As heard on Modern Family, Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) speaking:
“You know, I just wanna be home, reading on opposite ends of the sofa.”
[That’s how I feel today. Elaine, are you with me?]
Monday, February 6, 2012
Domestic aspirations
“People are getting rid
of bookshelves”
J. L. Sathre:
1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.
2. While you’re drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.
25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore (Open Salon, found via Coudal)
Barthes on pens
Roland Barthes on writing as ritual:
Take the gesture, the action of writing. I would say, for example, that I have an almost obsessive relation to writing instruments. I often switch from one pen to another just for the pleasure of it. I try out new ones. I have far too many pens — I don’t know what to do with all of them! And yet, as soon as I see a new one, I start craving it. I cannot keep myself from buying them.Barthes writes about felt-tipped pens in the essay “Stationery Store”:
When felt-tipped pens first appeared in the stores, I bought a lot of them. (The fact that they were originally from Japan was not, I admit, displeasing to me.) Since then I’ve gotten tired of them, because the point flattens out too quickly. I’ve also used pen nibs — not the “Sergeant-Major,” which is too dry, but softer nibs, like the “J.” In short, I’ve tried everything . . . except Bics, with which I feel absolutely no affinity. I would even say, a bit nastily, that there is a “Bic style,” which is really just for churning out copy, writing that merely transcribes thought.
In the end, I always return to fine fountain pens. The essential thing is that they can produce that soft, smooth writing I absolutely require.
“An Almost Obsessive Relation to Writing Instruments.” From a 1973 interview with Jean-Louis de Rambures. In Barthes’s The Grain of the Voice: Interviews, 1962–1980, translated by Linda Coverdale (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985).
The felt-tipped pen, of Japanese origin, has taken up where the brush leaves off: this stylo is not an improvement of the point, itself a product of the pen (of steel or of cartilage); its immediate ancestry is that of the ideogram.There are many photographs of Barthes with a cigarette in hand, but none that I can find in which he holds a pen. The New Yorker though has some samples of his handwriting.
Empire of Signs, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).
Related posts
Five pens (reveries)
R. Crumb’s supplies (steel nibs, Pelikan ink, Strathmore paper)
Nabokov’s supplies (pencils, index cards)
Proust, Barthes, involuntary memory
Proust’s supplies (a Sergeant-Major fan)
Saturday, February 4, 2012
This is not your song
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt:
“When you think about every iconic song that has emotional resonance for millions and millions of Americans, in almost every instance, Republican candidates can’t use the song because the artist is not supportive.”Caution: the article includes a photograph of Survivor, c. 1979. What were people thinking back then?
G.O.P. Candidates Are Told, Don’t Use the Verses, It’s Not Your Song (New York Times)
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
From Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions [OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies] (2006) is a smart and funny secret-agent spoof, with beautiful and dangerous women, international villains, and brilliant cinematography and special effects. Jean Dujardin seems to be channeling Cary Grant and Sean Connery (out of character, he resembles neither). His OSS 117 is charming, dim, self-satisfied, yet remarkably capable. Bérénice Bejo’s Larmina though is much, much smarter. As with The Artist, cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman shows himself to be an ace at capturing older styles of moviemaking. I love the period-perfect color and cheap projected background in the scene above.
Speaking of Cary Grant, I wonder how many viewers will recognize the Grant–Randolph Scott element in the flashbacks to 117’s relationship with Jack Jefferson (Philippe Lefebvre).
Related posts
The Artist (and typography)
EXchange names on screen (Cary Grant and Randolph Scott)
Jean Dujardin Sings (Elaine’s post on 117’s performance of “Bambino”)
Friday, February 3, 2012
From the Life Photo Archive
Wikipedia reports that Stephens College is “a women’s college located in Columbia, Missouri.” I have David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest on my mind — thinking about the novel’s many masks (figurative and literal, some worn while engaging in “video telephony”) led me, idly browsing, to this photograph.
The record store as public good
Leon Wieseltier on Amazon and the closing of Washington, D.C.’s Melody Record Shop:
How easy must every little thing be? A record store in your neighborhood is also convenient, and so is a bookstore. There is also a sinister side to the convenience of online shopping: hours once spent in the sensory world, in the diversified satisfaction of material needs and desires, can now be surrendered to work. It appears to be a law of American life that there shall be no respite from screens. And so Amazon’s practices raise the old question of the cultural consequences of market piggishness. For there are businesses that are not only businesses, that also have non-monetary reasons for being, that are public goods. Their devastation in the name of profit may be economically legitimate, but it is culturally calamitous. In a word, wrong.Record stores I have known
Going to Melody (The New Republic, found via Music Clip of the Day, where you can read more)
Relic Rack, Sam Goody’s, J&R
Record Service
Arteries of New York City
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Life in colledge
In the news: “A college student claims he was injured when a fraternity member in a ‘drunken stupor’ decided ‘that it would be a good idea to shoot bottle rockets out of his —
I’m stopping right there. You’ll have to click through to read the rest (found via Boing Boing).
Why colledge? That’s my word for “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge cheapens the experience of students who are in college. Colledge students and college students are often found on the very same campus.
Related reading
All colledge posts (via Pinboard)
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