July 16, 2012 On the Shelf Jane Austen, The Video Game; Katniss, the Baby. By Sadie Stein Quoth the Daily News, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single individual in possession of a Facebook account must be in want of social interaction.” Meet Jane Austen’s Rogues and Romance. Oh, and Jane’s ring sold for a bundle. How to write a cookbook. Grammatical shockers in history. The evolution of the Arabian Nights. The good news: baby names in 2012 are heavily influenced by literature. The bad news (for the babies): the literature is Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
July 13, 2012 This Week’s Reading What We’re Loving: Toomer, Kusama, and Train By The Paris Review Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration No. 1, 1962–67, watercolor, ink, graphite, and photocollage on paper, 15 7/8 × 19 13/16 in. Collection of the artist. © Yayoi Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, London Six years ago I wrote a little article about my favorite Washington, D.C., novels—and was roundly chastised for leaving Cane off the list. First published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s modernist classic isn’t exactly about Washington, and it isn’t exactly a novel. It’s an early response to the Great Migration, in linked stories and verse, that moves from rural Georgia to U Street and back again. Still, it may well be the District’s greatest hit. It is pure lyricism, perfect for these late summer nights. —Lorin Stein I caught a preview of the Yayoi Kusama retrospective that opened at the Whitney yesterday. If you’ve heard of her at all, it’s likely for her signature polka dots (or perhaps for her recent collaboration with Louis Vuitton). As a video in the show attests, her use of those dots was compulsive and obsessive: she sticks them on prone nudes, reclining cats, distracted dogs; they litter the ground, the wind, the sky. But most intriguing are her very early paintings, in which you can see Kusama working through the early masters of Western modernism. Of particular interest was a very odd painting incredibly titled Accumulation of Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization), in which waves of red curtain folds pinhole a scene of bare trees. As chance would have it, the painting perfectly represented the book I’ve been reading, Windeye, Brian Evenson’s adroitly creepy new story collection. It’s kismet! —Nicole Rudick What is glamour and how does one attain it? Is it curated, cultivated—or does it just arrive, like inspiration? Jim Lewis’s article for W magazine, “Face Forward,” is the perfect starting point for anyone intrigued by (or dismissive of) this fleeting, shimmering quality. For me, if beauty is an image, then glamour is imagery: aesthetics in the service of narrative. What is glamour, after all, but good storytelling? Presenting a glimpse of a lifestyle—or perhaps, a way of being—other, elsewhere, and then gone. —Alyssa Loh Read More
July 13, 2012 Softball TPR vs. High Times: Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em By Cody Wiewandt Team |1|2|3|4|5|6|7 Total TPR |4|0|0|4|0|0|4 12 HT |0|2|4|0|0|0|4 10 What a difference a week makes. In the last installment of these notes I detailed Team TPR’s slow descent into mediocrity, a juicy tale rife with last-second losses and clubhouse turmoil. Today, thankfully, I come bearing news of a different color: the color of victory (whatever that is—green?). In what was generally classified as “a bit of an upset” by the national media (and a delicious bit of revenge for last year’s dust-up), David (TPR) felled the brutish Goliath (High Times), armed with nothing more than the competitive spirit and a handful of ringers, including one of Bard baseball’s best—and the former collegiate roommate of now super famous hoopster Jeremy Lin. Read More
July 12, 2012 On Music Crawling Out of the Cribs By Noah Wunsch Heading to the Cribs show at Santos Party House, I could feel my brain wired like a motherboard. I was coming off of a two-week caffeine withdrawal, freshly rejuvenated by two black coffees. My fingers danced with anxiety as uncontrolled memories popped into my head. I thought about my camp counselor, Jared, who slap-boxed the kids in our cabin. If one started to cry, he’d play his usual trick: forced flatulence. He’d curl up on the floor like Grotowski’s cat, red faced, concentration veining out of his forehead, sucking in air, ass cheeks flexing until he let it rip. Inevitably, the kid would stop crying and Jared would slap-box another camper. I thought about my first Cribs show. In 2006, they opened for Death Cab for Cutie and Franz Ferdinand at Hammerstein Ballroom. I was supposed to take my high school girlfriend, but she had called me that day to let me know that she and my best friend of fourteen years had been playing a little game of hide the loose ends. I went alone and screamed along to “Mirror Kissers.” Read More
July 12, 2012 Arts & Culture On Parade By Jenny Hendrix The town that I grew up in holds what people like to call, with a kind of pride in poverty, the World’s Shortest Parade on the fourth of July. A number of small towns make similar claims, but our parade, next to the beach on Maxwelton Road in Clinton, Washington, deserves it. From the field by the old Steiner farm it continues just two blocks, ending at Dave Mackie park, where a series of foot, sack, and three-legged races are run and the national anthem sung. It’s not required to register in advance to march; one simply arrives and lines up in either a motorized or non-motorized line. This year, the parade’s ninety-seventh iteration, the lineup included a number of dogs, a few Republicans, one guy in a gorilla suit, many bikes (some of them “Occupied”) and a truck full of violinists. As we waited for the start, a bored-looking high school baseball team called the Crabs slouched, chins in hand, on their hay bales, and a grandmotherly woman in a mermaid costume had her picture taken with one of two groups of pirates. Read More
July 12, 2012 On the Shelf Sacred Texts, Caravaggio, and Some Pigs By Sadie Stein Yes, the Vatican is publishing e-books. So is Judy Blume. Amazon pulls a book allegedly containing a hundred previously undiscovered Caravaggios after scholars question its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century manuscript that disappeared last year, has been recovered. Happy birthday, E. B. White. Here are some piglets. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]