American Wei

Jing Wei—greatest artist of all time? (The above is for American Way magazine, which used to have the best Editor's Notes.) Her work is also in McSweeney's new San Francisco Panorama broadside, which is apparently flying off the stands so fast that I will never see a copy!

American idle

In the NYT Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates began her review of Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife by asking: "Is there a distinctly American experience?" She adds:

“The American,” by Henry James; “An American Tragedy,” by Theodore Dreiser; “The Quiet American,” by Graham Greene; “The Ugly American,” by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick; Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral” and Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho” — each suggests, in its very title, a mythic dimension in which fictitious characters are intended to represent national types or predilections.

Hmmm...Maybe this answers the question? (Punchline ca. 1:30 mark)



(Via Termite Art.)

Film issue

Am I the only one who didn't care for Children of Men? The long take at the end was pretty impressive, or was it simply impressive because I kept thinking, "It must be hard to do a long take like that, how do you choreograph everything?" etc.

Anyway, via Very Short List, here is Daily Film Dose's look at the long take. My favorite: "Russian Ark—The Whole Damn Movie."

And via The Morning News: Kristan Horton shoots scenes from Dr. Strangelove using household items.

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Ron Rosenbaum's written about the surreal in-flight catalogue Sky Mall, and suddenly the world of airborne literature seems ripe for analysis. The editor's note in the new American Way magazine gives you the sense that Sherri Gulczynski Burns figures, Nobody is going to read this, and if so—so what?

Do you have things on your to-do list that, no matter how important they are, take a backseat to everything else? Or is it just me? As I’ve mentioned before, writing this column is something I put off until the very last minute every single issue. I don’t know why. I think that only extensive (or intensive?) therapy would help me figure that out. This time, I even channeled the ghosts of all the users that IT people (read Wes) have “deleted” over the years, and I persuaded their spirits to infect my computer so that this file (and only this file) would not open. Sadly, the said IT person was able to fix it. So here I am.

As it makes me feel better to have an excuse, this time I’m chalking my procrastination up to it being the end of winter.

Hockey and basketball seasons have just come to a close, so it’s time to turn our attention to America’s favorite pastime. (And believe it or not, that favorite pastime is not happy hour!)

(It goes on...!)