire in a movie that captures a place like a bond jumper. In a film that bottles the smells and clamor of a destination, the snapshots and movements and time and condenses all these sensations into not just a backdrop…
Woody Allen Week(s) end with a bang: Erica on Vicky Cristina Barcelona!
The full U.K. series of "The Office" is on Hulu. →
faithandbegorrah:
What, you had something better to do?
Woody Allen Week: Everyone Says I Love You (1996) →
WILD CLICHES ARE MADE TO BE SPOKEN. OR SUNG.
by Danielle Lee
So, does everyone walk around throwing the four-letter sentiment your way, or are they all just explaining your love for some unidentified third person? What does Woody Allen mean by the title of his only musical, Everyone…
fancyismymiddlename.tumblr.com →
My mother passed away when I was seventeen, on the day that I graduated from high school. (You can’t make this stuff up.) For nearly ten years now, this deeply horrible thing has given me anxiety attacks, clawed at my guts, wrung out my heart, and has both crippled and uplifted me in unexpected and seemingly unlikely ways. In the past two or three out of ten years, the obvious side effects of...
You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon
…he looks...
Woody Allen Week: Interiors (1978) →
TOO PERFECT TO LIVE IN THIS WORLD
by Sherwyn J. Spencer
I have a tradition that I follow when I watch Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978). At the start of the film I turn the volume way up so that I can hear the opening lines clearly. Arthur, played by E. G. Marshall, stands by a window…
anxiety is getting the best of me these days. it happens every few years, in waves, and it feels like this and i hate it and just want it to stop. which, i know, only makes things hurt worse. so i’m trying to accept it. i’m trying to remember to breathe.
i wish i was a stronger person.
Woody Allen Week: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) →
ON AGAIN, OFF AGAIN
by Anna P.
Woody Allen’s admiration for Ingmar Bergman is well known, but Bergman’s influence eluded me in the first Allen films I saw (Annie Hall, Sleeper). Crimes and Misdemeanors, however, feels like a love letter to Bergman…
“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have...”
– — Roger Ebert
(via alexblagg) (via busterchaplin)
Woody Allen Week: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) →
THE HEART IS A RESILIENT LITTLE MUSCLE
by Anais Escobar
My mother saw Hannah and Her Sisters in theaters when she was pregnant with me. I imagine the twenty-something version of my mom eating Junior Mints, her usual movie snack, and occasionally placing a hand on her newly expanding…
“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we’re still...”
– Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (via sarahspy)
In the Morning - Built to Spill
Tuesday morning...
what?
I hate when people talk about how many followers they have too, but can I just say that my psychology tumblr has 8,135 followers as of tonight?! I can’t wrap my head around that number in any way.
eceu:
Red River - Rocky Votolato
New music...
a bright wall in a dark room.: Woody Allen Week:... →
YOU LOVE RUSSIA, DON’T YOU?
by Karina Wolf
Love and Death could only have been made by an autodidact. The movie is in awe of literature but toys with high seriousness. Woody Allen wrote it after Sleeper and concurrently with the script that would become Annie Hall. At the time, Allen…
Things I Don’t Want to Do Today but Have to Do Anyway Because I am a Grown-Up:
Fix the bathroom fan
Things I Recently Searched for on Google:
How to fix a bathroom fan
“They’d never noticed it before, the delusion—it’s like it was so emotionally...”
– The once and pale king would have been forty-eight today.
Some people have suggested that there is such a thing as The Philosophical Novel. Whereas other people think that there are only Good Novels and Bad Novels. Other people think other things. I’d suggest that every Good Novel is also a...
How Self-Compassionate Are You? →
This is a fairly quick, 20 question test designed to measure the compassion you show to yourself. I actually did fairly bad on most of it (final score = 2.3), and that’s probably a sign to go easier on myself. I’m guessing a lot of people end up with similar results.
(The test was developed by Dr. Kristin Neff at the University of Texas. “Her primary research interests center...
Woody Allen Week: Stardust Memories (1980) →
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
by Erin Crumpacker
There’s nothing seemingly magical about the way I discovered Stardust Memories. Like many film junkies before me, I found the DVD placed between a few beloved titles on the shelf of the Woody Allen section at my local video store in West…
Prayer for a Marriage, Steve Scafidi
For Kathleen
When we are old one night and the moon arcs over the house like an antique China saucer and the teacup sun
follows somewhere far behind I hope the stars deepen to a shine so bright you could read by it
if you liked and the sadness we will have known go away for awhile—in this hour or two
before sleep—and that we kiss standing in the kitchen...
Piano Quartet in A Minor - Mahler
Alex Ross of...
happy birthday to me.
About a Girl - Nirvana