June 2013
1 post
May 2013
5 posts
New John Mayer album this summer
New record this Summer… Not a Born and Raised “plus”… A new group of songs to bring the whole thing up to date with Summer 2013. I have that hunger that always precedes something meaningful. See you all soon. And thanks for the warm welcome back to the stage. Getting back on it a little at a time.
John
I’m like
April 2013
4 posts
“…and if [David Foster] Wallace teaches us anything it’s that you should be the sort of person who not only obligingly follows footnotes and endnotes but finds great value in doing so.”
—Cohen, Samuel S., and Lee Konstantinou. The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012. Print. xxii.
The Sound You Hear In Every Movie Trailer →
newyorker.com
Ian Crouch for The New Yorker:
By now, this accursed bass drone feels as if it has always been a part of our cinematic lives. Yet its reign of sonic terror has been relatively brief, dating, with a few antecedents, to a string of trailers made for Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” from 2010. The teaser for the film was released in 2009, and featured music by Mike Zarin. The movie’s third trailer, this time scored by Zach Hemsey, added a playful and clever string element over Zarin’s big booms. Both of these components were then absorbed into the film’s soundtrack, by Hans Zimmer, a composer who, based largely on his work on Nolan’s films in the past decade, probably deserves most of the blame for loosing this particular rock slide into the world.
It’s not just you who thinks that basically every movie trailer now sounds like Inception.
I was thinking about this very thing last night after seeing/hearing a trailer for NBC’s Hannibal, the music of which is a blatant ripoff of Zimmer’s “accursed bass drone.” Glad to know it’s not just me.
The nocebo effect →
blogs.smithsonianmag.com
An opposite tendency [of the placebo effect]—and one that has been largely overlooked by the research community—is the nocebo effect. Put simply, it is the phenomenon in which inert substances or mere suggestions of substances actually bring about negative effects in a patient or research participant. For some, being informed of a pill or procedure’s potential side effects is enough to bring on real-life symptoms. Like the placebo effect, it is still poorly understood and thought to be brought about by a combination of Pavlovian conditioning and a reaction to expectations.
February 2013
2 posts
Dollops of the fantastic
On David Mitchell’s next book:
[Mitchell] says it has ‘dollops of the fantastic in it’, though not of the hobbits-and-elves kind. ‘Stuff between life and death. And the soul.’
Totally vague, and I’m already sold.
this is the day →
robbellcom.tumblr.com
this day maybe be rough and bloody and heartbreaking but it is here and it is now and it is bursting with untold potential and possibility and our response to it is of utmost, urgent importance.
January 2013
3 posts
My Amazon review of Mark O’Connell’s new Kindle single Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever:
With “Epic Fail,” Mark O’Connell has rocketed to the top (or near-top) of my Authors To Watch list. Although he has written for various outlets including The Millions, Slate, The Guardian, etc., this was the first longform piece of his I’ve read, and I was completely dazzled.
“Epic Fail” is intelligent cultural critique intelligently written. Like others, I read (rather, devoured) it in one sitting; I was frequently nodding in agreement and even more frequently making notes in order to preserve O’Connell’s fresh insights and adroit prose. I normally hesitate to bestow five-star reviews, but for my part “Epic Fail” is a no-brainer. I’ve already recommended the essay both publicly and privately.
To those who wish it had more of a “conclusion” or final chapter: I found that each chapter contained its own conclusions and that the piece as a whole stands on its own without need for a summation. Even those chapters that end on an ambiguous note are done so (in my opinion) intentionally — requiring the reader to wrestle with the questions and come to his or her own conclusions.
Do not be fooled; although it may look like it, this is not brainless BuzzFeed-lit. “Epic Fail” is an engaging and erudite discourse in pop clothing.
The last and only other review I posted on Amazon was in 2006. It’s that good.
November 2012
3 posts
“The only problem is that rumors are now reported with the same tone and structure as hard news, and modern readers (no matter what they claim) have been trained to consume gossip and fact in the exact same way.”
—Chuck Klosterman, I Lived a CIA Conspiracy Theory
“It’s better to have a few fantastic things designed for you than to have many untrustworthy things poorly designed to please everyone.”
— The Best.
